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Easy Living

Chip Lord

1984 00:18:18 United StatesEnglishColor4:3Video
Tags:
Consumer culture

Description

Easy Living ingeniously depicts leisure life in suburban America with a cast of little plastic dolls and miniature model cars—the toys that shape American children's ideas about success and adult life—focusing on a typical day in the life of an "all-American" west coast town, where recreational activity and car culture prevail.

A project of the Contemporary Art Television Fund produced by artists Chip Lord and Mickey McGowan with Jules Backus.

This title is also available on Chip Lord Videoworks: Volume 1.

Chip Lord has worked with video since 1971, first as a partner in the alternative media collective Ant Farm, and since 1978 as an independent artist/producer. With Ant Farm, he produced and co-directed the video art classics Media Burn and The Eternal Frame. His early work draws on documentary conventions, but during the '80s he moved toward experimental narrative with Easy Living, Ballplayer, and his first feature-length tape, Motorist. His more recent works return to non-fiction with the video essay The Aroma of Enchantment (1992), and Awakening from the 20th Century (1999). He produces video installations as well as single-channel tapes, and he is a Professor in the Department of Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz.