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The Only Ones Left

Laura Parnes

2007 00:06:25 United StatesEnglishB&W and ColorStereo4:3Video
Tags:
Crime or Violence, Family, Installation, Mental Landscape, Portrait

Description

The Only Ones Left (three-channel video installation*), featuring actor Jim Fletcher, weaves film noir and mafia genre references with CEO diatribes, while also exposing the conventions of the feature film climax. The three channels of video depict all plot points of the Hollywood film climax concurrently. The channels are arranged chronologically from left to right. This simultaneity draws attention to the familiarity of the subject matter and the inevitability of the violent consequences awaiting the characters. Central to the installation is a confrontation that pits brother against brother, as the gangsters must attack and kill their own in accordance with the code of "honor". As will all the Godfathers, the main character is willing to resort to violence in the face of significant risk of catastrophe (self-destruction and the destruction of the family). Further, his decisions are perfectly rational within the framework of his prevailing ideology and the institutions that embody it.

*This is a single-channel version available for screening rental or educational purchase. For inquiries regarding three-channel installation version, please contact us.

About Laura Parnes

Laura Parnes’ critically acclaimed moving image works and installations address counter-cultural and youth-culture references where music is integral to the work. Her work engages in strategies of narrative and experimental film and video art to craft loose narratives of trauma and repressed memory around mass-culture experiences and youthful rites of passage. Using historical, literary and popular culture based references she addresses issues related to cultural production and societal malaise.

Laura Parnes has screened and exhibited her work widely in the US and internationally, including Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece; LOOP Festival, Barcelona, Spain; Light Industry, Brooklyn, NY; Kusthalle Winterhur, Switzerland; Overgaden- Institute for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark; iMOCA, Indianapolis, IN; Cinematexas, Austin, TX; Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, Lithuania; Museo Nacional Centro De Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Whitney Museum of American Art (1997 Whitney Biennial), NY; Dunedin Public Art Gallery, New Zealand; PSI Contemporary Art Center MoMA, NY; Miami Museum of Contemporary Art, FL; and Brooklyn Museum, NY.

Her solo exhibitions include; LA><Art, LA, CA; Alma Enterprises, London; Locust Projects, Miami; Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, LA; Participant Inc, NY and Deitch Projects, NY. She has had solo screenings at MoMA, NY; CATE 10-year Anniversary, presented by the School of Art Institute of Chicago and Video Data Bank, Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago IL; Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley Art Museum, CA; Vtape, Toronto and in a two-person screening at MoMA, NY. She was presented by Participant Inc. in a two-person exhibition at No Soul for Sale at X Initiative, NYC, NY.

Parnes is a 2013 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow and has lectured as a visiting artist at numerous institutions including: Harvard University, Columbia University and UCLA. She has participated in panels at Yale University, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and MoMA PSI. Parnes has held teaching positions at New York University, The New School and Bennington College. In 2012 she was a visiting critic at Yale University. She is currently teaching at graduate programs at MICA, Parsons and SVA. She received her BFA from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University.