“AUNTSforcamera” Artist-Devised Tour with Bettina Behjat Banayan (invited by IMMA/MESS)

An important interactive component of the installation of “AUNTSforcamera” at the New Museum includes a series of nine artist-devised tours, which have been organized using AUNTS’ chain-curation model. Nine artists have been invited by “AUNTSforcamera” artists to create a response to the exhibition in the form of a tour, which will be performed exclusively for and with participating audiences. Bettina Behjat Banayan was invited by IMMA/MESS.

IMMA/MESS’s STAGING STAGES is a single-channel dance-for-camera video that compresses the artist’s professional practice of applying makeup and performing all night in a club into a series of brief dances performed for cameras, accompanied by several outtakes that reveal the effort it takes to become so extraordinary. Responding to this work, Behjat Banayan has devised a tour for “AUNTSforcamera” in which she will recompose aspects of IMMA/MESS’s improvised performances as choreographies for a group intervention within the exhibition.

In keeping with the spirit of AUNTS, the currency of exchange for attending these tours is not monetary; instead visitors must provide proof of submission to #auntsforcamera, an interactive work by Karl Scholz included in the “AUNTSforcamera” exhibition. #auntsforcamera utilizes the downloadable app OchoVideo to record eight-second user-generated video clips to become part of a sequenced single-channel video installation (on view in the New Museum lobby) that accumulates over the course of the entire project from September 8, 2014, to February 15, 2015.

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