THESE ARE THE RULES considers how text, language, and voice can be both agents of control and resistance. Selected and arranged by film and video scholar and curator Steve Seid, the program features ten short video artworks made between the 1970s and 1990s by Bay Area artists that channel the technological, political, and cultural shifts of the period through an exploration of language and power.

Paul Kos begins the program with a strictly cadenced performance that ties rhythmic typewriter typing to military marching. Max Almy, Doug Hall, and Jeanne C. Finley wryly mimic authoritarian voices to deconstruct and mock their absolutism. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Tony Labat, and Valerie Soe probe language’s power to define and assign identity. Leslie Singer’s snarky take on the pop singer Madonna, Jordan Biren’s insistent and expulsive commands of a mysterious entity, and Rebeca Bollinger’s mechanically poetic voice synthesizer round out the program’s chorus.

THESE ARE THE RULES reveals an era of artistic creation that saw society’s transition from the centralized authoritarian voices of mass media and political machines to the rise (and dispersal) of disinformation and artificial intelligence in the digital age. The program screens daily in the McEvoy Arts Screening Room at the top of the hour.

McEvoy Foundation for the Arts