BALTIMORE, MD.- The Baltimore Museum of Art presents DIS │ A Good Crisis, an exhibition of video works organized by the New York-based collective DIS (run by principals Lauren Boyle, Solomon Chase, Marco Roso, and David Toro, in dialogue with their numerous collaborators). On view November 14, 2018, through November 17, 2019, this immersive video installation invites visitors into critical conversations on the subjects of money, politics, and contemporary media. The exhibition is being presented in two installation environments in the BMA’s Joseph Education Center, as well as online as part of The DIS Edutainment Network.
“Through razor-sharp writing and engaging performances inspired by contemporary media culture, DIS’s videos compel viewers to reflect on some of the most important issues of our time,” said BMA Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director Christopher Bedford. “I look forward to the many discussions that will occur as a result of their work.”
DIS works across a wide range of formats, most recently transitioning platforms from an online magazine to a video-streaming edutainment channel on dis.art. The videos created for the BMA’s exhibition take the form of cartoons, public service announcements, talk shows, and mini-documentaries, and address the period following the 2008 financial crisis and the economic future left to the Millennial generation. This is best exemplified by A Good Crisis (2018), a video narrated by an actor playing the Night King from Game of Thrones. DIS worked with leading inequality economist Moritz Schularick to consider housing and the "new rentership society"—a term coined by private equity firms to describe the cultural and economic shift that has seen the renter population of the United States swell following the housing crash in 2008. The video also includes a rapid-fire history of the 20th century’s economic booms and busts. Two other DIS videos address the concept of Universal Basic Income and the shifting economic circumstances of Millennials and their loss of a financial safety net.
Additional videos created for the exhibition by other artists and writers include a video created by Canadian artist Matt Goerzen with British-born artist Ed Fornieles that explains the ins and outs of trolling techniques, a talk show with British-born conceptual artist Hannah Black, a video essay by Whitney Mallett, and a cartoon of the Venus of Willendorf created in collaboration with author Andrea Shaw Nevins and animation studio Culturesport.
The exhibition is organized by Kristen Hileman, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, and Claudia Mattos, Assistant Curator of Media Arts and Live Events.
The New York-based collective DIS—made up of Lauren Boyle, Solomon Chase, Marco Roso, and David Toro—works across a wide range of media and collaborative and curatorial practices. In 2018, the collective transitioned platforms from an online magazine, dismagazine.com, to a video-streaming edutainment platform, dis.art, narrowing in on the future of education as entertainment. DIS enlists leading artists and thinkers to expand the reach of key conversations bubbling up through contemporary art, culture, activism, philosophy, and technology, with the aim to inform and mobilize a generation around the vital issues facing us today and tomorrow.
