• ElodiePongAfterTheEmpire2008videostill1.jpg

    Elodie Pong, After the Empire, 2008 (video still) HDCam, Colour, Sound, 13’50“, Courtesy Kunsthaus Zürich ©Elodie Pong & Freymond-Guth & Co Fine Arts

  • ElodiePongAfterTheEmpire2008videostill2.jpg

    Elodie Pong, After the Empire, 2008 (video still) HDCam, Colour, Sound, 13’50“, Courtesy Kunsthaus Zürich ©Elodie Pong & Freymond-Guth & Co Fine Arts

  • ElodiePongEndlessEnds2009videostill.jpg

    Elodie Pong, Endless Ends, 2009 (video still) Video, 16: 9, 6min47, loop ©Elodie Pong & Freymond-Guth & Co Fine Arts

Elodie Pong

8 November - 10 December 2010 in the Adam Gallery

Elodie Pong (born in 1966 in Boston, USA, lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland) is an artist and filmmaker known for her boldly stylised, analytic works which focus on human relationships, cultural codes and their impact on contemporary society. Academically trained as an anthropologist and sociologist, she often deals with social structures in her work. Pong’s wide-ranging oeuvre addresses questions of intimacy and separation, self stylisation and the instability of cross-cultural communication. 

Certain moments and figures in the history of humanity lie deeply anchored in our collective memory. We all know them, and they consciously or unconsciously inform our understanding of self. The artist Elodie Pong has selected such icons from contemporary history and pop culture for her video piece, After the Empire (2008). There she stages encounters among them and has them recite elements of famous speeches and statements. Karl Marx meets Marilyn Monroe, Elvis meets a Japanese version of Mickey Mouse reciting personal ads and Martin Luther King meets Frieda, a woman from rural Zurich inspired by Pong’s grandmother. Fusing personal and collective history, After the Empire explores questions of identity in an era of copy-paste and post-modern appropriation culture. Who are we and what has made us what we are? Or: what or who do we pretend to be?

 Pong often plays with references to cinema and iconic scenes of famous movies.  Endless Ends (2009) on first sight seems to be a nostalgic anthology of classic film clips featuring ‘The End’. This work's main focus, however, is directed towards the endless world of the stories' ‘negative space’, extending itself before and after these conclusions. Each scene's final image carries some residual trace of the film that ran before, bearing its poetics, nostalgia, mystery or humour, provoking memories or just a feeling that one has missed something. In such, the end per se is seen as nothing final, but as a marker of possibilities.

After the Empire,  2008
HD loop
duration 13:50 minutes

Endless Ends,  2009
video loop
duration 6:48 minutes

Mirjam Varadinis, contemporary art curator at Kunsthaus Zurich
http://www.elodiepong.net/

After the Empire contains some adult themes which may be unsuitable for younger viewers. Discretion is advised.