Jay Chung and Takeki Maeda

She’s gone

Jay Chung and Takeki Maeda remake a clip from the 1970s they found on the internet, and without really changing this archive material, displace it by imitating the staging and the acting with scrupulous precision. The slightest details are reproduced identically with great minutiae. The facial expressions are absurd, the prim attitude makes no sense. The blasé air of the actors (the artists themselves) creates a comic and ridiculous shift. She’s gone is typical of Chung and Maeda’s artistic strategy in which the hoax is a pretext for rereading and although the artists are staging themselves, they are also intent on becoming absent. In this literal video remake, the artists question the modes of diffusion of images, copying, artistic territory, legitimacy and paternity.