On April 22nd at 7pm, Jen Liu will give an artist talk at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. An Evening with Jen Liu is part of Modern Mondays, a platform for both emerging artists and pioneering figures who have changed the way we think about the moving image.

an evening with jen liu

Jen Liu is a New York–based artist who uses video, choreographed performance, and painting to explore national identity, gendered economies, and the remotivation of archival artifacts. Liu joins us to screen her video projects The Pink Detachment (2015) and Pink Slime Caesar Shift (2018), and to present the early phases of new work focused on the recycling of gold from e-waste.

Liu will also discuss source materials for these works, including The Red Detachment of Women, a “model opera” ballet from China’s Cultural Revolution; factory tours of a meat-processing plant and e-waste gold smelters; Andrei Tarkovsky’s Soviet science-fiction film Stalker (1979); and the 1964 BBC series The Dreams, by electronic composer Delia Derbyshire. In addition, the artist will discuss design influences from the Memphis Group, biotech trade brochures, and worker education manuals produced by labor activists in China.

Publication date: 11 Apr '19