More Real Than Reality Itself

ANDREA GEYER CAMILLE HENROT

LAURE PROUVOST

MORE REAL THAN REALITY ITSELF A. L. STEINER

ANDREA GEYER CAMILLE HENROT LAURE PROUVOST A. L. STEINER

MORE REAL THAN REALITY ITSELF June 28-September 21, 2014

CONTEMPORARY ARTS MUSEUM HOUSTON

ANDREA GEYER CAMILLE HENROT LAURE PROUVOST A. L. STEINER

MORE REAL THAN REALITY ITSELF June 28-September 21, 2014

CONTEMPORARY ARTS MUSEUM HOUSTON

CONTENTS 5

FAST FORWARD Dean Daderko

10

Andrea Geyer

14

Camille Henrot

18

Laure Prouvost

22

A. L. Steiner

27

Exhibition Checklist

29

Artist Biographies

CONTENTS 5

FAST FORWARD Dean Daderko

10

Andrea Geyer

14

Camille Henrot

18

Laure Prouvost

22

A. L. Steiner

27

Exhibition Checklist

29

Artist Biographies

A. L. STEINER / More

Real Than Reality Itself, 2014 (video still)

In the 1890s, Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope, Though films were popular public attractions, Auguste and Louis Lumière’s Cinematographe, it wasn’t until Kodak invented Super 8 cameras and Emil and Max Skladanowsky’s film and film in 1965 that recording and playback projectors introduced the medium of motion capabilities were brought within the reach of pictures to the masses. For the next two amateur filmmakers and domestic consumers, decades, the motion picture industry went initiating a home movie phenomenon. Soon through a number of technical as well as social after, in the 1970s, Phillips and Sony patented developments: soundtracks were added to their first home video cameras; by the 80s, films; editing advances allowed for the creation consumer model VHS cameras, VCRs, and of filmic montages; the French filmmaker Abel videotapes were common household property.

Gance invented the panoramic projection; and With creative means in the hands of domestic German Expressionists like Fritz Lang began users, video production proliferated. Left to build elaborate sets on which they shot their to their own devices, spectators explored films. The 1920s saw the rapid growth of the a wide range of interests, from activist and Hollywood studio system and the foundation of independent media to pornography, and the companies like Metro-Goldwynspace separating producers Mayer and Paramount Studios; and viewers of moving images their theatrical releases drew narrowed significantly. eager crowds, and studios The advent of the Internet banked on their popularity by and the creation of userfixing exclusive contracts with driven websites like YouTube Dean Daderko popular movie stars. and Vimeo have cemented An enduring image-technology video’s status as an essential revolution took place in 1939 when the RCA component of our contemporary lives. The Corporation televised the opening of the New medium fundamentally affects our interactions: York World’s Fair and broadcast a speech by dynamic content is commonplace on social President Franklin Delano Roosevelt—television media networks, cell phone pictures and clips was born. Though it was initially prohibitively externalize our memory, and we talk in real-time expensive for most consumers, by the mid- on digital interfaces. In cinema’s nascent era, 1950s television ownership had become seeing a movie was a special event, and while widespread. In order to boost dwindling cinema can be just as magical an experience theatrical attendance numbers, studios shifted today as it was at its outset, moving images their efforts toward the creation of “blockbuster” are a ubiquitous presence in our daily lives. films that were extensively advertised in advance Responding to these developments, More Real of their release. During these years, the average Than Reality Itself brings together single-, multiAmerican spent five hours a day watching channel, and installation-based videos by four television, and the average Brit watched for artists who breathe new life into the medium’s four. These developments inaugurated what we familiar documentary parameters. now know as mass media.

FAST FORWARD

5

A. L. STEINER / More

Real Than Reality Itself, 2014 (video still)

In the 1890s, Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope, Though films were popular public attractions, Auguste and Louis Lumière’s Cinematographe, it wasn’t until Kodak invented Super 8 cameras and Emil and Max Skladanowsky’s film and film in 1965 that recording and playback projectors introduced the medium of motion capabilities were brought within the reach of pictures to the masses. For the next two amateur filmmakers and domestic consumers, decades, the motion picture industry went initiating a home movie phenomenon. Soon through a number of technical as well as social after, in the 1970s, Phillips and Sony patented developments: soundtracks were added to their first home video cameras; by the 80s, films; editing advances allowed for the creation consumer model VHS cameras, VCRs, and of filmic montages; the French filmmaker Abel videotapes were common household property.

Gance invented the panoramic projection; and With creative means in the hands of domestic German Expressionists like Fritz Lang began users, video production proliferated. Left to build elaborate sets on which they shot their to their own devices, spectators explored films. The 1920s saw the rapid growth of the a wide range of interests, from activist and Hollywood studio system and the foundation of independent media to pornography, and the companies like Metro-Goldwynspace separating producers Mayer and Paramount Studios; and viewers of moving images their theatrical releases drew narrowed significantly. eager crowds, and studios The advent of the Internet banked on their popularity by and the creation of userfixing exclusive contracts with driven websites like YouTube Dean Daderko popular movie stars. and Vimeo have cemented An enduring image-technology video’s status as an essential revolution took place in 1939 when the RCA component of our contemporary lives. The Corporation televised the opening of the New medium fundamentally affects our interactions: York World’s Fair and broadcast a speech by dynamic content is commonplace on social President Franklin Delano Roosevelt—television media networks, cell phone pictures and clips was born. Though it was initially prohibitively externalize our memory, and we talk in real-time expensive for most consumers, by the mid- on digital interfaces. In cinema’s nascent era, 1950s television ownership had become seeing a movie was a special event, and while widespread. In order to boost dwindling cinema can be just as magical an experience theatrical attendance numbers, studios shifted today as it was at its outset, moving images their efforts toward the creation of “blockbuster” are a ubiquitous presence in our daily lives. films that were extensively advertised in advance Responding to these developments, More Real of their release. During these years, the average Than Reality Itself brings together single-, multiAmerican spent five hours a day watching channel, and installation-based videos by four television, and the average Brit watched for artists who breathe new life into the medium’s four. These developments inaugurated what we familiar documentary parameters. now know as mass media.

FAST FORWARD

5

A. L. Steiner’s three-channel video work More Real Than Reality Itself (2014)—from which this exhibition borrows its title—is a consideration of the intimate dimensions of political activism.

Rather than positing a single, dominant history, Steiner’s interviews with a number of individuals who have occupied a so-called “radical” societal fringe emphasize the personal dimensions, effects, and repercussions of what it is to live a life against the grain. In one particularly telling segment, Ericka Huggins, a former member of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and the widow of murdered Panther leader John Huggins,1 says: The term ‘radical’ was usually used for the sons and daughters of the middle class, and European-American young people. For African-Americans in the mass media the term ‘militant’ was used. And I’m sure that this way of dividing up activism was used to frighten those who had the fear of the history of slavery. But we considered ourselves ‘revolutionary’—we didn’t use the term ‘militant’ or the term ‘radical.’

Reflecting on her experiences, sequoia champion Carla Cloer, credited with singlehandedly preventing the deforestation of what is now the Sequoia National Monument in the California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, states that “the personal price I have paid is the feeling of no validation, and being ostracized and shunned.” Though her words convey a sense of deep personal regret, Cloer remains fiercely committed to the responsible stewardship and preservation of the natural landscapes we’ve inherited. In their interviews, Rita “Bo” Brown, who was incarcerated for her actions as a member of the George Jackson Brigade, and union labor agitator Miya Masaoka, whose parents were confined in a U.S. internment camp for Japanese-Americans following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, are both critical of

the United States’s exponentially-expanding prison industrial complex. Taken together, these individuals’ observations demonstrate the historical validity of their views, and the passage of time has allowed us to see them more reasonably as sensitive and visionary witnesses to a variety of injustices.

Juxtaposed between these activist interviews are segments in which Steiner records herself making out with friends and cavorting through natural landscapes with her fellow Chicks on Speed bandmates. There’s also a powerful musical interlude by noted chanteuse Mx. Justin Vivian Bond, and a televised interview from the ’70s in which Simone de Beauvoir addresses feminism and gender inequity.

Steiner’s digressions are decidedly queer and provocative, and they directly challenge the primacy of patriarchal and heteronormative standards in society today. These scenes stand out markedly from the interviews, not just because they assume a less straightforward documentary style, but because they stand in stark contrast to the shameful and prejudicial racist, misogynist, anti-environmental, heterosexist, and pro-capitalist beliefs that structure conventional relationships. By inserting herself into her video as a protesting, queer, non-normative body, Steiner embodies a famous cultural quip from Ericka Huggins: “Before we make revolution in society, we must first make it within ourselves.” Steiner exposes history as an unstable, subjective, and mutable topic. And if time has softened the judgments earlier generations levied on these so-described “radical” activists, Steiner’s work implies that radical analysis, awareness, resistance, and transformation await us.

In her single-channel videos It, Heat, Hit (2010) and How To Make Money Religiously (2014), Laure Prouvost relishes in playing the part of the unreliable narrator. These short-form works, full of rapid-fire edits and barrages of sound, alternatively suggest then subsequently

as the image cuts out when the boy is about to hit the water. This wavering dynamic—first ambiguity, then brutal clarity—plays out again and again in Prouvost’s work.

Prouvost’s relationship to the spoken and written word is deliberately charged with misunderstanding—words in the texts we read onscreen are occasionally misspelled, and even the thoughts they convey can be grammatically inventive. One is tempted to attribute this tendency to the artist’s personal story: a native French speaker who’s lived and worked in London for more than a decade, she exists in an adopted linguistic environment. When Prouvost remarks that she thinks misunderstanding makes you use your imagination more,2 we can come to understand her efforts to turn the presence of conflict and fear of the unknown into productive events.

The recent work, How To Make Money Religiously, adheres to a more thoroughgoing narrative trajectory, though it doesn’t abandon the artist’s disjunctive sensibility or her tendency to alternately seduce and disturb viewers. Its story mimics the persuasive language of email scams that prey on recipients’ desires for happiness and fulfillment, and the temporary though evanescent satisfactions money provides. After luring us in with desirable bait items—a designer purse, an island villa, a yacht— Prouvost perversely implies that these pleasures can be snatched away just as quickly as they arrived. Though it differs from the fragmented composition of It, Heat, Hit, the structure of How To Make Money Religiously is also multivalent, incorporating video clips and stills that recall stock imagery. Prouvost recognizes the disposable materiality attributable to digital imagery today, and mines this throwaway quality to introduce absurd, foreboding sensations of psychological restlessness in viewers.

disassemble any sense of narrative resolution.

The stories she shares are like roadmaps that send us into a series of dead ends and cul-desacs where we’re encouraged to turn around and get back out on the road. Prouvost’s videos are punctuated with graphic textual layouts that briefly suggest we may have arrived at a stable point of reference. It, Heat, Hit begins with the following instructions: THIS 6 MINUTE FILM REQUIRES ALL OF YOUR ATTENTION, EACH DETAIL OF PART 1 WILL BE ESSENTIAL TO PART 2.

THE CHARACTERS IN THE FILM ARE GLAD YOU ARE HERE TO JOIN THEM, THEY WOULD DO ANYTHING TO GET YOUR ATTENTION. THEY ARE DESPERATE FOR YOU TO ENGAGE: THEY NEED YOU TO EXIST. IF YOU DO NOT COLLABORATE THEY WILL ASK YOU TO LEAVE THE ROOM ON THE 6TH MINUTE

Though they suggest a sense of order, these proclamations are designed to disintegrate. Left with little else to orient ourselves by, we explore the affective relationship between Prouvost’s videos and ourselves. When the phrase “WATER AROUND YOUR LEGS LIKE THE FROG’S LEGS” appears onscreen, it is followed by image of an amphibian slowly propelling itself through murky waters; this combination of image and text conjures a sensual experience shot through with darker premonitions. The narrator’s voice (Prouvost’s own) consistently speaks to us in a whisper, as though we’re being offered access to secret information. The sense of intimacy this low register conveys acts as an enticement to come closer into the space the video carves out in the world. In another example, the text “UNCLE PUSHED THE ONLOOKERS INTO THE WATER,” is followed by an image of a boy jumping off of a cliff into the sea. Prouvost shocks us with the sound of shattering glass

In contrast to the singular, if disjunctive, chains of events that propel Laure Prouvost’s narratives, with her work Grosse Fatigue (2013)

7

A. L. Steiner’s three-channel video work More Real Than Reality Itself (2014)—from which this exhibition borrows its title—is a consideration of the intimate dimensions of political activism.

Rather than positing a single, dominant history, Steiner’s interviews with a number of individuals who have occupied a so-called “radical” societal fringe emphasize the personal dimensions, effects, and repercussions of what it is to live a life against the grain. In one particularly telling segment, Ericka Huggins, a former member of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and the widow of murdered Panther leader John Huggins,1 says: The term ‘radical’ was usually used for the sons and daughters of the middle class, and European-American young people. For African-Americans in the mass media the term ‘militant’ was used. And I’m sure that this way of dividing up activism was used to frighten those who had the fear of the history of slavery. But we considered ourselves ‘revolutionary’—we didn’t use the term ‘militant’ or the term ‘radical.’

Reflecting on her experiences, sequoia champion Carla Cloer, credited with singlehandedly preventing the deforestation of what is now the Sequoia National Monument in the California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, states that “the personal price I have paid is the feeling of no validation, and being ostracized and shunned.” Though her words convey a sense of deep personal regret, Cloer remains fiercely committed to the responsible stewardship and preservation of the natural landscapes we’ve inherited. In their interviews, Rita “Bo” Brown, who was incarcerated for her actions as a member of the George Jackson Brigade, and union labor agitator Miya Masaoka, whose parents were confined in a U.S. internment camp for Japanese-Americans following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, are both critical of

the United States’s exponentially-expanding prison industrial complex. Taken together, these individuals’ observations demonstrate the historical validity of their views, and the passage of time has allowed us to see them more reasonably as sensitive and visionary witnesses to a variety of injustices.

Juxtaposed between these activist interviews are segments in which Steiner records herself making out with friends and cavorting through natural landscapes with her fellow Chicks on Speed bandmates. There’s also a powerful musical interlude by noted chanteuse Mx. Justin Vivian Bond, and a televised interview from the ’70s in which Simone de Beauvoir addresses feminism and gender inequity.

Steiner’s digressions are decidedly queer and provocative, and they directly challenge the primacy of patriarchal and heteronormative standards in society today. These scenes stand out markedly from the interviews, not just because they assume a less straightforward documentary style, but because they stand in stark contrast to the shameful and prejudicial racist, misogynist, anti-environmental, heterosexist, and pro-capitalist beliefs that structure conventional relationships. By inserting herself into her video as a protesting, queer, non-normative body, Steiner embodies a famous cultural quip from Ericka Huggins: “Before we make revolution in society, we must first make it within ourselves.” Steiner exposes history as an unstable, subjective, and mutable topic. And if time has softened the judgments earlier generations levied on these so-described “radical” activists, Steiner’s work implies that radical analysis, awareness, resistance, and transformation await us.

In her single-channel videos It, Heat, Hit (2010) and How To Make Money Religiously (2014), Laure Prouvost relishes in playing the part of the unreliable narrator. These short-form works, full of rapid-fire edits and barrages of sound, alternatively suggest then subsequently

as the image cuts out when the boy is about to hit the water. This wavering dynamic—first ambiguity, then brutal clarity—plays out again and again in Prouvost’s work.

Prouvost’s relationship to the spoken and written word is deliberately charged with misunderstanding—words in the texts we read onscreen are occasionally misspelled, and even the thoughts they convey can be grammatically inventive. One is tempted to attribute this tendency to the artist’s personal story: a native French speaker who’s lived and worked in London for more than a decade, she exists in an adopted linguistic environment. When Prouvost remarks that she thinks misunderstanding makes you use your imagination more,2 we can come to understand her efforts to turn the presence of conflict and fear of the unknown into productive events.

The recent work, How To Make Money Religiously, adheres to a more thoroughgoing narrative trajectory, though it doesn’t abandon the artist’s disjunctive sensibility or her tendency to alternately seduce and disturb viewers. Its story mimics the persuasive language of email scams that prey on recipients’ desires for happiness and fulfillment, and the temporary though evanescent satisfactions money provides. After luring us in with desirable bait items—a designer purse, an island villa, a yacht— Prouvost perversely implies that these pleasures can be snatched away just as quickly as they arrived. Though it differs from the fragmented composition of It, Heat, Hit, the structure of How To Make Money Religiously is also multivalent, incorporating video clips and stills that recall stock imagery. Prouvost recognizes the disposable materiality attributable to digital imagery today, and mines this throwaway quality to introduce absurd, foreboding sensations of psychological restlessness in viewers.

disassemble any sense of narrative resolution.

The stories she shares are like roadmaps that send us into a series of dead ends and cul-desacs where we’re encouraged to turn around and get back out on the road. Prouvost’s videos are punctuated with graphic textual layouts that briefly suggest we may have arrived at a stable point of reference. It, Heat, Hit begins with the following instructions: THIS 6 MINUTE FILM REQUIRES ALL OF YOUR ATTENTION, EACH DETAIL OF PART 1 WILL BE ESSENTIAL TO PART 2.

THE CHARACTERS IN THE FILM ARE GLAD YOU ARE HERE TO JOIN THEM, THEY WOULD DO ANYTHING TO GET YOUR ATTENTION. THEY ARE DESPERATE FOR YOU TO ENGAGE: THEY NEED YOU TO EXIST. IF YOU DO NOT COLLABORATE THEY WILL ASK YOU TO LEAVE THE ROOM ON THE 6TH MINUTE

Though they suggest a sense of order, these proclamations are designed to disintegrate. Left with little else to orient ourselves by, we explore the affective relationship between Prouvost’s videos and ourselves. When the phrase “WATER AROUND YOUR LEGS LIKE THE FROG’S LEGS” appears onscreen, it is followed by image of an amphibian slowly propelling itself through murky waters; this combination of image and text conjures a sensual experience shot through with darker premonitions. The narrator’s voice (Prouvost’s own) consistently speaks to us in a whisper, as though we’re being offered access to secret information. The sense of intimacy this low register conveys acts as an enticement to come closer into the space the video carves out in the world. In another example, the text “UNCLE PUSHED THE ONLOOKERS INTO THE WATER,” is followed by an image of a boy jumping off of a cliff into the sea. Prouvost shocks us with the sound of shattering glass

In contrast to the singular, if disjunctive, chains of events that propel Laure Prouvost’s narratives, with her work Grosse Fatigue (2013)

7

Camille Henrot wrests a singular, harmonized vision from the simultaneous conglomeration of multiple images. Henrot developed this singlechannel video during a residency in Washington, D.C. as a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow. Understanding that museums with comprehensive holdings like the Smithsonian are best conceived of as repositories for culture, Henrot decided that the footage she shot on location in the museum would become the basis for a story that explained the creation of the universe. The resulting video is a haptic exploration of the evolution of culture and systems of knowledge. Her strain to synthesize diverse and discordant religious, philosophical, and hermetic beliefs and scientific knowledge is represented visually by a dense accumulation of desktop windows that pop open and display video clips and still images set against a driving spoken-word audio track. Though seemingly random, the image juxtapositions are the result of careful planning on Henrot’s part.

As viewers, the drive to establish associative relationships between seemingly unrelated snippets of content kicks in almost immediately.

When the circular shape of a spinning CD in one desktop window echoes a clip of a tortilla being rolled out in a previous one, what we’re experiencing is the desire to make sense of our perception. In another clip we see water from a wet sponge being squeezed out into a plastic basin; displayed atop a window with an image of cracked and dried earth, the clip juxtaposes desiccation with fluidity. Grosse Fatigue’s sophisticated audio track provides an invisible thread that further unites these diverse images; as water drips from the sponge, the narrating voice states “and the King Above the Sky said ‘punch holes in the earth and the water will drain away.’” This is but one of the many creation mythologies shared in the video; each one of them conveys a sense of magic and poetry that points toward the existential question of how we came to be.

Grosse Fatigue is presented in a room whose walls and carpeted floor are a vibrant blue that glows in the projected video light. This particular blue is the same one used in chroma keying, an editing technique that allows multiple, unrelated images to be composited to form a singular impression. To create a chroma key a color range in the topmost layer of an image is removed, allowing the leftover portion to be superimposed on a second image. This technique is commonly used in televised weather broadcasts to create the impression that a meteorologist is standing in front of a computer-generated map. In its desire to sensibly reconcile independent images, Henrot’s reference to chroma keying becomes an analogue for Grosse Fatigue’s attempt to establish a sense of order in the world. Henrot locates a sense of continuity and commonality between seemingly discrepant images and video files and allows us in on her moments of discovery so that we too can recognize the connective tissue uniting the diverse images, and find ourselves in it.

Produced during her residency at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Andrea Geyer’s single-channel video Insistence (2013) and the installation-based multi-channel video Three Chants Modern (2013) both acknowledge and explore the often-unrecognized contributions of women during the establishment of Modernist artistic traditions in the United States. During her residency, Geyer was afforded the opportunity to review MoMA’s archives in depth and detail.

She came to realize how important the initiatives of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Lillie P. Bliss, and Mary Quinn Sullivan were to the founding the museum—without their initial efforts, MoMA would not exist. As Geyer researched other New York museums, she found that many of them shared this defining characteristic.

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, devoted to the advancement of women in and through art, established her legacy with the Whitney Museum of American Art. As the first director

and curator of Guggenheim’s Museum of NonObjective Art, Hilla Rebay was instrumental in laying the foundation for what would eventually become the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Luminaries like Helen Clay Frick and Katherine Dreier are also notable contributors to this history. Besides building a world-class private art collection based in her family residence in New York, Frick saw to the founding of two art history libraries and various teaching collections. Dreier, an active suffragette and close friend of Marcel Duchamp, cofounded the Society of Independent Artists and the Société Anonyme, acknowledged as the first permanent collection of modern art in the United States. It was not only their interest in creative pursuits that united these women; they advocated variously for political reform, women’s suffrage, birth control, and a variety of other liberating humanitarian concerns. Their alliances in and across salons, speakeasies, dinner tables, beds, restaurants and bars bridged class separations, diverse cultural backgrounds, and a variety of aesthetic affiliations. The Modernism these women espoused looked not to the familiar, but to innovation and the production of new forms of knowledge. It’s fitting then that Three Chants Modern brings Geyer’s innovative formal and conceptual investigation to one of Modernism’s originary spaces. It unites dance, vocal performance, and visual art without establishing a sense of hierarchy between them.

Insistence adopts the words and motivations these women presented to the world as a sonic background for an image of a hand building a tall stack of postcard-sized photographs, oneby-one, on a wooden tabletop. Though both the quotations being read and images onscreen are unattributed, through them the gravity, topics, and sensibilities that motivated these liberated women comes to be understood.

Geyer is motivated less by the historicity of these women’s words as she is by the enduring sentiments they communicate.

Geyer’s works insist that the invigorating spirit

of art, politics, education, and social reform championed by and evident in the work of these pioneering modern women is far from diminished today; rather, it continues to motivate artistic inquiry. This vital creative temperament remains consistent, even if the forms it produces have changed a great deal. This energy is palpable in her work, as it is in Henrot’s, Prouvost’s, and Steiner’s. The changing shape and form of its manifestations signal a deeply felt desire to create substantive cultural change.

Moving images are now ubiquitous and ceaseless in today’s culture. We’re bombarded daily by capitalist come-ons, agenda-based reportage, and examples of how brands—and even people—creatively refashion themselves by controlling their public image. Andrea Geyer, Camille Henrot, Laure Prouvost, and A. L. Steiner’s videos expand this culture mindfully, provocatively, and exuberantly.

Notes 1. Members of the Black Nationalist US Organization (US) gunned down John Huggins and BPP leader Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter during a 1969 Black Student Union meeting in Los Angeles. A November 29, 1968 FBI memo describes a letter the FBI’s Los Angeles office doctored to appear as though US had generated it. The letter, which the FBI intended to mail to the BPP office, describes fictitious US plans to ambush BPP members. The memo explicitly states “it is hoped this counterintelligence measure will result in a ‘US’ and ‘BPP’ vendetta.” For additional information, see Craig Collison’s Fight to Legitimize Blackness (full e-book available for free on Google Books) or https://archive. org/details/CointelproTheUntoldAmericanStory?]

2. For an interview in which Laure Prouvost talks about her practice, visit http://www.tate.org.uk/ context-comment/video/tateshots-turner-prize-2013nominee-laure-prouvost.

9

Camille Henrot wrests a singular, harmonized vision from the simultaneous conglomeration of multiple images. Henrot developed this singlechannel video during a residency in Washington, D.C. as a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow. Understanding that museums with comprehensive holdings like the Smithsonian are best conceived of as repositories for culture, Henrot decided that the footage she shot on location in the museum would become the basis for a story that explained the creation of the universe. The resulting video is a haptic exploration of the evolution of culture and systems of knowledge. Her strain to synthesize diverse and discordant religious, philosophical, and hermetic beliefs and scientific knowledge is represented visually by a dense accumulation of desktop windows that pop open and display video clips and still images set against a driving spoken-word audio track. Though seemingly random, the image juxtapositions are the result of careful planning on Henrot’s part.

As viewers, the drive to establish associative relationships between seemingly unrelated snippets of content kicks in almost immediately.

When the circular shape of a spinning CD in one desktop window echoes a clip of a tortilla being rolled out in a previous one, what we’re experiencing is the desire to make sense of our perception. In another clip we see water from a wet sponge being squeezed out into a plastic basin; displayed atop a window with an image of cracked and dried earth, the clip juxtaposes desiccation with fluidity. Grosse Fatigue’s sophisticated audio track provides an invisible thread that further unites these diverse images; as water drips from the sponge, the narrating voice states “and the King Above the Sky said ‘punch holes in the earth and the water will drain away.’” This is but one of the many creation mythologies shared in the video; each one of them conveys a sense of magic and poetry that points toward the existential question of how we came to be.

Grosse Fatigue is presented in a room whose walls and carpeted floor are a vibrant blue that glows in the projected video light. This particular blue is the same one used in chroma keying, an editing technique that allows multiple, unrelated images to be composited to form a singular impression. To create a chroma key a color range in the topmost layer of an image is removed, allowing the leftover portion to be superimposed on a second image. This technique is commonly used in televised weather broadcasts to create the impression that a meteorologist is standing in front of a computer-generated map. In its desire to sensibly reconcile independent images, Henrot’s reference to chroma keying becomes an analogue for Grosse Fatigue’s attempt to establish a sense of order in the world. Henrot locates a sense of continuity and commonality between seemingly discrepant images and video files and allows us in on her moments of discovery so that we too can recognize the connective tissue uniting the diverse images, and find ourselves in it.

Produced during her residency at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Andrea Geyer’s single-channel video Insistence (2013) and the installation-based multi-channel video Three Chants Modern (2013) both acknowledge and explore the often-unrecognized contributions of women during the establishment of Modernist artistic traditions in the United States. During her residency, Geyer was afforded the opportunity to review MoMA’s archives in depth and detail.

She came to realize how important the initiatives of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Lillie P. Bliss, and Mary Quinn Sullivan were to the founding the museum—without their initial efforts, MoMA would not exist. As Geyer researched other New York museums, she found that many of them shared this defining characteristic.

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, devoted to the advancement of women in and through art, established her legacy with the Whitney Museum of American Art. As the first director

and curator of Guggenheim’s Museum of NonObjective Art, Hilla Rebay was instrumental in laying the foundation for what would eventually become the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Luminaries like Helen Clay Frick and Katherine Dreier are also notable contributors to this history. Besides building a world-class private art collection based in her family residence in New York, Frick saw to the founding of two art history libraries and various teaching collections. Dreier, an active suffragette and close friend of Marcel Duchamp, cofounded the Society of Independent Artists and the Société Anonyme, acknowledged as the first permanent collection of modern art in the United States. It was not only their interest in creative pursuits that united these women; they advocated variously for political reform, women’s suffrage, birth control, and a variety of other liberating humanitarian concerns. Their alliances in and across salons, speakeasies, dinner tables, beds, restaurants and bars bridged class separations, diverse cultural backgrounds, and a variety of aesthetic affiliations. The Modernism these women espoused looked not to the familiar, but to innovation and the production of new forms of knowledge. It’s fitting then that Three Chants Modern brings Geyer’s innovative formal and conceptual investigation to one of Modernism’s originary spaces. It unites dance, vocal performance, and visual art without establishing a sense of hierarchy between them.

Insistence adopts the words and motivations these women presented to the world as a sonic background for an image of a hand building a tall stack of postcard-sized photographs, oneby-one, on a wooden tabletop. Though both the quotations being read and images onscreen are unattributed, through them the gravity, topics, and sensibilities that motivated these liberated women comes to be understood.

Geyer is motivated less by the historicity of these women’s words as she is by the enduring sentiments they communicate.

Geyer’s works insist that the invigorating spirit

of art, politics, education, and social reform championed by and evident in the work of these pioneering modern women is far from diminished today; rather, it continues to motivate artistic inquiry. This vital creative temperament remains consistent, even if the forms it produces have changed a great deal. This energy is palpable in her work, as it is in Henrot’s, Prouvost’s, and Steiner’s. The changing shape and form of its manifestations signal a deeply felt desire to create substantive cultural change.

Moving images are now ubiquitous and ceaseless in today’s culture. We’re bombarded daily by capitalist come-ons, agenda-based reportage, and examples of how brands—and even people—creatively refashion themselves by controlling their public image. Andrea Geyer, Camille Henrot, Laure Prouvost, and A. L. Steiner’s videos expand this culture mindfully, provocatively, and exuberantly.

Notes 1. Members of the Black Nationalist US Organization (US) gunned down John Huggins and BPP leader Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter during a 1969 Black Student Union meeting in Los Angeles. A November 29, 1968 FBI memo describes a letter the FBI’s Los Angeles office doctored to appear as though US had generated it. The letter, which the FBI intended to mail to the BPP office, describes fictitious US plans to ambush BPP members. The memo explicitly states “it is hoped this counterintelligence measure will result in a ‘US’ and ‘BPP’ vendetta.” For additional information, see Craig Collison’s Fight to Legitimize Blackness (full e-book available for free on Google Books) or https://archive. org/details/CointelproTheUntoldAmericanStory?]

2. For an interview in which Laure Prouvost talks about her practice, visit http://www.tate.org.uk/ context-comment/video/tateshots-turner-prize-2013nominee-laure-prouvost.

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ANDREA GEYER / Three

Chants Modern, 2013 (installation view: A Space Gallery, Toronto, 2013)

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ANDREA GEYER / Three

Chants Modern, 2013 (installation view: A Space Gallery, Toronto, 2013)

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ANDREA GEYER / Three

Chants Modern, 2013 (production stills)

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ANDREA GEYER / Three

Chants Modern, 2013 (production stills)

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CAMILLE HENROT / Grosse

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Fatigue, 2013 (video still)

CAMILLE HENROT / Grosse

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Fatigue, 2013 (video still)

CAMILLE HENROT / Grosse

Fatigue, 2013 (video still)

CAMILLE HENROT / Grosse

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Fatigue, 2013 (video still)

CAMILLE HENROT / Grosse

Fatigue, 2013 (video still)

CAMILLE HENROT / Grosse

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Fatigue, 2013 (video still)

LAURE PROUVOST / It,

Heat, Hit, 2010 (installation view: Extra City Kunsthall, Antwerp, 2011)

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LAURE PROUVOST / It,

Heat, Hit, 2010 (installation view: Extra City Kunsthall, Antwerp, 2011)

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LAURE PROUVOST / How

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To Make Money Religiously, 2014 (video still)

LAURE PROUVOST / How

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To Make Money Religiously, 2014 (video still)

A. L. STEINER / More Real Than Reality Itself, 2014 (installation view: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2014)

A. L. STEINER / More

Real Than Reality Itself, 2014 (video still: animation, Aimee Goguen)

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A. L. STEINER / More Real Than Reality Itself, 2014 (installation view: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2014)

A. L. STEINER / More

Real Than Reality Itself, 2014 (video still: animation, Aimee Goguen)

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A. L. STEINER / More

Real Than Reality Itself, 2014 (video still: animation, Aimee Goguen)

CHECKLIST OF WORKS Andrea Geyer

Camille Henrot

Insistence, 2013 Video: color, sound, 15:20 minutes Courtesy the artist and Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne, Germany

Grosse Fatigue, 2013 Video: color, sound, 13:00 minutes Original music by Joakim Text written in collaboration with Jacob Bromberg Voiceover: Akwetey Orraca-Tetteh Producer: kamel mennour, Paris Additional support: Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin, Paris Production: Silex Films Awarded the Silver Lion at the 55th Venice Biennale, 2013 This project was conducted as part of the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship Program, Washington, D.C. Special thanks to: the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum © ADAGP Camille Henrot Courtesy the artist, Silex Films, and kamel mennour, Paris

Three Chants Modern (Lily, niv, and Agnes), 2013

Digital C-print 40 x 32 inches Courtesy the artist and Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne, Germany

Three Chants Modern, 2013 2-channel video installation: color, sound, 25:00 minutes Written, directed, and edited by Andrea Geyer Performers: niv acosta, Lily Gold, Patricia Hoffbauer, Alicia Ohs, Edisa Weeks, and Leslie Zima Choreography: niv acosta Lyrics: Andrea Geyer Music: JD Samson Costume design: Jocelyn Davis Production manager: Cortney Andrews Production manager, MoMA: Jill A. Samuels Director of photography: Michelle Lawler Steadicam operator: Jamie Northrup 1st camera assistant: Consuelo Althouse Camera spotter: Ilyn Womg Gaffer: Stefan Weinberger Gaffer’s assistant: Matt Whitman Assistant to the director: Brenda Goldstein Script supervision: Alona Weiss Sound: John Steadwell Boom operators: Pieter Paul Pothoven, Isaac Pool Media manager: Maricruz Alarcón Performance support: Lauren Denitzio Spotters: Christine Howard Sandoval, John Führer Sound mix: Alexa Zimmerman Color correction: Cory Evans This work was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Made possible by MoMA’s Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art through the Annenberg Foundation.

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne, Germany

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A. L. STEINER / More

Real Than Reality Itself, 2014 (video still: animation, Aimee Goguen)

CHECKLIST OF WORKS Andrea Geyer

Camille Henrot

Insistence, 2013 Video: color, sound, 15:20 minutes Courtesy the artist and Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne, Germany

Grosse Fatigue, 2013 Video: color, sound, 13:00 minutes Original music by Joakim Text written in collaboration with Jacob Bromberg Voiceover: Akwetey Orraca-Tetteh Producer: kamel mennour, Paris Additional support: Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin, Paris Production: Silex Films Awarded the Silver Lion at the 55th Venice Biennale, 2013 This project was conducted as part of the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship Program, Washington, D.C. Special thanks to: the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum © ADAGP Camille Henrot Courtesy the artist, Silex Films, and kamel mennour, Paris

Three Chants Modern (Lily, niv, and Agnes), 2013

Digital C-print 40 x 32 inches Courtesy the artist and Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne, Germany

Three Chants Modern, 2013 2-channel video installation: color, sound, 25:00 minutes Written, directed, and edited by Andrea Geyer Performers: niv acosta, Lily Gold, Patricia Hoffbauer, Alicia Ohs, Edisa Weeks, and Leslie Zima Choreography: niv acosta Lyrics: Andrea Geyer Music: JD Samson Costume design: Jocelyn Davis Production manager: Cortney Andrews Production manager, MoMA: Jill A. Samuels Director of photography: Michelle Lawler Steadicam operator: Jamie Northrup 1st camera assistant: Consuelo Althouse Camera spotter: Ilyn Womg Gaffer: Stefan Weinberger Gaffer’s assistant: Matt Whitman Assistant to the director: Brenda Goldstein Script supervision: Alona Weiss Sound: John Steadwell Boom operators: Pieter Paul Pothoven, Isaac Pool Media manager: Maricruz Alarcón Performance support: Lauren Denitzio Spotters: Christine Howard Sandoval, John Führer Sound mix: Alexa Zimmerman Color correction: Cory Evans This work was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Made possible by MoMA’s Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art through the Annenberg Foundation.

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne, Germany

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ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES Laure Prouvost

A. L. Steiner

It, Heat, Hit, 2010 Video: color, sound, 7:20 minutes Courtesy the artist and MOTINTERNATIONAL, London

More Real Than Reality Itself, 2014 3-channel video installation: color, sound, 53:56 minutes Courtesy the artist and Koenig & Clinton, New York

How To Make Money Religiously, 2014 Video: color, sound, 8:44 minutes Courtesy the artist and MOTINTERNATIONAL, London

Andrea Geyer Born 1971, Freiburg, Germany Lives and works in New York

Camille Henrot Born 1978, Paris Lives and works in New York

A 2000 graduate of the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program, Andrea Geyer works with photography, video, and performance, using both fiction and documentary strategies to address larger concepts such as national identity, gender, and class in the context of the ongoing re-adjustment of cultural meanings and social memories. Geyer’s work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art and Art in General, New York; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; REDCAT, Los Angeles; Tramway, Glasgow, Scotland; the Tate Modern and Serpentine Gallery, London; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland; Göteborgs Konsthall, Sweden; Generali Foundation and Secession, Vienna; Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand; the Turin Biennale; the São Paulo Biennial; and dOCUMENTA (12), Kassel, Germany.

In her work, Camille Henrot analyzes systems of visual information and typologies of objects from a wide array of historical moments. She has produced a number of visual essays in which she follows intuitive research pursuits across disciplines and finds a variety of aesthetic and morphological links between disparate systems of knowledge. Henrot’s practice combines anthropological research with a staggering range of cultural fragments reflective of the current digital age. Her work has been exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée d’Art Moderne, and Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the New Orleans Museum of Art; the New Museum, New York; and the 55th Venice Biennale. In 2010, Henrot was nominated for the Prix Marcel Duchamp, and in 2013 she received a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

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ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES Laure Prouvost

A. L. Steiner

It, Heat, Hit, 2010 Video: color, sound, 7:20 minutes Courtesy the artist and MOTINTERNATIONAL, London

More Real Than Reality Itself, 2014 3-channel video installation: color, sound, 53:56 minutes Courtesy the artist and Koenig & Clinton, New York

How To Make Money Religiously, 2014 Video: color, sound, 8:44 minutes Courtesy the artist and MOTINTERNATIONAL, London

Andrea Geyer Born 1971, Freiburg, Germany Lives and works in New York

Camille Henrot Born 1978, Paris Lives and works in New York

A 2000 graduate of the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program, Andrea Geyer works with photography, video, and performance, using both fiction and documentary strategies to address larger concepts such as national identity, gender, and class in the context of the ongoing re-adjustment of cultural meanings and social memories. Geyer’s work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art and Art in General, New York; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; REDCAT, Los Angeles; Tramway, Glasgow, Scotland; the Tate Modern and Serpentine Gallery, London; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland; Göteborgs Konsthall, Sweden; Generali Foundation and Secession, Vienna; Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand; the Turin Biennale; the São Paulo Biennial; and dOCUMENTA (12), Kassel, Germany.

In her work, Camille Henrot analyzes systems of visual information and typologies of objects from a wide array of historical moments. She has produced a number of visual essays in which she follows intuitive research pursuits across disciplines and finds a variety of aesthetic and morphological links between disparate systems of knowledge. Henrot’s practice combines anthropological research with a staggering range of cultural fragments reflective of the current digital age. Her work has been exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée d’Art Moderne, and Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the New Orleans Museum of Art; the New Museum, New York; and the 55th Venice Biennale. In 2010, Henrot was nominated for the Prix Marcel Duchamp, and in 2013 she received a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

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Laure Prouvost Born 1978, Croix-Lille, France Lives and works in London

A. L. Steiner Born 1967, Miami, Florida Lives and works in Los Angeles

Laure Prouvost’s unique approach to filmmaking, often situated within atmospheric installations, employs strong storytelling, quick cuts, montage, and deliberate misuse of language to create surprising and unpredictable work. Her painting, video, sound, and site-specific work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; the New Museum, New York; Fondazione Morra Greco, Naples, Italy; Gallery TPW, Toronto; and Tate Britain, London. Screenings and performances of her work have been presented by the Center for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; and the Rotterdam Film Festival. Prouvost graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in 2002, and since 2003 has been the director of tank.tv, an online platform for artists’ work in moving images. In 2009 she completed the LUX Artist Associate Programme, and in 2010 she received an MFA from Goldsmiths College, London. Prouvost was awarded the Max Mara Prize for Women in 2011, and the Turner Prize in 2013.

A. L. Steiner utilizes constructions of photography, video, installation, collage, collaboration, performance, writing, teaching, and curatorial work as seductive tropes channeled through the sensibility of a skeptical queer eco-feminist androgyne. She has had solo and collaborative exhibitions at the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Oregon; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Tate Modern, London.

She has participated in group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Kitchen, the New Museum, and MoMA PS1 in New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; the Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston; and REDCAT, Los Angeles. Steiner is a collective member of Chicks on Speed, cocurator with Nicole Eisenman of the project known as Ridykeulous, and a cofounder and organizer of Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.).

This publication has been prepared in conjunction with More Real Than Reality Itself, the 184th exhibition in the museum’s Perspectives series. This exhibition was organized for the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston by Dean Daderko, curator.

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston June 28-September 21, 2014 The Perspectives Series is made possible by a major grant from Fayez Sarofim and by donors to the Museum’s Perspectives Fund:

Bright Star Productions Inc. The Brown Foundation, Inc. Dillon Kyle Architecture Heidi and David Gerger Glen Gonzalez and Steve Summers Kerry Inman and Denby Auble Mady and Ken Kades Poppi Massey Leslie and Shannon Sasser in Honor of Lynn Herbert Robin and Andrew Schirrmeister William F. Stern

Perspectives catalogues are made possible by a grant from The Brown Foundation, Inc. Funding for the Museum’s operations through the Fund for the Future is made possible by generous grants from Chinhui Juhn and Eddie Allen, Anonymous, Jereann Chaney, Marita and J.B. Fairbanks, Jo and Jim Furr, Barbara and Michael Gamson, Brenda and William Goldberg, Leticia Loya, Fayez Sarofim, Robin and Andrew Schirrmeister, and David and Marion Young.

The Museum’s operations and programs are made possible through the generosity of the Museum’s trustees, patrons, members and donors. The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston receives partial operating support from the Houston Endowment, the City of Houston through the Houston Museum District Association, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Texas Commission on the Arts, The Wortham Foundation, Inc and artMRKT Productions.

CAMH also thanks its artist benefactors for their support including Jules de Balincourt, Jack Early, Mark Flood, Keltie Ferris, Barnaby Furnas, Theaster Gates, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Mary Heilmann, Jim Hodges, Jennie C. Jones, Klara Lidén, Maya Lin, Robert Mangold, Melissa Miller, Marilyn Minter, Angel Otero, Enoc Perez, Rob Pruitt, Matthew Ritchie, Dario Robleto, Ed Ruscha, Rusty Scruby, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, James Surls, Sam Taylor-Johnson, and William Wegman.

Official airline of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston My deepest thanks are due first and foremost to the artists and their assistants, including Marie Heilich at Camille Henrot’s studio, and Lauren Denitzio at Andrea Geyer’s studio. Thanks also to the galleries working with these artists: Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne, Germany; Kamel Mennour, Pierre-Maël Dael, Marie-Sophie Eiché, Emma-Charlotte Gobry-Laurencin, and the staff at galerie kamel mennour, Paris; Metro Pictures, New York; Nicola Wright and Persilia Caton at MOTINTERNATIONAL, London; and Leo Koenig, Margaret Liu Clinton Koenig, Amanda Knuppel, the staff of Koenig & Clinton, New York and Deborah Schamoni, Berlin. I owe a debt of gratitude to Ginger Brooks Takahashi for her longtime friendship, and her accomplished design work for this catalogue. Thanks to Rachel Cook, Alhena Katsof, and Isla Leaver-Yap for inspiration and thoughtful feedback. And last but not least, a huge “thank you” to my colleagues here at CAMH, and our generous supporters.

Dean Daderko, Houston, July 2014 Design: Ginger Brooks Takahashi Editing: Rose D’Amora Printing: EarthColor Houston Front cover (clockwise from top left): Andrea Geyer, Insistence, 2012 (video still) Camille Henrot, Grosse Fatigue, 2013 (video still) A. L. Steiner, More Real Than Reality Itself, 2014 (video still) Laure Prouvost, It, Heat, Hit, 2010 (video still) Back cover (clockwise from top left): A. L. Steiner, More Real Than Reality Itself, 2014 (video still) Camille Henrot, Grosse Fatigue, 2013 (video still) Andrea Geyer, Three Chants Modern, 2013 (video still) Laure Prouvost, It, Heat, Hit, 2010 (video still)

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston 5216 Montrose Boulevard Houston, Texas 77006-6547 Tel.: (713) 284-8250 Fax: (713) 284-8275 www.camh.org

ISBN 978-1-933619-49-1 © 2014 Contemporary Arts Museum Houston

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Laure Prouvost Born 1978, Croix-Lille, France Lives and works in London

A. L. Steiner Born 1967, Miami, Florida Lives and works in Los Angeles

Laure Prouvost’s unique approach to filmmaking, often situated within atmospheric installations, employs strong storytelling, quick cuts, montage, and deliberate misuse of language to create surprising and unpredictable work. Her painting, video, sound, and site-specific work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; the New Museum, New York; Fondazione Morra Greco, Naples, Italy; Gallery TPW, Toronto; and Tate Britain, London. Screenings and performances of her work have been presented by the Center for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; and the Rotterdam Film Festival. Prouvost graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in 2002, and since 2003 has been the director of tank.tv, an online platform for artists’ work in moving images. In 2009 she completed the LUX Artist Associate Programme, and in 2010 she received an MFA from Goldsmiths College, London. Prouvost was awarded the Max Mara Prize for Women in 2011, and the Turner Prize in 2013.

A. L. Steiner utilizes constructions of photography, video, installation, collage, collaboration, performance, writing, teaching, and curatorial work as seductive tropes channeled through the sensibility of a skeptical queer eco-feminist androgyne. She has had solo and collaborative exhibitions at the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Oregon; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Tate Modern, London.

She has participated in group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Kitchen, the New Museum, and MoMA PS1 in New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; the Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston; and REDCAT, Los Angeles. Steiner is a collective member of Chicks on Speed, cocurator with Nicole Eisenman of the project known as Ridykeulous, and a cofounder and organizer of Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.).

This publication has been prepared in conjunction with More Real Than Reality Itself, the 184th exhibition in the museum’s Perspectives series. This exhibition was organized for the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston by Dean Daderko, curator.

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston June 28-September 21, 2014 The Perspectives Series is made possible by a major grant from Fayez Sarofim and by donors to the Museum’s Perspectives Fund:

Bright Star Productions Inc. The Brown Foundation, Inc. Dillon Kyle Architecture Heidi and David Gerger Glen Gonzalez and Steve Summers Kerry Inman and Denby Auble Mady and Ken Kades Poppi Massey Leslie and Shannon Sasser in Honor of Lynn Herbert Robin and Andrew Schirrmeister William F. Stern

Perspectives catalogues are made possible by a grant from The Brown Foundation, Inc. Funding for the Museum’s operations through the Fund for the Future is made possible by generous grants from Chinhui Juhn and Eddie Allen, Anonymous, Jereann Chaney, Marita and J.B. Fairbanks, Jo and Jim Furr, Barbara and Michael Gamson, Brenda and William Goldberg, Leticia Loya, Fayez Sarofim, Robin and Andrew Schirrmeister, and David and Marion Young.

The Museum’s operations and programs are made possible through the generosity of the Museum’s trustees, patrons, members and donors. The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston receives partial operating support from the Houston Endowment, the City of Houston through the Houston Museum District Association, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Texas Commission on the Arts, The Wortham Foundation, Inc and artMRKT Productions.

CAMH also thanks its artist benefactors for their support including Jules de Balincourt, Jack Early, Mark Flood, Keltie Ferris, Barnaby Furnas, Theaster Gates, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Mary Heilmann, Jim Hodges, Jennie C. Jones, Klara Lidén, Maya Lin, Robert Mangold, Melissa Miller, Marilyn Minter, Angel Otero, Enoc Perez, Rob Pruitt, Matthew Ritchie, Dario Robleto, Ed Ruscha, Rusty Scruby, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, James Surls, Sam Taylor-Johnson, and William Wegman.

Official airline of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston My deepest thanks are due first and foremost to the artists and their assistants, including Marie Heilich at Camille Henrot’s studio, and Lauren Denitzio at Andrea Geyer’s studio. Thanks also to the galleries working with these artists: Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne, Germany; Kamel Mennour, Pierre-Maël Dael, Marie-Sophie Eiché, Emma-Charlotte Gobry-Laurencin, and the staff at galerie kamel mennour, Paris; Metro Pictures, New York; Nicola Wright and Persilia Caton at MOTINTERNATIONAL, London; and Leo Koenig, Margaret Liu Clinton Koenig, Amanda Knuppel, the staff of Koenig & Clinton, New York and Deborah Schamoni, Berlin. I owe a debt of gratitude to Ginger Brooks Takahashi for her longtime friendship, and her accomplished design work for this catalogue. Thanks to Rachel Cook, Alhena Katsof, and Isla Leaver-Yap for inspiration and thoughtful feedback. And last but not least, a huge “thank you” to my colleagues here at CAMH, and our generous supporters.

Dean Daderko, Houston, July 2014 Design: Ginger Brooks Takahashi Editing: Rose D’Amora Printing: EarthColor Houston Front cover (clockwise from top left): Andrea Geyer, Insistence, 2012 (video still) Camille Henrot, Grosse Fatigue, 2013 (video still) A. L. Steiner, More Real Than Reality Itself, 2014 (video still) Laure Prouvost, It, Heat, Hit, 2010 (video still) Back cover (clockwise from top left): A. L. Steiner, More Real Than Reality Itself, 2014 (video still) Camille Henrot, Grosse Fatigue, 2013 (video still) Andrea Geyer, Three Chants Modern, 2013 (video still) Laure Prouvost, It, Heat, Hit, 2010 (video still)

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston 5216 Montrose Boulevard Houston, Texas 77006-6547 Tel.: (713) 284-8250 Fax: (713) 284-8275 www.camh.org

ISBN 978-1-933619-49-1 © 2014 Contemporary Arts Museum Houston

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CONTEMPORARY ARTS MUSEUM HOUSTON