John Menick | Projects

2008, 32-Track audio CD

Goldberg Variations Variations is an audio work that simultaneously plays ten different synchronized recordings of Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations BMV 988. The beginning of each variation is synched, but after the first note, the performances fall out of step due to the differences in their tempos. The CD contains all thirty of the variations and the Aria and Aria da Capo.

Mirage Terminal is a series of prints, videos and texts related to the history of Western films.

A video by John Menick, Ongoing (begun in 2008), In English, Black and white, DV, Silent, Infinite Loop

Watch Hearsay online.

A collection of hearsay I've heard and passed on to others. The hearsay is not necessarily true or false. I've believed all of it at one time or another, and still believe some of it. I passed on none of the hearsay if I knew it to be false. Additionally, if I knew the hearsay was true or false I did not include it in the video. None of the hearsay was personal and all of it involved general, societal topics. New hearsay is added to the video every few months.

A video essay by John Menick, 2006, In English, Color, 24p DV, Stereo, 6 min

An unidentified man describes his ongoing fixation with "last person on earth" films -- films in which a single person awakens to find that he or she is the sole living inhabitant of a city.

Funded by
CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts for the group exhibition Prophets of Deceit (September 2006 - November 11 2006)

A short, narrative film by John Menick, 2006, In French with English subtitles, Color, 24p DV, Stereo, 21 min

"Occupation" is a short narrative portrait of Malik, a homeless Senegalese postcard salesman living in Aubervilliers, France. Malik lives out of his car; his existence has hardened into a circular routine of urban exploration by night and the selling of his self-made postcards by day. The cards are the result of his travels through the peripheral spaces of the Aubervilliers. Avoiding typical touristic cityscapes, Malik's postcards focus on highway overpasses, disused factories, and housing projects. The film shows one day and night in Malik's life, a life that is both entangled with his host city and permanently pushed to its margins.

2001-2, single-channel video, 7:26

This video is a cinematic research taking the form of a location scouting for a film to be shot in Nuremberg. Location scouts are employed by film productions to find sites for the shooting of a film. They take photographs of a location and write commentaries on the suitability of that site for the given scene.

The movie itself is a fictional production that will not be filmed. It is a narrative about a detective investigating a disappearance. A video presentation of locations in the city is shown with an audio soundtrack describing the possible usage of the sites, as well as how they evoke the city's history.

The "2002 Palestine International Video Festival" was a video festival that took place in the West Bank during the winter of 2002. The festival was conceived by Emily Jacir (UNDP/TOKTEN), and was co-organized by John Menick. The festival's Web site is archived here.

"Work", University Art Museum, State University of Albany, New York
published interview

The project involves the participation of several work-study students employed at the Museum. The artist has asked these students for responses to the following question:

"If you were to be paid to engage in a leisure activity that you have not had the opportunity to occupy yourself with at school, what would it be?"

Solo Exhibition, Rampe 003
Berlin, Germany
sound installation

This work took the form of a 40-minute series of fictional radio programs that was played continuously in the Rampe 003 pavilion located on Rosa Luxembourg Platz in Berlin.

"Greater New York," PS1 Center for Contemporary Art, Long Island City, NYC
altered wristwatch watch produced by Maria Muresan

A single watch altered so that an entire day will take 28 standard hours to pass. An individual may live on this time and negotiate the difference in any manner they choose.

Solo Project, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, Queens
double-sided bookmark

In the winter of 1999 I was asked to execute an independent project at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, Queens. The project I carried out was documented in the form of a bookmark, which was given away for free at the information desk of the museum.