Audrey Chan

BOOMERANG is a video about the Iraq War, Maya Lin, love songs, the politics of escalation & the logic of withdrawal. It is a meditation on the paradox of memorial design in a historical moment characterized by the rapid proliferation of images of war and terror across the Internet. BOOMERANG employs found footage of amateur video produced by American soldiers and Iraqi insurgents, clips from Middle-Eastern news sources, and excerpts from Freida Lee Mock’s award-winning 1995 documentary, “Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision.” BOOMERANG also addresses the re-contextualization of popular music in service of the home-edited video montage format through an American soldier’s interpretation of Eminem’s “Soldier” (2002) and the artist’s appropriation of Aretha Franklin’s “The House That Jack Built” (1968). Anchored by segments of first-person text, the video constructs a space where poetics, historical spectatorship, political identity construction, the failures of war, and digital media commingle.

 

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Exhibitions & Screenings:

CRW – contemporary reflections on war, BKS Garage, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, Denmark, curated by Julie Galsbo and Malene Dam, 2010
re-Perspective, The Office: An Art Space, Huntington Beach, California, curated by Chloe Flores and Autumn Beck (catalogue), 2007
Memorial Proposals for the Iraq War, 9th Street Entry Gallery, Bethel University, St. Paul, Minnesota, 2007
Greater LA MFA Exhibition & Film Screening, California State University at Long Beach, Long Beach, California, 2006
femmeusesaction #15, l’exposition, Parc Saint Léger – Centre d’art contemporain, Pougues-les-Eaux, France, curated by Cécile Proust, 2006
Let’s Talk About…, Larissa Goldston Gallery, New York, New York, 2006
Speed Limit, REDHEAD at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York, New York, 2006
BOOMERANG, D301 Gallery, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California, 2006