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Item: The Electronic Monster and Thirteen Ghosts

Jim Shaw

2024

Installation, variable dimensions.
Materials:

Collection: M HKA / Collection Flemish Community (Inv. no. BK009662).

The Electronic Monster and Thirteen Ghosts (2024) is a new work created for the exhibition, inspired by the memories of a double-bill horror movie Shaw saw at the cinema when he was nine years old. The installation brings together singing wigs, an aggressive vacuum cleaner, catalogue models, cavemen, a half-cake, half-intestine figure, and the ghosts of industrial power and consumerism in a last, grotesque, and outdated dance. The work resurfaces American society’s debris and components, like an adrift yet very much present floating ideology. It is apparent — in this piece and many others — that Jim Shaw’s oeuvre is marked by a vintage aesthetic that reveals how important the 1960s were in forging his vision as a young artist, while he now uses this aesthetic as a poignant means of both depicting and undermining “the mythologised golden age of patriarchy in post-war America, where white men ran everything”. The present spectacle confronts viewers with a typically European standpoint: hungry for and critical of a stereotypical America, existing beyond a reality one can’t quite grasp.

Credits

Editing, Animation - Kane Lafia

Videography - Daniel Hawkins

Music mixing, looping etc. - Kane Lafia

Music - Jim Shaw, D’redd D’warf (Dani Tull, Brian Randolph, Daniel Hope, Jim Shaw), Kalle Nemvalts

Voice Recording - Corby Gallegos

Voice Editing - Alan Tofighi

Catalog models written dialogue - Colette Weber Shaw

Catalog model Script editor - Akela Munson

Set Photographer - LeeAnn Nickel

Performers

Amorphous head Puppeteer - Daniel Hope

Book - Kelsey Kuykendall

Cake - Kane Lafia

Cavemen - Marnie Weber, Kane Lafia, Daniel Hope

The Electronic Monster - Jim Shaw

Vacuum Cleaner - Daniel Hope

Wig Puppets - Tanya Haden and Mariah Csepanyi Cool

Vocal Performers

Catalog model voices - Conor Murphy, Blake Bailey, Corby Gallegos, Jim Shaw

Crackly puppet head voice - Tanya Haden

Cake and Vacuum voices - Corby Gallegos

Cigarette men voice - Blake Bailey

Parking Meter Voice - Jim Shaw

Smooth puppet head voice - Jim Shaw

Costume and Puppet Fabrication - Daniel Hope, Kelsey Kuykendall

Assisted by: Shelby Date, Javier Espinoza-Lopez

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About M HKA / Mission Statement

The M HKA is a museum for contemporary art, film and visual culture in its widest sense. It is an open place of encounter for art, artists and the public. The M HKA aspires to play a leading role in Flanders and to extend its international profile by building upon Antwerp's avant-garde tradition. The M HKA bridges the relationship between artistic questions and wider societal issues, between the international and the regional, artists and public, tradition and innovation, reflection and presentation. Central here is the museum's collection with its ongoing acquisitions, as well as related areas of management and research.

About M HKA Ensembles

The M HKA Ensembles represent our first steps towards initiating the public to today's art-related digital landscape. With the help of these new media, our aim is to offer our artworks a better and fuller array of support for their presentation and public understanding.