Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby: Here is Everything

On view 1 – 30 September 2014

Here Is Everything presents itself as a message from The Future, as narrated by a cat and a rabbit, spirit guides who explain that they’ve decided to speak to us via a contemporary art video because they understand this to be our highest form of communication. Their cheeky introduction, however, belies the complex set of ideas that fill the remainder of the film. Death, God, and attaining and maintaining a state of Grace are among the thematic strokes winding their way through the piece, rapturously illustrated with animation, still and video imagery.
It is a work that contains specific details about its themes, but sufficiently ambiguous and free of dogma, including religious dogma that, our futuristic visitors explain, is a vestigial leftover from an earlier phase of evolution. And while Death is an ever-present rumination, so are Redemption, Affirmation, and Possibility. (John Massier, Hallwalls Catalogue for the exhibition Hopelessly Middle Aged, 2012)

Cooper Battersby and Emily Vey Duke have been working collaboratively since June 1994. Their work has been broadcast and exhibited around the world. Duke and Battersby are currently teaching at Syracuse University in Central New York. In 2010 they were shortlisted for the prestigious Sobey Art Award, and their work is distributed by Video Data Bank in Chicago, Argos in Brussels, V-Tape in Toronto and Video Out in Vancouver. In 2012, a book was published about their work. It is titled The Beauty is Relentless.

Directors: Emily Vey Duke, Cooper Battersby, Distribution: Video Data Bank www.vdb.org