Employing found materials from contemporary society, filmmakers Jenny Vogel and Mary Billyou share investigations into parallel but opposing psychologies: surveillance and social participation; intimacy and authority; the conscious and the subconscious. Their web-based and textual works are driven by an interest in desire, melancholia, and the messiness of existence. Vogel and Billyou currently work together through the Brooklyn-based Round Robin Artist Collective.

Mary Billyou’s films and videos have shown in North America, Europe, and in China; screenings include: Images Festival, SCOPE New York, Sundance International Film Festival, Black Maria Film Festival, and Squeaky Wheel. Her work revolves around the perceptual and philosophical matrices of “the face,” the scientific gaze, and feminism. Her interests include collaborative practices, ordering systems, and going for long walks with the dog. In 2010, she received a filmmaking grant from The Jerome Foundation.

Jenny Vogel (born in Germany, 1975) lives in New York and North Texas. She works in video, photography and computer arts. Vogel’s art explores the world as viewed through new media technology using web-cameras, blogs and Google searches as source material. She received her MFA from Hunter College (NYC) in 2003. She is a 2005 NYFA fellow in Computer Arts and is currently an Assistant Professor of New Media Art in the College of Visual Arts and Design at the University of North Texas. Her work has been screened and exhibited in group and solo- shows in numerous locations and galleries: San Francisco Camerawork, CA; Arnolfini, UK; The Siberia Biennial, Russia; The Swiss Institute, NYC; EFA Gallery, NYC; Kunstwerke, Berlin; PS1 Contemporary Art Center, NYC.

http://www.artingeneral.org/events/995

Double Bill: Mary Billyou & Jenny Vogel
TRT: 62:00

CBS Eye by Mary Billyou, 1:30 mins., 2010, 16mm
A colorful Rayogram employing found black & white leader announcing 1960s Central Broadcasting Service television programs.

The Wonder of It All (Recurved) by Mary Billyou, 8 mins., 2010, video
Press photographs are placed, one on top of another, of war, conflict, and border crossings. Over these is the sound of a nine-year old girl reading aloud anti-war essays. This video is grounded strictly within the American amnesiac arenas of cash money and the rat race.

Through the Silent Land by Jenny Vogel, 10min., 2008, video
Having developed a fascination with webcams stationed in city centers and people's homes, Vogel started to collect the images they broadcast throughout the internet. Pointing out into abandoned courtyards and empty streets many of these cameras portray a world, which is seemingly devoid of people. This video uses the footage of these cameras weaving together a maze-like web of nighttime shots. A voice-over acts as a guide for dreamlike wandering through a low-resolution, virtual no man's land.

1-9 by Mary Billyou, 8 mins., 2008, video
Early 20th century footage of convulsing figures. Their bodies erased, covered up, whited out. A medium shot against a makeshift background, repeating with little variation. There are others in the frame, uniformed others: doctors, orderlies, police, soldiers? Trouble in the trouble.

We Love Germany: Thanks for Everything by Jenny Vogel, 18 mins., 2006, video
“Sri Lanka 'National Handball Team' Disappears in Germany,” reported a small blurb on CBS News. Most surprised were the people of the small village of Wittislingen in Germany, who hosted the Sri Lankan team for a local tournament. After the match the Sri Lankans disappeared and were nowhere to be found. A brief inquiry yielded that a Sri Lankan national handball team never existed, and that the rather well organized scam enabled 23 illegal immigrants to obtain European Union visas. In We Love Germany: Thanks For Everything… Jenny Vogel deals with the aftermath of the incident, as she presents the story from the point of view of the villagers of Wittislingen.

Perhaps the Singer is Dead by Mary Billyou, 7 mins., 2004, video
As the waves of television roll bars lull the viewer into a false semi-sleep, the video’s text accuses its audience that “You’d make a terrible witness.”

The Desert by Jenny Vogel, 9 min., 2002, video
A personal but also generic love story viewed through the lens of webcams. A voice is speaking from the past, speaking about memory, while the images of continuously updating webcams describe a world that has become small, but at the same time gigantic and distanced.