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Spook™: The Negro Revolution 1776 – 1781: A Screening
Rough-cuts from the Spook™ project made @ Eyebeam

Date:    Thursday, June 25, 2009
Time:    6:00pm - 8:00pm
Location:    Eyebeam Art + Technology Center
Street:    540 W 21st Street
City/Town:    New York, NY

Phone:    2129376580
Email:    info@eyebeam.org

Description
On June 25, Eyebeam resident artist Kenseth Armstead will be screening scenes from his feature action/art film “Blowback (Spook 1781)" © armstead 2009. The scenes used a process he developed called “Open Source Casting”: which allowed the general public to become the stars of his film. For the past five months, over 100 people enacted in HD video, the true story of the double agent/slave-spy James Armistead Lafayette. Viewers were able to select a character, like James or one of his two handlers: the Marquis Lafayette (General, US Continental Army) and the Lord Charles Cornwallis (General, British Army.)

About Spook™
In the summer of 1781, James Armistead Lafayette was the sneakiest man in America. By providing intelligence, James succeeded in liberating our insurgent forefathers from the British Empire. Spook™ is a multimedia installation project based on James’ true story as a double agent for America’s first Director of Central Intelligence, George Washington.

About the Artist
Kenseth Armstead’s multimedia works have been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Brooklyn Museum, and the Bronx Museum of the Arts. His works are in private and public collections including the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the African American Museum, Dallas. Armstead is an alumnus of the Whitney Independent Study Program. He has earned a Pollock-Krasner Award, NYFA video fellowship, NYSCA individual Artist Grant (film/video,) a Creative Capital Grant and a Bronx Council on the Arts Digital Matrix Commission. Armstead was an artist in residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace, and is currently artist in residence at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center.

For more information:
http://eyebeam.org/events

Spook™: Establishing Shot

The installation "Spook™: Establishing Shot" will consist of numerous elements:  HD video production equipment; Documentary 18th century images, hand-made forensic, drawings, reconstructions & abstractions;  the screenplay “Blowback (Spook 1781)" © armstead 2009 and research documents.  These media items will be staged as a film set.  This life-sized tableau, handmade, drawn and constructed by the artist, will render an immersive abstraction of the espionage landscape that James navigated.  The constructed space will be flexible and extensible, allowing the artist to stage espionage happenings.

The espionage happenings of "Spook™: Establishing Shot" will be scheduled events.  Using the feature length screenplay “Blowback (Spook 1781)" professional actors, passersby and museum visitors will reenact James' historic achievements by reading for the role of James or George Washington, if they choose.  They may choose any scene or the artist may suggest one.

"Spook™: Establishing Shot" integrates actors and regular people into the same, free form cattle-call process and film production.  It dissolves the American Revolution’s mythology and replaces it with a serial act; hundred’s of people, inhabiting James’ peculiar role, an invisible agent, in the midst of a bloody insurgency.