Amsterdam: Artist Paul McCarthy’s C.S.S.C. Coach Stage Stage Coach VR experiment Mary and Eve (2017) in VR series Xtended at Eye Filmmuseum – From 25 July through 11 August

On 25 July 2019, Paul McCarthy’s expansive virtual reality work C.S.S.C. Coach Stage Stage Coach VR experiment Mary and Eve will be presented at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, marking its premiere in the Netherlands. First exhibited by the Faurschou Foundation during the Venice Biennale in 2017, this work revisits McCarthy’s ongoing project, ‘CSSC Coach Stage Stage Coach.’ Encompassing a wide range of media, McCarthy’s project pulls from mass culture, fusing high-brow and kitsch references to evoke a range of feelings, from intense familiarity to deep disgust. This work includes a recent film that gleans inspiration from John Ford’s 1939 Western Stagecoach that stars John Wayne. Taking the form of a spin-off, a phenomenon associated with the entertainment industry, this virtual reality work builds on an existing scene by McCarthy that stars his two characters, Mary Magdalen (played by Rachel Alig) and Eve (played by Jennifer Daley).

 

Using virtual reality to fully immerse viewers into its world, C.S.S.C. Coach Stage Stage Coach VR experiment Mary and Eve requires viewers to choose from eleven scenes wherein Eve and Mary Magdalen interact. This work was featured at Art Basel Unlimited last month prior to Amsterdam premiere at Eye Filmmuseum.

Director:
Paul McCarthy

Cast:
Mary (Red) – Rachel Alig， Eve – Jennifer Daley

Production:
Alex Stevens, Naotaka Hiro, Jody Joyner

From 25 July through 11 August, daily in the Room at the Top. www.eyefilm.nl/xtended

McCarthy’s recent video, DADDA Donald and Daisy Duck Adventure (2018) will also screen for the first time in the Netherlands. Inspired by Fassbinder’s Whity (1971), DADDA Donald and Daisy Duck Adventure is part of an expansive roster of additional films that will screen in conjunction with CSSC Coach Stage Stage Coach.

Additional programme in the cinemas

CSSC – It Begins – The Coach The Skull (Paul and Damon McCarthy, 2017)

In CSSC – It Begins – The Coach The Skull, six passengers travel on a stagecoach through a Western landscape moving in a continuous loop. The assengers are Ronald Raygun, Nancy Raygun, Mary Magdalen, Jesus Chryst, Adam and Eve. McCarthy’s characters constantly drink whisky and threaten each other. The conversation in the coach is repetitive, absurd, and abusive – repeating clichés of dentification that are used by authority figures and tyrants; “What’s your name? Where do you live?”. The action between the passengers progresses to sexual abuse primarily directed at the two innocents, Adam and Eve. The performance is a form of abstracted appropriation, a tool to critique, to peel the onion of what is.

25 July 21.00 + 29 July 19.00 + 4 August 19.00 + 7 August 21.15

DADDA – Poodle House Saloon (Paul and Damon McCarthy, 2018)

DADDA – Poodle House Saloon is the first of 5 feature-length episodes shot in the saloon set. The saloon is the skull, the characters stay in the saloon as they kill and abuse on another repeatedly. They reanimate in each new scene. The characters depict iconic individuals, yet perhaps more critically, types of human caricatures ever present in society and media. The performers are involved in an action of pretend. The characters are in a state of delusion, often a dark, violent, and insane state of being. Both men and women are caught in this trap: the skull, the set, the saloon.

10 August 21.15 + 13 August 19.15

Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939)

26 July 19.15 + 2 August 16.00

The Hateful Eight on 70mm (Quentin Tarantino, 2015)

28 July 15.30 + 8 August 21.00

Whity on 35mm (Fassbinder, 1971)

31 July 19.15 + 11 August 21.15

About Paul McCarthy

Paul McCarthy is widely considered to be one of the most influential and groundbreaking contemporary American artists. Born in 1945, and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, he first established a multi-faceted artistic practice, which sought to break the limitations of painting by using unorthodox materials such as bodily fluids and food. He has since become known for visceral, often hauntingly humorous work in a variety of mediums – from performance, photography, film and video, to sculpture, drawing and painting.

Xtended

C.S.S.C. Coach Stage Stage Coach VR experiment Mary and Eve is part of Eye’s Virtual Reality programme Xtended, which has featured work by the artists and filmmakers Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Laurie Anderson, Marina Abramović and Tsai Ming-liang, as well as an ode to Oskar Schlemmer.

Text: Marnix van Wijk

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