Supanick, Jim

Quest for What: Video by the HalfLifers Bibliography

Bay-Area video duo the HalfLifers (Anthony Discenza and Torsten Z. Burns) create performance-based videotapes using consumer-grade equipment and degraded signal aesthetics; works cited include the 1997 Actions in Action, Fear of Rescue, Control Corridor and Return to Rescueworld. Their tapes assemble shaky camerawork, color distortion, glitches, fast-forward and undercranking-like motion to stage improvised buddy-movie reenactments of post-apocalyptic scenarios and comic, self-reflexive exchanges. The article places them in a lineage with Vito Acconci, John Baldessari and Martha Rosler and notes the piece originally appeared in Film Comment (Sept/Oct 1999).