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Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center,
Troy NY

JORDAN WOLFSON

Con Leche, 2009

Video project, Mac mini, video

Video 14:57 minutes; voice audio 22:41 minutes

Courtesy of the artist and Johann König, Berlin

A piece in which the video image and spoken audio are continuously out of sync, Con Leche presents an ever-shifting landscape of juxtaposition that defies a stable symbolic reading. Animated Diet Coke bottles filled with milk march barefoot through the post-industrial streets of Detroit. The video image is constantly rotated, undermining the sense of a stable ground. A commercial voice-over actress narrates fragments of text with unsettling topics, while Wolfson periodically interrupts and instructs her to change the volume or tonality of her speech.

The film shifts around a central lack, understood by Lacan as the source of anxiety. This is reiterated in the figures of Diet Coke, a consumer product with no caloric substance. Philosopher Slavoj Žižek has noted that products such as Diet Coke are the result of an age of "decaffeinated belief, a belief that does not hurt anyone and never requires us to commit ourselves."

  • EXHIBITIONJordan Wolfson, Uncertain Spectator / Video still from Con Leche, 2009, courtesy of Johann König, Berlin.

    Jordan Wolfson, Uncertain Spectator / Video still from Con Leche, 2009, courtesy of Johann König, Berlin.

  • EXHIBITIONJordan Wolfson, Uncertain Spectator / Video still from Con Leche, 2009, courtesy of Johann König, Berlin.

    Jordan Wolfson, Uncertain Spectator / Video still from Con Leche, 2009, courtesy of Johann König, Berlin.

  • EXHIBITIONJordan Wolfson, Uncertain Spectator / Video still from Con Leche, 2009, courtesy of Johann König, Berlin.

    Jordan Wolfson, Uncertain Spectator / Video still from Con Leche, 2009, courtesy of Johann König, Berlin.

  • EXHIBITIONJordan Wolfson, Uncertain Spectator / Video still from Con Leche, 2009, courtesy of Johann König, Berlin.

    Jordan Wolfson, Uncertain Spectator / Video still from Con Leche, 2009, courtesy of Johann König, Berlin.

  • EXHIBITIONJordan Wolfson, Uncertain Spectator / Video still from Con Leche, 2009, courtesy of Johann König, Berlin.

    Jordan Wolfson, Uncertain Spectator / Video still from Con Leche, 2009, courtesy of Johann König, Berlin.

  • EXHIBITIONJordan Wolfson, Uncertain Spectator / Video still from Con Leche, 2009, courtesy of Johann König, Berlin.

    Jordan Wolfson, Uncertain Spectator / Video still from Con Leche, 2009, courtesy of Johann König, Berlin.

  • EXHIBITIONJordan Wolfson, Uncertain Spectator / Video still from Con Leche, 2009, courtesy of Johann König, Berlin.

    Jordan Wolfson, Uncertain Spectator / Video still from Con Leche, 2009, courtesy of Johann König, Berlin.

  • EXHIBITIONJordan Wolfson, Uncertain Spectator / Video still from Con Leche, 2009, courtesy of Johann König, Berlin.

    Jordan Wolfson, Uncertain Spectator / Video still from Con Leche, 2009, courtesy of Johann König, Berlin.

  • EXHIBITIONJordan Wolfson, Uncertain Spectator / Video still from Con Leche, 2009, courtesy of Johann König, Berlin.

    Jordan Wolfson, Uncertain Spectator / Video still from Con Leche, 2009, courtesy of Johann König, Berlin.

  • EXHIBITIONJordan Wolfson, Uncertain Spectator / Video still from Con Leche, 2009, courtesy of Johann König, Berlin.

    Jordan Wolfson, Uncertain Spectator / Video still from Con Leche, 2009, courtesy of Johann König, Berlin.

  • EXHIBITIONJordan Wolfson, Uncertain Spectator / Video still from Con Leche, 2009, courtesy of Johann König, Berlin.

    Jordan Wolfson, Uncertain Spectator / Video still from Con Leche, 2009, courtesy of Johann König, Berlin.