My Turn: Weekend at Bernie’s
Jul 12, 2011

A screening of Weekend at Bernie’s (1989) turned into a conversation about conceptual art when artist Cory Arcangel presented the film on June 30 in conjunction with his exhibition, Cory Arcangel: Pro Tools, and as part of the My Turn public programs series. My Turn invites artists to create events for the Whitney’s public that are an extension of and informed by their practice. The exhibition, on view until September 11, 2011, features new work by Arcangel which revolves around the concept of “product demonstrations.” All of the works—ranging from video games, single channel video, kinetic sculpture, and prints, to pen plotter drawings—have been created by means of technological tools with an emphasis on the mixing and matching of both professional and amateur technologies, as well as the vernaculars these technologies encourage within culture at large.

 Although Arcangel had never seen Weekend at Bernie’s before, he introduced the film, citing it as an influence on his work or an example of a concept that is easily described and understood, similar to “an elevator pitch”—a short description of a product, service, or project that “can be explained really quickly. . .” Weekend at Bernie’s tells the story of Larry and Richard’s weekend getaway at their boss’s swanky summer home. Needless to say, the weekend takes an unexpected turn when they find him dead and they pretend he is still alive to protect themselves from the same hit man that killed Bernie.

When he began making work ten years ago, Arcangel explained, he found audiences were very turned off by his use of technology. As a “defense mechanism,” Arcangel decided to make his work very simple, and like an elevator pitch, easily communicated to a stranger in ten seconds or less. In this way, Arcangel sees a “bizarre parallel” between his work and Weekend at Bernie’s, as well as more current films such as The Hangover (2009) and Hot Tub Time Machine (2010), because the hooks or plots of these movies can be summed up in a sentence, or even the title. Additionally, Arcangel was interested to find out what it would be like to watch Weekend at Bernie’s in the setting of the Whitney, and thought that screening the film would be a fun way to “test the idea.” The movie was played on a VHS player, to which one excited audience member responded, “VHS! Are you serious?!”

After the screening, Arcangel answered questions from the audience. When asked what he thought of the movie after seeing it for the first time, he said, “That movie was sick.” Soon, however, the conversation took on a more serious tone. One audience member asked Arcangel to discuss the film in relation to his work on view at the Museum. Arcangel said, “If you go far enough with something it lends a certain power,” and because of that his work often attempts to “stretch things out to be as ridiculous as possible.” Another audience member commented that it was much more interesting to watch Weekend at Bernie’s in the context of an art museum, especially since it inspired a discussion focused on conceptual art and Arcangel’s process. In the end, Arcangel was asked to evaluate the success of the program, or his “test.” He said, “The reality I thought was kind of fun.”

By Lauren Rosenberg, Public Programs Intern