The Power Plant

Just two days before the American general election, when voters will go to the polls to decide between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, The Power Plant presents a screening of Political Advertisement IX 1952-2016 followed by a discussion with artists and long-time collaborators Antoni Muntadas and Marshall Reese.

Muntadas, artist and Professor of the Practice in the Department of Architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Reese, artist, first launched the Political Advertisement project in 1984. They included thirty-second spots from the presidential elections dating from the 1952 election, Dwight D. Eisenhower versus Adlai Stevenson, through the 1984 election, Ronald Reagan versus Walter Mondale. Every four years, Muntadas and Reese issue a new edition of Political Advertisement. The project speculates whether presidential politics have changed since the early 1950s, or whether the same strategies established in the 1950s are used today. As Steve Reid, former Film and Video Curator at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, writes: “guided by the cooing come-ons of the thirty-second TV spot, [presidential] campaigns were soon reduced to photo ops, televised debates, and sound bites. Out was the whistle-stop tour and the scrappy convention, in was the instant poll and the attack ad.”

Following the screening, Jeffrey Dvorkin, a celebrated journalist; commentator on American current events; and Lecturer and Director of the Journalism Program at University of Toronto Scarborough, joins Muntadas and Reese on stage for conversation about how the development of televised media and electoral politics have become increasingly inseparable. Questions from the audience will be encouraged.

MAJOR DONOR