Allison Tanenhaus
Doug Bielmeier
Corporate Responsibility Pledge
USA 2020 // 6.40 min. // HD 16:9
„Corporate Responsibility Pledge” is a multimedia work that identifies the conflict between corporations and communities of people. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the movement in business to take responsibility for the role of corporations in the quality of life of the communities they serve and operate in. The piece asserts that as either a marketing tool or as an altruistic effort, CSR has both a positive and negative effect on the lives of people and their communities. The video is an assemblage of public domain footage from the mid-twentieth century—industrial shorts, advertisements, PSAs, environmental films, and home movies—that has been ripped, glitched, and restitched. The resulting narrative originates with the golden potential of capitalism for the American nuclear family, and quickly deteriorates into a neon-tinged, retrofuturistic miasma of big business’s shortcomings. With an eye on economy and ecology in equal measure, the video both celebrates and laments the premise and promise of commercial progress. Created in partnership with the musicians of the Unheard-of//Ensemble (https://www.unheard-ofproject.com).
CV
Allison Tanenhaus (she/her) is a New York–born, Boston–based digital glitch artist. She specializes in bold geometrics, kaleidoscopic color fields, trippy op art, thought-provoking truisms, and unexpected dimensional qualities. Her primary formats include retrofuturistic GIFs, loops, and music videos; abstract public art; street art cat stickers; and large-scale video projections. Notable installations and commissions include the ICA Store at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston; New England Synth Fest; Harvard Graduate School of Design; Boston Convention & Exhibition Center; SaveArtSpace.org; Hotel Studio Allston; and “GlitchKraft: Allison Tanenhaus + Friends” at Emerson Contemporary.
Doug Bielmeier creates commercial drone/experimental electronic music featuring his performance on lap steel with live processing. Bielmeier’s music has been described as an extension of Xenakis’s early electroacoustic tape pieces (American Record Guide, 2018) and “Gentle (Cinemusical).” Other reviewers explain Bielmeier’s music is “drone work meant to shake you out of your shell of complacency (Midwest Record)” and “hypnotically static yet ever moving within itself (Classical-Modern Music Review).” Album releases include Beast of Bodmin Moor (Noisy Buffalo, 2019), Costa Mesa Rocking Chair (Ravello, 2018) and Betty and the Sensory World (Ravello, 2017), which have been performed internationally at Circuit Bender’s Ball (Nashville), Brooklyn Arts Gym (Brooklyn), and Muse Gallery (London), and broadcasted on WMBR (MIT, Cambridge), KALX (Berkley), WUTL (New Orleans) being heard by over 10K listeners on Drone Zone (Somafm.com).