Sean Livingstone “The Filthy Fifteen and other cassette tape works”

For the last two decades Sean Livingstone has been working with collage, image transfer, painting, video, among other techniques while at the same time playing in different underground hardcore-punk bands in NYC.

Among the many techniques used to create his visual poetics, a recurring practice is the transfer and reconfiguration of collected and archived images, moving these from one medium to another to subvert and resignify its meaning.

These works explore themes such as branding & propaganda, ephemera, memorabilia, dynamics of control and by making use of old and obsolete tools such as Dry Transfers, 60’s magazines, cassette tapes he creates contemporary satirical representations of what can be seen as “Americana” culture today.

In this show Sean presents two series of works: “The Filthy Fifteen” and “Exiting Machines”

“The Filthy Fifteen” series is named after the list of songs that the (PMRC) deemed to have violent, drug-related or sexual themes. The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) was an American committee formed in 1985 by DC politicians' wives. 

This documentation presents all the fifteen cassette tapes in an assembled composition with the extracted "questionable, filthy" song from it, while in “Exiting Machines” Livingstone presents different mixed-media collages made of cut-ups from old architectural magazines that he’s been collecting for years and create compositions that are assembled and layered creating depth and perspective and seem to evoke the construction of future that never materialized.

Curated by Lucas Cabu