The astonishingly seductive, serious and beautiful six-part video "Glass Life" by Sarah Cwynar (on view at Foxy Production until Oct. 23), is about the frictionless world of displacement and gliding, in which past and future collapse into an alluring now that somehow remains out of reach. (The title line of the work is excerpted from Shoshana Zuboff's influential 2019 book, "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Struggle for a Human Future on the New Frontier of Power.") It is also a portrait of the artist as her own archive. Made during the pandemic, the nineteen-minute long torrent of still and moving images (pictured, in detail, above) includes images of Cwynar in his studio, revisiting props and photos from previous projects, amid scenes from recent protests. on the streets of New York City, a fleet of Alitalia planes on the ground, and an overwhelming variety of additional content. Categorical and historical distinctions dissolve, so that Margaret Thatcher and Mickey Mouse, or a live model and CGI-generated avatar (to name an infinitesimal sample of Cwynar's encyclopedic themes), become exchangeable fodder for food. .
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Sarah Cwynar | The New Yorker
