COOPER BATTERSBY and EMILY VEY DUKE

2023

Aug 25

Here Is Everything, 2013
single channel video and animation
14 minutes

Riverside Park

In Here Is Everything, collaborators Cooper Battersby and Emily Vey Duke attempt to address the big questions—the existence of God, abjection and redemption, the problem of suffering and death—through what has been called their “literary post-punk film style.” As with many of their past works on topics including beauty, the opioid crisis, and gun violence, they share a sense of wonder about the natural world to unpack deeper questions about the human realm.

Curator John Massier writes, “Here Is Everything presents itself as a message from The Future, as narrated by a cat and a rabbit, spirit guides who explain that they’ve decided to speak to us via a contemporary art video because they understand this to be our highest form of communication. Their cheeky introduction, however, belies the complex set of ideas that fill the remainder of the film. Death, God, and attaining and maintaining a state of Grace are among the thematic strokes winding their way through the piece, rapturously illustrated with animation, still and video imagery. It is a work that contains specific details about its themes, but sufficiently ambiguous and free of dogma, including religious dogma that, our futuristic visitors explain, is a vestigial leftover from an earlier phase of evolution. And while Death is an ever-present rumination, so are Redemption, Affirmation, and Possibility.” 1

Using a combination of narrative and visual storytelling, the artists’ tongue-in-cheek claim that this video will explain “everything” points to the hubris of humankind, and ultimately, our ignorance. Tucked within their collage of found imagery, animated dioramas, and song, the artists explore germane topics including “advice for young women” and critiques of the pharmaceutical industry, covering “everything” that is true to them. In the end, the rabbit and the cat say, “You might notice it's not everybody’s everything, but I think we got some of the important bits.”

Artist Biographies

Cooper Battersby and Emily Vey Duke have been working collaboratively since 1994. They work in printed matter, installation, new media, curation, and criticism, but their primary practice is video art. They are Canadian artists based in rural New York State. Together, they have exhibited their work at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Rochester Contemporary Art Center, UMKC Gallery of Art, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Ann Arbor Experimental Film and Video Festival, and ARGOS centre for audiovisual arts. The Beauty is Relentless brought together 11 essays on Battersby and Vey Duke’s practice, published in 2012 by Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art and Pleasure Dome, Toronto. In 2010 they were shortlisted for Canada’s Sobey Art Award and in 2016 they were featured in Images Festival Canadian Artist Spotlight, Toronto.

1. John Massier, Hallwalls catalogue for the exhibition “Hopelessly Middle Aged”, Fall 2012.