Chaperone with Ian Cooper

Scream 3, Miramax Films, 2000

Wednesday, July 1st, 7 pm

SCREAM 3

(Wes Craven, 2000)

EFA Project Space presents Chaperone, a weekly screening series consisting of films handpicked by a group of artists, all whose work provocatively explores disparate aspects of our culture’s love affair with mediated reality.

EFA Project Space welcomes the artist Ian Cooper, as he chaperones the movie SCREAM 3:“…Scream 3, the final portion of the cult meta-trilogy takes place in Hollywood, on the set of a film-within-the-film, titled Stab 3, which is, itself, the final installment in a series begun by chronicling the horrific events depicted in the first Scream film. The sheer intellectual titillation of watching actors portray characters interacting with other actors playing characters, who are themselves actors portraying characters based on the others’ characters, supersedes everything.  In one memorable scene, the tireless heroine, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) finds herself being chased through a set accurately recreating her childhood home — and how does the audience know that it’s so perfectly reconstructed? Because we recognize it from Scream, of course. The character relies on her memory of a space she’s intimately familiar with, in efforts to navigate cleverly and evade the killer. However, this structure’s true nature as an incomplete theatrical set, not a home, creates some truly uncanny post-postmodern stumbling blocks. Sidney’s extraordinary circumstances in this scene remind me of certain jarring, uncanny moments from my youth - the sensation of being caught in the near-perfect chasm between fiction and reality.”     

Image courtesy  Ian Cooper

By extracting and reconfiguring set pieces from coming-of-age films and television programs, Ian Cooper’s work explores themes, such as isolation and longing, central to the tropes of media-constructed adolescence. Recent work focuses on architectural elements from these fictional sources that directly enunciate their own function, specifically declarations of “vacancy” or “absence,” as pertaining to the presence, or housing, of the human figure. Cooper has had solo projects at Sandroni.Rey, Los Angeles, and has shown abroad at various institutions and galleries, including the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich; Annarumma 404, Naples; and Nice & Fit, Berlin. Cooper’s recent print project published by Forth Estate, shown late last year at EFA Project Space, was recently accessioned by The Whitney Museum of American Art for its permanent collection. Cooper was born and raised in Manhattan. He is on the sculpture faculty at New York University, and currently lives and works in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

 EFA Project Space is located at 323 West 39 Street, 2nd Floor.

The Chaperone program has been organized by Ian Cooper, artist, and Michelle Levy, Program Director, EFA Project Space.

Sponsorship provided by  

For more information on the event, contact projectspace@efanyc.org, or 212-563-5855 x 151