Eli Coplan
US TV AND FILM
5 October–9 November 2024
Opening: Friday 4 October, 6–9 pm


[Breton] was the first to perceive the revolutionary energies that appear in the ‘outmoded,’ in the first iron constructions, the first factory buildings, the earliest photos, the objects that have begun to be extinct, grand pianos, the dresses of five years ago, fashionable restaurants when the vogue has begun to ebb from them. The relation of these things to revolution—no one can have a more exact concept of it than these authors. No one before these visionaries and augurs perceived how destitution—not only social but architectonic, the poverty of interiors, enslaved and enslaving objects—can suddenly be transformed into revolutionary nihilism. Leaving aside Aragon’s Passage de l’Opéra, Breton and Nadja are the lovers who convert everything that we have experienced on mournful railway journeys (railways are beginning to age), on Godforsaken Sunday afternoons in the proletarian quarters of the great cities, in the first glance through the rain-blurred window of a new apartment, into revolutionary experience, if not action. They bring the immense forces of ‘atmosphere’ concealed in these things to the point of explosion. What form do you suppose a life would take that was determined at a decisive moment precisely by the street song last on everyone’s lips?

Excerpted from Walter Benjamin, “Surrealism,” in One Way Street, trans. Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter (London; New York: Verso, 2021), 267.


An American television, made in Mexico, hangs opposite the window onto Princeton Street. The screen’s surface—a thin, plastic polarising film—has been peeled off, revealing the glass of the LCD panel beneath. The film was removed with meticulous, toxic handwork (this was a new, store-bought Samsung). As a result of this procedure, the television screen glows with an even white light as the backlight brightens and dims along with the signal. In reflections and at oblique angles, faint images may be apprehended, and when the scattered light is filtered out by a polariser, the picture can be made to reappear. A polarising film is hung on the window, rendering the televised image visible from the street.

This is a smart TV. It is streaming live television broadcasts over IPTV. IPTV, or Internet Protocol television, describes a service that transmits television content over IP networks. Thousands of global channels are accessible, unlocking an internationalist potential for the translocal sharing of culture and information unrealised in the structure of conventional broadcast television. This IPTV service is provided by an online, invite-only file sharing network and is given as a gift to members after they donate to contribute to its costs. Corporate television networks see no profit and receive no data, and advertisements are not directed towards their target audiences. Throughout the run of this exhibition, from 5 October to 9 November 2024, television from the United States plays on the screen.

On the other works: 1) Tooth Tunes is the trademark for a discontinued line of children's toothbrushes released by Hasbro in the aughts that made use of a unique patented technology. Each toothbrush plays a two-minute song through a dental mandibular sound transducer in its head. Once activated, a small chip in the handle plays the featured song by transferring vibrations through the bristles into the front teeth, through the jawbone, and directly into the inner ear. 2) us_tv_and_film.txt is a frequency list composed of words drawn from scripts for television and film productions. It was created in 2006 and remains part of a widely used software package that estimates password strength, performing the notion that the most literal content from these works finds its way directly into the private lives of individuals.


Eli Coplan (b. 1992, San Diego; lives and works in New York) studied at Reed College, Portland; and the Independent Study Program, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In 2023 he presented a solo exhibition, Disney Plus, at Commercial Street, Los Angeles. Recent and forthcoming group exhibitions include On Television, carriage trade, New York (2024); Decumanus Maximus, inge, Long Island (2024); Chadwick Rantanen, Eli Coplan, Hana Miletić, Rachel Fäth, Magenta Plains, New York (2024); Eli Coplan, Rachel Fäth, Oto Gillen, Drew Healy, Anna Rubin, b11g, New York (2024); Quad, a. SQUIRE, London (2024); Slow Dance, Stadtgalerie, Bern (2023); and Manhattan, Claude Balls Int., New York (2022).

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