Title: MOOC (Massively Oppressive Operational Condition)
Media type: Video with sound
Performer: Mark Amerika
Video and Sound production: Zak Loyd and Ryan Wade Ruehlen
Video post-production: Laura Hyunjhee Kim
Sound post-production: Chad Mossholder
Duration: 13:30
Video Link: MOOC (Massively Oppressive Operational Condition) video
About the work
MOOC is a long-form work of video performance art featuring artist Mark Amerika. In the video, Amerika portrays an unnamed professorial persona who mocks the trendy MOOC online course format.
In this particular course, an Introduction to Digital Art, Amerika’s persona playfully satirizes the contemporary art scene, digital culture, cult branding, selfie-mythology, and the neoliberal systems of higher education. The unusual recombination of Amerika's Brooklynese vocals with a stream of hilarious visual puns and custom-designed soundtrack blur the lines of distinction between video performance art and a new mode of 21st century pedagogical practice.