Every Shot, Every Episode

Jennifer and Kevin McCoy

2001 · Custom digital video playback installation with 277 video compact discs · Photographs

From photography’s beginnings, archival practice has structured the medium, offering frameworks through which to amass and interpret even the most seemingly insignificant camera creations. The McCoys collect and categorize thousands of individual shots that comprise a completely fictitious world—the 1970s cop show Starsky & Hutch. Lodged in the subconscious of an entire generation, the artists’ banal source material is subjected to the non-linear, non-narrative logic of the computer database, grouped typologically by structural technique (every zoom-in, every special effect), stock character (alcoholic, bookie), or action (car chase, drug use). Both unprecedented and utterly traditional, Every Shot, Every Episode is a witty critique of media imagery as well as a portable reference guide for those raised and reared by television.

Artist

Jennifer and Kevin McCoy

Date

2001

Medium

Custom digital video playback installation with 277 video compact discs

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, Henry Nias Foundation Inc. Gift, 2002