Screen Projects: Virocode: No Plan for the Future
virocode, No Plan for the Future (still), 2019. Digital video. Courtesy of the artist.
Search for the Hashtag #noplanforthefuture and images of donuts spewing jelly, melted ice cream, and splattered pies will fill your feed. These small tragedies are part of virocode’s ongoing resistance to collective memory loss and the amnesia that social media platforms like Instagram perpetuate. In a culture where perfect food pictures abound, these tasty images of tiny disasters aim to remind the viewer that reality can be the most delicate of delicacies to perish at the hands of fools. Beginning after the 2016 presidential election, virocode—a Buffalo-based collaborative of Peter D’Auria and Andrea Mancuso—have embraced “the slow unfolding cultural accident that we are in” and set out to digest the torrent of malnourishing disinformation presented as America’s desserts.
virocode creates art that explores the theories, laws, and hypothesizes of science which hemorrhage into our culture, and coagulate on the individual. The work exposes scientific tenets to the chilly outside air and re-contextualizes them in the full spectrum of the narrative of everyday living. virocode is a collaborative effort of Peter D’Auria and Andrea Mancuso. They have been producing artwork since 1987 and have exhibited work in photography, video, installation, and the digital arts throughout the United States and in Europe including The Museum of Modern Art and The Kitchen in New York City; Artist Television Access, Artspace, Southern Exposure Gallery, and the Emanuel Walter and Etholl McBean Galleries in San Francisco; The Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California, Diverseworks Art Space in Houston, Texas, The University of Arizona Art Gallery, in Tucson, Arizona, Impakt Festival in The Netherlands, the European Media Art Festival in Osnabruck, Germany and at the Albright Knox Art Gallery, Burchfield-Penny Art Center, CEPA Gallery, Squeaky Wheel and Hallwalls in Buffalo, New York.
virocode began working together while completing undergraduate studies in Art and the Social Sciences at the State University of New York at Buffalo, studying with Marion Faller, Paul Sharits, and Tony Conrad. Andrea Mancuso received a Ph.D. in Visual Studies from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2016 working closely with Jonathan Katz and Gary Nickard, and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1993 studying and working closely with Doug Hall, Margaret Crane, John Winet, Kathy Acker and Tony Labat. Andrea teaches art specializing in photography and new media at Nichols School in Buffalo, New York. Peter D’Auria received a BA in art in 1989, an MA in Pathology in 1998 from the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Health and Biomedical Sciences, and a Physician Assistant Degree from Daemen College. He currently works in clinical practice in the Buffalo area and is an adjunct instructor in the Physician Assistant Studies Department at Daemen College.