Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay is a Montréal-born artist working predominantly in video, text and sound. Since 2000 his work has brought together song, self-reflexive performance and lyrics from pop music as vehicles for examining the singing voice, the untranslatability of emotions into language and the ways in which emotional expression changes shape when mediated by technology and popular culture. Nemerofsky Ramsay's work has screened in festivals and galleries across Canada, Europe and East Asia and has won prizes at the Hamburg Short Film Festival, the Kasseler Dokumentarfilm- und Videofest and the Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen (all in Germany), the Toronto Inside Out Film and Video Festival as well as First Prize at the Globalica Media Arts Biennale in Wroclaw, Poland. He currently divides his time between Canada and Europe.
http://www.nemerofsky.ca/

Playing with well-known pop music is a recurring element in the work of the Canadian artist Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, whether he is making a cover of a Madonna hit (Live to Tell), 'popping-up' an ancient song (I am a Boyband) or singing along with TATU (Audition Tape). Patriotic revolves around passages from the controversial Patriot Act, which was ratified by the US Congress after 09/11. Together with the French artist Pascal Lièvre – who previously used president Bush’s speech on the 'Axis of Evil' as the starting point for making a superkitsch music video – he chose passages from the bill that extensively dealt with the safety of the United States and the struggle against the archenemy: terrorism. This collaboration resulted in a sugary-sweet, many-voiced ode to the US, with a clear homo-erotic ring to it. Patriotic teems with bombastic, graphically represented rhetoric and singing soldiers in bogus uniforms.

What are the ingredients for a real boyband - a cute tune, dance moves and of course 4 handsome hunks, each with their own look... A cloned boyband co-opts an Elizabethan madrigal to express its heartbreak over tost love.