What is my work about?
How to form structured responses to ideas that resist narration? How to set images into motion around objects (or subjects) that aren’t, precisely speaking, photographable? I use these questions as armatures, or propositions, when filming a robotics demonstration, or visiting a television library. My videos crystallize around uncooperative images: they try to enact the replacement of one media technology by another; or systematize an inevitability; or narrate a condition rather than an event. These videos always fold into themselves the effort to produce their own form, or mode of display.
Artist Statement
The film Two Devices (17 min, 2014) comprises two sections: in one, a Pakistani television news story about a robotic seagull is re-shot in the American desert; in the other, an animated donkey mulls over an existential crisis while waiting to detonate itself in a public market. Technology is bending the machine towards the animal; violence is converting animals into machines. How to make this relationship show itself? This question also prompted the print piece Babble Off, Babble On (Risograph, 11×16”, 2014), which typesets web-only news stories about weaponized animals from Afghanistan and Iraq into a small source reader. The surge in biologically-inspired mechanical engineering is concurrent with the popular recognition of global ecological crisis. It is said we can only see a form fully in its twilight moment; perhaps this can explain robotic seagulls and exploding donkeys.
Two Devices was included in the exhibition *Synthetic Spectra* at the ICA Philadelphia, along with another video, A Third Version of the Imaginary, (12 min, 2012), which traces an encounter with the library of the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation in Nairobi, and the failed effort to screen one of its holdings. If, in Two Devices, we are confronted with an image from a rapidly forthcoming future, A Third Version shows us an image from the past, appearing briefly and then vanishing, but still haunting the proceedings. Together, these two projects posit a relationship between cataloging an archive and mechanizing an animal: they both use the same set of tools.
The Suitcase System (2013- ) is an ongoing project to design an alphabetic family of objects for use in public monuments. Suitcase comprises both historical archetypes (an arch, a column, or an obelisk) and newly conceived sculptural glyphs (Wreckage, Smoke, Fence). Purporting to streamline the process of shaping civic memory, the project aims to parse the relationship between public forms and political ideologies. Suitcase currently exists in two formats: an online warehouse of freely available 3D designs, and a series of prototype sculptures.
CV
Education
2012 Whitney Independent Study Program (Studio)
2007 School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA)
2001 Swarthmore College (BA)
Exhibitions / Screenings
2014
Synthetic Spectra, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA (solo)
Alternate Correspondence, 1/9 Unosunove, Rome, IT (forthcoming)
Courtisane, Ghent, BE
Les Rencontres Internationales, Gaîté Lyrique, Paris, and HKW, Berlin
International Film Festival Rotterdam
World of Matter/Ecologies of Raw Material, HMKV, Dortmund, DE
2013
The Things We Know, Henningsen Gallery, Copenhagen, DN
There’s No Place Like Home, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, DE
Migrating Forms, New York City, NY
Testing the Shelf Life, WORM, Rotterdam, NL
Carte Blanche, Museum of the Moving Image, NY
Cinéphémère, FIAC, Paris, FR
Viennale 13, International Film Festival, Vienna, AT
Dispersed Documents / Living Archive, Arsenal Cinema, Berlin, DE
Théorèma, FID Marseille, FR
RIDM Festival, Montreal, QB
Kasseler Film/Video Festival, Kassel, DE
Forårsudstillingen, Charlottenborg Kunsthal, Copenhagen, DN
Oberhausen Short Film Festival, DE
25FPS Festival, Zagreb, HR
Images Festival, Toronto, ON
2012 Movable Facture, VIVO Media Arts Centre, Vancouver, BC
Whitney Independent Study Program, group show, NY
An Echo Without a Medium, The Print Studio, Hamilton, ON (solo)
2011
Simple Rational Approximations, Artissima, Turin, Italy
Space Over Time, Camel Space, NY
Bronx Biennial, Bronx Museum of Art, NY
2010
Art and Law, VLA Residency Exhibition, Maccarone Gallery, NY
Shallow Graves: From Heritage to Heterotopia, Rush Arts, New York, NY
The Tiller Effect, NY Studio Gallery, New York, NY
2009
Projector, Four Gallery, Dublin, IR
PILOT: 21st Century Strategies for the Manifesto, CCS, Bard College, NY
Post-Memory: A Collection of Makeshift Monuments, EFA, New York, NY
Grants / Residencies
Process Space, Governor’s Island, LMCC (2014)
Whitney Museum Independent Study Program (2011)
Banff Center for the Arts residency, Alberta, Canada (2011)
Visiting Researcher, The Cooper Union Architecture Archive, NY (2010)
Artists in the Marketplace program, Bronx Museum of Art, NY (2010)
Residency for Art and Law, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, NY (2010)
Dean’s International Travel Fund Award, Museum School (2007)
Montague International Travel Grant (2007)
Museum School Graduate Teaching Fellowship (2007)
Yousuf Karsh Prize in photography, Museum School (2006)
Bibliography
Nicolas Feodoroff, “On A Third Version of the Imaginary”, FID Journal, 7/3/2013
Madeleine Bernstorff, “Lasst hundert Living Archives blühen!”, Berlin, 2013
Allison Collins, “Movable Facture” [catalog] VIVO Center, Vancouver, 2012
Uta Baier, “Schlecht dran, wer keine Kontakte hatte”, der Freitag, 4/23/2012
Northcross, Wayne, ed. “Bronx Calling”, Bronx Museum of Art, 2011
Trotier, Kilian, “Netzfreundschaften sind Nutzfreundschaften,” FAZ, 11/17/2010
“Geflecht der Nähe,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 11/17/2010
David Giles, “Camera Vacua,” Paper Monument #2, Fall 2008
“In Print,” Canadian Art, Winter 2006
Flash Forward: Emerging Photographers, Magenta Foundation
Publications
2014 “Everyday Static Transmissions”, Triple Canopy (www.canopycanopycanopy.com)
“An Echo Without a Medium”, in Roulotte: 10, ACM, Barcelona, ESP
2013 “The Delight of the Yearner”, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art
Interview with Hossein Amanat, Bidoun, issue 28
2012 [Chess Story], supported by BC Arts Council
An Echo Without a Medium, supported by Ontario Arts Council
“Fälschungserschwerende Schrift”, Bulletins of the Serving Library #3 (exhibition catalog for Ecstatic Alphabets, Museum of Modern Art)
“Distant Objects Becoming Near”, artist project in Triple Canopy issue #16
2011 “On The Delight of the Yearner: Ernst May and Erica Mann in Nairobi, Kenya, 1933-1953”, Netzwerke des Exils: Künstlerische Verflechtungen, Austausch und Patronage Nach 1933, Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin
“10,000 Lives”, The 8th Gwangju Biennale (catalog contributions)
“Potenco al la Homoj: The Story of Esperanto”, Bidoun, issue 23
2010 “Shot in the Dark”, The Abu Dhabi National, July 23, 2010
2009 “Conversation Piece”, The Abu Dhabi National, Nov. 20, 2009
“The Future Takes Forever: Becoming FM-2030”, Bidoun, issue 19
“Avenue Patrice Lumumba, by Guy Tillim”, Bidoun, issue 19
2007 “Art Matters: Michael Rakowitz”, The Nation, Sept. 19, 2007
“Dear Catastrophe Architect: Albert Speer”, Bidoun, issue 11
Presentations
2014 Visual Culture Colloquium, Bryn Mawr College, PA
“On Synthetic Spectra / The Big Nothing,” ICA Philadelphia
2013 “The Cat, the Gull, and the Ass,” The Drawing Center, NYC
“Paper Softens the Stone”, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, Germany
Colloquium for Unpopular Culture, New York University, NYC
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
2012 “System, Movement, Data”, VIVO Center for Media Arts, Vancouver, BC
2008 Art Institute of Boston
2006 School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Concordia University, Montreal, QC
Massachusetts College of Art
Two Devices, HD Video, stereo, color, 17 minutes, 2014