micha cárdenas on Sun, 3 Apr 2011 19:55:41 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime-ann> Many Worlds, Many Times ARTifact Gallery Spring Exhibition |
. *Many Worlds, Many Times* ARTifact Gallery Spring Exhibition April 6 - June 10th, 2011 *Featuring the work of: * Zach Blas Sadie Barnette Ela Boyd Monica Duncan Anya Gallaccio Chris Head Chris Kardambikis Frankie Martin Laura Odell Nira Pereg Cauleen Smith Pinar Yoldas Curated by Micha C?rdenas, mcardenas@ucsd.edu, 858-534-1207 Online exhibition and more information at http://cat.ucsd.edu *Curatorial Statement* ??Hume?s empiricism is a sort of science-fiction universe *avant la lettre*. As in science fiction, one has the impression of a fictive foreign world, seen by other creatures, but also the presentiment that this world is already ours, and those creatures, ourselves.? - Gilles Deleuze, Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life ?El mundo que queremos es uno donde quepan muchos mundos.? ?In the world we want many worlds to fit.? - Fourth Declaration of the Selva Lacandon, Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos Indigenous Clandestine Revolutionary Committee General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation Mexico The courses in the Culture, Art and Technology program for Spring 2011 enact a vision of a multiplicity of worlds and times, on many levels: the science fiction imaginary, phenomenological approaches to time and a world experienced through sound are just a few. Imagining and building worlds is a practice that intersects with science, art, politics and philosophy. While postmodern theories have been criticized for obscuring reality and focusing excessively on language, emerging theories of difference including postcolonial theory, queer theory and disability studies may offer a different resolution of this impasse. ?Many Worlds, Many Times? offers a number of models for imagining multiple, simultaneous worlds and times. Theorists such as Jack Halberstam have made ?the perhaps overly ambitious claim that there is such a thing as ?queer time? and ?queer space.??[1] On the other hand, one can see the acceptance and embrace of multiple worlds, times and realities as a fundamental characteristic of late postmodernism or post-postmodernism. While Frederick Jameson has claimed that late postmodernism is characterized by a return to the real, I argue that such a return is impossible. In contrast, thinkers such as Halberstam and Gilles Deleuze propose a multiplicity of times and spaces which coexist. What postcolonial and queer theories offer is a world in which many worlds fit, to refer to the Zapatistas. In these theories of difference, to attempt to claim that one hegemonic conception of time and space is more real than others is unacceptable. Many contemporary artists such as Blast Theory, Mez Breeze and my own work with Elle Mehrmand demonstrate what I have termed the transreal: artworks that cross boundaries of multiple realities with a nuance for a multiplicity of worlds, using reality as a medium. For the Spring 2011 ARTifact exhibition, I have chosen a number of artists who enact the multiple worlds explored by the CAT curriculum this quarter. Chris Kardambikis? paintings use comic-inspired imagery to enact a rich science fiction world building project that resonates deeply with Prof. K. Wayne Yang?s class ?Worldmaking?. Anya Gallaccio?s pieces in the show use nanoscopic imagery to reveal the many worlds existing in the dirt on your windowsill or sand on a beach. ?Actualities? by Ela Boyd speculates on the multiple worlds held in objects: their pasts and futures, their perception and their virtualities as objects in becoming. The French postmodernist philosopher Deleuze writes about these modes of understanding the everyday world as something other-worldly, when he states that ?Hume?s empiricism is a sort of science-fiction universe *avant la lettre*?. The multiplicity of the world as described by Deleuze here can be seen to support the visions of writers such as Halberstam who envision multiple worlds from a standpoint of differences in lived experience. Nira Pereg?s work uses a closely related a strategy, which she calls ?re-looking?, and close observation. Pereg?s work explores the interplay of public and private space, creating yet another way of imagining the multiple worlds we pass through each day and how each of them have their own qualities and change both how we perceive ourselves and how we act. This quarter?s show will include Pereg, visiting Innovator-in-Residence at UCSD, thanks to a collaboration with ArtPwr. Many times are imagined by the artists in the show as well, demonstrating a rich set of ideas for Prof. Stefan Tanaka?s class ?A History of Time: Time and Modern Society? to engage with. Zach Blas? work ?Transcoder? imagines an alternate way technology could have developed through his Queer Technologies project. Transcoder includes impossible functions such as qTime(), inspired by Halberstam?s writing, which would cause a computer to shift into an alternate conception of time whenever called by a program. Frankie Martin?s project ?Caught in the Web? explores the queer time of the internet through a character lost in the web who wonders where she is and how long she?s been there, all the while expressing a dysfunctional desire which longs for a connection with another. Chris Head?s ?2-1? explores the endless algorithmic time of video games by considering the time of a single character from the game Super Mario Bros. Cauleen Smith and Sadie Barnette?s pieces in the show engage the rich history of Afro-futurism, in close dialog with K. Wayne Yang?s ?Worldmaking? class, which goes beyond an understanding of the technical aspects of world building in film or literature to examine the way that imagined worlds can act as a lens on daily injustices and their possible future consequences. Their works also enact the strange empiricism of Hume, described by Deleuze, in which elements of everyday life slip into other places and times. Like artists such as Sun-Ra, their work enacts possible futures that figure black and African peoples at the center of their narratives, demonstrating the power of science fiction as a mode of social critique. As the EZLN wrote in their Second Declaration of the Selva Lacandon, their social movement imagines and struggles for a world where many worlds fit, not one with a hegemonic narrative, a single way of life and a privileged form of embodiment. Many of the works in the show cross boundaries by shifting both time and space. Monica Duncan and Laura Odell?s ?Living Pictures (Behind the Auto Store)? creates a world in which the main characters are perfectly still, blending in with the environment and creating a photo out of a video. Still, in the Living Pictures series the viewer is presented with the sound of the world in real time, belying the fact that they are watching a video. These scenes create an uncanny world, in which a person stands still but people move around them, creating a crashing together of times as passers by stop to look. This simple gesture of stillness creates a space of strangeness where one imagines these characters operating at a different time scale or trapped in a cosmic error of *dromos* out of sync with *chronos*. Duncan?s work resonates with Nancy Guy?s course ?Listening to the World?, as the viewer relies on sound cues to understand the strangely poetic scene before their eyes and the ambient sounds come into sharp focus. Evoking other-worldly biologies, Pinar Yoldas? work ?Fabula? also utilizes an aesthetic of confusion which gives the viewer pause. Bizarre creatures suspended in fluid evoke fantastic possibilities of alien biologies by utilizing responsive sculpture. Both this work and Ela Boyd?s work in the show play with the viewer?s perception, shifting through different meanings with longer viewing and questioning such concepts as visual proof. They bring to life questions from Tanaka?s course and Prof. Cheryl Peach?s course such as these: how does technology relate to human perception, representation, and social organization; how do we know what we know; and how do we know we?re not wrong? [1] Judith Halberstam, In A Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, p. 1, NYU Press, New York and London, 2005 -- micha c?rdenas Interim Associate Director of Art and Technology Culture, Art and Technology Program, Sixth College, UCSD Co-Author, Trans Desire / Affective Cyborgs, Atropos Press, http://is.gd/daO00 Artist/Researcher, UCSD School of Medicine Artist/Theorist, bang.lab, http://bang.calit2.net blog: http://transreal.org gpg: http://is.gd/ebWx9 _______________________________________________ nettime-ann mailing list nettime-ann@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-ann