Many Worlds, Many Times, ARTifact Gallery Spring Exhibition

many-worlds-times-poster (PDF 6MB)

Featuring the work of:

Zach Blas
Sadie Barnette
Ela Boyd
Monica Duncan
Anya Gallaccio
Chris Head
Chris Kardambikis
Frankie Martin
Lara Odell
Nira Pereg
Cauleen Smith
Pinar Yoldas

CONTACT: Curated by Micha Cárdenas

WHEN: April 6 – June 10th, 2011

Gallery Events

Opening reception Wednesday, April 6th, 2011, 6:30pm – 8:30pm
Pepper Canyon Hall 257
Including a screening of Cauleen Smith’s film The Fullness of Time

Panel Discussion on “Science Fiction and Speculative Thought as Social Critique and Social Action”
Featuring:
Cauleen Smith, Professor of Visual Art
K. Wayne Yang, Professor of Ethnic Studies
Zach Blas, PhD Candidate at Duke University

MACOKE (Most Awesome Chill Out Klub Ever) Project Project, 8:30pm-9:30pm
MACOKE will be projecting games for large scale playing outside on South
side of Sixth College Building. (MACOKE meetings are currently held in
the Sixth College Commuter’s Lounge from 6:00-11:00pm on Tuesdays.)

Panel Discussion, “World Building and Contemporary Art”
Friday, April 22nd, 3pm
Pepper Canyon Hall 257

Featuring Kim Stanley Robinson
Sheldon Brown, Professor of Visual Art
Cauleen Smith, Professor of Visual Art
Christopher Kardambikis, MFA Candidate

The Culture, Art and Technology (CAT) program at the Sixth College of
UCSD is proud to present the new ARTifact gallery exhibition for the
Spring 2011 quarter, Many Worlds, Many Times, curated by Micha Cárdenas,
Interim Associate Director of Art and Technology for Sixth College. The
ARTifact gallery exists as a physical gallery in the CAT core offices as
well as an online exhibition space at the CAT website, cat.ucsd.edu
. The gallery acts as an integrated learning
laboratory, transforming the working environment of CAT students, staff
and faculty into a hybrid space in which contemporary art can be part of
the dialog of interdisciplinary undergraduate learning curriculum in
Sixth College.

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 Lara 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

Artist Bios

Sadie Barnette is from Oakland, California. She received her BFA from
CalArts in 2006, and is currently pursuing her Masters in Visual Arts at
the University of California, San Diego. She says the following about
her practice: “Look at a Venn diagram. I exist in the space where the
circles overlap and layer. Something as simple and geometric as a circle
can serve as a tool for identity (de)construction. My work draws on this
possibility, allowing simple forms and gestures to present ideas of
social chaos, the fragility of being, ecstasy and the impossible. I use
drawing, photography, and objects to construct a visual language system
out of sub-culture codes and west coast vernacular, economic formalism
and abstractions. I activate meaning and power in anonymous faces, signs
for nothing, and negative space.”

Zach Blas is an artist and writer working at the intersections of
networked media, queerness, and the political. He is particularly
interested in activist art that address the methods and styles in which
technologies, bodies, and capital impact, reconstitute, and proliferate
assemblages of sexuality, gender, and knowledge, alongside the
potentials and possibilities of reshaping these assemblages as well as
reconfiguring un/human modes of agency and resistance. His current
project, Queer Technologies, is an organization that develops
applications and situations for queer intervention and social formation.
Zach has recently exhibited at the Highways Performance Space, Los
Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, File Electronic Language International
Festival in Brazil and the 2010 Arse Elektronika Festival in San
Francisco, where he was the recipient of a Prixxx Arse Elektronika.
www.zachblas.info

Ela Boyd is currently a Visual Art MFA candidate at UCSD. She is
originally from Hollywood, CA and received her BFA from California
College of Arts in San Francisco. In her work, she explores
phenomenological issues with the interplay of light, space and time. Her
methodology involves collapsing spatiotemporal modalities using
photography, collage, sculpture and new media installation works. Most
recently, she has been working with interactive media to fuse various
modes of visual perception and offer an experience of a new ontological
paradigm. Her work has been exhibited in various galleries and art
spaces within California, including LA Center for Digital Art, Lawrence
Ascher Gallery, Barnsdall Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and Pharmaka
Gallery. In 2005, Boyd attended an artist residency at Est Nord Est in
Quebec and has been included International exhibitions in Canada and
Portugal.

Anya Gallaccio emerged in the late ’80s as part of the group of young
British artists from Goldsmiths College in London. Since her first
appearance in the historic 1988 Freeze exhibition, she has become
established internationally, having exhibited at the Sculpture Centre,
New York and Palazzo Delle Papesse, Sienna, and completed major
commissions, including ‘Motherlode’ where she collaborated with vintner
Zelma Long to make six zinfandel wines in Sonoma Valley. She has
exhibited widely in the UK including Camden Art Centre, ICA, and
Serpentine in London; the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham and Bluecoat,
Liverpool. Gallaccio was nominated for the Turner Prize and received the
prestigious Sculpture Commission for the Duveen Gallery at Tate Britain
in 2003. In 2009 she prepared a major new work for ‘Radical Nature’ at
the Barbican, London. Gallaccio’s works are held in a variety of public
collections including Tate; the Arts Council; The British Council
Collection; South London Gallery; Victoria and Albert Museum; Stedelijk
Museum, Amsterdam; Seattle Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary
Art, Sydney. Gallaccio is known for her early projects employing natural
materials, including a room painted with chocolate (1994), an enormous
ice block which melted over the duration of the exhibition in the
Wapping Pumping Station (1996) to her intricate lawn design at Compton
Verney, (2000). Gallaccio’s work paradoxically shifts between minimal
approaches to form and a highly intuitive process. Often using the
strategies of minimalism, the grid and modular units, and overturning
them through the perishable organic materials she sources, such as
fruit, trees, flowers, ice and sugar. The elemental quality of these
materials results in natural processes of transformation and decay,
often with unpredictable results which are dialogue with land artists
60′s including Robert Smithson and Walter de Maria and their interest in
entropy.

Christopher Head is a software artist focused on the intersection of
software design, games, and art practice. He produces projects in a
variety of forms including computer visualization, simulation, games,
and hardware hacking. Christopher is heavily involved with both
established and emerging technologies, specifically in creating Open
Source/Free art, and moving the mechanics of computer-mediated gameplay
out of the established realm of entertainment and into an artistic
context. Christopher received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from San Jose
State University while working in the CADRE Laboratory for New Media.

Christopher Kardambikis is exploring an absurd mythology for the future
through drawings, paintings, and books. He has co-founded two artist
book projects: the Pittsburgh-based Encyclopedia Destructica (with
Jasdeep Khaira) and the San Diego-based Gravity and Trajectory (with
Louis Schmidt). He has been an artist in residence at the Vermont
Studio Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Millay
Colony, and the Pittsburgh Center of the Arts. Kardambikis received a
BFA in Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon University in 2005 and is
currently pursuing an MFA at the University of California, San Diego.

Frankie Martin’s work uses comedy as a frame of reference to open the
door to a radical re-thinking of the social construct. Frankie’s video
and hyper masculine performance work complicates the idea of what is
appropriate via confusing semi-public space for private, creating
homosocial spaces and abstracting language. Frankie is currently working
on a book of creative nonfiction. Frankie is represented by CANADA in
New York City and has shown work at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts,
MOMA, Moore Space, Orange County Museum of Art and more. Frankie is
currently attending the MFA program at the University of California San
Diego. www.frankiefeverforever.com

Nira Pereg’s work deals with ways that social structures intersect with
the authority of the individual. Typically, her projects are
documentary-based, but transform reality into an quasi-theatrical
events. Using complex editing techniques and various-scaled multimedia
installations, Pereg’s interest in socials schemes draws on a unique and
personal perspective. “Re-looking” is a primary concern in her work
practice and her everyday life, and often builds on periods of intense
travel and close observations. Pereg, born in in Israel, spent the 90s
in New-York, where she received a B.F.A from Cooper Union. On her
return to Israel, she graduated from the Bezalel M.F.A studio program in
Jerusalem, and has been teaching internationally ever since. Pereg’s
works have been exhibited at PS 1 New York, HDK Berlin, KW Berlin, ZKM
Karlsruhe, the Israeli Museum of Art in Jerusalem, Sammlung
Goetz-München, Edith-Ruß-Haus für Medienkunst, The Tel-Aviv Museum of
Art, and at various festivals and galleries. She recently received the
Nathan Gottesdiener Foundation Israeli Art Prize for young artist.

Cauleen Smith has received grants or fellowships from the Rockefeller
Inter-Cultural Media Arts Fellowship, the American Film Institute
Independent Film and Videomaker Program, the National Black Programming
Consortium, and a Western States Regional Fellowship, Artmatters, and
Creative Capital. Smith was commissioned by Creative Time and Paul Chan
to produce a video response to the city of New Orleans 2 years
post-Katrina. The project, entitled, The Fullness of Time, premiered at
The Kitchen and won the jury award for best film at the New Orleans
International Film Festival. Smith is using the Creative Capital
sponsorship to produce a series of digital videos that re-enact
historical instances in which a traumatic human gesture of negation
resembles earth sculpture or land arts projects from the early
seventies. Her screenplay adaptation for the Martha Southgate novel
Third Girl From The Left is being produced by Washington Square Films,
with George C. Wolfe attached to direct and Kerry Washington as
executive producer. Smith is currently shooting an experimental
psychogeographic film on Sun Ra, improvisation, and creative music in
Chicago, IL. As a community building curatorial project for San Diego,
Smith opened the Carousel Microcinema, a roving cinema space dedicated
to the viewing and discussion of the moving image. The programs combine
historical avant-garde and conceptual works with contemporary and
emerging works ranging in genre from performance video to structuralist
materialist filmmaking. Cauleen Smith’s short films are distributed by
Canyon Cinema and Video Data bank. Beginning in the Spring of 2011 to
May of 2021 Smith, as acting associate professor in the department of
visual arts, will be on residency at University of California, San
Diego. The Year And Change Artist Residency is a public research
laboratory that produces workshops and disseminates objects for and the
the UCSD campus community as a means of exploring utopia, campus
culture, collegiality, and art practice as research and production.

About the curator: Micha Cárdenas [http://transreal.org] is an
artist/theorist whose transreal work mixes physical and networked spaces
in order to explore emerging forms of queer relationality, biopolitics
and DIY horizontal knowledge production. She is the Interim Associate
Director of Art and Technology for UCSD’s Sixth College in the Culture,
Art and Technology program. She has been a lecturer in the Visual Arts
department and Critical Gender Studies program at UCSD. She is an
artist/researcher with the UCSD School of Medicine, CRCA and the
b.a.n.g. lab at Calit2. Her recent publications include Trans
Desire/Affective Cyborgs, with Barbara Fornssler, from Atropos Press, “I
am Transreal”, in Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation from Seal Press
and “Becoming Dragon: A Transversal Technology Study” in Code Drift from
CTheory. Her collaboration with Elle Mehrmand, “Mixed Relations,” was
the recipient of the UCIRA Emerging Fields Award for 2009. She has
exhibited and performed in biennials, museums and galleries in cities
around the world including Los Angeles, San Diego, Tijuana, New York,
San Francisco, Montreal, Egypt, Ecuador, Spain, Saas-Fee, Switzerland,
Dublin, Ireland and many other places. Her work has been written about
in publications including Art21, the Associated Press, the LA Times,
CNN, BBC World, Wired and Rolling Stone Italy.

Pinar received her BArch from Middle East Technical University, her MA in Visual Communication Design from Istanbul Bilgi University, her MS in information technologies from Istanbul Bilgi University and her MFA from UCLA’s Design|Media Art department. So far, she has exhibited in Los Angeles, Istanbul, Frankfurt and Bologna.Her art fellowships include MacDowell Colony, Ucross Foundation, Minneapolis Art on Wheels and Duke University’s Visiting artist award. Her work is a reflection of her interests in architecture, neuroscience, evolution, gender studies and science fiction. Pinar is Aegean and is currently teaching interactive graphics at Duke University.

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