The Weight of the World by Institute for Humanities Research

the weight of the world

a contemporary art exhibition of affect and reason curated by Kev Nemelka for the Arizona State University Institute for Humanities Research, a research unit of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

On the cover: Stephen Santore, EF2URB, 2014.

The Weight of the World: A Contemporary Art Exhibition of Affect and Reason © 2015 Kev Nemelka for Arizona State University Institute for Humanities Research (IHR) Designed by Kev Nemelka Select photography by Dallas Etzel Other photographs provided by the artists All rights reserved. No element of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including recording, photocopy, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from IHR and the artists featured in this publication. ihr.asu.edu Printed and bound in Tempe, AZ by ASU IHR with support from the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability (GIoS) About the author Kev Nemelka is a writer, curator, editor, designer, and art historian, and the contemporary art curator at ASU IHR. kevnemelka.com Author’s Acknowledgments Thanks to Breezy Taggart, Jennifer Quincey, Susan Anderson, Sally Kitch, Stetson Finch, the rest of IHR and GIoS, Herberger Institute, Harry Wood Gallery, Peter Bugg, Meredith Hoy, Dallas Etzel, my parents, and my fiancé. Finally, my special thanks go to the superb artists whose oeuvres have made this exhibition a possibility.

contents 01

Introduction: ‘An Atlas Terrestrial’

Artists / Works Noé Badillo Guy Brando Greg Caldwell Edgar Cardenas Dan Collins Leila Daw Lisa Ferguson Clark Goldsberry Jacob Haupt Noah Jackson Kyle Jorgensen Madeline McNeil Mary Neubauer Joseph Ostraff Klaus Pinter Plantbot Genetics Inc. Courtney Richter Stephen Santore Rachel Cardenas Stallings Buzzy Sullivan Céline Trouillet Claire White

2014-2015 IHR Fellows’ Abstracts

This group exhibition is created and funded by IHR in conjunction with the 2014-2015 Fellows Program. It is further supported by the Harry Wood Gallery and the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability. A number of works from the show will be featured at the 2015 Sustainability Solutions Festival, and the full exhibition will supplement Balance-Unbalance 2015, an international, interdisciplinary conference on water, climate, and place. To inquire about purchasing any of the works featured in this exhibition, please contact the curator at kev.nemelka@asu.edu.

‘an atlas terrestrial’ Kev Nemelka

To be the species burdened by all the problems of the world implies that our sense of responsibility is the pivotal quality differentiating us from all other creatures. Faced with the decisions that will determine the future of the planet, we are also implicitly expected to eventually identify solutions to these problems. Somewhere along the way humanity was steered toward a condition of dichotomized thinking— perhaps because of literature, propaganda, politics, ethics, etc.—and the art of problem solving was inserted into a black-and-white realm of interpretation, a realm which underwrote an off-limits interstice between oppositional, dyadic constituents. It should by now be a given that life has never truly been permanently settled within an either/or jurisdiction. We are finally realizing that the intellectual and emotional regimes we developed and appropriated did not necessarily create relegated gaps, but rather indispensible areas of intersection that, when assessed appropriately, have the potential to provide beneficial clarifications for the betterment of our contemporary world.

Stephen Santore, BEF9JF, 2014.

Joseph Ostraff, Flash, 2014.

To address these notions, The Weight of the World deals first with the concept of false dichotomy, specifically concerning reason and affect and how this severance has traditionally been made tantamount to a male/female, fact/ fiction, or STEM/Humanities dyad, respectively. 01

Introduction

Noé Badillo, Untitled, 2005.

Kyle Jorgensen, Corpus, 2014.

The exhibition includes a number of artworks that revisit the art historical desire of artists to represent the world around them, artworks that, beneath a surface of poeticism or idealized nature, contain underlying messages that hint at a disappearing, detrimentally nostalgic, or outdated romanticization or objectification of nature. These works also push for more conceptual or data-driven substance within contemporary environmental art, taking into consideration the fact that affect and reason have always been simultaneously embedded in ecological aesthetics (hence the implied difference between the very scientific “environment” and the affective powers of “nature”). A third concentration of this exhibition is the incorporation of sustainability and the essential employment of both logic and emotion to better determine its prospects. These works emphasize the relationship between art, ecology, the individual, and the community, illustrating that decisions regarding the planet’s future are dependent on both a rational and passionate examination of the current state of things in order to create awareness and encourage action within local communities. It is not my intention to completely separate the contents of this show into three distinct categories. After all, the show is about ridding ourselves of constrictive, dichotomized thinking. I list particular works and artists within certain subcategories simply because they encapsulate that subtopic well, however that does not mean that the works fail to reach into any of the other sections of the exhibition, nor does it mean that any of the three sections is necessarily independent of the others. Dichotomy and the Inevitability of Intersection

Noah Jackson, Dad / Painting 5, 2014.

Rachel Cardenas Stallings, still from All I See, 2011.

In addition to the IHR Fellows’ research themes, this exhibition draws inspiration from Jacques Rancière’s 2009 essay “Contemporary Art and the Politics of Aesthetics” and his discussion of collapsed oppositional dyads (the museum as not homogenous or heterogeneous but both; photography not as reproducibility or uniqueness but both; etc.).1 His insights help validate the dialectic of affect and reason this exhibition aims to represent. This portion of the show is also greatly informed by “The Paradoxical Bodies of Contemporary Art,” written by Christine Ross. She references Antonio Damasio’s notion of the Cartesian Error—“the separation of reason from emotion, [which] prevented Descartes from

An Atlas Terrestrial

conceiving the entire organism as a thinking, feeling being”—and concludes that traditional dichotomies should not be accepted and inaugurated so undoubtedly.2

The Weight of the World supports these claims with works that address inevitable crossover and interconnectedness. Stephen Santore’s tri-tone pixelated image, for example, is a straightforward and gradual blend of hues, pointing to the natural bleeding of one thing into another. Joseph Ostraff’s light installation approaches this same foundational idea from the vantage point of the mathematical inevitability of things eventually overlapping. Other artists like Noé Badillo and Kyle Jorgensen address the overlapping of the aesthetics of affect, reason, and sustainability in a rather lyrical manner, not necessarily discussing the inevitability of overlap so much as the dynamism that overlap can produce.

Céline Trouillet, still from Song Nº22, 2013.

Some of the works in this section use the human figure in attempt to further dismantle the Cartesian Error. Noah Jackson’s figural work is a blending and confusing of two things made indistinguishable via interchange. Each figure can thus embody affect and reason as being partially translated into its counterpart. The video works of Rachel Cardenas Stallings and Céline Trouillet also speak to embodiment, the former more illuminative of harmony in one-as-many, the latter of unity in many-as-one. Ironically, both engage a musical element, and the song chosen for Trouillet’s work alludes to celestial eclipses, adding another layer of subtlety to the theme of overlap and intersection. Other artists like Courtney Richter consider additional implications of customarily paralleled dichotomies, i.e. the solidity of reason vs. the malleability of affect represented in the lumber and fiber components of her work. Jacob Haupt and Greg Caldwell explore the traditional prescription of masculinity or femininity to the affect/reason dichotomy, blurring the lines that designate “proper” associations. The fiber works of Madeline McNeil and Claire White consider hand-sewing and embroidery as activities that were once both affective and practical—even crucial—parts of everyday life that, because of the advent of better technology, have become obsolete and “merely decorative,” bringing the conversation of affect vs. reason into that of human vs. machine or even craft vs. high art. Interestingly, both artists have created hand-made artworks that resemble both a

Courtney Richter, You Have at Your Power the Ability to Do Anything, 2014.

Introduction

data-driven and an ecological aesthetic. Guy Brando’s cheeseburger painting is a somewhat humorous example of a logical, rational attempt to examine the many constituents that make up the whole of something as affective and nostalgic as comfort food. This work provides fascinating commentary on our failed attempts to make sense of things while utilizing only one element of dichotomized analysis. Greg Caldwell, Let’s Brain-Heart Storm, 2014.

This portion of the exhibition leads up to Ross’s perceptive inquiry: “Has contemporary art displaced the Western mind/ body split?” Furthermore, where does the human/nature split play into this exposé of false dichotomy? The next two sections of The Weight of the World address these questions, asserting that we cannot and should not “foreclose the need to reflect on the passages between reason and emotion, between senses, between mind, body, and environment.”3 Visualizing Ecological Aesthetics Andrew Brown’s introductory essay in Art and Ecology Now (2014) elucidates ecological aesthetics of the past and how artists have always attempted to re-visualize their natural surroundings in dramatic landscape paintings or the Romantic implementation of the Sublime, etc. Unlike traditional landscapes, however, these contemporary works have more of an overt agenda in avoiding the objectification of nature (reason) while still maintaining an element of the aesthetic (affect).

Jacob Haupt, Galactus in Sorrow; Tears of the Silver Surfer; Doctor Doom Shedding a Tear, 2014.

The photographs of Edgar Cardenas and Clark Goldsberry are great examples of contemporary works that artistically envision our environs both terrestrial and beyond. Cardenas’ works examine the overlap of the striking and the mundane within our quotidian environments. He suggests that just because our backyards and local flora are not stereotypically breathtaking does not mean they deserve to be overlooked, building on William Cronon’s assertion that “idealizing a distant wilderness too often means not idealizing the environment in which we actually live.”4 While his works remind us to heed the everyday, Goldsberry’s seascapes are subtle reminders of the everywhere, specifically the oceanographic. Additionally, both he and Cardenas address the therapeutic and contemplative constituents of nature, situating themselves as respectful bystanders of the beauty of the earth.

An Atlas Terrestrial

Other artists in this exhibition consider how the (eco)logical and the (eco)aesthetic, when synthesized, create new forms of data visualization, sometimes even gesturing to a synaesthetic experience of sorts. Mary Neubauer’s digital concepts are all aestheticizations of ecological data gathered from numerous sources. These numbers concern issues like climate change and noise pollution. In other words, she takes the data-driven product of rationalization and transforms it into something affective and aesthetic, enhancing the way we understand and visualize information. Her works give another meaning to Brown’s assertion that “art could be a place within the environment and be made from it.”5 Leila Daw’s painted mapscapes also fit into this notion of synthesizing the (eco)logical and the (eco)aesthetic. Her series is nostalgic for antique map art, emphasizing the duo-toned nature of older maps which combined affective imagery with useful, pertinent data regarding terrain. In “The Trouble with Wilderness” (1995), Cronon writes, “There is nothing natural about the concept of wilderness,” suggesting that because nature itself has become “a spectacle to be looked at and enjoyed for its great beauty, the sublime in effect [has become] domesticated.”6 Consider Brando’s windowscape within this context. The painting is an integration of nature into domestic space, and vice versa. It can also serve as commentary on how society experiences the Sublime from a safe, sanitized distance. Brando poignantly brings this type of subtle objectification to the surface by visualizing the illusory interstice between man and nature that dichotomized thinking has devised. Santore’s blurred landscape plays to a similar tune, suggesting that our civilized, preconceived understanding of what nature is and should be prevents us from actually seeing it in its truer form. We can safely assume that, like that of affect/reason, the nature/culture dyad is not as disconnected as convention has led us to believe. Cronon’s proclamation proves this. But this does not necessarily mean that all intersection is good, i.e. the cultural objectification and industrial exploitation of nature. Romanticization and maltreatment of the environment produce what could be called cultured nature, or nature as second to culture.7 This category of thinking injuriously perpetuates “the problematic structure of objectification relied on by capitalist industry,” which this exhibition endeavors to avoid.8 Jackson’s digital landscape rendering

Edgar Cardenas, Cloud, 2010.

Clark Goldsberry, Smithson Study #77, 2014.

Mary Neubauer, Climate Change III, 2011.

Introduction

Leila Daw, A Traditional Way of Life, 2014.

points to this objectification of nature at its more intrusive levels. The image insinuates concerns of deforestation, desertification, or even unharvested rainfall. Works like this remind us that, as the human community, it is our responsibility not only to refrain from separating nature from culture, but also to renounce allocating a second-rate status to the former in relation to the latter, especially for reasons of economic gain; to cease from depoliticizing the environment merely on the grounds of aesthetics, but also to refrain from presenting the environment merely through a spiritualist lens. The employment of both logic and emotion is essential in all of these seemingly heavy undertakings. Ecological aesthetics can lead to the realization that if we are to maintain the beauty of the earth we must first be more conscious of our decisions. We must employ affect and reason to find a proper balance. Many works in this section suggest that, while sustaining a sense of the aesthetic, contemporary ecological aesthetics exposes us to ethicopolitical or socioeconomic elements involved in how we visualize, even talk or think about, our surroundings. Logic, Emotion, and the Community

Guy Brando, Dayroom, 2014.

Buzzy Sullivan, from Love Seat, Salton Bay, CA, 2014.

This last sub-category of the exhibition is concerned most with the integration of the human conscience into the conversation of affect, reason, and the environment, touching on the fact that employing both logic and emotion is necessary in order to help individuals and communities reach a higher level of environmental awareness as they make lasting decisions about their future. These artists donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t necessarily point to any specific solutions, but there is certainly a noteworthy significance in the exposĂŠ factor these artworks demonstrate. Buzzy Sullivan, Lisa Ferguson, and Plantbot Genetics Inc. deal with specific events that have occurred recently in world news. Images from Sullivanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s series entitled Engineered Ruins: Water in the American West illustrate how he examined the reality of an ecological problem and documented it for the benefit and education of regional and national communities. The Salton Sea is a terminal body of water that was created accidentally from the damming of the Colorado River. It became the most productive tilapia habitat in the world but

An Atlas Terrestrial

has since been neglected and was eventually poisoned, affecting a massive amount of wildlife. Approximately three to nine million fish die every year, and the beach is comprised primarily of dead fish. Some believe that passing legislation to evaporate the sea by fifty percent would better control this obscene ecological system. Others wish to entirely erase the Salton Sea, not realizing that this decision would drastically affect numerous surrounding areas like Palm Springs. Sullivan’s photographs of this unfortunate situation address the interconnectivity of many systems— ecological, sociopolitical, ethical—and the results of human carelessness and bad planning. Ferguson’s process-based monoprints confront the issue of anthropogenic climate change, specifically the disappearing lands in Bangladesh due to the excessive heat-trapping emissions of other countries that are increasing sea levels at a considerably rapid pace. It is predicted that millions will be forced from their homes within the next couple decades because of these rising waters, a colossal problem that some believe would hopefully alter immigration laws, allowing those made homeless to relocate to the countries that have been the cause of their lost land. Plantbot Genetics Inc. has provided Dueling Attackaratus, an interactive science-art piece that comments on the industry of genetically modified produce that, in the vein of simulacra, has “no clear heritage and no clear future.” The interactive component of this project places the participant in the position of enabler, bringing the startling creatures to life with the push of a button. This resuscitation also implies a possibility of change, of putting an end to the harmful mysteries of genetic modification via the same will that brought it to pass. In other words, Dueling Attackaratus is about responsibility and “the public’s passive deferral of [that] responsibility to scientific expertise and governmental authority, which makes us vulnerable both to solutions forged by exclusive social and political interests and to the forces of commercial exploitation that would use green rhetoric for the purposes of economic profit.”9

Lisa Ferguson, from Ghosts, 2014.

PlantBot Genetics Inc., Dueling Attackaratus (Monsantra Series PlantBot), 2014.

Some works in this third subsection more symbolically connect Mother Nature and the human family. For example, Klaus Pinter’s paperwork is a simplified human form, first begging the question of whether or not attributing more 07

Introduction

overtly anthropomorphic qualities to tree-products would evoke a greater sense of care within consumers. One of the “figures” is also crumpled and placed on a limited stack of templates, paralleling the act of crumpling as something we are doing to the environment and, by implication, ourselves. Similarly, Santore’s work resembles infrared thermographic imaging of the earth’s surface and weather patterns but contains a subtle anthropomorphic element of a person’s face in that imaging, again suggesting that we are one with the earth. Dan Collins’ photographic rendering of Phoenix underwater is a blending of fiction and not-so-unthinkable fact, drawing the viewer toward the relationship between affect, reason, art, ecology, and the community.

Klaus Pinter, Untitled, 2012.

Dan Collins, Drowning Phoenix, 2009.

There are naturally (pun intended) many outlets of exploration when contemplating the concept of affect and reason, and the IHR Fellows examine a number of these other issues, such as the politics of emotion and emotional agency. The Weight of the World investigates merely one possible platform of inquiry, i.e. humanity and the relationship we have with our natural milieu. Because we are the species burdened by all the problems of the world, the Atlas of our own Titan-less realm, we must accept the implications of that responsibility, which, as aforementioned, are that there could eventually be solutions to those problems. We certainly cannot claim to have any of those solutions yet, nor could we confidently say they will ever be fully discovered or realized, but it is presumably at that elusive point when we will no longer have any need for art exhibitions about sustainability and the like. That being said, art theorist T.J. Demos affirms that “while exhibitions dedicated to sustainability… may themselves be unsustainable from the perspective of global warming, exhibitions focusing on art and ecology nonetheless remain urgent at this time.”10 But at least we are finally reaching a point where the estrangement of affect and reason can become reconciled, rendering the construction of viable, propitious solutions regarding sustainability all the more comprehensible and feasible in a not-too-distant future.

An Atlas Terrestrial

Notes 1. Jacques Rancière, “Contemporary Art and the Politics of Aesthetics,” in Communities of Sense: Rethinking Aesthetics and Politics, eds. Beth Hinderliter, Vered Maimon, Jaleh Mansoor, and Seth McCormick (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), 34-35. 2. Christine Ross, “The Paradoxical Bodies of Contemporary Art,” in A Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945, ed. Amelia Jones (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2006), 386. 3. Ibid., 396. 4. William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, ed. William Cronon (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995), 85. 5. Andrew Brown, “At the Radical Edge of Life,” in Art and Ecology Now (New York: Thames & Hudson, Inc., 2014), 12. 6. Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness,” 75. 7. This phrase is a reworking and recontextualization of a phrase from Pierre Bourdieu’s The Field of Cultural Production (1993), “culture as second nature.” 8. T.J. Demos, “The Politics of Sustainability: Art and Ecology,” in Radical Nature: Art and Architecture for a Changing Planet 1969-2009 (London: Barbican Art Gallery, 2009), 20. 9. Ibid., 18. 10. Ibid., 28.

artists / works

NoĂŠ Badillo Guy Brando Greg Caldwell Edgar Cardenas Dan Collins Leila Daw Lisa Ferguson Clark Goldsberry Jacob Haupt Noah Jackson Kyle Jorgensen

Madeline McNeil Mary Neubauer Joseph Ostraff Klaus Pinter Plantbot Genetics Inc. Courtney Richter Stephen Santore Rachel Cardenas Stallings Buzzy Sullivan CĂŠline Trouillet Claire White 11

Artists / Works

NoĂŠ Badillo Chandler, Arizona, USA Some of my projects represent spiritual union, while other works play with the juxtaposition of emotion and reason that can be sensed through the drawing of the morphemic constituents of a language. This particular untitled work pertains to the emotive and cognitive processes of language presented in a visual context, juxtaposing the expressive use of abstraction with the use of linguistic cryptography.

Untitled, 2005. Monoprint and water-soluble pencil on paper. 30 x 22â&#x20AC;?.

Artists / Works

Guy Brando Provo, Utah, USA

My work often involves peering into or out from a space. I think a lot about the empty and seemingly useless spaces that lie between spaces of purpose and/or importance. Walls, windows, horizons, corners, corridors, skies, etc. can often give one a strange and perhaps unsettling context to the space in which one is situated. Often the images I create are attempts at dealing with this reaction to space. My work isn’t about time and space, but rather times and spaces.

Cheeseburger, 2013. Acrylic on panel. 16 x 16”. Dayroom, 2014. Acrylic on paper. 12 x 12”.

Artists / Works

Greg Caldwell Provo, Utah, USA

I draw simple symbols of people, robots, cars, horses, bikes, flowers, cats, and houses. I use these symbols to represent myself, the world I experience, ideas, feelings, dreams, and the future. I also create scenarios in which they interact. I use text in my art to describe the piece or to say what I am thinking about. I try to use a child-like approach in choosing, composing, drafting, and coloring these symbols.

Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Brain-Heart Storm, 2014. Acrylic on panel. 22 x 21â&#x20AC;?.

Artists / Works

Edgar Cardenas Surprise, Arizona, USA

Specifically, my artwork explores the ecological, cultural, and technological relationships humans have with land. I’m also interested in approaching sustainability issues in a more holistic and humanistic manner by integrating my art and research practice.

Cloud, 2010. Inkjet print. 30 x 20”. Eclipse, 2012. Inkjet print. 30 x 20”. Saguaro at Night, 2014. Inkjet print. 30 x 20”.

Artists / Works

Dan Collins Tempe, Arizona, USA

I draw upon a range of interdisciplinary approaches to art theory and production, including site-specific sculpture, performance, 3D visualization, rapid prototyping, and GIS mapping. I situate my work in the gap between the body and technologyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;between the hand-made and the high-tech. Recent work focuses on novel 3D scanning systems, 3D printing, interactive media, and community mapping.

Drowning Phoenix, 2009. Inkjet print. 40 x 20â&#x20AC;?.

Artists / Works

Leila Daw

Branford, Connecticut, USA Maps and aerial views are purported to be the ultimate in reason, showing objective representations of information, “the way things are.” But in fact, maps illustrate and embody our emotions, desires, cultural backgrounds, and politics, filtering the world according to our biases. We see what we look for. We see the landscape imbued with the power of emotion, a past that never was, a tribute to our explorations, or a sustainable future. My maps reference the structure of geological underpinnings, conventions of cartography, traces of habitation, and archaeology. Maps are frequently gridded as a means of categorizing space and controlling information. This series of work utilizes squares to reference sections of map grids, yet each square belongs to a different location, mapping a different aspect of the land/sea/ sky observed or imagined. My materials are frequently metallic or iridescent; the work seems to flicker as one passes—just as light changes in a landscape depending on vantage points— which speaks to beauty and magic, even, or perhaps especially, in conditions that can destroy us. Recent work focuses on novel 3D scanning systems, 3D printing, interactive media, and community mapping.

Top left to right bottom: One Glacier; Village by the Estuary; Antarctica; Lycian City; Scorpio in the Sea; Total Control; Patara; The Golden Cities; Autumn on the Island; A Traditional Way of Life; Cold Camps; Wind in the Night Sea, 2014. Mixed media on panel. Each 9 x 9”.

Artists / Works

Lisa Ferguson Washington, D.C., USA

In my work, I explore the idea of give and take. My monotype process includes adding layer upon layer to one work while subtracting from another. My use of the ghost image of each plate creates remnants of past actions. Old layers and forms may disappear completely, while others will be revealed as the process carries on.

Ghosts, 2014. Monotype diptych. Each 22 x 30â&#x20AC;?.

Artists / Works

Clark Goldsberry Provo, Utah, USA

My work is an effort to linger in liminal spaces. These images of shorelines, somewhere between land and sea, captured at dawn, somewhere between day and night, represent an effort to inhabit, rather than resist, spaces of polyphonic tensionality.1 The image captured beyond Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty is an effort, as suggested by Alexander Pope, to “consult with the Genius of the Place in all,” as Smithson did.2 Creating the Spiral Jetty was, for Smithson, an attempt to engage in a “dialectic of nature that interacts with the physical contradictions inherent in natural forces as they are.”3 In every phase of its making and unmaking it has opened discussions about entropy, control, and collaboration—mutually generative and destructive—between nature and man. This image, ultimately, is a portrait of Smithson’s Collaborator. Ted T. Aoki. “Teaching as in-dwelling between two curriculum worlds,” in Curriculum in a New Key: The Collected Works of Ted T. Aoki, eds. W. Pinar & R. Irwin (NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005), 159-166. 2 John Beardsley. Earthworks and beyond: Contemporary art in the Landscape (NY: Abbeville Press, 2006), 22. 3 Robert Smithson. “Cultural Confinement,” in Art in Theory, 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, eds. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 971. 1

Smithson Study #77, 2014. Archival giclée print. 20 x 20”. 46.1899º N. 123.8211º W. Astoria, OR, USA, 2012. Xerox print. 36 x 72”. 46.4131º S. 168.3475º E. Invercargill, NZ, 2014. Xerox print. 36 x 72”. 13.8333º S. 171.7500º W. Apia Harbour, Upolu, WS, 2013. Xerox print. 36 x 72”.

Artists / Works

Jacob Haupt Provo, Utah, USA

I’m interested in the cosmic god characters created in popular culture via television, cinema, and comic books. These entities represent the ideal without much regard for personal flaw or weakness. When the one-dimensional figures in pop culture are frustrated through investigation and manipulation they transcend the very boundaries that birthed them and become “virtually” mortal.

Galactus in Sorrow, 2014. GIF animation. Tears of the Silver Surfer, 2014. GIF animation. Doctor Doom Shedding a Tear, 2014. GIF animation.

Artists / Works

Noah Jackson Provo, Utah, USA

My work is about how nighttime changes a landscape/place, familiar or otherwise. Residential areas and places of vastness transform after midnight and they become something different entirely. I am also intrigued with creatures and objects that live halfway between wildness and domestication. There are several parallels between this nighttime world and the duality that exists in these animals and subjects. My work is always exploring the gradual decline and increase of the impact that man-made structures have on an environment as you move further from established civilization.

Dad / Painting 5, 2014. Inkjet print. 36 x 24â&#x20AC;?. Untitled, 2014. Inkjet print. 36 x 24â&#x20AC;?.

Artists / Works

Kyle Jorgensen Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

My current body of work is focused on exploring the act of compositional arrangement of both drawings and paintings, but also of the visual aspects of the computer desktop arrangement. I hope to address these elements through painting and drawing but also through creating formalist hand drawn animations. I consume most of my entertainment, view most of my art, and do most of my non-studio work from my computer. By utilizing animations I hope to address the absurdity, aesthetics, and the oftentimes comical qualities of consuming so much information through a singular visual source. It is my hope that the animations will not only allow me to set in motion possible compositional arrangements for the drawings and paintings but also that the looping nature of the GIF animations themselves will communicate the idea of a never-ending flood of attentiongrabbing visuals that result from constant computer usage and internet advertising. These concepts add to the contemporary art dialogue of issues revolving around the affects of technology in relation to consuming art, information, and other media online, as opposed to in person, at a gallery or in the museum. They also attempt to challenge ideas of what animations are expected to address and communicate. By approaching animation from a formalist perspective (as opposed to a figurative standpoint), their aesthetic qualities continue to intrigue and are as limitless as the traditional formalist compositions, just brought to life and set in motion.

Corpus, 2014. Acrylic on panel. 24 x 20â&#x20AC;?.

Artists / Works

Madeline McNeil Washington, D.C., USA

Medallion is an homage to the set of skills buried by industry and consumerism. It is an homage to self-reliance and domesticity. I make use of skills once inherited maternally, now taught in schools and the virtual world. It represents the value I associate with well-made hand crafts and labor.

Medallion, 2014. Unbleached muslin, thread, dowel. 19.5 x 20â&#x20AC;?.

Artists / Works

Mary Neubauer Chandler, Arizona, USA

My artistic processes focus on the hidden aspects of our surroundings, emphasizing artistic and tactile ways of understanding global and metropolitan functions based on data visualization. New ways of seeing our natural and built environments are made possible through the dimensional, visually appealing expression of the many streams of numbers that constantly input from our environment. An expanded awareness of systems, cities, timelines, and the rhythms of the larger world is evoked. It is my hope that these data-responsive images will serve as an aid to a more deeply felt, more profound understanding of the complex attributes of the environments in which we live today. My work is designed to provide a highly visual interpretation of the behavior of data through time, while remaining true to the underlying input driving the visuals. My data visualization work has a broad capability for variation. It responds to incoming data through textural variation, color, feeling tone, and illumination. The work can be produced as 2D imagery, sculptural form, surface maps, animations, and responsive public art. They are meant to express long-term patterns in global phenomena, enhance sensitivity to the invisibly functioning aspects of our surroundings, and offer an expanded definition of sculpture. This work lends clarity to the grand cycles of nature and human activity, while revealing fresh perspectives on day-to-day metropolitan life. The results are amazing and beautiful, often echoing forms and patterns found in nature.

Climate Change III, 2012. Digital lambda print. 20 x 40”. Surface Ozone, 2011. Digital lambda print. 36 x 36”. Sonoran Desert Weather, 2013. Bronze. 30 x 30 x 28”. Airport Decibel Levels Hourly, Sky Harbor Airport, 2006. Digital lambda print. 36 x 36”.

Artists / Works

Joseph Ostraff Fairview, Utah, USA

This project comes from the idea that something may happen, wondering if Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be around to see it. I feel a sense of limitationseeking situations where something unique may be observed if I have the patience to wait for mundane elements to align and do something epic. The idea is expressed through a collection of 20 traffic barricade lights arranged on a floor. Over a period of time, a variety of patterns will develop. Mathematically, it is projected that at some point in time all the lights will blink or flash in unison.

Flash, 2014. 20 road caution lights. 72 x 72â&#x20AC;?.

Artists / Works

Klaus Pinter Wien, Austria

Through interactive engagement leading to the transformation of a drawing into sculpture, the piece shifts into a substantively different level of interpretation.

Untitled, 2012. Xerox print. 8.3 x 11.7â&#x20AC;?.

Artists / Works

PlantBot Genetics Inc. Auburn, Alabama; Statesboro, Georgia, USA

Monsantra is named after the Monsanto Corporation, the largest supplier and producer of genetically modified seed. Like a Bmovie Godzilla, Monsantra is a hybrid of imagination, possibility, and reality. Posing as a farmer at a Monsanto Field Research Laboratory, using transgenic seeds from the Monsanto Corporation, genetically modified food plants are grafted onto remote controlled bases and released to engage unsuspecting audiences. Here, people are motivated to question their food, where it comes from, and where it may be going. Monsantra asks communities to consider the food they eat and how it arrives to their plates. Coupling this poetry with current scientific knowledge on the environmental and social costs of bioengineered crops, Monsantra provokes investigations into current agricultural practices inspiring individuals to think more critically despite their education, economic level, or interest in art or farming. The artist team of Wendy DesChene (Canada) and Jeff Schmuki (USA) present exhibitions, lectures, and workshops and under the guise of PlantBot Genetics Inc., a parody of the Monsanto Corporation and other Big Ag Firms who skillfully manipulate current food production and distribution systems. In answer to this, PlantBot Genetics Inc. creates organisms with no clear heritage and no clear future. Our bizarre creations emphasize the ridiculousness of actual biotech products through corporate graphics, product descriptions, and marketing techniques.

Dueling Attackaratus (Monsantra Series PlantBot), 2012. Interactive mixed media. 24 x 12 x 12â&#x20AC;?.

Artists / Works

Courtney Richter Tempe, Arizona, USA

My work explores the cycle of self-improvement in which I perpetually find myself, held captive by the seductive notion of the potential to change, and frustrated by the near impossibility of self-acceptance. This cycle contains moments of excitement, shame, striving, skepticism, deconstruction, reconstruction, and self-discovery. My works present visual metaphors for this cycle, utilizing both structural and chaotic forms to express the internal struggle that is present during this sequence. The work is less about transformation, and more about the “almost” transformation—the continual attempts that expose moments of strength or vulnerability, and my attempt to understand how these co-exist.

You Have at Your Power the Ability to Do Anything, 2014. Hand-woven/acrylic yarn, tea-stained felt, wood. 12 x 95 x 10”.

Artists / Works

Stephen Santore Carlsbad, California, USA

I am drawn to the observation and contemplation of what exists around us, within us, and within me. I try to maintain an awareness of the dichotomies that exist in life that also find themselves powerfully in the color theory of complimentary colors. I am driven to create images that reflect these feelings and considerations, striving to intuitively work with digital media, photography, and paint to alter an emerging image until it appears that something happens, until it feels I have found an image that speaks, even sings. There becomes an affinity between what is within an image and what is within the heart and soul. I wonder about the infinite connections between each one of us and what we might see and feel in these works. The images I make begin and end as exploration. Each one is separate, yet related, a step attached to endless steps. The process brings to me a heightened sense of being and a need to learn more, to live and love more, and to create more.

EF2URB, 2014. Digital print. 48 x 32â&#x20AC;?. JWB4GU, 2014. Digital print. 48 x 32â&#x20AC;?. BEF9JF, 2014. Digital print. 48 x 32â&#x20AC;?.

Artists / Works

Rachel Cardenas Stallings Santa Monica, California, USA Music opens its audience to affects and perceptions not conveyed through language. It works on both molecular and macro levels, allowing its listeners to imagine new paths and new ways of being, even as it strengthens the audienceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sense of community on local and global levels. During a performance, musicians are capable of transforming the audienceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s emotional and mental state. Additionally, they can only do it successfully through a refining process that takes deep persistence and optimism. In my work I have attempted to understand the relationship between musical performances and listeners.

Still from All I See, 2011. Video installation.

Artists / Works

Buzzy Sullivan Tempe, Arizona, USA

My art practice explores the complex dichotomy between what is and what was, cultivating a dialog that explores the distance between these opposing concepts through a range of subject matter. In my most recent work, Engineered Ruins, I document the rapidly changing landscape of the American West, devastated by the depletion and manipulation of water and water rights. This work focuses on California, posing a series of questions about the sustainability of agriculture and population booms in the semi-arid state. At the core of this project is a concern for how water use and perceived needs have shaped our natural and social landscape. The series was shot as 8x10 wet-plate ambrotypes, the same photographic process used by the post-Civil War photographers who traveled with governmentsponsored surveys to document the uninhabited West. My work suspends a moment in time, allowing the viewer to glimpse beyond that which is concrete. I manipulate time to create a distilled version of what is and what once was. By dissecting a single moment, I present an abstracted version of the affects that man, time, and environment have had on one other.

Loveseat, Salton Bay, CA, 2014. Pigment print. 90 x 24â&#x20AC;?. Los Angeles Aqueduct, Jawbone Canyon, CA, 2014. Pigment print. 72 x 36â&#x20AC;?.

Artists / Works

Céline Trouillet Strasbourg, France

Twin teenage sisters from a village in Burgundy perform “Total Eclipse of The Heart” by Bonnie Tyler. The idea of outer space represented by the term “eclipse” in the song title is echoed by the starry backdrop and the fact that twins are to be found in the constellation of Gemini, all of which is in contrast to the inner emotional space of the heart and the intimate complicity the twins represent.

Still from Song Nº22, 2013. Video installation.

Artists / Works

Claire White Provo, Utah, USA

I am interested in documenting experience into form. This process of documenting is filtered through memory and does not always translate in a way that makes sense or tells the full truth of the initial experience. It is layered and altered by what comes before it and will inevitably influence what comes after. I use my work as a way to perfect or muddle these memories.

Untitled, 2013. Embroidery. Each 6 x 8â&#x20AC;?.

ihr research fellows 2014-2015

‘Histories of Well-Being from Shakespeare to American Cultures of Wellness’ Cora Fox, Associate Director, IHR, Associate Professor of English, ASU How do we understand and experience what it is to be well, and how is wellness linked to being content or happy? Tracing the cultural history of Anglo-American concepts of well-being from the intertextual birth of the word “well-being” in the English Renaissance to the present, Fox unravels the ways positive affects have been understood and deployed, sometimes in the service of political and ideological movements and agendas. Drawing together insights from fields of the social sciences focused on positive affects, as well as from cultural approaches to medicine and health, Fox analyzes textual and artistic case studies to provide a historical context for our own present day uses of concepts of wellness. In the term well-being, we recognize and signify both quantifiable, objective markers of health, and subjective—often narrativized—notions of good feeling, eliding the divide between reason and affect that is so foundational within Western culture. Similarly, many of the pieces in this exhibit bear witness to or utilize the striking cultural assumptions we bring to notions of the separateness of affect and reason—such as when we confront the absurdity of what we consider emotional or unemotional, or when we see the body as machinic or automated and hence not influenced by emotion. Both Fox’s research and these artistic representations call attention to the shifting, negotiated space that is the historical divide between affect and reason. 57

Affect and Reason: Abstracts

‘Interdisciplinary Approaches to Emotion in Early Modern England: A Proposed NEH Seminar and Collection’ Bradley J. Irish, Assistant Professor of English, ASU Irish is currently working on his first monograph, tentatively titled Powerful Feelings: Emotion and Culture in the Tudor Court. Uniting literary analysis, theories of affect from the sciences and humanities, and a deeply archival account of Tudor history, Powerful Feelings examines how literary and historical texts reflect and construct the dynamics of emotional life in the Renaissance courtly sphere. Spanning the sixteenth century—with chapters on (1) Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and satire, (2) Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and elegy, (3) religious polemic in the tumultuous reigns of Edward VI and Mary I, (4) Sir Philip Sidney and Elizabethan pageantry, and (5) Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex and factional literature—this study argues that the dynamics of disgust, envy, hope, rejection, and dread, as they are currently theorized in the modern affective sciences, can be seen to guide textual production in the early modern court. By aligning Renaissance discourses of emotion with current trends in empirical and theoretical research, the monograph provides a new methodology of critical analysis for literary studies and cultural history: one that, by leveraging a text’s affective mechanics, reveals how the biological, psychological, and social dynamics of emotion help shape the stylistic, thematic, and formal features of literary and non-literary texts, and shape the very cultural and historical frames that give rise to their production.

‘The Feeling Body and Affective Journeys—Experiences of the Manchu Conquest in Seventeenth-Century China’ Xiaoqiao Ling, Assistant Professor, School of International Letters and Cultures, ASU For traditional Chinese literati, writing is the means by which one cultivates the self in a life-long journey toward moral perfection. As an ingrained act that results from years of training, writing also mediates the past, present, and future, as men of letters turn to the time-honored literary tradition and historical figures for selfidentification in their pursuit of literary immortality. This study focuses on the body as a fruitful site for literati communities to contemplate their experiences of the Manchu conquest in order to transport their senses of the self across the traumatic divide. The feeling body, with its sensory and emotional perceptions, lends itself particularly well for explorations of such issues as emotional attachments to the past and modes of remembrance conducive to reconstructing an (imaginary) world of order. The body, both in its corporeal form and as a rhetorical figure, dictates the quest of literati communities to restore their cultural anchor and moral reasoning by establishing a sense of affective and living connection to the past. 58

IHR Research Fellows 2014-2015

‘Democratization and Emotionalization of Democracy in the USA and the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 until 1990’ Michael Mayer, Assistant Professor of Contemporary History, Political Academy in Tutzing Affect, feelings and emotions do not simply react to historical developments but they emboss social interactions and are therefore historically powerful. Mayer examines the democratization of democracy in the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany between 1949 and 1990, particularly how affect and feelings gained social power and how the apparent contradiction between emotions and reason became historically effective. Mayer’s project focuses on three topics, which can be examined on the basis of solid sources: participation, integration and prevention.

‘Economies of Feeling: Russian Literature, 1825-1855’ Jillian Porter, Assistant Professor of Russian, University of Oklahoma In 1806, the so-called New Dictionary included “economy” (ekonomiia) in its list of words that had recently entered the Russian language, but which were not yet widely understood. Explaining “economy” as a wise approach to estate management that “occupies a middling place between prodigality and miserliness,” this dictionary prescribes an emotional understanding of economics rooted in the cultural values of the Russian landowning class. Taking her cue from the New Dictionary, Porter explores the imbrication of economics, emotions, and words in early nineteenth-century Russia. Economies of Feeling examines Hospitality, Ambition, and Money as three especially productive narrative paradigms that writers deployed in works pitting purportedly eighteenth-century Russian values of prodigality and generosity against nineteenth-century “foreign” values of individualism and accumulation. An axiom of this study is that there are no tenable boundaries between the supposedly “rational” and “irrational” domains of the economy and the emotions, respectively. Charting the intersections between commerce and gift exchange, and tracing shifting cultural conceptions of generosity, ambition, and avarice, Economies of Feeling argues that the interaction between competing discourses of economics and the emotions shaped seminal works of nineteenth-century Russian literature.

Affect and Reason: Abstracts

‘The Sentimental Public: Emotion, Politics and the French Revolution’ Victoria E. Thompson, Associate Professor of History, ASU What is emotional agency? How do emotional reactions to moments of great upheaval shape political decision-making? How does the often-confused mixture of emotions that individuals feel when faced with an unfolding situation get sorted out into easily identifiable emotions that can fuel a political movement? This project examines these questions by looking at the taking of the Bastille in 1789, an event that marked the beginning of popular participation in the French Revolution. At the center of this project are fear and joy. Parisians who lived through the storming of the Bastille were beset by a series of often overwhelming emotions over the course of several days in July 1789. Fear both divided and united Parisians during this period; joy marked moments when fear was alleviated, as well as moments of unity of purpose. Emotions influenced decision-making. They were also invoked to justify and explain what occurred, making even the most violent actions appear “reasonable” at the time. In studying the taking of the Bastille, it becomes clear that emotion must be considered alongside reason as integral to the political public sphere.

A research unit of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences