RENASCENCE/07 An international juried exhibition of new media by artists with disabilities Soula Antoniou, President Stephanie Moore, Director of Visual Arts Jennifer Wexler, Visual Arts Coordinator VSA arts is an international nonprofit organization founded in 1974 by Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith to create a society where people with disabilities learn through, participate in, and enjoy the arts. VSA arts provides educators, parents, and artists with resources and the tools to support arts programming in schools and communities. VSA arts showcases the accomplishments of artists with disabilities and promotes increased access to the arts for people with disabilities. Each year millions of people participate in VSA arts programs through a nationwide network of affiliates and in more than 60 countries around the world. VSA arts is an affiliate of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Renascence 07 debuted at the Kennedy Center Terrace Gallery, June 1–28, 2007. For more information visit: www.vsarts.org/renascence Renascence 07 © Copyright 2007 by VSA arts Individual images are copyrighted by the individual artists. Reprinted by permission in this publication. This publication may not be reproduced without written permission from VSA arts. With appreciation to Surround Art Art Direction & Design: Richard Chartier (3particles.com) Printed by Dan Daniels, Rockville, Maryland Alternative formats (Large print, Braille) are available upon request. The contents of this publication were developed under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. However, those contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the federal government. VSA arts 818 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 600 Washington, D.C. 20006 FOREWORD VSA arts embarked on an ambitious pursuit to identify artists with disabilities who combine visual art and technology. Selected by a distinguished jury, these artists are at the forefront of using New Media to convey personal experience. The theme, renascence, invites artists to consider a rebirth of the senses. These artists demonstrate personal experience in innovative ways and invite active participation by the viewer. The resulting exhibition compels us to think deeply about our humanity—the differences and similarities that bridge our lives. We offer our most sincere congratulations to the artists who are making great strides in this new frontier. This exhibition advances the dialogue for artists with disabilities and their artistic contributions. The future is open to powerful possibilities. Soula Antoniou, President INTRODUCTION RENASCENCE, NEW MEDIA, DISABILITY, AND CREATIVITY by Patrick Lichty, Professor of Interactive Arts and Media, Columbia College Chicago The emergence of expression in New Media art forms is being seen throughout the contemporary art world, and many artists with disabilities are using it as a form of “second birth,” or renascence. When I mention “New Media,” this refers to art that incorporates digital technology, and more specifically, not just digital print, but live, interactive works that exist on the Web and in the gallery as interactive video, robotics, virtual reality, and sculpture. New Media uses technology not merely as a tool, but as a medium with special forms of expression unique to itself and the technological culture in which we live. Exploring this new world of art is the purpose of VSA arts’ Renascence 07 exhibition. In the late 1990s, there was an advertisement that spoke of the Internet as a place where there would be no differences in race, disability, or gender, and we would be set free to do whatever we chose. Although currently, realization of this dream is imperfect at best, many of us who have disabilities have found the new global village a place where we can express our differences or pass as “un-different” as we choose. Understanding that there are some who are given the opportunity for renascence through electronic media asks us to understand that the same media also present tremendous challenges. Certain levels of ability in technology require access, education, and aptitude across many disciplines, and people with disabilities are often not given equal opportunities to learn in the educational system. For adults, support is often limited, as Social Security and public programs usually only offer subsistence funding and do not allow for the purchase of expensive electronic art materials, software, and similar equipment. Last, consider that electronic media is largely visual, has certain ergonomics and interfaces that provide challenges for those with different abilities. Frequently, all of these issues are dealt with in relative silence if that artist with a disability does not wish his or her challenges to constitute the subject of the work. VSA arts has been truly forward-thinking in organizing this exhibition. This exhibition expands our understanding of New Media electronic arts and the diversity of the peoples who participate in them. ABOUT THE JURY DAVE EVERITT ( www.daveeveritt.org ) Dave Everitt, a freelance artist and researcher from Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, England, uses computer technologies to explore the individual interaction between order and disorder in relation to natural and mathematical pattern, biological information, and human responses to technology. Everitt’s work requires audience input and participation, allowing his art to be interactive. He is interested in the connection between unusual mental states and digital realities, especially the dissociation and freedom involved from out of body experiences. Everitt, whose history includes chronic fatigue syndrome, social phobia, insomnia, and OCD, views computer technologies as essential in order to digitally process and present the little elements in relationship to the greater aspect of existence. BYEONG SAM JEON ( www.bsjeon.net ) Byeong Sam Jeon is distinguished internationally for his interactive digital media arts that address disability issues and social implications. This native of Korea has exhibited in the ISIMD 2005 in Istanbul, Turkey; Uijeongbu International Digital Arts Festival 2005 in Seoul, Korea; and SIGGRAPH 2004 in Los Angeles, California. In his curatorial experience at the Beverly Arts Center in Chicago, Interactive Playground: Sight Unseen, Jeon exhibited works that explored the disability perspective. He also worked as a visual art director in KKI-PAN, a performance group of women with disabilities in Korea. Jeon received his MFA in Art and Technology Studies at the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently in the Arts Computation Engineering (ACE) graduate program at University of California, Irvine. PATRICK LICHTY ( www.voyd.com ) Patrick Lichty is a technologically based conceptual artist, writer, independent curator, animator for the activist group, The Yes Men, and executive editor of Intelligent Agent magazine. His workspans over 15 years, dealing with media narrative/criticism and information aesthetics under many different contexts. He works in diverse technological media, including painting, printmaking, kinetics, video, generative music, and neon. Venues in which Lichty has been involved with solo and collaborative works include the Whitney Biennial, as well as the International Symposium on the Electronic Arts (ISEA). He is currently a professor of Interactive Arts and Media at Columbia College Chicago. MARISA OLSON ( www.marisaolson.com ) Marisa Olson is an artist, critic, and curator. She is currently editor and curator at Rhizome.org and she's organized exhibitions and programs at the Guggenheim, SFMOMA, the Getty, White Columns, Artists Space, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and elsewhere, including SF Camerawork, where she was previously associate director. She's written for Wired, Mute, Afterimage, Flash Art, ArtReview, and others, and has written commissioned essays for the Walker Art Center, the Banff Centre's New Media Institute, and Eyebeam. Her own performance-based work often takes the form of net art, video, sound art, and installations. This work has recently been presented by the Whitney, the New Museum, the Pacific Film Archive, and numerous international festivals. BILL SHANNON ( www.virtualprovocateur.com ) Bill Shannon is both an interdisciplinary performing artist and advocate of art and disabilities from Brooklyn, New York. Shannon, who has limited mobility as a result of Legg-Calvé Perthes, created a cultural hybrid of dancing that includes hip hop music, a skateboard, and his crutches, better known as the “Shannon Technique.” Shannon uses chance encounters in his street improvisations as he dances down the street, playing with the variables of traffic, bystanders, music, and his pain threshold to determine his next dance move. His video installations have exhibited in the U.S. and Europe at contemporary museums and galleries such as the Tate in Liverpool, U.K., and Kiasma, Helsinki Museum of Contemporary Art, in Finland. Additionally, he helped choreograph Cirque de Soleil’s Varekai. ARTISTS CHAS DE SWIET LONDON, United Kingdom NUTTER.TV, 2005 NET.ART “A renascence coming from our senses, hearts, and souls is very welcome and long overdue. Is this one of the ripples that leads to the wave?” “Art has profoundly affected my ‘education’ of, or exploration into, the nature of madness.” Chas de Swiet created www.Nutter.tv to portray, through a Web site, the experience of being “psychotic” and to address the stigmatization and misunderstanding of people with mental disabilities. The site attempts to communicate the experience from a first-person point of view in order to arrive at a fresh perspective. By interacting with the Flash environment, the user can journey around London, mixing and triggering sounds. Ultimately, the site is an exploration of hearing and seeing. People in psychotic states may experience auditory and visual hallucinations. The site accepts these sensory inputs, explores them, and normalizes them. WWW.DESWIET.COM LIHUA LEI SOLON, MAINE PHANTOM PAIN, 2006 MULTIMEDIA INSTALLATION “Art helped me see that I could solve problems step by step if I had a plan. Art also gave me a sense of real existence for my life.” “...Does my body remember what it has lost? Do the cells and nerves still hold these imprints?” Lihua Lei’s installation, Phantom Pain, includes three areas: an interior gallery space, an open water area, and the vestibule of an entrance. Moving through these different spaces suggests the floating of concepts. Lei, who has polio, conveys the inaccessibility of a dream, wish, or memory through the installation. The concept that Lei cannot catch her memories and contain them is reflected through the use of translucent qualities of the fabric, glass, Lucite cube, and faded film images. The voice of the artist’s mother, heard in the piece, is in Taiwanese—a language without written form, passed on orally through generations. The distant recording is only partially accessible through the emotions of her voice. Through this installation, Lei is able to convey her personal renascence. KURT WESTON HUNTINGTON BEACH, CALIFORNIA PAPER DOLL, 2006 DIGITAL VIDEO (1 minute 36 seconds) “New digital media is providing us within creased opportunities for artistic and intellectual expression. Expanded possibilities and a renewed creative spirit thrive within this new conceptual wave.” “I wake up every day in a visually distorted world. It is a 24/7 reminder of what the disease has done.” Kurt Weston’s digital video, Paper Doll, illustrates the full repertoire of the visual assist devices that Weston uses on a daily basis. In 1991, Weston was diagnosed with AIDS and eventually lost his sight. Paper Doll provides a humorous perspective of his subject—the spectator—using these devices to view a performance of a doll placing an old 78 r.p.m. record album onto a phonograph that plays the 1940s song, “Paper Doll.” Weston’s intent is to ironically juxtapose the revival of the classic with high-tech devices and digital media. WWW.KURTWESTON.COM JU GOSLING aka ju90 LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM FIGHT, 2003 FILM-DANCE INSTALLATION (6 minutes 12 seconds) “Art, more than any other subject, taught me to think, to reflect, to see the world more clearly and from many different perspectives.” “Fight is a film-dance. It explores themes of growing up and coming out as disabled, and of developing Disability Pride. It shows the fight for self-awareness and self-acceptance, which everybody has to go through at some point in their lives. It is also a self-portrait.” Ju Gosling aka ju90 is a performance and multimedia artist who works largely within the theories and traditions of the disability arts movement. Fight is a film-dance installation performed by Ju Gosling with Layla Smith. Still images from the DVD show two women dressed in tight black clothing, one wearing an orthopedic spinal brace, transformed into an ornate corset decorated with a mosaic which includes a series of mirrors, and the other wears bracelets which match the brace. The women are shown moving together or with their faces reflected in the mirror on the back of the brace. The brace, titled Making It Very Glamorous, was created specifically for the project by orthotist Jonathan Wright and decorated by Andrew Logan. WWW.JU9O.CO.UK LEON LIM NEW YORK, NEW YORK LEON LIM’S SILENT STORY, 2007 MULTIMEDIA INSTALLATION “Renascence is a strong word to me because I am Deaf since birth. I feel like everything is reborn when I look at the past.” “Fewer than 10 percent of 6 billion people in the world are Deaf and hard of hearing. My work allows people to think deeply about the experience.” Leon Lim’s multimedia installation, Leon Lim’s Silent Story, includes four moving images that represent the struggle and unawareness of Deaf life in society. The installation forms an immediate relationship with the viewer, using an experimental presentation to visualize different perspectives. The first work, Killing My Deafness, conveys Lim’s childhood story, rooted in his family’s conflict of accepting his deafness. The second and third works, Deafness and Hearingness: Missing Messages, explore communication through both speech and sign language. Missing messages within the video format portray the misunderstanding or miscommunication between the Deaf and hearing communities. The fourth piece, Bring All People to Reunion Like a Rose, encourages greater understanding as the bridge. WWW.26STUDIO.COM HANS BERNHARD VIENNA, AUSTRIA PSYCH|OS CYCLE, 2004-PRESENT DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY, NET.ART “My manic episode was my renascence. This event was the turning point in my life; nothing was the same again.” “Art is the only way out. My life is my art and the art becomes my life on a daily basis.” In March 2002, Hans Bernhard experienced a manic outbreak in South Africa. He was airlifted to Austria’s General Hospital in Vienna. Two-and-a-half years later, video footage of his stay at the mental hospital was uncovered and released, unedited. Bernard came to realize that his mental disability had been undiagnosed and untreated for 30 years. The fusion of technology with life experience is evident in several of the works coming from his Psych|OS cycle, which includes work in video, photography, and a blog. The cycle reflects the mental illness in a highly subjective way, bluntly depicting the reality of the artist’s life. WWW.UBERMORGEN.COM CLOVIS BLACKWELL PASADENA, CALIFORNIA CLOVISBLACKWELL.COM/MEGALOPOLIS, 2006-PRESENT NET.ART “Megalopolis represents the rekindling of my passion for life after a long dormant period following the development of my website.” “Art serves as both a release from and exploration of my experience living with rheumatoid arthritis. The Super-Clovis persona parodies the notion that a hero, or a Superman, must have superpowers.” Clovis Blackwell created his site, Megalopolis: The “Official” Home of Super-Clovis, to explore a superhuman persona. Megalopolis is an interactive online city for Super-Clovis and other heroes, villains, and citizens. The site is also Blackwell’s response to the creation of digital objects and information that is categorized into databases, as well as online social networks that bring individuals together in a computer environment. Embracing the rebirth of culture in a digital era, Megalopolis serves as a vehicle for the characters to explore fantasy personas. The site also begs the question as to whether these personas serve as a valuable release from painful experience—or as escapism, which hinders growth. WWW.CLOVISBLACKWELL.COM MARY BEHR HOBOKEN, NEW JERSEY MOVE!, 2007 INTERACTIVE SCULPTURE “I created this installation of empowerment—anyone can enjoy the movements, but the participant with artificial joints is the catalyst that unleashes the beautiful experience.” “My aim is to create a marker for the experience of recovered mobility.” Mary Behr’s interactive sculpture, Move!, is a direct response to the invasive nature of airport security checkpoints for those with artificial joints. By customizing the design and performance for individuals who have synthetic internal devices, Behr changes the metal-detecting procedure from punishment into reward. Instead of the imposing alarm, the signal triggers a series of hypnotic movements within the folded paper construction. Behr, who has had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis since she was 12years old, captures the joy of recovered mobility. WWW.MARYBEHR.COM