final exam question

David Carpenter

In this course I have been treated and taught as a grad student in studio arts (which I am) and not like an art history grad student. This is something that I am grateful for and has made this course more beneficial to my studio practice and me. From the course I have gained a significant amount of exposure both to new artist and important theorists and ideas. This exposure has helped me find the context that I want my work to be placed.
My work is inspired by the difference between my grandfather’s world and my own. I use this juxtaposition to address gender roles, the value of labor and the laborer, and to examine systems of hierarchy. Exposure to Michel Foucault , Gillies Deleuze, [1] and Paul Virilo[2] has been a direct influence in the development of my current work. Foucault and Deleuze [1] are influential to me for their examination of social systems of hierarchy. Virilo’s[2] ability to walk forward and look backwards at the same time gives him a unique perspective to the future of our techno driven world.
My favorite thing about this course is the exposure to new artists. Many I would never have know about otherwise. The London base group Revital Cohen made a piece called “Life Support” where they substituting a dialysis machine with a sheep. Like many of the artist we have studied this semester they use new technology to conduct a conversation about the how our world is changing. What makes this work and many others we looked at so powerful is not the use of technology, but that their ideas are so well crafted. The result is that the viewer is immediately asking questions. Questions like, “Is the real? Does it work? What would it be like to live with farm animals? Is this a normal pet relationship?” In some ways I think it may be easier to grow a transgenic sheep than to develop an idea that engages the viewer so well.
With the exposure that 4484 Streetview has given me, I now know the context in which I want my work to exist. That context is socially charged work that is not motivated or limited by sales and or gallery space. I want to make work that addresses complicated issues in a way that the viewer must as well; work that is inspired by developments in new technology and is not limited by old traditions of making.

[1]

Deleuze, Gilles. “Postscript on Societies of Control.” The Cybercities Reader . Ed. Stephen Graham. Routledge, 2004. 73-77.

[2]

Virilio, Paul. “The Perspective of Real Time” Pp.22-34 and “Grey Ecology”Pp.58-68 Open Sky . Verso, 1997.

[3]

Revital Cohen, “Life Support” 2008,

http://www.revitalcohen.com/?p=15#show_slide