1/20 of a millennium (and then some)
As the 50th anniversary is approaching for the Cochrane-Woods Art Center at the University of Chicago, we, a group of artists and scholars, want to take this opportunity to pause to not only reflect on the past but also gaze at the future. Anchoring the fleeting moment of the now, we present 50.5 works for CWAC Exhibitions as our ruminations on key aspects of our time, shared interests of the group, and individual contexts of our life. Instead of collating answers to celebrate this historical milestone, we feel more grounded if we ask questions and capture episodes of inquiry through our visual responses. Why do our perceptions of the past live in flux? What will be the now? How can we invest in the future history of our art? Here are some thoughts from our group, which we hope we may share as the very foundations that inform the making for this exhibition.
natalie jenkins
I am interested in artmaking as measurement. Though measurement most commonly refers to the quantification or calculation of the attributes of an object, I am looking towards measurement as a means to capture and describe the indescribable phenomena of the natural world. This kind of thinking is inherent to all of us — our experiences with the great outdoors are not those of quantitative judgment, but of psychic impression. But what exactly is the natural world? And how can we express the experiential shape of the wild? Can we even make a distinction between human subjects and nature as a set of objects deserving of consideration? Can everything done by humans be natural? To ask these questions, I turn to the act of measurement — to artmaking, to sculptural (re)production. This phenomenological appraisal both collapses and creates the distance between human and the outside,
marking the space between you, me, and the ecologies between us. It is a useful tool for imitating the psychogenic dimension of existing on the earth. Simultaneously, the messiness and fallibility of measurement creates human-environment entanglements ripe for exploration: the slippage between the natural and the unnatural, the human and the animal, the real and imagined, the artificial and the authentic.
Luke S. Kalaydjian
I have become obsessed with physical media, this ownership of information, containing song and material on a black, anonymous, very destructible, tape. My recordings will disintegrate with time. I can physically destroy it, either by tearing the tape or by recording over it, but through processes that will allow the presence of information to live on: cemented, changed, illegible. What I offer are my reflections of the material, of history, of recorded, unrecorded, and rerecorded information. I seek to recomplicate the operational and phonetic aspects of instruments and equipment of information containment, all in an attempt to prescribe new purpose, awareness, and value to old processes. How does process affect experience? What does it mean to change, destroy, or reinterpret information? Are distortions and warping to qualities in history always bad?
Betty Young Kim
Fifty years can feel like a long time to some. To my children, it feels like an eternity. To my parents, it feels like time has flown by. Recently, my mother shared her memories of her life in Korea – the hardships, loss, and struggle. She recalls those moments like they happened yesterday. It’s a way for her to share her experience and pass her memories onto me - continue those memories into the future. When my son shares his struggles, some moments occurred yesterday or earlier during the day. And we process his experiences together (to help him grow as an individual and not let the pain experienced during the day affect him into the night).
I look at life through the lens of a mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, and community member. I ask questions about what is remembered in the family archive, how memories are acquired in image-making, and whose story is told through the process of the archive. Who’s story is written? Remembered? Lost? Or forgotten? And what about the fragments and connections in time?
Noah Lawson
I aim to explore how the passage of time and time dependent processes affect materiality and our perception of it. All matter is affected by the passage of time in some way or another, but some resist time’s hand more than others. The idea of degradation can be taken to represent something purely physical—to succumb to the inescapable entropic forces of the universe—but it is also largely a human construction. Ideas such as uselessness and obsolescence exist purely within the realm of human perception. As such, I wish to acknowledge that which is deemed worthless, yet whose only sin is continuing to exist beyond that brief window of time in which they are useful, and present them as objects of interest independent of any purpose they once had. Now, in a time of unprecedented technological progress along with enormous amounts of waste, I believe this idea is more pertinent than ever. Additionally, I am interested in materials such as stone and glass, which are perceived as being relatively unaffected by time. To me, their seeming rigidity and lack of changeability lend extra interest to work that involves manipulating these materials in unexpected ways.
Drew Parkinson
I am always curious about the ontology of things - not only as a way of understanding, but also in the frameworks we choose to interpret with. Why might we describe a car in technical terms, and a flower with romantic ones? Why do we see some things as intentional, and others as chance? Through merging observational mark making with compositions of chance, it is my hope to question how things come to be, and our tendency to define them as such.
Tongji Philip Qian
I tend to subscribe to idiosyncratic parameters to guide the process of making, and I desire moments of surprise that simultaneously enhance and liberate. For instance, one plant may be a decoration, but what about a number of them, neatly positioned in two lines? Also, what if I notarize my thoughts instead of something that needs authentication? Additionally, is time the real measurement of humanity? What, then, are the apparatuses that trace time? Our pulse as the inner clock? Daylight Saving Time? The doomsday clock? Such questions lie within my interests, and I want my work to hover between art and the rest, whatever it may be.
About
1/20 of a millennium (and then some) is an exhibition collaboration among the Department of Visual Art, the Department of Art History, and the Visual Resources Center. Key organizers include but are not limited to: Théodora Dillman, Natalia Granquist, Owen Hoffer, natalie jenkins, Luke S. Kalaydjian, Betty Young Kim, Noah Lawson, Bridget Madden, Christine Mehring, Drew Parkinson, Tongji Philip Qian, and Allie Scholten