Cafe Press, when viewed as a tool for artistic production is an interesting departure point for the exploration of object creation ‘after the internet’. Both the site and it’s user community celebrate the ease and immediacy of invisibly manufactured, ready-to-make items. Their contributions make for a staggering array of proposed t-shirts, teddybears and campaign signs all made in narrowly prescribed forms. As Nicolas Bourriaud writes in his exploration of relational aesthetics, “the advances of technology and ‘Reason’… blindly replace human labour by machines, and set up more and more sophisticated subjugation techniques…So the modern emancipation plan has been substituted by countless forms of melancholy.” This installation at Sego Art space aims to address forms of melancholy found on cafepress and allow the invited artists an opportunity to designate works for manufacture and purchase on the site and in the space.

Curated by C. Coy with a live lecture by artist and curator Marisa Olson on Thursday, April 2nd at 7pm

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

Kari Altmann, Jeffrey Baij, Charles Broskoski, Ryan Browning, Chris Collins, Petra Cortright, Constant Dullaart, Patrick Dyer, Thomas Galloway, Quinn Gorbott, Bardhi Haliti, Charles Harlan, Chris Harris (lung), Joel Holmberg, Justin Kemp, Dennis Knopf, Andrew Kozlowski, Thomas Mailaeander, Eilis McDonald, Jon Rafman, Billy Rennekamp, Zach Shipko, Hayley Silverman, James Whipple, Jessica Williams, Bennett Williamson, Robert Wodzinski, Damon Zucconi and others

Forms of Melancholy ::: Marisa Olson from Sego Art Center on Vimeo.

I am sure many of you have already heard of what will be going on at Sego in March: a special project that local artist Chris Purdie has been cooking up for about a year now. Chris has created a website Chrispurdie.com where you can track his progress and see hints of what might be on March 6.  I will try to get him to post on this blog as well.  If the project at all seems narcissistic, solipsitic, and entirely self centered- your’e on the right track.  Chris is the last person I would describe with these personality traits- and thus the project suddenly becomes a critique of the contemporary artist herself- mimicing a number of obvious art world personas that need not be named.

I am most excited for this project as it is one of the few true performance art events that has recently been had in the state of Utah (Dance Theatre Coalition and its Proving Ground performance art series has helped performance significantly in the beehive state). Chris is publishing a full color catalogue with essays by performance rock scholar Wade Hollingshaus, and others yet to be announced. The project recieved major funding from the Laycock Center for Creative Collaboration at BYU, a foundation that this author has benefited from with past project funding also.

This performative collaboration has indeed become an excercise in relational aesthetics: the artist and the project collaborators have all experienced something greater than individual artistic achievement- and the goal is to include viewers as participants in this dialogue.  So start getting excited for this project if you haven’t already.  And make sure you are there on March 6th.  I promise you’ll have a good time.