ORAL SADISM AND THE VEGETARIAN
PERSONALITY
Thursday, December 12th, 2013.
I have
been assembling an archive of 35mm slides since
2000. All of the slides are photographs I
took myself (usually on a copy stand) of images, texts, and objects, each of
which becomes a "potential" drawing (the practice for which I am best
known). There are nearly 10,000 slides now.
About 6 years ago my assistant and I began to categorize them (there are
maybe 200 categories and subcategories) and file them. But I only recently realized that the slides kind of tell my story–as an artist, collector,
editor, and even a lot about my personality. I've attached the master
list of categories and you'll see what I mean. Reading the list sort of
tells you what my concerns are, in a distanced and objective (and possibly
funny) manner. I think they also tell you something about navigating a
messy world with too much information, and how one comes to make sense, and
ultimately meaning, from it. They transcend interest and likes, become
about choices and values. How we as a culture make meaning is at the
center of my work, and this slide archive shows
how over the past decade I have tried to do so myself.”
The show will consist of
a dark room full of slide projectors (on stands, the
floor, and ceiling mounted) on automatic advance mode. Each projector will show
a "selected" loop of slides (each projector holds a loop of 80 slides) that will be drawn from my archive. It will not be a random
selection or a comprehensive selection, but instead an edited selection that
attempts to draw connections between different types of categories or imagery.
So while there will not be an entire projector loop devoted to "Bob
Dylan" or "Charlie Chaplin", both could be on the same loop with
"boxers" "knights" and "politicians". So this
loop, for example, would end up being something about masculinity, bravado,
power, influence, and "dudes". Or there might be a loop devoted
to different types of texts, or one focused on materials and surfaces, or one that
deals with history, etc., for a total of 14 projectors each with its own theme.
With 14 projectors each holding 80 slides, there will be over a thousand total images. The advance of
the projectors will not be syncopated (i.e., they will play at different
speeds) so this produces over a million possible combinations of images, so the
relationships will constantly by shifting. Together it will be quite a
jumble, but that is the point. - Karl Haendel.
The MARTE Contemporary program is sponsored by Mario Cader-Frech and Contemporary MARTE Committee.
