Issue No. 23 | Get Fierce!
4 December 2008 2:27pm PST
4 December 2008 2:27pm PST
Dave McKenzie
Politics and Personhood
Dave McKenzie’s Screen Doors on Submarines
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In Dave McKenzie’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, the multimedia artist frames an examination of the relationship between individual and collective subjectivities within the American social body. Screen Doors on Submarines (2008) is grounded in a political energy that corresponds with the 2008 American presidential race and the ongoing impact of technology and globalization. Screen Doors on Submarines directly interrogates fixed notions about media, representation, citizenship, patriotism, and civic engagement in the public sphere.
McKenzie’s installation, complete with various transmissive media devices including a projection of a swirling digitized news anchor chair and a large boom box, is a comment on temporality, not only in terms of how we experience time but also in terms of how we encounter American politics both visually and sonically through various media frequencies. Additionally, McKenzie is interested in activating the point of historical origin and return; essentially, how history repeats. The broken record hiccup of a lone slide projector captures the artist’s intention here.
McKenzie’s larger practice of inciting instances of cultural exchange is made visible as he inserts himself into the work. His self-descriptive text and the way he positions himself in relation to others is a reflexive gesture that involves and implicates the viewer, inviting the viewer to take on a range of perspectives and identities. This act is a conversation between authority and agency that is further contextualized by the modes of public address that McKenzie uses in the exhibition, from political speech to personal letter. Screen Doors on Submarines is a pertinent time-specific work that warrants a thoughtful contemplation of the transformative contemporary moment.
Screen Doors on Submarines runs through June 15, 2008 at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) Gallery in downtown Los Angeles.
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http://www.redcat.org/gallery/0708/mckenzie.php
via Tiffany Barber, 2 June 2008 10:02pm | 3
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| Comments:
Hi Tiffany,
The write up on this piece is as visual as the piece itself. I love the mention regarding “authority and agency” because it colors the season of contemporary politics. This message should be exemplified in American politics.
Keep up the faith and good work! I am proud.
Shavasia
(Fordham alum)
Sounds interesting. Now I gotta see the exhibit!!!
T-Barb!
Great piece. Admittedly, I found it more compelling than the installation itself. His work just didn’t translate for me in that space. Your fine distillation of the installation is in stark contrast to his seemingly disparate works which ultimately had little impact for me. (I know, NEGO-RAMA). I must say, though, that there was something refreshing about his alienating approach, neither poignant nor clever in my mind, but the fact that the installation was kind of barren, overly serious and didactic didn’t taste right to me. This political piece just lacked the poetry that I enjoy from artist like Francis Alys.
Pray tell, what am I missing here? I don’t know Dave’s work as well as you do I am sure!
LOVE YOU T!!!