Artist Statement
My practice explores the way language, media, and economy mediate technologies of the self and ways in which art making can be pushed towards an expanded notion of the sensorial. I am interested in connections between materials and materialism, states of perishability and their relationship to meaning and value, consumerist digestion and cultural metabolism, smuggling, stomachs as biological metaphor, molecular gastronomy, scent, the fragrance industry as memory machine, commodification of creativity, public relations as medium, and post-humanist theory with it’s sociopolitical implications for the body, and by extension, the senses.

My interest in the sensorial stems from a desire to reorder and reconfigure the spatial and experiential terms of a strictly visual art. By introducing elements of scent, tactility, sound, impulse, and memory, I hope to engender a more dynamic encounter with art through the interstices of sense and narrative. The body (corporeal and political) becomes a transformative site affecting both transparent and opaque realities. In terms of objects, I am interested in coded, yet unstable, often perishable or volatile materials.  Many of my techniques could be seen as the application of culinary methodologies to undigestible materials, a form of traumatization (deep-frying) that underscores the vulnerability of objects to time and violence, and the “shelf-life” of ideas, objects, and trends.

In 2008, I embarked on a collaborative perfume project with architect Maggie Peng: Shigenobu Twilight (see images 18-20).  The project combines conceptual, sculptural, and alchemical components to recompose political, historical, and corporate narratives through the strategies and sensibilities of contemporary art. The project is an attempt to penetrate the otherwise secretive and hermetic world of “noses” and scent chemists (Shigenobu Twilight is hand made in our studio), blurring the lines between amateur and professional, auteur and corporation, between artwork and consumer product.

Collaboration, participation, and community are key aspects of contemporary creative practice. This is reflected in my work with Circular File, an artist collective framed as a dysfunctional, quasi-Hollywood studio, which encompasses a wide range of activities from performances, procedures, and events like Schadenfreude Sports Bar to the production of a television channel for Performa 09. Circular File Channel (see images 9-13) consisted of artist-created vignettes representing both commercial and alternative modes of media making, and exploring themes of post-humanism/ trans-humanism, reverse destiny, shared brainwaves, and attention scarcity.

With Un-Spa (see images 13-14) Circular File explored the commodification of the self by experimenting with procedures and techniques appropriated from the wellness industry, public relations and psychology as generators of consumer desire.  A series of site-specific procedures and workshops are offered to guests by appointment. These procedures mix tropes of “pampering”, “wellness” and “relaxation” with anthropological inquiry into consumer habits, lifestyle, and class. If the focus group is psychological technique deployed in the service of advertising, Un-Spa is the short circuiting of the focus group.