A Curator’s Statement: Jennifer Moller

I recently curated Laterna Magica, a video festival held at the Provincetown Art Association, Provincetown, Massachusetts, during the month in January, 2005. I created the festival mainly because I was interested in presenting an alternative media show in Provincetown and I has a desire to light up the Murchison Gallery in the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. I wanted to stimulate new ideas about artistic expression and introduce video as an art medium to the arts community. The show was no paean to power, just art, ideas, and people gathering. It’s organization was communal in the sense that there was nothing to buy and hoard but rather an experience to share. The impetus was also political. The economics of Provincetown reflecting United States capitalist cultural values encourages artists to create primarily for commodity to dollar exchange. Because of these types of pressures I thought it essential to shift the dominant paradigm. I wanted to create a show that is, in the words of Lewis Hyde, gift based. I also wanted to play the trickster and exhibit more unusual works for this area, narrative filmatic wall painting and non-narrative experiential video. My aim was to lighten up our thoughts and moods creating a different kind of festival of lights during the dark days of January. I felt the need to energize creative sensibilities and include everyone, professional artists, beginners, high school students, and people from the local community. As in all successful gift exchanges I was the one who was gifted in many ways, with inspiration, space, television monitors, DVD players, pieces of cherry wood, labor, and friendship. 

My collaboration with artist Tracey Anderson was the most significant gift I received. Initially, We met through the Emerging Artist’s show curated by Mike Wright at PAAM in October 2004. I created a large sculptural housing with woodworker Beth Ireland, for a video projection piece titled, “Seas.” The housing had mirrors that reflected fragments of Tracey’s paintings and I felt a pull from the energy in her work. I started looking at her paintings and I noticed that her shapes were not carefully arranged forms but rather they moved and demanded space from her canvas. Even within the same canvas the work was many times disjointed and therefore possessed a sense of movement. It appeared to be moving as if in a stream of consciousness, a style that lent itself to cinematic treatment. The words of Roland Barthes kept coming to my mind, “spectacle of symbolic consciousness.” I asked her to paint the walls of the Murchison gallery at the PAAM for the festival and what I anticipated unfolded masterfully before me. As Anderson took her line and shapes to Mylar her strong iconic language communicated with raw intensity, a kind of electricity came forth. The mural piece over 91’ long and 5’ wide made a powerful statement (without the mediation of painting traditions) as the shapes and lines on Mylar shouted to viewers to pay attention. A cry of alarm comes to mind, “look, look the house is on fire and this is the reality that you are creating.”  It is the modern world that Anderson is painting, one that Hannah Arendt described as beginning at the time of the first atomic bomb, a symbol that she uses often. This modern age marked by high anxiety is created, according to Arendt by a paradoxical feelings, on one hand we possess the feeling of being completely powerless yet on the other hand we possess the power to destroy all life. I experience a kind of catharsis from viewing most of Anderson’s work, including the new mural as she paints the abjection and anxiety that I am feeling. The mood is decidedly defiant, and I am grateful for it. The work is also prescient in its anticipation of the techno-animal future, she paints half human half machines; the new human will most likely become a combination of part transplanted technology and part human being. The title of Anderson’s work is The New Empire Parts I, II and III. The subtitles are: Part I : Power, Propaganda, Ambition,War, Part II : Guns,Torture,Television, Atrocity, Part III Industry, Technology, Morality, Corruption, The size is  91’ long x 5’ wide. The materials are Mylar and house paint. I look forward to seeing it installed in another venue and curious what connections the new context may bring. She is a powerful artist with vision.

My own creative inspiration has been swinging back and forth, from ideas of emancipation and later to ultimate emancipation through transcendence. My influences include some thinking from the Frankfurt School of German intellectuals and their ideas about cultural power and the political danger of creating objects for veneration, in essence you are teaching the masses submission. At the same time I am drawn to the thinking of Zen Buddhist thought and in its artistic manifestation found in the work of Fluxus members where the artwork privileges experience over object. Founding Fluxus member Yoko Ono aimed to express spirit armed with a resistance to capitalist appropriation, so it made sense for her and other members to let go of the objectness in art making and move toward making conceptual art pieces. I believe that the Provincetown Art Association is a perfect place to perform or install experiential work that challenges dominant values because artists can create without an obligation to sell. This is why I was able to do my “seas” video projection and later the video festival. The PAAM is another gift in this long chain of gifts. I am very thankful and fortunate that I was chosen. This paragraph may begin to explain why I am so attracted to the medium of video, as it lends itself to the ephemeral over the fixed and to the experience over the object, especially when used in projection. The medium can be adapted to space as form and is then considered, as sculpture would be, a form in space. 

What attracted me to Tracey Anderson’s painting is the same thing that has attracted me to video and that is in its dissidence. She creates work that is not seeking anyone’s favor but rather it demands attention. In this way her mural at the PAAM echoed the vibration of video, an active disturbance. The show came together united under the idea of something that disturbs the quiet and at the same time it provokes thought. It was an experiment that succeeded if judged by what I hoped to achieve. I knew that Anderson would handle the materials, the room, the creation and succeed because I could read her character, talent and ambition. She did so and we received twenty videos to exhibit and we put on a show and this was amazing first year event. 

Lauren O’Neil’s, Can’t Get Enough of That Wonderful Stuff, Susan Jennings, Bird Sex and my video projection, Swim and AutoBody were all pieces intending to engage viewers in a psycho-somatic way, the scale of the human form was life size and therefore it was meant to be seen and felt by the viewer. Mary’s Drawing, a line animation created by Kathy Desmond was also projected larger than life size in the main gallery, it coexisted with Anderson’s mural in a way that was positive for both. While constructing the show I was concerned that the animation would dominate the viewing space. This concern comes from an understanding that movement engages us at a deep level. If you ask any web designer or deer hunter they will tell you that the human being viscerally responds to movement. It is something hard wired in all of us, perhaps a remnant from our reptilian brain (if it is moving it may kill us or we may need to catch it to kill it). The delicate and beautiful movement of the lines in Mary’s Drawing contrasted with Anderson’s energetic lines and brought attention to her conviction. I let the projection of Mary’s Drawing spill over its screen and onto the mural and then I mixed some projected super 8 film work I made to accentuate those relationships. It worked and gave me something to develop further, inspiration for a new piece. 

Denny Camino gifted us his monitors and exhibited his Community piece, an interview with the people who labor in Provincetown in the summer. Chris DeSousa from the Provincetown High School exhibited his dirtbike video in the projection booth and woke up everyone with his motorbike ride off his hand built 8’ wooden ramp. This work that people shared was a gift for everyone. Erica Chough from the Fine Arts Work Center exhibited a beautiful dream-like, folk tale inspired animation titled, Our Cosmos, Our Chaos. There are many pieces that deserve mention and critique but I will resist further digression since this was not meant to be a review of work but rather a curator’s statement.

The collaboration with Anderson helped me clarify my own convictions. We started unconsciously to pick up on each other’s work. Anderson commented to me about a parallel course in our individual visions and that is the best way to express what happened. After seeing Anderson’s painting work next to my installation in the Emerging Artists show I recommitted to a series of line animations. I later envisioned a show of my projected line animations co-existing with her painting a large mural. Later Anderson’s scratches in the black paint of her mural echoed the scratches I grooved into the super 8 film I projected. We made a commitment to collaborate on a show together in the future.

In the next show I would like to create work specifically about political dissidence, the importance of shifting paradigms and fighting the propaganda war waged by the present administration. I want to demonstrate the double speak visually so that it will be easier to see. I heed Arendt’s warnings from her 1951 book "The Origins of Totalitarianism," as she wrote, "Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it." I believe it is our responsibility as thinking and creative beings to be substantive citizens and do what we can to stop the movement into Fascism. This is the time for pre-emptive artist works that are decidedly political and liberalizing. It will be left for history to evaluate and judge the actions of our governments and our people. I want to be among the people who fought the good fight. Artists can be the true freedom fighters in the idea war because in order to make good art they already have to be equipped with intelligence, courage, vision and a mission to find the Truth.

Jennifer Moller/ February, 2005