Date 4/5/10
Affiliation Artists, San Francisco
Concatenating, Condensing, Conflating, Confounding, Considering, Contaminating, Contemplating, Conversing, and Conjuring: these are some of the means and ways we employ in our art work. Often, but not always, these technologies employ language, pictures, and sound. Computers are sometimes involved. So are cameras, psychics, magicians, librarians, film sound effects designers and balloon sculptors. Our art practice begins from a shared love of the spoken word, the recorded human voice, unreliable witnesses, true believers, eccentric craftspeople, libraries and museums of all kinds. We are interested in translation, particularly the questions which arise when different systems of knowing and understanding collide. These collisions are the substance and subject of our work. In our lecture, we’ll present examples from three projects created over the past 7 years: Art After Death, The Sound Library, and [the new project which is as yet untitled but which could be called History Lessons].
Chris Kubick and Anne Walsh, both Oakland, CA-based artists, often work together under the name Archive. They produce sculpture, works on paper, video, video games, audio cds and sound installations. From 2001 to 2005, their project Art After Death centered on the overlaps of metaphysics and art history. From 2004-2007, they produced works from a massive commercial sound effects library, exploring the rhetorical and sculptural dimensions of these complex cultural archives. In recent video projects, Archive continues its work with specialist performers and craftspeople to focus on the residue of fantasy left behind at “historical” sites and monuments.
Recent projects have been exhibited at San Francisco Camerawork, the Rosenbach Museum and Library (Philadelphia), Artists Space (New York City), Royal College of Art (London), Lothringer 13 (Munich), the Whitney Museum of American Art (2002 Biennial exhibition) and as part of the Hayward Gallery's (London) travelling exhibition program, amongst many others venues. Archive’s sound work has been included on multiple National Public Radio (US) programs, Resonance Radio (UK), Munich Public Radio, Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Works for publication have appeared in Cabinet (NYC), Leonardo Music Journal, ArtLies (Houston, TX), and Camerawork.
Anne Walsh is a contributing editor of X-Tra Art and Culture Quartery, a blogger for San Francisco MoMA, and is Associate Professor of Art at U.C. Berkeley. Chris Kubick is a sound designer and lecturer in new media and sound art at U.C. Berkeley. He is also the founder and director of Language Removal Services.
-- As of 4/5/10