Delete Me features new work from the 2017 graudating MFA class of the UCLA Design Media Arts department. Works span the genres of interactive installation, performance, sculpture, software, sound, print, and video work.
OPENING NIGHT: MAY 18, 2017 5–8PM
EXHIBITION: MAY 18 – JUNE 1
GALLERY HOURS: Monday — Thursday, 10am – 5pm
There are many different forms of deletion. We rub a pink eraser on paper in a clod-handed imitation of handwriting; on a typewriter, deletion is mark-making (XXXX); with film, it’s a razor blade and a trash can. Deletion has always been work – that’s why there are editors. It’s a labor of reclaiming space, creating conditions to begin again. Beginning again means that we have, momentarily, invalidated our past work. We can try again, fail better. Now, when we virtually delete a phrase from a Google doc, it (and every past version) is saved in a labyrinth of forking paths, all existing forever behind the rhythm of an animated blinking vertical line:
… “|, _, |, _, |, _, |, _” ...
We generate data profiles when we navigate online spaces. Our story is written for us with our every move, creating an avatar of you. There are consequences to the existence of your digital double, ranging from the trivial to dire. Our online identities are, metaphorically speaking, the blocks of type in the printing press of rapidly evolving machine intelligence. Do you know the etymology of the word “stereotype”? It’s the process by which rather than spelling the word in type letters (“d” “e” “l” “e” “t” “e”), a single block would be cast (“delete”).
Delete Me is an exhibition which features new work from the 2017 graduating M.F.A. class of the UCLA Design | Media Arts department. Works span the genres of interactive installation, performance, sculpture, software, sound, print and video work. Exhibiting artists: Lander, Symrin Chawla, Matthew Doyle, David Ertel, Sanglim Han, Kate Hollenbach, Rui Hu, Yuehao Jiang, Alice Jung, Amanda Stojanov, Lee Tusman.
Lander is an artist interested in humor, discomfort, play and the absurd.
Through the fistula a tiny culture awaits your gaze. Bosch occupies Wall Street. Francis Fukuyama and Arthur Danto chill at the end of art and history. The Apis bull sports another coat of paint. Take a knee and peek while onlookers snicker at your new hat.
A monument to big fusses over little issues.
Symrin Chawla is an artist based in Los Angeles. Her work explores intuitive movement and the artifacts of emotion through task-based performance and sculpture. In autobiographical performances ranging from minutes to hours, imprints of the female body take form against invisibility, perishability and the limits of reason.
Sanglim Han explores disembodied, fragmented, and interstitial bodies. Through performative media, she creates a site for fluctuating identities where our personal and social experiences are revisited and boundaries are convoluted. Her works have been presented internationally in various festivals and galleries including IDFX, Breda, Netherlands; Matadero Madrid Contemporary Art Center, Madrid, Spain; Institut für Alles Mögliche, Berlin, Germany; Partícula Coimbra – Space for Art and Culture, Coimbra, Portugal; 14th Biennial Symposium for Arts and Technology; San Diego Media Arts Center; Sullivan Galleries; Richard Gray Gallery. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently a candidate for the Master of Fine Arts at UCLA Design Media Arts.
I examine the notion of a human form at micro- and macro- level, challenging the absoluteness of identity.
Kate Hollenbach is an artist and programmer working with interactive systems and new technologies. Her art practice currently focuses on mobile phones and ways people relate to their devices. Her interest in art and technology stems from years of professional work in interface design and product development. As Director of Design and Computation at Oblong Industries, she led an interdisciplinary team of designers and programmers to develop cutting edge user interfaces for collaborative environments. She is currently a graduate student in Design Media Arts at UCLA and holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering from MIT.
The experience of a place and time cannot be complete in just the physical or virtual world alone: presence is now required in both. Online presence is mediated by apps, giving software interfaces increasing control over expression and identity. The design of software now affects posture, gesture, and presence across the digital and physical realms. New input technologies and interface paradigms deepen one’s ability to be present both virtually and physically. Augmented reality merges human vision with computer graphics. Gestural interfaces and new sensing technologies let humans manipulate computers with full motion of their bodies. Voice recognition allows for hands-free interaction altogether. What happens as computers know and learn more about human bodies? What freedoms and privacies are jeopardized or lost altogether? How do our bodies change under the pressures of a merged virtual and physical reality?
Rui Hu is a Los Angeles-based artist working primarily with digitally mediated images and objects. His work often grows out of dissecting certain systems or categories, and often invites and engages with the tension between form, fiction, and language. Rui has shown his work at venues internationally, including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Netherlands; the Images Festival at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada; Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl, Germany; International Symposium on Electronic Art, Hong Kong, China; and the Australian Center for the Moving Image, Australia. He received his BFA from New York University.
Yuehao Jiang is a heterosexual-Chinese-born-in-the-90s-female-self-defined-interdisciplinary artist. She calls herself an image, sound and object maker. Considering digital media as a crucial subject that shapes people's perceptions, she is interested in displaying new media work in nontraditional gallery settings. Her work explores the intimate relationship between the body, the space, and the recognition. Jiang received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently a candidate for the Master of Fine Arts at University of California, Los Angeles.
The installation explores the extended meaning of Shanzhai ( 山寨, copycat), a Chinese word commonly refers to counterfeit products that imitate well-known brands. Although the word may imply a negative meaning at the surface level, it carries features of fast renewal speed, indigenized design, vulgarized adaptation, and flexible options. Its ignorance of copyright law and intellectual property rights challenges the monopolized companies who control the full resources over the globalized market. A pair of sneakers mixes the Nike logo with Adidas design symbolize a democratic system that resists against the existing one.The making process utilizes techniques such as photogrammetry, 3D rendering, and digital fabrications. The transformation and glitches occurred while data are regenerated correspond to the way images are altered from its original to the Shanzhai form.
Born in Los Angeles, raised in Seoul, South Korea. Jung attained her BFA at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) as a Sculpture major and shown work internationally. Jung is now focusing on her studies at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in the Design | Media Arts (DMA) department as an MFA candidate.
“Good does not become better by being exaggerated, but worse, and a small evil becomes a big one through being disregarded and repressed. The shadow is very much a part of human nature, and it is only at night that no shadows exist.” This quote is from a book 'A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity' (1942) explains a ‘shadow’ that everyone has. The shadow is interpreted to Alice Jung something that cannot be escaped from like a fingerprint you cannot erase from your body. Jung keeps challenging the idea of the shadow and shares it with the viewers. Jung is a Korean American female artist who explores Asian female identity through performance and media art. By using her body as a material to express ethnical, racial and cultural values in Western society, Jung challenges the viewers through questioning stereotypes of an Asian woman.
b. Ottawa, ON, Canada. Amanda is an artist and design researcher with a professional background in visual communication. She have experience working with design teams in large design studios, independent agencies, non-profit organizations and have worked as a freelance designer. Her MFA work is centered around creating interactive video/animation, sculpture, and narratives that interrogate gender identity, agency / body politics, and visibility in virtual spaces. The subjects of her work focus on sci-fi narratives and world-building themes around gender expression and transformation.
Lee Tusman is a new media artist and curator interested in the application of the radical ethos of collectives and DIY culture to the creation of, aesthetics, and open-source distribution methods of digital culture. His artistic output includes interactive media, video art, net art, experimental videogames, sound art, websites, twitter bots and pirate radio stations. Many of his works feature themes of self-identity, mistranslation and new methods of communication in contemporary internet culture. In addition to his art practice, Tusman has been a curator for a decade, presenting exhibits and public performance projects at museums, galleries, universities and alternative venues in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Toronto and Los Angeles.
Messlife is a virtual DIY artspace in the tradition of warehouse art spaces and alternative venues. Mess.cafe is a free (as in radical) software project, built by many people, for purposes of online and IRL hanging, collab'ing and making. Messlife takes inspiration from the actions and tools of the free software movement, the history of musical collaboration and jamming, and the world of DIY art collectives and warehouse spaces. It encourages a much wider community of artists to take on the principles and systems of these alternative communities. Messlife maps out a method for pirates, neighbors, thieves, classmates, strangers, friends, provocateurs and comrades to work together in cahoots. Messlife supports horizontal artistic collaboration over hierarchical systems of exploitation or power. Messlife supports teamwork, co-creation, and the empowerment of those who may not think they have required skills. Messlife supports jamming, the quest for utopia and the sublime, and experimentation that may result in failure. Messlife exists for the artists, but also for the public. Messlife supports presenting artworks online, IRL, in print, and any other way.