questions and answers
questions from Katie Webster of Amelia's Magazine, a culture magazine in the UK, for a feature on my works.
- can you tell us a little about your previous bodies of work post training?
eg. outline some of your more successful exhibitions (in your eyes), ones that shaped your progression to the themes which you are currently pursuing
(perhaps A Nightmare on Grand St) to focus more on shelter, continental drift, entrance, drift and the throne...
I've been working on the current body of work for the last four years. Just before I started my current work, I had a show in Brooklyn in the Spring of 2004 that I called Glitch. The work from that show was the culmination of the ideas I had been pursuing for the previous few years starting in graduate school. I had felt a shift coming for awhile. My frustration about world events and the culture I live in was too great to ignore. I felt that my work was too passive in it's cultural criticism, mainly because I was probably the only person who knew that my paintings were critical. They were very idiosyncratic, abstract paintings. I was painting with a set of symbols/motifs that only I was really able to understand. There wasn't any representational symbolism in those paintings except for the fact that they were vaguely landscape oriented. The paintings consisted of these landscapes, populated by undulating, grid based patterning, which was loaded symbol for me. My anxiety about not really being able to communicate what I wanted to say was extreme. I started a series of drawings that began exploring what I would add to this closed system. The fact that they were closed systems was part of the point, so it was a struggle to find the kind of symbol that I could live with. First of all, I started making waterscapes, which had oil drums peeking above the surface amongst the undulating patterns. I felt that these could lead to something, so I continued along these lines. Already the paintings were touching on issues of ecology, and I was using them to talk about ideological conflict. In the course of doing internet image searches for "wastelands" and similar key words, I began to find images of huge piles of computers and televisions scattered in places around the world. This electronic scrap was exported by the U.S. and other technological nations under the auspices of a recycling project, but really it is just a cheap way of dealing with toxic waste. These piles became a powerful symbol for me because by using them I could comment on a culture of consumerism and waste, and through this lens also continue working with issues surrounding hi-tech culture and mythology.
For the Nightmare on Grand St. event in 2005, I collected 28 or 29 computer monitors and televisions off of the streets in my neighborhood in Brooklyn over the course of three months. They were all out on the street for the garbage pick-up, and all had about an 85-90% chance of ending up in China, or Africa, or anywhere else that would take them for recycling. China alone illegally imports somewhere around 18,000 shipping containers full of U.S. e-waste per year. Their government has made it illegal, but scrap merchants easily import it without problems. Also, the U.S. is the only technological country not to sign the Basil Treaty, which basically states that technological nations will deal with their own e-waste, and not export it to any other country. However, even in countries that have signed this treaty, individual companies within the country often find ways of exporting it.
I then opened all of these computers and televisions up, broke out their CRT tubes leaving only the glass on the front and invited friends and other artists paint and etch images onto the glass. Then I made some rudimentary furniture out of stuff left on the streets for garbage pickup, and piled these computers in a large pile on the sidewalk in front of the gallery I was working with on Grand St. in my neighborhood. All of the computers were lit from the inside by candles like jack'o lanterns. There are a few images of individual lanterns on the press release that you can see here: http://www.jonelliottonline.com/Jon_Elliott_newpage_53_Nightmare_Press_Release.htm I have repeated that project on a smaller scale for group shows in Atlanta and Los Angeles as well.
- which do you feel are your most groundbreaking, or successful works on your site? could you explain a bit about them.
"Plague of Excess" is probably the most ground breaking piece, in that it is the first large painting I made within the current body of work. It was started at the end of 2004, and extended deeply into 2005. It made me realize how powerful the subject matter could be, esp. when expressed on a large scale. It also set the tone for the painting "Run Off," which was made dirctly after, and many of the paintings to follow.
- what made you concerned with issues to do with technological ideology and mythology?
Because I think their examination reveals a tremendous amount about our cultural currents as a whole, how we view the rest of the world, and the environment we live in. Besides that, I have always been into science fiction that deals with technology, which is modern myth making.
- what has made you so intrigued by computers and tv's in the content of your work?
Among many reasons, because they are objects that are very powerful in our culture. I'm interested in them as symbols, and how the symbol changes when they are depicted as piles of garbage.
- what messages are you wishing to convey?
Complicated question, because I'm hoping to convey more then just messages with these paintings. What I try to do is to inform these paintings with enough subject matter that easy access, ready for print messages are difficult to pin down, and hopefully whatever I am learning or teaching myself will be conveyed. There are messages, but I don't want to pin them down because there are so many that mentioning a few of the more obvious ones would tend to depreciate the more subtle ones.
- what response or action are you hoping to achieve?
I hope people look at themselves and their own culture through a new lens.
- are you involved in any organisations, protests or groups?
I'm not really an activist, though I have attempted to become involved in certain groups. I've also attempted to start certain programs. For instance I attempted to start a "program" where people would buy and then donate important documentary dvds to local video stores, under the agreement that they are rented out for free. There are some things that I think people need to see, and maybe free rentals would help encourage their viewing. That didn't really get off the ground, but it's still an idea out there. It's one of those projects I would love to see someone else do. However, much like a good journalist, I think painting helps me maintain the appropriate removal from my subject matter to be able to see things more clearly, and make work that is skeptical and philosophical. I do get involved on some level though. I think the "Nightmare on Grand St." event is a good example of a project that had the feel of an activist project, but through the lens of an art action.
- where do you see your work developing from your current body.- are you working on anything at the moment?- what do you see future work concerning?
New developments include the transformation of the piles of garbage into structures that were obviously constructed by humans for some sort of shelter. There are many reasons for this current transformation, and I'm only beginning to understand them. It's a process of learning, I don't always immediately understand the reasons I make certain images, though I understand enough to know whether it's worthy of my time. That's the project I'm working on right now, and part that body of work will be on display in London during the Zoo Art Fair in Oct. I see my future work concerning a similar satellite of ideas as my current work, but I don't know. I never really know when the next major development is going to happen, I just trip over it in the course of moving through ideas.
---------addendum----------------
-Can you explain more about what you mean by technological mythology?
I have some concrete notions about what it means, and many fuzzy impressions. It is really a topic so vast that to fully explain what I mean by it, it would take writing you a book. This morning I did an internet search on "technological mythology" and one of the first hits was an article, very didactic and alarmist, in the extremist style of much media culture writing. It was written by someone named Jesse Hirsh, I wouldn't recommend reading it, it isn't well written. It is an example of one persons definition of technological mythology, and his attempt to expose the myths surrounding the internet. The title of the essay is "The Mythology of Technology: The Internet as Utopia." The internet is a powerful cultural force, and has been for a long time, but it is only one example of a mythologized technology. Here are a few quotes from the essay: (if you want, I can send you the link the the entire essay)
"The most dominant myth of our time is the Internet. The mythological meaning of the Internet: 'Utopia'. It has become the technological metaphor large enough to absorb all the hopes, dreams, and desires of a civilization. Millions have rushed on-line in search of a meaning, a harmonious narrative that describes change."
and another:
"The Internet by definition, does not exist. It is an abstraction that nobody has seen, smelled, or touched. It is a myth used to shift our belief systems and dramatically alter our behaviour. It transforms our linguistic framework by changing the context in which language interacts with mind. It is a redefinition of literacy as the linguistic system itself becomes simultaneously individual and collective."
and:
"Through the virtualization of our culture, the medium of mythology reconstructs reality to manufacture consent. Growth and development are guided and directed by the few at the expense of the many. The technological mythology is reality in the virtual world, and our consuming desires drive us to live virtually perfect. In the process we have negated our sovereignty and secured the Platonic chains around our neck as we stare at the shadows on the cave wall."
I wouldn't say that the internet is a myth, I would say that there is an abundance of powerful myths about the internet, and there have been for many years, predating the popular use of the internet. And the internet is really just one of many sources of contemporary mythology. Some pop culture stories involving technology have been told so many times, by different people, that in my opinion they have entered the realm of myth. In addition, there is a very religious element to technology, there are various cults and sects of people who embrace technology in a way that christians embrace their savior, for instance. A pop culture reference would be the Matrix trilogy, which updates the christian mythology with a new christ figure Neo, for example. An old, equally well known example is the movie Tron, which has many of the classic elements of technological myth, including the idea that human consciousness is a pattern that can be quantified and reanimated within a supercomputer, that even the body can be reduced to a binary code, etc. It is striking how similar some of these ideas are to ideas about 'the soul' in other mythologies, but "heaven" is replaced by a supercomputer. There are several other themes that Tron hits on, many of which were previously discussed in the book Neuromancer by William Gibson, one of the more famous "cyber punk" novelists. Neuromancer has been so influential to contemporary visions of virtual reality, internet, etc.,that in a way, it is a modern technological mythic story. It is so culturally influential in ways that even people who aren't online, or who don't like, or might even hate "science fiction" have been influenced by the ideas in that story. I don't recommend reading it, it's not very well written. But there are many real life examples of people who actually do really believe this stuff. It always amazes me what people believe in. Some technological mythologies get tangled with UFO cults, the examples are many. Almost all of the new religions embrace technology, from Scientology to the Heavens Gate, to the Raelians (sp?). However, I'm more interested in how the popular media portrays technology, commercials, movies, novels, electronic music, television shows, etc. I guess what I'm saying is I'm more interested in how visions of the power of technology interacts with consumer culture, and how these mythologies (either utopian or dystopian) fill deep psychological needs, and often abstract reality in ways that are not always socially positive, and in some cases are destructive, but are all seemingly geared in some veiled, and some obvious ways, to getting you to buy a new laptop. Well, there are many reasons for myth, and not all of them are sinister or commercial, they are also stories that stimulate the imagination and are genuinely entertaining and relevant. But, I'm a skeptic, and all that really means is that I always look for the other side, and feel the need to question assumptions and beliefs. Like I said in the last group of questions, making paintings of images of piles of garbaged computers and televisions, with flickering images of consumer culture on the screens, gave me a symbol through which I could begin to question the mythologies surrounding technology and consumer culture in general.
- can you tell us a little about your previous bodies of work post training?
eg. outline some of your more successful exhibitions (in your eyes), ones that shaped your progression to the themes which you are currently pursuing
(perhaps A Nightmare on Grand St) to focus more on shelter, continental drift, entrance, drift and the throne...
I've been working on the current body of work for the last four years. Just before I started my current work, I had a show in Brooklyn in the Spring of 2004 that I called Glitch. The work from that show was the culmination of the ideas I had been pursuing for the previous few years starting in graduate school. I had felt a shift coming for awhile. My frustration about world events and the culture I live in was too great to ignore. I felt that my work was too passive in it's cultural criticism, mainly because I was probably the only person who knew that my paintings were critical. They were very idiosyncratic, abstract paintings. I was painting with a set of symbols/motifs that only I was really able to understand. There wasn't any representational symbolism in those paintings except for the fact that they were vaguely landscape oriented. The paintings consisted of these landscapes, populated by undulating, grid based patterning, which was loaded symbol for me. My anxiety about not really being able to communicate what I wanted to say was extreme. I started a series of drawings that began exploring what I would add to this closed system. The fact that they were closed systems was part of the point, so it was a struggle to find the kind of symbol that I could live with. First of all, I started making waterscapes, which had oil drums peeking above the surface amongst the undulating patterns. I felt that these could lead to something, so I continued along these lines. Already the paintings were touching on issues of ecology, and I was using them to talk about ideological conflict. In the course of doing internet image searches for "wastelands" and similar key words, I began to find images of huge piles of computers and televisions scattered in places around the world. This electronic scrap was exported by the U.S. and other technological nations under the auspices of a recycling project, but really it is just a cheap way of dealing with toxic waste. These piles became a powerful symbol for me because by using them I could comment on a culture of consumerism and waste, and through this lens also continue working with issues surrounding hi-tech culture and mythology.
For the Nightmare on Grand St. event in 2005, I collected 28 or 29 computer monitors and televisions off of the streets in my neighborhood in Brooklyn over the course of three months. They were all out on the street for the garbage pick-up, and all had about an 85-90% chance of ending up in China, or Africa, or anywhere else that would take them for recycling. China alone illegally imports somewhere around 18,000 shipping containers full of U.S. e-waste per year. Their government has made it illegal, but scrap merchants easily import it without problems. Also, the U.S. is the only technological country not to sign the Basil Treaty, which basically states that technological nations will deal with their own e-waste, and not export it to any other country. However, even in countries that have signed this treaty, individual companies within the country often find ways of exporting it.
I then opened all of these computers and televisions up, broke out their CRT tubes leaving only the glass on the front and invited friends and other artists paint and etch images onto the glass. Then I made some rudimentary furniture out of stuff left on the streets for garbage pickup, and piled these computers in a large pile on the sidewalk in front of the gallery I was working with on Grand St. in my neighborhood. All of the computers were lit from the inside by candles like jack'o lanterns. There are a few images of individual lanterns on the press release that you can see here: http://www.jonelliottonline.com/Jon_Elliott_newpage_53_Nightmare_Press_Release.htm I have repeated that project on a smaller scale for group shows in Atlanta and Los Angeles as well.
- which do you feel are your most groundbreaking, or successful works on your site? could you explain a bit about them.
"Plague of Excess" is probably the most ground breaking piece, in that it is the first large painting I made within the current body of work. It was started at the end of 2004, and extended deeply into 2005. It made me realize how powerful the subject matter could be, esp. when expressed on a large scale. It also set the tone for the painting "Run Off," which was made dirctly after, and many of the paintings to follow.
- what made you concerned with issues to do with technological ideology and mythology?
Because I think their examination reveals a tremendous amount about our cultural currents as a whole, how we view the rest of the world, and the environment we live in. Besides that, I have always been into science fiction that deals with technology, which is modern myth making.
- what has made you so intrigued by computers and tv's in the content of your work?
Among many reasons, because they are objects that are very powerful in our culture. I'm interested in them as symbols, and how the symbol changes when they are depicted as piles of garbage.
- what messages are you wishing to convey?
Complicated question, because I'm hoping to convey more then just messages with these paintings. What I try to do is to inform these paintings with enough subject matter that easy access, ready for print messages are difficult to pin down, and hopefully whatever I am learning or teaching myself will be conveyed. There are messages, but I don't want to pin them down because there are so many that mentioning a few of the more obvious ones would tend to depreciate the more subtle ones.
- what response or action are you hoping to achieve?
I hope people look at themselves and their own culture through a new lens.
- are you involved in any organisations, protests or groups?
I'm not really an activist, though I have attempted to become involved in certain groups. I've also attempted to start certain programs. For instance I attempted to start a "program" where people would buy and then donate important documentary dvds to local video stores, under the agreement that they are rented out for free. There are some things that I think people need to see, and maybe free rentals would help encourage their viewing. That didn't really get off the ground, but it's still an idea out there. It's one of those projects I would love to see someone else do. However, much like a good journalist, I think painting helps me maintain the appropriate removal from my subject matter to be able to see things more clearly, and make work that is skeptical and philosophical. I do get involved on some level though. I think the "Nightmare on Grand St." event is a good example of a project that had the feel of an activist project, but through the lens of an art action.
- where do you see your work developing from your current body.- are you working on anything at the moment?- what do you see future work concerning?
New developments include the transformation of the piles of garbage into structures that were obviously constructed by humans for some sort of shelter. There are many reasons for this current transformation, and I'm only beginning to understand them. It's a process of learning, I don't always immediately understand the reasons I make certain images, though I understand enough to know whether it's worthy of my time. That's the project I'm working on right now, and part that body of work will be on display in London during the Zoo Art Fair in Oct. I see my future work concerning a similar satellite of ideas as my current work, but I don't know. I never really know when the next major development is going to happen, I just trip over it in the course of moving through ideas.
---------addendum----------------
-Can you explain more about what you mean by technological mythology?
I have some concrete notions about what it means, and many fuzzy impressions. It is really a topic so vast that to fully explain what I mean by it, it would take writing you a book. This morning I did an internet search on "technological mythology" and one of the first hits was an article, very didactic and alarmist, in the extremist style of much media culture writing. It was written by someone named Jesse Hirsh, I wouldn't recommend reading it, it isn't well written. It is an example of one persons definition of technological mythology, and his attempt to expose the myths surrounding the internet. The title of the essay is "The Mythology of Technology: The Internet as Utopia." The internet is a powerful cultural force, and has been for a long time, but it is only one example of a mythologized technology. Here are a few quotes from the essay: (if you want, I can send you the link the the entire essay)
"The most dominant myth of our time is the Internet. The mythological meaning of the Internet: 'Utopia'. It has become the technological metaphor large enough to absorb all the hopes, dreams, and desires of a civilization. Millions have rushed on-line in search of a meaning, a harmonious narrative that describes change."
and another:
"The Internet by definition, does not exist. It is an abstraction that nobody has seen, smelled, or touched. It is a myth used to shift our belief systems and dramatically alter our behaviour. It transforms our linguistic framework by changing the context in which language interacts with mind. It is a redefinition of literacy as the linguistic system itself becomes simultaneously individual and collective."
and:
"Through the virtualization of our culture, the medium of mythology reconstructs reality to manufacture consent. Growth and development are guided and directed by the few at the expense of the many. The technological mythology is reality in the virtual world, and our consuming desires drive us to live virtually perfect. In the process we have negated our sovereignty and secured the Platonic chains around our neck as we stare at the shadows on the cave wall."
I wouldn't say that the internet is a myth, I would say that there is an abundance of powerful myths about the internet, and there have been for many years, predating the popular use of the internet. And the internet is really just one of many sources of contemporary mythology. Some pop culture stories involving technology have been told so many times, by different people, that in my opinion they have entered the realm of myth. In addition, there is a very religious element to technology, there are various cults and sects of people who embrace technology in a way that christians embrace their savior, for instance. A pop culture reference would be the Matrix trilogy, which updates the christian mythology with a new christ figure Neo, for example. An old, equally well known example is the movie Tron, which has many of the classic elements of technological myth, including the idea that human consciousness is a pattern that can be quantified and reanimated within a supercomputer, that even the body can be reduced to a binary code, etc. It is striking how similar some of these ideas are to ideas about 'the soul' in other mythologies, but "heaven" is replaced by a supercomputer. There are several other themes that Tron hits on, many of which were previously discussed in the book Neuromancer by William Gibson, one of the more famous "cyber punk" novelists. Neuromancer has been so influential to contemporary visions of virtual reality, internet, etc.,that in a way, it is a modern technological mythic story. It is so culturally influential in ways that even people who aren't online, or who don't like, or might even hate "science fiction" have been influenced by the ideas in that story. I don't recommend reading it, it's not very well written. But there are many real life examples of people who actually do really believe this stuff. It always amazes me what people believe in. Some technological mythologies get tangled with UFO cults, the examples are many. Almost all of the new religions embrace technology, from Scientology to the Heavens Gate, to the Raelians (sp?). However, I'm more interested in how the popular media portrays technology, commercials, movies, novels, electronic music, television shows, etc. I guess what I'm saying is I'm more interested in how visions of the power of technology interacts with consumer culture, and how these mythologies (either utopian or dystopian) fill deep psychological needs, and often abstract reality in ways that are not always socially positive, and in some cases are destructive, but are all seemingly geared in some veiled, and some obvious ways, to getting you to buy a new laptop. Well, there are many reasons for myth, and not all of them are sinister or commercial, they are also stories that stimulate the imagination and are genuinely entertaining and relevant. But, I'm a skeptic, and all that really means is that I always look for the other side, and feel the need to question assumptions and beliefs. Like I said in the last group of questions, making paintings of images of piles of garbaged computers and televisions, with flickering images of consumer culture on the screens, gave me a symbol through which I could begin to question the mythologies surrounding technology and consumer culture in general.
posted by Jon at 2:35 PM
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