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BIBILOGRAPHY

Artist Interview: Mary Mattingly
February 17, 2010

For a visual artist, Mary Mattingly has spent an inordinately large amount of the last decade in the company of engineers. Her two latest projects, The Wearable Home and Waterpod, have been experiments in survival in a rapidly approaching dystopian future and they have gained Mattingly widespread praise for her ambitious employment of sculpture, living systems, and sheer resourcefulness.

Originally a child of Northern Connecticut, Mattingly has pursued a visual arts career that has taken her as far afield as the Parsons School of Design, NYU, Yale, Paris, and her current home of New York City. Among her varied accomplishments are included a post-apocalyptic opera, a series of inventive and functional Wearable Homes, and—most recently and perhaps most notably—the Waterpod Project.

A collaboration between Mattingly and a series of environmentalists, sculptors, marine engineers, and designers, the Waterpod was a self-sustaining experimental home, contained on the space of a floating barge. Meant to supply food, electricity, and shelter for up to four people, the Waterpod launched in June of 2009 from a peer in the Bronx and made a well-publicized, three-month voyage up through Queens, serving as a hub for community-building and environmental awareness along the way. It is an outstanding example of the environmental consciousness and boundary-pushing creativity that have so far defined Mattingly’s career and continue to do so as her international reputation expands.

Mattingly recently took time from her schedule to chat with me via email about the Waterpod Project, life in New York City, and the legal challenges of blending the line between one’s art and one’s living space.

Shane Danaher: I was surprised to learn that you actually went to Pacific Northwest College of Art for a while. I was curious about “Portland of the past” as I only moved here a couple years ago. By this point we’re kind of patting ourselves on the back for having a large “creative class,” I was just curious if this was the case at all when you were living here or if it’s a more recent development?
Mary Mattingly: I moved to Portland to attend PNCA from Boston, where I was living from 1997—1999 (after high school) because I had heard of the art and indie community there, and read about the community-based political activity there. I imagined it as a movement. Of course there is a very established history of Portland and modernism in the ‘60s. I was aware of some of this before moving there, and found the art scene to be very different from Boston, more grassroots and refreshing. When I moved there, First Thursdays were a big event, and it felt like there was a lot going on. People were engaged. There was a small crowd of engaged artists in Boston but people were a lot more isolated from one another at the time.

SD: With Waterpod, Wearable Home and several of your other projects it seems as if you’re blurring the line between “art” and “experimental engineering.” I was curious about your opinion on what constitutes an “artist” at this point in history and what role artists should be playing in our world.
MM: I think that the in-between spaces are one of the most interesting areas of art today, and they are clear ways for art to intervene in society. While I’m interested in the history of art, I am not interested in repeating history. I know that I am full of contradictions but I like using spaces that are not prepared for art to instigate, and spaces that are prepared for art to tell stories about evolution and ideas.

SD: Your art is obviously very much intertwined with activism, is this something you see as a personal choice or is it something you think should be a goal of artists in general? In your opinion, is there such a thing as art without a political subtext?
MM: The act of making art is infused with political subtext, and activism. Art is an agitation to the status-quo space and artists are agitators. Art is a freedom and opportunity to improve sociopolitical shortages in a society. It’s hard to ignore the world surrounding us. As a human, if we are political then as an artist we should be political. I believe that a person’s life and art should reflect one another.

SD: In your Wearable Home series you’ve mentioned how one of your goals with the project was to create a “general look de-emphasizing self and re-emphasizing everything else.” Seeing as art is for so many people a work a self-actualization, how do you balance this view of the artist as an individual achiever with the stated goal of the artist being the exact opposite of that?
MM: I am interested in community. The Wearable Home is designed looking at uniforms around the world. It is designed to depict a dystopic future, but one that humans are swiftly approaching, and there is a safety in being part of a group, being identical to a friend and an enemy. Theories behind uniforms usually have to do with striving for a deeper consciousness. The idea is that people would spend less time focusing on appearance and more time focusing on questions about life and the worlds around us, or with the Wearable Home, more time focusing on survival and play.

But to respond to these ideas as being the antithesis of artists today, I think that there is a general understanding that artists are committed to a life of study and reexamination that is less based on personal appearance than most of society. But it is true, people in our culture in general spend a lot of time and energy attempting to be different, and our culture encourages that, largely to sell more products. There can be an infinite amount of things to sell if individuals are exponentially in process of differentiating themselves from one another and expressing uniqueness through products instead of ideas.

SD: It seems that from most angles Waterpod was regarded as a success. Could you talk a little bit about what surprised you most about the project and any areas that you would have changed in retrospect? I know there were some more Waterpod concepts floating around, are you planning any other iterations of the project?
MM: The planning process for the Waterpod felt endless and demanded my total attention for a solid year before we launched. With a new request and demand daily from one agency or another, the only way to adapt to the situation was just to focus on completing one small step at a time.

Knowing that there was so much to do before it could be realized, I could not really take time or a step back from my position as organizer to consider what the reality would be like if it was achieved, because that reality was always so far away. So when we moved on to the Waterpod this past June, I didn’t really have any preconceptions about what it would be like. I had hopes, and imagined many different scenarios, and none of them prepared me for the incredible kindness, engagement of many communities, and the welcoming aspects of the project. Nothing prepared me for life under a microscope either. In a way I hadn’t really imagined, the Waterpod was an endurance project and a performance, but coupled with a place for scientific data collection for appropriate technologies. At times I imagined that it felt like the Biosphere II must have felt, but really it was so different from that. It was truly a living sculpture, influenced by every person that set foot on board. Being in New York, each neighborhood is extremely different, and the Waterpod was docked in a different neighborhood every two weeks. Because people move here from all over the world, the interactions that took place on the Waterpod were very rich and instigated a lot of unexpected meetings and collaborations. People left inspired, and I think empowered.

SD: You mentioned some of the problems you had with the red tape surrounding Waterpod and I was curious about what the reactions of New York City officials were once they learned about the project. Do you feel like they took something away from the experience as well?
MM: I think so. None of the agencies we worked with knew exactly how to permit a project like the Waterpod, because it fell somewhere between public art on land (being attached to a pier at most times), an event space, and a boat. So we all learned about all of the nuances in permits and codes between different city departments. Some agencies were worried because they thought our budget was unrealistic, so I think that they were nicely surprised to see a project of that scale and requiring a lot of surrounding infrastructure, pulled off for a minimal amount of money, and I think that they really saw different communities pulling together to help the project succeed, from Miller’s Launch, the company that towed the Waterpod from pier to pier, to Blank Rome, our legal counsel, to the many talented people who volunteered their time and knowledge.

SD: It seems like you’re drawn to the idea of utopianism in an era where it feels like many people have simply given up on the concept. Do you think utopian ideas are still worth exploring and why?
MM: Utopia, like a boat, is a placeless place and a vestige of our imagination. I am interested in utopias as a concept, and accept that to attempt to create a utopic space is a romantic and nostalgic idea that stems from literature more than reality, because in reality a utopic space cannot be sustained due to human nature. The Waterpod was somewhere between real and imaginary and I imagined it as a constantly changing space, which is maybe the only way to sustain a utopic environment. Although these are intriguing concepts, I’m more interested in the reality of heterotopias, and am much more worried about the fate of humanity than about creating a utopia. I believe we can create some kind of personal-bubble utopias, and the artist-worker is an action that embeds a thread of necessary utopian points of view into society.

SD: If the past is any indication you simply must have more projects coming up. Could you give me a brief rundown of what you’re working on in the next year?
MM: I’ve been working on many things, including a book about the Waterpod Project, and a project with a working title Air Ship Air City, which is an elevated living systems lab. I’m also working on a body of photography that stems from the idea of being trapped in the same space.

SD: I’m curious about your idea of art as “using spaces that are not prepared for art to instigate.” You mentioned also that your upcoming photography project deal with the idea of place. Could you tell me what it is about the idea of location that attracts you?
MM: I’m interested in boundaries that we have as individuals or as communities, towns, and countries. I’m also interested in systems of control, from value systems to political systems. Distorting boundaries between places and combining different geographies has this affect of distorting our spatial memories and expands our ability to imagine why and how this could be. Places are also metaphors of states of being, and a place that is a collage or cut-up of a post-industrial society, while although it is altered as I create it, it is true to my own state of mind, and I imagine the state-of-mind of many other people living in this spatiotemporal reality.

SD: Speaking (again) of “place” I was curious about how you feel about operating in New York right now. Do you consider it your home and how do you think that location influences your work? There’s been a lot of talk about it being the “capitol of the twentieth century” and as someone who I imagine would have mixed feelings about the twentieth century, I was curious about how you felt.
MM: I moved to New York in August of 2001. It was a place I had wanted to live after graduating High School, but my parents were very worried about me moving there so I stayed in Northern Connecticut (where I grew up) and went to a community college in Manchester, CT before moving to Boston the next year. For a number of reasons, I had resigned myself to thinking my parents were right.

Before moving to Boston, I went to New York alone for a week, without telling anyone and with not much money. I walked around on the streets all night, or rode the subway, taking naps in Port Authority and places I thought were safe and for travelers. The trip was about coming to terms with a place I had romanticized since my first trips there, which I think is something that everyone who has a relationship with New York deals with, whether you grow up, immigrate, or find yourself there. To me, that trip was a romantic action, but it was also a trip to find out if I should believe that romance. I think that affirmed an obsession I have had with New York.

Then, moving to this city right before the September 11th attacks, this tragedy that everyone felt and dealt with on a very present and personal level, made me feel a bond with the people who live here that I had not felt anywhere else I have moved to.

I continue to feel like the rules for survival in New York are grey and challenging. I enjoy feeling the speed and motion of the city as well as solitude, facelessness, and at the same time the individual character in each expressive moment, and general leveling and mutual respect that I feel I witness now. It’s a city that cares a lot about history, art and culture. A city of immigrants with a very layered, rich depth allowing for unending exploration. Whenever I leave, I want to go back.

SD: There’s a lot of well-earned worry in your work about the future of humanity and I was curious about what, at this point, you see as a cause for hope.
MM: Growing up with parents who were children of the Great Depression, my family reused everything. I have a habit of saving things, and since I move around often, I am careful about acquiring things. Ten years ago, I saw the excess in people’s habits as a lot greater than I believe it is now, in the USA. I witness people’s resourcefulness more-and-more, and I see people in the city wanting to connect with nature. I see so many inspirational role models in people today at every age. I also see the increasing leveling of technology as a truly remarkable marker of this time and place in history. Technological advances can be made very quickly now that so many more people have the tools to discover and create. The acceleration rate of technology is both frightening and exciting.

Is this Brooklyn’s craziest crib?
BY STEPHEN BROWN
for The Brooklyn Paper
Enlarge this image

The Brooklyn Paper / Mike Short
Mary Mattingly’s new sustainable apartment unit, called “Flockhouse,” is slated to be built atop this Flatbush Avenue building.

Well, it’s certainly more inviting than an overpriced studio in Park Slope.

Mary Mattingly, the avant-garde eco-provocateur, has proposed what could be the most-bizarre abode in all of Brooklyn — a chicken-coop–styled unit that she wants to install atop the Metropolitan Exchange Building at 33 Flatbush Ave.

Mattingly, most famous for her Waterpod craft earlier this year, says her new “Air Ship Air City” has received the initial green light from the eclectic group of activists at the MEX building to construct the “sustainable living” and event space that will feature a chicken coop, a laboratory, and a sleeping area for an intrepid ecologist. Though the living space — also known as a “flock house” — looks more appropriate for fowl than humans, the amenities, like a hanging garden, free eggs, no utility bills and something Mattingly refers to as “human nest outdoor couches” are definitely a plus. Al Attara, the owner of the building, cautioned that he had yet to see the proposal and that he would have to make sure all building regulations were met before giving final approval to the project. “Air Ship Air City” follows in the footsteps of Mattingly’s Waterpod, a barge that looked like it came from a poorly received Kevin Costner movie. “This will be an evolution of Waterpod’s autonomous living system and event space,” Mattingly said, pointing out that many of the materials used in the barge would be recycled and put to use in the new structure. And like the Waterpod, the conceptual sketches of the house-on-the-roof conjure images of a “Waterworld”-like environmental disaster, where desperate Brooklynites gather whatever scraps and flora they can to survive. “I think it is interesting to associate this project with structures that are on stilts or are already elevated to relate to … sea level rise, but more than that, ‘Air Ship Air City’ can be an example of a housing add-on for the growing population of New York City,” Mattingly added. The MEX Building is an ideal location for such an out-there idea. Inside the seven-story building, Attara has brought together numerous like-minded entrepreneurs who dedicate their time to coming up with more environmentally friendly solutions to the world’s woes. Mattingly said in her proposal for “Air Ship Air City” that the space could eventually become entirely sustainable by harvesting kitchen compost from the building, harnessing energy from the sun and wind and even implementing a “system that turns waste into energy.” Currently on the roof of the MEX building is a prototype of a “Fab Tree Hab” — literally a tree house that could (theoretically!) provide a comfortable living space for a family. That concept was designed by Dr. Mitchell Joachim of Terreform One, another group of thinkers that envisions a future where a brownstone on Prospect Park West won’t be worth a damn. Mattingly cautioned that the “Air Ship Air City” project is only in the earliest stages and that many of its aspects will change. Still, bargain hunters beware, if all goes as planned the cheapest and strangest house in all of Brooklyn looks to be going up sometime in spring 2010 with occupancy in June.
©2009 COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER GROUP

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The Waterpod Project is one part art, one part home and one part "showcase of sustainable technology." According to the project's Web site, the pod came about after its developers "looked at our essential energy needs, survival and attainable comfort and translated that into a list of potential projects for the aspiring engineers.

Art
Mary Mattingly at Robert Mann Gallery

Mattingly's color photographs are sci-fi fantasies of future in which nomadic figures in tentlike robes or protective jumpsuits wander through a brave new depopulated world. In several pictures, these faceless figures (survivors? explorers? lone visionaries?) look out over untouched vistas - a snowy mountain range, a receding glacier, a choppy sea. But there's something elegiac about the landscapes, as if they're all that's left of an environment and a civilization that have been reduce to the contents of the towering cardboard boxes that some of the nomads (and a life-size sculpture in the gallery) trundle around on their bicycles. Where do we go from here? Mattingly proposes the Waterpod, and eco-habitat arriving soon at a Manhattan pier. Through May 23.

v -how the idea of Waterpod came to your head? was it connected to any personal experience? what was it?
I had been building Wearable Homes, meant for a future when more of the world’s population is mobile equally due to environmental reasons as political reasons. I would test these Wearable Homes in harsh climates to see how they would hold up. A lot of the work that I focused on was how to acquire (and in many cases purify) water, and the politics of water rights and the still early stages of water privatization. With how quickly humans are depleting land of natural resources that make it possible to survive on it, I began to picture areas of land that were free from harms way, like mobile islands. For me, the Waterpod became a way for a community space to be autonomous the way the Wearable Homes are, but very adaptable and made by a community. The Waterpod became a way to reconnect with nature, because the seas are a constant reminder, and examine the disconnect that most people in industrial or post industrial nations have with “where things come from”.
-what was the inspiration for the Waterpod shape? It began as a transparent sphere, with half under water and half above, two levels, and a garden structure around the outside perimeter. I attached a sketch of the first design. It evolved into an amorphous natural shape that mimics waves, still keeping the initial sphere as the greenhouse structure, and the nice thing about the layout is that it will be different each time depending on the platform size, and what materials are available locally.

Interview by City Magazine

Name:  Mary Mattingly    

Based in: NYC (Live: LIC, Studio: LES)

Type of art: Photography and Sculpture

CM: What has been the highlight of your career so far? MM: The highlight of my practice is the project I am currently working on called the Waterpod, because the process is very challenging and when it is done it will really transform my life, and my live-work spaces in an experimental way, and IÕm not sure what the outcome will be.  The triennial at the International Center of Photography, titled Ecotopia, was a big deal for me because the exhibitionÕs featured image was mine, and that attention has brought me many opportunities.  Currently, my work is part of the Prix Pictet, an international award recognizing sustainability in photography with a series of shows beginning with the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

Who has been the biggest artistic inspiration in your life? To limit this as much as possible: Fran�ois Truffaut, Constant Nieuwenhuys, Buckminster Fuller, and Samuel Beckett.

What are you currently working on now?  I am currently working on two bodies of work: ÒAnatomy of MelancholyÓ and ÒNomadographiesÓ. ÒAnatomy of MelancholyÓ is a study of both sculptural installations and actual spaces that provoke feelings of melancholy, based on the failure of an ideal or failing of a would-be utopia.  For instance, I documented the Biosphere II outside of Tucson, Arizona, a Titan Missile Silo, and Theodore KaczynskiÕs cabin.  ÒNomadographiesÓ includes photography, sculpture, and video and tracks a lone pilgrim in a hybrid bicycle.  I am also creating a living structure called the Waterpod that will be completed in 2009.  To do this, I am collaborating with an artistic and scientific team to make it an autonomous space created from all recycled materials, where we will experiment living in this permanently mobile structure made for the rising tides. 

In Seven Firm Oligopoly and in The overaccumulation crisis, you show a pessimistic vision of the future of the earth. Do you really think it could happen to our planet ?
I grew up in a flood-prone area and would regularly worry about, clean up after, and protect against floods. During my youth, water was a controversial topic in the town, as pesticides such as DDT from the surrounding farms had polluted the well water, and buying city water was a new solution to the pesticides found in the water table. I really started researching issues surrounding water when its privatization started to become more prevalent. I was reading articles about riots in Cochabamba, Bolivia, because the city’s residents were not able to afford the price of the newly privatized water. That same year, the news described cataclysmic, devastating floods from the UK to Cambodia, and Madagascar to Mozambique. There was immense flood damage that year. Simultaneously, here in the United States, bottled water and jugs of water are an essential commodity in our society. Watching the position of water drift from being a natural resource to a commodity just literally scared me. It continues to scare me that, as an overall trend, people are depending on buying things, while forgetting how to make things, or, for instance, depending on a large levee and relying on an inadequate evacuation system. These are quick fixes for a global trend of not taking care of nature, and of no longer knowing how to.
I began working on wearable homes in 2001, largely as a result of the year 2000, during which I moved five times. I imagined that I was acting as a model for future nomads, as now we are beginning the culmination; to a point where everything is flexible, because it needs to be, because living is about survival, functional space is a luxury, products all want to be smaller, houses all want to be prefab, and waterfront property is on a market downturn. A wearable home should not only be equipped for the city nomad but for the future nomad who will need to travel through each of the prevailing climates of the near future: arctic, desert, and waterlogged tundra, illustrating different modes of survival.
For my recent work, I have been traveling to places that were and are in danger of drought, in need of water, or that have an excess of water due to melting glaciers or storms. I was able to experience hardships from lack of water and difficulties communities face from changing climates first hand, to study floodgates and rising tides, and at times I was fortunate enough to be able to help in relief efforts. With the inclusion of sculptures, the images that I make border fiction and reality. Depending on the particular image and the sentiment that I want to evoke in the viewer, I use 3D imaging programs and digital editing programs to create or alter initial photographs so that they may tell a story and suggest a feeling that borders between a warning and a reality I believe we are heading towards.Are you inspired by the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC about the future of climate ? Where do you find inspiration ?
In October of 2005, the United Nations University predicted 50 million environmental refugees by the year 2010, as the result of environmental crisis and slow-motion disasters due to the instability of infrastructures resulting in famine, drought, disease, sea-level rise. I try to figure out survival solutions daily, especially for the nomadic, whom I feel will become a population majority in time. I have learned a lot through studying Inuit cultures that have been surviving in extreme cold for centuries, and nomadic desert tribes like the Tuareg tribe in Africa. This also helps me learn more about human nature and fragility, needs, strengths, and our intuition. I have worked much of this information into the Wearable Homes. I am inspired by a lot of work by different organizations including the IPCC. I read blogs related to the environment and technology, I regularly read magazines like The Economist and Mother Jones, am inspired by attending conferences, listening to a variety of podcasts, and reading a variety of theory as well as fiction.
Do you know what scientists think about your art ? Did some of them come for exemple in New York, at Robert Mann Gallery, to see it ?
The scientists I have met are largely intrigued by what I am trying to do, which is partly to add imagination to ideas based in science. Some own installations or photographs I have made. I have made “inventions” that are do-it-yourself interpretations and solutions to problems like purifying dirty water, for instance, by reusing three plastic bottles to create your own easy-to-make water purification system. My urge to make useful, easy to use and easy to recreate inventions comes from the need I feel to relearn people on how to live with nature, because we will need to. Some of what I try to express in my photos is the danger that comes with forgetting how to make things. We become dependent on having the option to buy everything, and that gives the sellers so much power over us. The Waterpod project is allowing me the chance to work closely with more scientists and inventors.
What about the Waterpod, is it currently floating around Manhattan ?
The Waterpod will launch May 2009. Initially, I had planned to launch it this year, but the city of New York promised more support if I were to wait a year to do the project. This alongside the fact that in December and January I went to the hospital for two separate operations due to appendicitis. The additional year to work on the project has allowed me to expand it a great deal, I am now working with three other artists and a growing team of volunteer scientists and “green builders”. We now have more time and are gathering more support to do a wider experimentation with materials and the portability of the overall design.
What is the message you want to send to people ?
I want to raise questions about the role of the individual in a society and on our earth. I want people to question their proscribed societal roles, and be independent from markets and other systems of control. I want to motivate people to feel that they have the ability to change things, make things, to create and recreate reality.
What do you think about the behaviour of US government about climatic problems ?
The United States was, as of 2005, the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. The US government is largely ignorant and extremely slow in dealing with climatic problems, and it is apparent that this is because of the interest in big business. The fact that the government will not ratify the Kyoto Protocol until there is participation by developing nations is extremely immature and irresponsible. On the other hand, there is a very large grassroots movement (and not-so-grassroots movement) in individual states, towns, cities, in Silicon Valley, within organizations, and on individual levels.

Neuberger Museum Interview 04/2008

1. In what ways does your work reflect a concern with environmental changes?

My work focuses on many environmental elements including water – from rising sea levels to privatization to water purification, to the effects on land and people in a situation lacking water, desertification of land, flooding of land, and mobilization of people.  Aside from being the only non-replaceable element on earth, water expresses change, movement, and relates to transmigration. 
When I create sculptures, the majority of the elements used are found objects.  I create machines and structures that are cobbled-together to represent new ways of living, surviving, and existing. 
I am concerned with the survival of people in a changing environment and at a time of cultural and economic change that is fueled by globalization as well as our changing ecologies.   How will these changes affect us? How will we prepare?  What will we do, will we create? Wander? Search?

2.  From what sources do you gather information pertinent to your art?

My information-gathering process begins with my immediate, daily surroundings.  Whether I am residing in a city or countryside, I am affected by everything around me.  My daily practice consists of reading newspapers (NY Times, Financial Times usually), magazines (Economist, Wired, National Geographic lately), blogs (Worldchanging.org among a dozen others).  I often look at data visualizations of information and occasionally watch movies, usually read nonfiction, right now I am reading “Nomadology: The War Machine” by Deleuze and Guattari, as well as Whitehead’s “Adventures of Ideas”.

3.  If you feel artists have a sense of social responsibility, how does your work reflect this? 

I do feel that as humans, it is our job to have a level of compassion for the world and others, and that encompasses a sense of social responsibility.  Personally, I feel a deep concern with my realization that humans are headed for multiple disasters because of the way that we exploit the earth and each other.  I feel paralyzed if I feel that I am not doing anything, even the smallest amount, about this.

4.  How does the prevailing point of view in your work connect to the way you choose to live?

One of my current projects is the Waterpod.  The Waterpod is a floating sculptural Living Structure designed as a new eco-habitat for the global warming epoch. It will launch in New York in May, 2009, from the Newtown Creek between Brooklyn and Queens, navigate down the East River, explore the waters of New York Harbor, and stop at each of the five boroughs. As a completely sustainable, navigable living space, the Waterpod showcases the critical importance of the environment and serves as a model for new living technologies. The Waterpod is an extension of body, of home, and of community, its only permanence being change, flow, and multiplicity. With this project, I hope to encourage innovation as we visualize the future fifty to one hundred years from now.

5.  Artists have the ability to grasp momentous changes, so how can the arts have an influence over public consciousness?

The Arts can have an influence over public consciousness by illuminating what is important and presenting it in profound, indelible ways.  We can describe, depict, inform, and inspire, depending on how our work speaks to others.

6. How can art institutions – such as museums – make a crucial difference to the future?

Museums and art institutions can make a crucial difference to the future by elevating art and maintaining its position as ennobler, inspirer, and instigator.

7.  If you feel environmental activism is a movement that will define a generation, or help define the beginning o the millennium, what would you say is key?

I would say that repetition is key.  As society reaches a tipping-point (I think this will be a large-scale disaster of some sort) if there is enough information reverberating in the sound waves, and in the general airs of conversations, the two will be associated, and this can create change.  It’s like thinking about “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” as a tipping-point for a large percentage of the American population to realize that slavery of humans needed to stop.  We don’t know what the tipping point will be, but the information and the facts need to be told repeatedly to a public who doesn’t want to understand, and in this case, to big business, who doesn’t want the public to understand.

8.  In what way is your choice of medium influenced by the statement you want to make?

I like to work with photography and video because of what great tools they are for storytelling, especially the latter.  Photography is still associated with repeating what is physically there, and when we see a photograph, we want to believe it is real.  The Waterpod, to me, is creating the future for the present day, it is literally extracting some of my photographic elements (Seven-Firm Oligopoly, for example) from their place and time, and expelling them into the present, physical world.

9.  How is your career fed/dueled by politics?

The money that helps make political decisions interests me more than the politicians who enact and implement them.  I don’t follow politics as closely as I follow industry and market forces. 

Gundel-Maria Busse, Schon Und Schrecklich, “Main Echo”, December 2007

Von Sylvia Staude, Holt Uns Endlich Ab, “Frankfurter Rundschau”, November 2007

RECENT INTERVIEWS

Interview with Cynthia Roznoy from the Mattatuck Museum 5/07:

Photography is your primary medium. Has this always been the case? Kindly describe any art school/art world influence that affected this choice of medium. Where does video fit in?
I studied photography and new media in many different schools, partly influenced by my father who works in a variety of digital forms, and partly because these were somewhat more practical and less esoteric fields than, for example, painting felt to me at the time. I grew up in a very rural community with overriding practical values and not much exposure to any present day art world. I spent a lot of time with writing, had business plans for a fashion line, and every type of photography portfolio. It really wasn't until I started combining all of my interests and studies did I realize that in fact this is what art is. It wasn’t until then that I really started to pursue and codify an art life.
In my artwork I will use any medium to realize an idea, however, I usually finalize a piece through photography, video, or sculpture because these mediums, to me, allow for a direct translation of reality or of a created real-space and because they either represent the world around us or sit in the world around us, they carry a truth. Photography and video have an inherent honesty – we continue to want to believe what looks believable. Manipulating “reality” within these mediums to create futuristic scenes allows for the ability to provide latent meaning. Indelible, purposeful and fantastic.

Who have you studied with? at Yale/Norfolk?
At Yale/Norfolk I studied under David Hilliard, Sam Messer, Valerie Hammond, and Jake Berthot. Some other influential teachers have been Dorothy Imagire from Connecticut, Carole Liucci from Connecticut, Dianne Kornberg from Oregon, Cynthia Pachikara from Michigan, and Penelope Umbrico from New York.

Your work provides a vision of the future. Has this always been an abiding interest? If not, what other subjects interested you and what instigated the shift to futuristic subject matter?
My work has always been an interleaving of the past, present and future, understanding that the future is imminent and immanent. I have always practiced some form of future scenario-planning, and have always been environmentally and politically concerned in my life and art. Out of everything that interests me, some things tend to frighten me, and the things that frighten me tend to eat away at me. It is those things I usually end up making work about. It’s obscenely frightening to see an aerial view of the sprawling Las Vegas suburbs, to think of the sustainable desert nature that was once there, and to see how nondescript and bland our created space there is. In turn it is amazing to think about what humans can do technologically. This one image spawns many creative thoughts and questions for me: Why are so many people attracted to these communities? Is it through political views? Mass Media? Fashion? A unified language? Economics? All of these things? What will be the result of many of these spaces? As for fashion and photography, two of my early and remaining interests, what will be the result of a constant deluge of image? The result of a blandification and ubiquitousness of the product? Of an illusionistic creation of a self, a personality, through these products, whether they be clothes, cultural stamps, or other decorations?

I read that Ray Kurzweil's work is a consideration for you. Please describe how you know his work and the ways in which your art might further, reflect, his thinking or how it shares with your philosophy.
Marshall McLuhan said, “When an environment is new, we perceive the old one for the first time.” McLuhan also wrote at great length about Continuity in Discontinuity, or chiasmus: the reversal-of-process caused by increasing its speed, scope or size. Kurzweil states that, with the exponential acceleration of development in technology and so-called progress, the human condition will reach a point when we can no longer process our environment from our present perspective as the accelerating speed of growth outpaces our faculties. However, Bertrand Russell made an excellent point, saying that if the bath water got only half a degree warmer every hour, we would never know when to scream. Perhaps it is only with the acceleration of change that we can notice and react to it. Finally, Vernor Vinge defines the Singularity as the postulated point or short period in our future when our self-guided evolutionary development accelerates enormously. The Singularity, though, has been a condition felt by humans that perhaps began before Gutenberg, with alphabets, cave paintings, with artistic expressions that removed us from ourselves, and with the Greeks who abstracted and objectified nature by creating their own cosmos. With these advances, humans need and accept history as myth and an “electric merger of past present and future become today”. In 1962, the philosopher William Barrett used an image of Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture to illustrate his book, Irrational Man. Irrational Man is a story told (by Kierkegaard) of the absent-minded man so abstracted from his own life that he hardly knows he exists until, one fine morning, he wakes up to find himself dead. When the condition of existentialism was defined (maybe with Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in the first half of the 19th century, described by philosopher Edmund Husserl and his student Heidegger, but perhaps we finally had a poster-boy with Jean-Paul Sartre), we understood Ivan Turgenev’s nihilism, which Heidegger defines well as "there is nothing left of Being as such," and we understood existentialism as the consciousness of death, the purposlessness of life, the individual construction of identity to fill the void of meaninglessness. Giacometti was a friend of existential and surrealist writers like Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Eluard and André Breton. The discussion of human civilization evolved from a human-death dilemma to human-machine civilization. Kurzweil is predicting singularity as a future happening, but as far as I can tell, it is already here and will continue to grow. The singularity has been depicted by artists from Giacometti to Bellmer, to Friedrich, Goya, Godard, to some interpretations of Ad Reinhard’s black paintings, to name just a few. Technology aids in abstracting us from our face-to-face community, and can be a surrogate for real people. When people are imbedded with different forms of technology, from the wireless to the plastic to the drug, and when we procreate solely outside of the body, we just continue the abstraction from nature and person that began before the Greeks invented the cosmos.
Ray Kurzweil’s notion of the singularity has always interested me. Other definitions of singularity include:
Mathematical Singularity - a point where a mathematical function goes to infinity or is in certain other ways ill-behaved.
Technological Singularity - a theoretical point in the development of a scientific civilization at which technological progress accelerates into infinity or beyond prediction. This is believed to occur when artificial intelligence or intelligence amplification reaches a certain level.
Singularity - (operating system) - an operating system research project by Microsoft.
Gravitational Singularity (physics) - an infinity occurring in an astrophysical model, involving infinite curvature (a mathematical singularity) in the space/time continuum, namely black holes, white holes and worm holes.
According to the standard big-bang theory, our universe sprang into existence as "singularity" around 13.7 billion years ago. Singularities are thought to be zones of infinite density that exist at the core of "black holes." The pressure is thought to be so intense that finite matter is actually squished into infinite density. Our universe is thought to have begun as an infinitesimally small, infinitely hot, and infinitely dense. (http://www.big-bang-theory.com/ and www.wikipedia.org)

Kindly describe your work process: please include choice of topic, setting of scene, and photographing technique (film, computer manipulation).
I begin with a specific or more general story I need to tell or feeling I want to evoke. I then build sculptures or collect images to create a physical or virtual space-composite – a new place. I do not have a set way of creating, but I will often begin with sketches, then create sculptures, then photograph and videotape them either on a seamless background or in a “natural” setting. I will create performances to take place within the setting to be documented. I digitize the film and the video and then work with them from there to hone, specify, and blend. I can think of no better exploration of my current process than to show you this photo of the walls and ceiling of my current workspace, which, since losing my studio in January during a large real estate deal, has been my apartment.

Are there influences from other photographers (historical? Contemporary?)
Certain images stand out to me. Jeff Wall’s “A Sudden Gust of Wind” and “After Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison”, Gregory Crewdson’s “Untitled 1999” depicting a man digging up his living room and “Untitled 2002” of a woman floating in her flooded home, the photography of Simen Johan, Thomas Demand, Hans Bellmer, and Mariko Mori. The art that I make is influenced by a number of things, ranging from painters like Caspar David Friedrich, Edvard Munch and Pieter Bruegel to contemporary artists like Paul Chan and Thomas Hirshhorn, designers like Bruce Mau, playwrights and directors like Peter Sellars, architects like Rem Koolhaas, corporate literature like Monsanta’s annual reports, blogs like Slashdot and worldchangding to writers like Jerry Meander, theorists like Jean Baudrillard, Katherine Hayles and Paul Virilio, futurists like Ray Kurzweil.

Is there a (an intentional?) narrative? Describe some themes.
The eminent loss of nature and communication, the proliferation of the man made and the machine made, the dependence of people on the machine, the constant balancing and measuring of humankind’s potential for creation and destruction. The automation of society and resulted loss of survival skills, the reuse of archaic technologies, the indifference of people and the acceptance of the calm after destruction.

How do describe your personal (is it the same or does it differ from your artistic) view of the future? Does this affect how you live (?green)?
I try to live very humanely, in my interactions with others, with animals, and with nature. I am currently working on a project called Waterpod. It really describes how I live, and my goals.

Julie Fishkin at Sadie Magazine:

"It seems strange to position and categorize your work based on the fact hat you're a woman and under thirty-one. Do you think those criteria figure in your work?"

I looked at the show and its parameters as just one of many ways curatorial groups use a set of rules to survey the dynamics of a certain time and place. “31 Under 31 Women in Photography” is a very open-ended platform to base a show on, and not what my work is about, so I did read the show as more of a survey of contemporary work that would perhaps illuminate some trends or specific lineages between my generation and an other generations of photographers.

"Is there such a thing as a woman photographer, I mean, besides the obvious facts? Does this come with any sensibilities?"

I don’t think so. I think that given the history of feminism and where we are now in that dialogue, there is such a thing as, for example, a feminist dialogue within photography that deals with gender, but there is not a distinct look or sensibility of a photographer that is also a woman. That said, gender roles can almost always be read into an image of people, and at this point it is just embedded in our cultural mindset to read images on that level.

"How did you choose what work of yours to put into this show? Did the thematic parameters influence your choice?"

I picked eight works: a selection of my favorite pieces and some new work. I think that the curators picked an interesting piece for the show. To me, “The Hunt” is a complex picture. It depicts a woman hunting for fish with a net while a flock of birds fight amongst each other over their recent kill. She represents a return to the primal hunter-gatherer but in a time when this typology cyclically returns as a way of life and survival. This picture also represents the mostly nonexistent relationship between people and the animal world, but the birds could easily be a substitute for humans.

"Did you know March is Women's History Month? Doing anything special?"

Yes, history in general is very important to me. Being a woman and closely understanding some of the struggles of women, Woman’s History Month has personal significance. I am currently working on a large collaborative project (actually with three other women) that will occupy most of this month for me, but I am reading a book by Hannah Arendt and may revisit Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party”.

"When did you first pick up your camera to start shooting? Is that the best way to observe your world, or the world?"

My father remembers teaching me on his Pentax K1000 when I was eight years old. We would go to a lake near the house I grew up in and shoot photographs of the water. I especially remember the foliage in the fall that surrounded the lake. Photography is an amazing way to see the world. Every moment can be isolated, saved, reviewed, written and rewritten, changed and created.

Fore Cast at White Box

Mary Mattingly Fore Cast: An Environmental Disaster Opera 2006 installation and performance [an image from the performance of December 19]

Because of the ambience (shadows, respectful movement and low buzz) of dozens of my fellow acolytes at the opening reception on Tuesday, "Fore Cast", Mary Mattingly's ambitious "Environmental Disaster Opera" currently in engagement at White Box seemed to me to play almost as much as a recreation of a narrow historic scene as a prediction of a much larger and horrible future world. It was my birthday. I was in a very good mood, so I found myself thinking of the legendary (and much-lamented) "happenings" of the 1960's Cold War era as I was contemplating the artist's somewhat less happy theatrical representation of a world engaged in the details of survival during World War IV.

An extended excerpt from the press release provides a little more context:
     Entering a water-filled and truncated landscape, viewers witness the land's predicted end-state, a reversion to its primeval condition and a topographical perspective of a sick new world. The marshy waterscape is the setting for the future of a civilization ensnared in an unceasing loop of WWIV, a war Albert Einstein foreshadowed as being fought with sticks and stones. With an unparalleled innate sense of intelligence, wit and craft, Mary Mattingly creates an installation explains the tragic outcomes of this hypothesized war in the not-so-distant future.

    Multiple video projectors arranged in a semi-circle fill the walls of White Box and present a "Fore Cast" that will loop for six days and one hour. (A new week, according to Mary Mattingly's proprietary uniform time scale, derived from ancient Assyrian and Babylonian astronomical methodology and translated to a system for future use.) The videos play continuously in White Box's waterlogged space. The main screen portrays WWIV, fought by six groups of combatants --- The belligerents' leaders plot together in a corporate conference rooms, ultimately degenerating into intercontinental world-scale conflict fought with the weapons of Cain and Abel, the war unfolding in disastrous environments everywhere.

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