March 31 – June 24, 2018
Warner Gallery
Reception: Friday, April 6, 2018
Katie Duffy and Eric Souther will participate in a gallery walk and talk, beginning at 6:30 p.m. in the Warner Gallery.
The South Bend Museum of Art is proud to present, Katie Duffy and Eric Souther: Agentive Valley, the third in the SBMA’s Conversations series of exhibitions.
Technology in many ways works as an extension of ourselves, allowing us to offload memories, breach geographic boundaries, and traverse our world and galaxy with growing speed. As technology becomes more complex, the space between the digital and the physical continues to shrink, and unseen algorithms, codes and computer-based systems become ever more omnipresent in our daily lives and rituals. Popular dystopian-focused media depicts how this integration could lead to abhorrent consequences. Regardless of the outcome, technology will continue to evolve and alter the way we see and exist in the world.
Artists Katie Duffy (Chicago, IL) and Eric Souther (Mishawaka, IN) explore the agencies of digital intelligence and their interaction with the materials they use. Through video, digital fabrication, performance and new media, they bring to light the patterns, rituals and broad possibilities that exist in the space between the digital and the physical… the Agentive Valley. In this arena, the artists navigate topographies of varying realities in order to uncover a connective locus of individual and artificial intelligence. From this point, the artists begin to erode normative notions of what it means to be human.
Katie Duffy creates carnal and colorful transmedia mashups that protrude outside of easy definition and circle cheekily around deep issues of humanity. Drawing from an expansive and obsessively created “library” of code snippets and cad/cam forms, Duffy creates pieces that fuse the aesthetics of digital devices with anatomical forms. They have had recent solo exhibitions at Arlington Art Center Arlington, VA, and solo projects at Satellite Art Fair, Miami, FL. Recent group exhibitions of Duffy’s work include Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA; School 33, Baltimore, MD; Space Camp, Baltimore, MD; and Hillyard Art Space, Washington, DC. Duffy is the founder of the Art + Code education initiative, Hack the Patriarchy, which was a 2016 Grit Fund Recipient. Duffy received their M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art (2014), and is currently an Assistant Professor of Art and Technology at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, IL.
Eric Souther is a video and new media artist whom draws from a multiplicity of disciplines, including anthropology, linguistics, religion and critical theory. These investigations coalesce into works where ritual, materials, and technological assemblages form emergent systems. His work has been featured nationally and internationally at venues such as the Museum of Art and Design, New York, NY; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; and the Museum of Art, zhangzhou, China. His work has been screened in The Athens Digital Arts Festival, Athens, Greece; Cronosfera Festival, Alessandria, Italy; the Galerija 12 New Media Hub, Belgrade, Serbia; and the Simultan Festival, Timisoara, Romania. In 2016, Souther won the Juried Award for Time-Based at the international art competition, ArtPrize. He received his M.F.A. in Electronic Integrated Arts from Alfred University (2011) and is currently an Associate Professor of New Media at Indiana University South Bend.
The Conversations series of exhibitions pairs a regional established artist with an established artist from outside of the South Bend community. It sparks discussion between the work of the two artists – examining parallels and dissonances, and provides an opportunity to exhibit some of the strongest artists working today, in the region and nation. Taking full advantage of the expansive Warner Gallery, Conversations also encourages artists to show larger, more ambitious work than might be possible in smaller gallery spaces.
Images:
(left) Katie Duffy, Hard C, Custom code, PLA, power strip, USB cable, LEDs, dimensions variable
(right) Eric Souther, still image from Search Engine Vision “ISIS”, single channel video, 2016, 6min 31sec, 1920 x 1080 HD
Accommodations generously provided by:
