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animate objects
David & Lizzie Zucker Saltz
January 9 - March 3, 2002
Main Gallery
An e-mail interview with David and Lizzie Zucker Saltz by Karen Rapp, December 2001
KR: I am intrigued by the fact that you incorporate a variety of media in your work and move across disciplines. Can you describe how your individual work has led to collaboration; do you work together as an artist and theorist, or do you reject these categories?
LZS: We would definitely reject the rigid categories of artist and theorist, as we have both written and practiced creatively, with David's writings obviously being the more philosophically rigorous, but his theatrical work is every bit as artistic as my gallery exhibitions! As a couple who got together pretty young, we evolved together intellectually and artistically, asking each other for feedback on both our artistic endeavors and our writing. It was only natural that we helped each other out, and in the process became intrigued with how the performativity implicit in many art installations shared elements with theatrical performance (which, of course, had been explored in the Happenings of the 60's, and before by Dada-ists). In 1994, we attended a summer workshop at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver on 'Computed Art'; it was a turning point for us in that the enormous possibilities of simple interactive electronics became apparent. There we produced our first version of FLIECO: The Fluid Identity Electronic Companion, a gender/age/race neutral life-sized dummy who would speak to you, reacting differently depending on where and how you squeezed its plush body.
KR: How is digital technology transforming theatre and the visual arts?
DZS: In some cases, digital technology is merely a tool that facilitates work in pre-existing media, for example, by enhancing photographs or adding special effects to films. There is nothing wrong with that, but I am most interested in the ways that digital technology is creating new art forms that blur the boundaries between formerly distinct disciplines like theatre, film, sculpture and music. Consider a simple example: a sculpture that produces different sounds as viewers move around it. This sculpture is clearly more than just an object for visual consumption. But what, exactly, is it? Is it a musical instrument? Or a type of musical composition? Do viewers become performers as they experiment with the different kinds of sounds the sculpture is capable of producing? If several viewers move around the sculpture simultaneously, each producing different sounds, and they begin to create a kind of musical dialogue with each other, is the interaction between these viewers part of the artwork itself, or something extraneous to the work? I do not think there are any clear answers to these questions, which is precisely why they interest me. This kind of work challenges the very categories the questions presuppose.
KR: Your work strikes a balance between technology and art -- as the technology recedes into the background, your sculptures come to life, and possess a distinctly "hand-made" quality. Why is it important to "de-emphasize the 'geek factor' of technologically-driven art"?
LZS: We have been impressed by the technological artworks of David Rokeby, Paul Garrin and Tony Oursler because they are so aggressively human and often funny. Because our pieces are never about the mechanisms driving the interactions, with the exception of Entrances and Exits, it did not make artistic sense to have the mechanisms visible. So, its not so much about de-emphasizing the "geek factor," as you put it, but emphasizing the human, emotional and dramatic aspects of the pieces, which is why the "hand-made" quality, an outgrowth of my solo work in clay and fabric, is in the forefront. 10021190 is an example of a piece in which the human hand, literally, covers visually and practically the modified computer mouse that activates the images, so that the subject matter can be the focus.
KR: How does your work negotiate the relationship between the body and technology?
DZS: The boundary I am most interested in probing and transgressing through digital technology is the one that divides live performance from recorded media. A lot of postmodern theory has tried to throw the very notion of presence into question. Walter Benjamin set the tone with his famous critique of the "aura" of unique art objects and his valorization of mechanical reproduction. More recent theorists, like Philip Auslander, bring Benjamin's critique into the televisual and digital age, while performers like Laurie Anderson use technology to virtualize or disembody the live performer. I am driven by the opposite impulse, closer in spirit to Donna Haraway's celebration of the cyborg. Rather than trying to transform real objects and live performers into disembodied representations, I am interested in using digital technology to create tangible, present objects, events and interactions in the real world.
KR: There is clearly a performative aspect to your work. Can you discuss how the pieces in the exhibition, The Breathing Crab and 10021190 move the audience from passive viewers to participants in the work itself, and the notion of the participatory versus the staged.
DZS: I regard The Breathing Crab and 10021190 as occasions for live performance, with the performer being the viewer/participant. The element of live performance distinguishes these works from a typical sculpture or painting as well as from video and film. The element of live performance brings these works closer to staged performances (theatre, dance or performance art). However, there is a huge difference here too: a staged performance, though "live," still restricts the audience to the role of observer. In participatory works, the viewers themselves become the performers. This puts a certain responsibility on the audience. If the audience does not play its part, the performance will not take place. The meaning of participatory artwork arises from the audience's experience of performing the piece. In a staged performance, the performer performs for an audience's benefit, but in participatory works the acts of performing and spectating are one and the same.
KR: I find Vent to be particularly disturbing given the recent rise in hate crimes since 9/11. How did you choose these specific "red neck" stereotypes?
LZS: We chose the three stereotypes (a white male, a Jewish female, an African-American male) after researching the evidence of hate crimes on the Web, wanting very much to make it clear that no one group is more 'privileged' as haters or hated than any other. We are both Jewish, so we are sensitive to such issues anyway; but the fact that my maternal grandparents, who lost many close relatives to Nazism, were also very prejudiced against African-Americans,was always disturbingly hypocritical. While the media may be making us more aware of hate crimes since 9/11, I have been receiving the Southern Poverty Law Center's newsletter for some time, which has been covering the persistence of deep pockets of virulent racism.
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Sweeney Art Gallery
Watkins House
3701 Canyon Crest Drive
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521-0113
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11 am to 4 pm
(New Area Code)
Phone: 951/827-3755
Fax: 951/827-3798
E-mail: krapp@pop.ucr.edu
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