Nostalgia for Neverwas

The intent of my work is to explore the mirages that we create for each other and the limits of virtuality. By virtuality, I mean things such as countries, ownership, advertising, news media, the Internet and various communications by proxy. By recontextualizing reality from the viewpoint of a virtual environment, it becomes possible to de-familiarize and destabilize the everyday illusions; the ones that have become so commonplace that they are no longer visible.

Nostalgia for Neverwas is a mixture of old and new technologies and styles. It is a joining and a recombinant hybrid of a fictionalized past and an idealized future. As we find ourselves immersed in turbulence and uncertainty, perhaps sleepless with anxiety, one may feel a pull toward a seemingly weightless past; a simpler time that moved at a pace slower and more comprehensible. As the wavy lines clear and the focus sharpens, it emerges that this past is so edited and revised, that if the same were to be applied to the present, there would be a longing only for this moment.

About Joseph Farbrook:
Joseph Farbrook grew up in New York City and Santa Fe, raised by his father, a concrete poet and his mother, a painter. Farbrook attended the University of Colorado focusing on performance and narrative, where he wrote electronic music, poetry and fiction. Becoming interested in a more immersive approach to narrative, he began using computers and the Internet as creative media. Subsequently discovered by the art department, he was offered a fellowship to pursue an MFA in digital art. Working in a visual arts environment, Farbrook began creating electronic installations, interactive video and virtual reality narratives. He also experimented with media-reflexive live performances mixed with interactive screen projections. Farbrook's latest work explores the intersections between video, video games and sculpture.

Farbrook exhibits both nationally and internationally. Recent venues include the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, La Fabrica Arte Contemporaneo in Guatemala, The International Center of Bethlehem in Palestine, as well as venues in Mexico, Chile, Korea and the USA. Farbrook is presently an Assistant Professor of interactive media and game development at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. For more information please see: http://farbrook.net.

It It and the Gimme Box

It It and the Gimme Box is a playful look at our relationship with consumer objects. As consumers, cut off from methods of production, we perceive these objects of consumption as both insignificant and dismissive while at the same time magical and mysterious. As we disregard the objects around us, we also become attached to the performative status they embody and form emotional relationships with their function. It It and the Gimme Box renders portraits of three objects, each a ubiquitous item from the contemporary urban lifestyle: a house key, ear-buds and a personal paper trail (receipts, bank statements and so on). Each object has their own extensive life story, from extraction to extrusion, from fabrication to sale, from use to disposal. Drawing from the aesthetics of product photography and the deep history of satire and cabaret, It It and the Gimme Box conflates our insatiable desire for things and our impulsive response to advertising gimmicks, with a deeper relationship and responsibility for the objects we consume.

Using video, sensors and interactive programming, the heart of It It and the Gimme Box is three original songs, performed as playful music videos within small booths or “portals” placed around the gallery. The videos are viewed in small clips presented in a non-linear order, determined by the gestures of the viewer. As the viewer performs a simple gesture (for example, extending their arms forward) a movement sensor will activate the video clips. To view the videos the viewer must maintain this gesture, which acts as a form of "currency” between the viewer and the work.

This piece has been produced with the support of Harvestworks Digital Media Center, which has provided MAX/MSP and audio engineers, The BRIC/Rotunda Fellowship and the New York State Council on the Arts.

About Maya Suess:
Maya Suess, born on a small island off the coast of western Canada, today lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her performative installations use music, playful aesthetics and wit to examine issues of identity, sexuality and personal responsibility. Employing viewer-performer proximity as a central strategy, Suess produces work that is completed by the audience's presence. She is a current fellow at the BRIC/Rotunda Gallery in Brooklyn and a recipient of a 2009 Independent Artist’s Grant from the New York State Council on the Arts. She has been a previous recipient of a Canada Council Exhibition Grant, an Alternate Resident at Harvestworks Digital Media Center and has exhibited at the Center for Architecture (New York), The Western Front (Vancouver), the Vancouver Art Gallery, The Greater Victoria Art Gallery, Kansai Queer Film Festival (Kansai, Japan), Live Biennial of Performance (Vancouver), The Festival of Original Theatre (Toronto), The London Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, among others. She holds a BFA in Media Arts from Emily Carr Institute and an MFA in Contemporary Performance from Simon Fraser University. For more information please see: http://mayasuess.blogspot.com.