For the past fifteen years, Lauren Lee McCarthy has worked in performance, video, installation, software, artificial intelligence, and other media to address how an algorithmically determined world impacts human relationships and social life. Lauren Lee McCarthy's current show at Mandeville Art Gallery, UC San Diego, La Jolla, is called “Bodily Autonomy”. The show brings together two major works — Surrogate and Saliva — to examine bio-surveillance. There's also a new site-specific video by Lauren Lee McCarthy and Casey Reas for the exterior screen of the Mandeville Art Gallery. Bodily Autonomy is McCarthy’s largest solo exhibition in the United States to date and runs until May 25, 2024. In this video, the Director and Chief Curator of the Mandeville Art Gallery, Ceci Moss, provides us with in introduction to the Mandeville Art Gallery and Lauren Lee McCarthy's exhibition.
Lauren Lee McCarthy: Bodily Autonomy. Solo exhibition at Mandeville Art Gallery, UC San Diego, La Jolla. Exhibition walkthrough and interview with Ceci Moss, Director and Chief Curator, Mandeville Art Gallery and Professor of Practice in Visual Arts at UC San Diego. La Jolla, March 7, 2024.
PS: Special thanks to Gallery Guide Stephania Torres-Londono for performing at the Saliva Bar.
Lauren Lee McCarthy: Bodily Autonomy. Solo exhibition at Mandeville Art Gallery, UC San Diego, La Jolla. Exhibition walkthrough and interview with Ceci Moss, Director and Chief Curator, Mandeville Art Gallery and Professor of Practice in Visual Arts at UC San Diego. La Jolla, March 7, 2024.
PS: Special thanks to Gallery Guide Stephania Torres-Londono for performing at the Saliva Bar.
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CreativityTranscript
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00:43 Hi, my name is Cece Moss.
00:45 I'm the Director and Chief Curator
00:47 of the Mandeville Art Gallery,
00:49 and I also hold a dual appointment
00:51 as Professor of Practice in the Department of Visual Arts
00:53 here at UC San Diego.
00:55 The Mandeville Art Gallery
00:57 is
00:59 a non-collecting institute
01:01 for contemporary art here at
01:03 UC San Diego.
01:05 It was established in 1966,
01:07 and
01:09 it was
01:11 established alongside with the
01:13 creation of the Department of Visual Arts
01:15 here.
01:17 It's always had a very
01:19 experimental program
01:21 with a focus on Southern California
01:23 artists, with a focus
01:25 on performance
01:27 and installation and
01:29 new art forms,
01:31 and has always been
01:33 a space for experimentation
01:35 here at UC San Diego.
01:37 And
01:39 yeah, I started this position
01:41 about a year ago.
01:43 The gallery just went through a major
01:45 renovation to the building.
01:47 So
01:49 the
01:51 gallery
01:53 moved to this space in
01:55 1975, and
01:57 then underwent a major renovation
01:59 which includes
02:01 a new HVAC system, new flooring,
02:03 new lighting, new kind of everything.
02:05 It's pretty much a new building.
02:07 And also part of that too is
02:09 the entire building is wrapped
02:11 in a surround LED
02:13 wall that encases the whole
02:15 entire exterior. And the whole
02:17 renovations were designed by Studio
02:19 E Architects, who are a firm
02:21 based here in San Diego.
02:23 And the gallery won a
02:25 Orchid Award, which is one of the
02:27 main architectural awards in the
02:29 Southern California region for the
02:31 renovation. I've been working as a
02:33 curator for the last 20 years. I
02:35 started at the New Museum in New York.
02:37 I also worked at RYZONE for many
02:39 years. And then I worked as
02:41 a curator at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
02:43 in San Francisco. And then I
02:45 started an alternative space
02:47 in Los Angeles called GAS.
02:49 Which also we did a wonderful video
02:51 on Vernissage TV for that.
02:53 It's one of the best
02:55 piece of documentation of that
02:57 project. And then I came
02:59 down here for
03:01 this position. I've also been teaching for a long
03:03 time too. So I've
03:05 taught at SFAI and
03:07 CCA and NYU
03:09 and Scripps and USC.
03:11 So I also
03:13 taught for many years. And
03:15 I did my PhD at NYU
03:17 in comparative literature.
03:19 And I published a book
03:21 called Expanded Internet Art.
03:23 So a lot of my
03:25 academic work is looking at
03:27 art and the internet.
03:29 But then my curatorial
03:31 practice also involves a lot of those
03:33 topics. But
03:35 I'm also interested in social practice
03:37 and social engagement and
03:39 performance and video
03:41 and a lot of different formats.
03:43 And the great thing about this role and
03:45 the great thing about this institution is I'm able to
03:47 lean into all of those strengths.
03:49 And those focus
03:51 areas are very much also a part of the
03:53 decades of programming
03:55 that have occurred here at this
03:57 institution.
03:59 [Background conversation]
04:13 Right now, around
04:15 me, you see a solo
04:17 exhibition by Lauren Lee
04:19 McCarthy. It's titled
04:21 Bodily Autonomy.
04:23 Lauren Lee McCarthy is a
04:25 professor at UCLA in the
04:27 Design Media Arts program.
04:29 And this is her largest
04:31 solo exhibition to date.
04:33 So it's just been a real joy
04:35 to open such a
04:37 ambitious project
04:39 by one of the most important
04:41 artists working in the field of art
04:43 and technology in the United States
04:45 and internationally really.
04:47 And the show includes two
04:49 major bodies of work,
04:51 surrogate and saliva.
04:53 And both of
04:55 these works were supported
04:57 by Creative Capital and this show marks the
04:59 premiere of these works
05:01 after Lauren's been working on them for
05:03 many, many years.
05:05 Both with support from Creative Capital
05:07 but also through residencies at
05:09 Pioneer Works and a number of other
05:11 different institutions.
05:13 So it's a major project
05:15 for Lauren. Both of these
05:17 works are examining bio-surveillance
05:19 through related but
05:21 separate vantage points.
05:23 For surrogate,
05:25 Lauren proposes to be a
05:27 remote-controlled surrogate
05:29 to couples who are interested
05:31 in having Lauren carry
05:33 their child. And this
05:35 thought experiment fails
05:37 and Lauren isn't able to actually
05:39 realize it. But that
05:41 the project is sort of Lauren
05:43 talking to family members
05:45 about this concept.
05:47 Lauren talking to prospective parents.
05:49 Lauren also going through a
05:51 psychological evaluation
05:53 in order to be able to
05:55 go through with the surrogacy.
05:57 Like a lot of Lauren's work,
05:59 Lauren has also created
06:01 custom software as part
06:03 of the performance
06:05 and installation and video.
06:07 So there's on the
06:09 wall here, you see
06:11 the software that Lauren
06:13 created for prospective parents so they can
06:15 track her meals,
06:17 her calendar, what she's doing.
06:19 So clearly,
06:21 this is a project that's thinking about
06:23 reproductive technology and the future
06:25 reproductive technology
06:27 and reproductive rights.
06:29 It's also thinking about
06:31 new forms of family structures
06:33 and family systems. And then
06:35 also thinking about the future genetic engineering
06:37 and how that will impact
06:39 the legal parameters,
06:41 the familial norms
06:43 and all of these things as
06:45 we move into the future.
06:47 So the other body of work is
06:49 called Saliva.
06:51 This is a newer body of work.
06:53 And here, again,
06:55 Lauren is thinking about bio surveillance
06:57 and the
06:59 future of bio surveillance.
07:01 For the project,
07:03 Lauren has created a
07:05 saliva bar, which you see behind me.
07:07 And this is simply an invitation
07:09 for the public to exchange their
07:11 DNA with one another using
07:13 saliva. And the
07:15 point of this is to have
07:17 us reflect on how our DNA
07:19 is captured by
07:21 corporate entities. Obviously,
07:23 with the recent pandemic,
07:25 we were giving away
07:27 swabs of our DNA
07:29 to government
07:31 entities. So thinking about
07:33 the circulation of our DNA
07:35 information, who's capturing that
07:37 information, and what the future
07:39 of that will mean.
07:41 One of the big themes in the show is
07:43 data privacy, right?
07:45 And so one thing
07:47 the show is asking us to imagine is, like,
07:49 think about the lack of data privacy
07:51 we have in this current moment.
07:53 And let's imagine 10 or 20 years where our
07:55 DNA information is also
07:57 part of our larger data profile.
07:59 And what will
08:01 that open? What are the politics of that?
08:03 What are the ethics of that? All of these
08:05 really important questions.
08:07 So in order for the public to
08:09 think about this and have that occasion
08:11 to consider these things,
08:13 Lauren has invited
08:15 people to come and
08:17 donate their
08:19 saliva or their DNA
08:21 to this installation.
08:23 And in exchange, they take
08:25 someone else's saliva.
08:27 And the script for
08:29 these exchanges,
08:31 which you actually see one going on right behind me
08:33 right now, is
08:35 organized by software
08:37 that Lauren created with
08:39 Boas Sender,
08:41 where there's a script in the software
08:43 and
08:45 the audience is
08:47 invited to supply their
08:49 identifying information,
08:51 things like their race,
08:53 their favorite food, their star sign,
08:55 and then they can select
08:57 an anonymous donor, so it's all
08:59 anonymous, through the
09:01 information that they provide. So it's also thinking
09:03 about how we see each other through
09:05 kind of our data
09:07 and through our sort of basic
09:09 descriptive information. One of the
09:11 great things about the software, too, is it
09:13 allows participants to stop at any time.
09:15 So if they don't feel comfortable
09:17 with the exchange or if they aren't
09:19 comfortable with the terms of engagement, they can just
09:21 stop. So consent is a big thing
09:23 that's built into the
09:25 structure of the software.
09:27 And then also,
09:29 people can create their own terms.
09:31 And so some of the terms have been really
09:33 playful, like, "If you take my saliva,
09:35 you must take it on a hike today."
09:37 "If you take my saliva,
09:39 you have to wear it as jewelry."
09:41 So people
09:43 have been really kind of leaned into that
09:45 part of the script and made it their own.
09:47 And then
09:49 once you take someone's saliva from the
09:51 installation, you also get a receipt
09:53 that has those terms printed
09:55 out, and it's
09:57 put in a nice bag.
09:59 And then all of the exchanges are
10:01 facilitated
10:03 by UC San Diego students.
10:05 So Lauren actually ran
10:07 a training and a workshop here
10:09 directly with UC San Diego students.
10:11 So it allows them to connect
10:13 directly with an artist and participate in the
10:15 installation and facilitate these exchanges.
10:17 [Audience chatter]
10:33 I should also mention that we
10:35 commissioned site-specific
10:37 work for the exterior screen,
10:39 and that's produced by
10:41 Lauren Lee McCarthy and Casey Rees,
10:43 who's also a professor
10:45 at UCLA in the Design Media Arts Program.
10:47 And in that video, Lauren is
10:49 typing with her tongue, and she asks
10:51 the question over and over again, "Are you the perfect
10:53 specimen?" So much of the, like,
10:55 what does it mean to be
10:57 a specimen? Who is determining
10:59 what a specimen is? What is perfection?
11:01 I mean, these are a lot of the questions that are
11:03 present in the show, but they're looping
11:05 also outside in the exterior screen.
11:07 [Audience chatter]
11:31 [Audience chatter]
11:39 [Audience chatter]
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