Lauren Lee McCarthy: Bodily Autonomy / Mandeville Art Gallery, San Diego

VernissageTV

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.

Transcript

00:00 [chatter]

00:02 [chatter]

00:04 [chatter]

00:07 [chatter]

00:10 [chatter]

00:12 [chatter]

00:15 [chatter]

00:17 [chatter]

00:19 [chatter]

00:21 [chatter]

00:23 [chatter]

00:25 [chatter]

00:27 [chatter]

00:29 [chatter]

00:31 [chatter]

00:33 [chatter]

00:35 [chatter]

00:37 [chatter]

00:39 [chatter]

00:41 [chatter]

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]

12:07 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Category

Transcript

Recommended