With Your Mouth
With Your Mouth from SaBa on Vimeo.
In this work, the landscape responds to your voice.
Space Station
Earth | Time Lapse View from Space | Fly Over | Nasa, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.
Do Not Spray Directly in Face
Text for Facullty Now
I am interested in the effects of language and human behavior on the landscape. Just as the way we speak shapes our thoughts, the language we use changes our interaction with the places we inhabit. New technologies, advertising, and distance communications have altered language and, in many ways, the ways in which we perceive our surroundings. Time and space have become compressed in our minds, and distances that once took months to cross have now become a minor obstacle in a faster-paced global journey. The scale of nature now seems infinitely small.
For the Faculty Now exhibition, I have included both solo and collaborative work dealing with divergent aspects of language. Signs, mapping, architectural drawings, public art, and karaoke have all found a place in my recent work. (T)(W)Here and Mans/Lands/Caping imagine language—focused on place and time—as a series of superimposed architectural structures. The work by SaBa—a collaboration with Sam Sheffield—imagines a world where nature is subordinate to the human voice. Drawing inspiration from landscape painting and karaoke, With Your Mouth requires the participant to give a vocal performance in order to alter the landscape, while skewing the gallery into a playful space of shared experience. Finally, the selection of work by Barchael—a collaboration with Michael Bernhardt—attempts to encourage a contemporary dialog with familiar public artworks. Through practical suggestions and parody, Barchael aims to liberate tired public works from their dormant, landmark status.
Juggling
I was recently in Denver for the opening of a Barchael exhibition at Vertigo Art Space. The installation went well—apart from going 44 hours without sleep—and the opening event was great. I was able to see a lot of great friends as well as meeting lot of new, interesting people in the process. Now, just as the Barchael show will be part of Denver’s “First Friday”, I am currently preparing work for a “Faculty Now” show at the University of Toledo. I’m currently working with Sam on a new SaBa piece for the show, as well as planning to include some recent Barchael work and a few new solo pieces. While I enjoy working on multiple projects, the juggling, combined with inconsistent sleep, is providing me with new challenges to my attention span.
