The West Central Illinois Arts Center is proud to present a traveling multimedia installation by artist- activists Paul Guzzardo and Jesse Thomas Codling. Their work probes the effect of emerging digital information archives on the design and occupation of public space. This work examines the relationship between this current wave of digital information technology and the street. The work is available to be viewed during normal gallery hours from 4pm to 7 pm on Fridays and 10am to 4pm on Saturdays through November 19th.
Paul Guzzardo will also be offering a talk “A Walk on the Digital Sublime – Meets Occupy.” The talk will be held on Thursday, November 17th at 7pm at the West Central Illinois Arts Center at 25 East Side Square. The talk will be open to the public and free.
The installation has already been seen at several major universities. It opened at the University of Newcastle (UK) in September. It is currently at the school of Art and Design at the University of Dundee in Scotland where Guzzardo is a Fellow in the School of the Environment. The exhibition opened at Western Illinois University on October 21-22, 2011 for the English Graduate Organization Conference: Intersections: Literature, Technology, and Science.
The work is part of a research project by Guzzardo and Jesse Codling, an independent graphic designer. Guzzardo and Codling describe the installation as:
“A Walk on the Digital Sublime” bores into a St. Louis Missouri urban design praxis. The praxis “recursive urbanism” uses the street as: 1) an evolving search engine, a tableau you drift through, synthesizing as you move, 2) a platform to assemble networks to critique the network, and 3) a probe into how digital kit edits-us. Videos and accompanying graphics frame a struggle of getting onto the street, and manning way-stations to navigate through a digital fog. This streetscape praxis is now snared in litigation in St. Louis. St. Louis is where Marshal McLuhan did foundational media work. McLuhan anguished that the “privileged diet for the elite” would thwart art as radar. “A Walk on the Digital Sublime” tracks how a bogus idea of community provoked a lawsuit, and why a St. Louis elite decided to forfeit and obliterate McLuhan’s St. Louis legacy. And do it in time to celebrate his 2011 Centennial.”
Additional video, photo-strips documenting the installation, and content can be found on guzzardo’s blog site buildbetterbarrel.
Admission to the Arts Center is free. The West Central Illinois Arts Center is located at 25 East Side Square on the historic Courthouse Square in Macomb.
