Saturday, November 1, 2008

John Baldacchino

Gunda

Richard Jochum

"My Favorite Saying" Outline

Every culture comprises big reservoirs of visionary sayings and proverbs. They often help us to struggle with events that ask us either to change our attitude or to find comfort in handed down knowledge and oral history. The purpose of this project is to collect them by asking 30 people to speak their favorite saying and tell the short story of it: when and how the phrase first entered his/her life. The result will be a series of short video blog entries which are posted on the internet and which are accessible to the exhibition audience. Sharing these gems of personal wisdom and landscapes of human resilience with each other will teach us about each others developmental whereabouts; and it will also bring cultural flavor into an often quite impersonal web.

"My Favorite Saying" is part of "Intersections and Interstices"

Intersections and Interstices @ Macy Gallery · Teachers College, Columbia University · Tuesday, Nov 3 - Friday, Nov 28, 2008

The goal of the exhibition at Macy gallery is to show a variety of works by the Austrian sculptor and media artist Richard Jochum who has been a visiting scholar and artist-in-residence at Teachers College since 2004. The exhibition will display new and recent work in a variety of forms and media including video, photography, installation, and object art. Following its title - “Intersections and Interstices” - mixing these media and having them interact with each other will be a main focus of the show.

Artist Statement

(1) Although trained as a sculptor I see myself as a media artist. That means that my work is not limited to a single material, it includes all sorts of media. In a recent exhibition for instance I was showing 25 new installations: photography, objects, drawings, and video.

(2) I believe in the power of art. I think art continually has to find new images for the time we live in. For the conditions and issues we deal with: existentially, politically, physically, and globally. Searching such images is what I am aiming for.

(3) Going back and forth between knowing and doing feeds what we ultimately call culture. It is important to me to be involved in art practice from both a theoretical and practical stance. I usually get most inspired by artwork that comes from a balance between aesthetic form and conceptual content.

(4) My artwork is often based on some sort of humor. I like it when serious things come with a wink. It makes it easier to deal with, to digest, and to further construct.

(5) I do believe in an intriguing encounter between art producers and the public. To embrace education is a rewarding way to expand our creativity. Audiences can make us learn better, and see things we would not have known of. I understand both, intelligence and creativity to be profoundly social.

Richard Jochum, New York 2005-2007

Artist Biography

Richard Jochum is currently a Visiting Scholar and Artist-in-Residence at Teachers College Columbia University in the Department of Arts and Humanities and the Film and Education Research Academy FERA. He has worked as a media and video artist since the late 1990s and has had numerous international exhibitions and screenings. Richard received his PhD from the University of Vienna (1997) in which he undertook a study of strategies of coping with complexity in contemporary philosophy. His MFA in sculpture and media art is from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna (2001). Richard’s art practice is accompanied by publications and research in the field of cultural theory and media art and he has been awarded several grants and prizes. He is a member of node101, a collaborative community that spreads social media technology worldwide and taught courses in media studies and technology at Columbia University (New York), at the University of Applied Arts (Vienna) and at the University of Applied Sciences (Dornbirn). One of his most recent installation - an oversized prayer necklace as a communal sculpture – is exhibited on the roof top of the American University in Cairo, March – 2007. More information can be found at http://richardjochum.net