Talk

Paul Chan first gained critical attention for a series of rich and complex digital animations. One such animation, Birds…Trash…The Future (2004), was projected onto both sides of a hanging screen and collaged references from Goya to Notorious BIG to the Bible, generating an apocalyptic landscape serenaded by the songs of birds and mobile phones. Chan has also produced a number of single-channel videos, drawings, writings and, more recently, a series of digital projections. These projections, collectively called The 7 Lights (2005-07), unfold through a series of interconnected installations, which include drawings, texts and collages. 1st Light (2005), for example, begins and ends with a prismatic pool of radiant colored light projected onto the floor that tracks the course of a day from dawn to night. As the day comes, shadows both static and moving appear: a telephone pole and a street lamp, surrounded by floating shadows of familiar objects, such as phones, computers, and cars. As this tranquil scene progresses it is disrupted by images of rapidly falling human figures, then slowly fades into night. Much of Chan’s work, like the Lights series, is not pointed in its politics, but instead acts like a stage on which aesthetic, philosophical and everyday symbols interact, become unhinged or are re-contextualized. Chan is also well known for his political interventions—in 2002 he broke US sanctions and federal law to visit Baghdad, and in 2004 he garnered police attention for The People’s Guide to the Republican National Convention, a free map distributed throughout New York to help protesters to get in or out of the way of the RNC. Most recently Chan collaborated with the Classical Theatre of Harlem and Creative Time to produce a site-specific outdoor presentation of Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot in New Orleans. On April 30th he will present The Spirit of Recession as part of the Public Art Fund’s Spring Talks program.

The Public Art Fund Talks is an ongoing series of discussions and presentations by some of today’s most influential artists, critics and curators. The program is organized by the Public Art Fund in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics.