Interview with Curator Joelle Fleurantin
I was looking for a co-curator for Artificial Retirement who has a similar mind as mine and understands technologies, not only technically, but also thinks critically about our relationship with them. Flux’s former Managing Director Carina Kaufman recommend Joelle Fleurantin without hesitation. Since Fleurantin joined the team, Artificial Retirement open call was spread very fast through artists, organizations, and institutions.
Fleurantin is a current Flux Factory resident artist, and works as a UX designer and researcher professionally. She introduces herself as “an artist and a researcher in a committed relationship with her computer.” That sentence connoted her close relationship with technology in working and living environments. Her work explores this often functional, sometimes dysfunctional union. She has presented her work at the NYC Media Lab Summit, Facets Conference, and Mozilla Festival and received a Master’s from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University and studied art history and film at Yale University and Brooklyn College respectively.
I interviewed Fleurantin about her experience working for Artificial Retirement so far, and her personal interests in failure, imperfection and destruction.
What made you to decide to co-curate Artificial Retirement?
I had been interested in curating a show for a while, and was presented with the opportunity when I started my Flux Factory residency. Carina, the former Residency Director, suggested I help curate the show since there is some overlap in our technical interests. I was really intrigued by the open call and your work. What made me say yes was that I really wanted to see how the show would take shape, what kinds of artwork and performances would eventually be accepted. It was an opportunity to see how these ideas, Failure, Imperfection, Destruction, are understood by others — not just artists but the visitors as well.
What was your impression when you read applications for Artificial Retirement?
Wow! Selection was difficult. There were so many strong applications. Being on the selection side was interesting in another way: it gave me another perspective on how people interpreted the open call. The process itself helped us define what our goals were for the show, what dialogue we wanted to have with the public.
Do you have any of your previous or on-going projects which concern similar subject as Artificial Retirement?
I’m really interested in exploring and articulating the body’s relationship to big-c Computing. I’m using mine for these first experiments. The project that I’m pursuing during my Flux residency is a continuation of Patchworked Venus, my graduate thesis. I think all of my work deals with or is adjacent to the ideas presented in Artificial Retirement. I can’t speak about my relationship with my computing devices without alluding to or explicitly mentioning decay, failure. I can’t speak about my relationship with my computing devices without juxtaposing myself against them, anthropomorphizing them. I wonder how the digital device itself, not just software platforms, effect bodies.
Artificial Retirement opens August 19th at Flux Factory with an opening reception at 6pm. Performances by Byron Rich and Heather Brand, Niki Passath, and Fan Letters start at 7pm. AR is a Flux Factory major exhibition.
