Tracy Mackenna

     
Tracy Mackenna
Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee
t.mackenna@dundee.ac.uk
http://www.mackenna-and-janssen.net


Biography
Tracy Mackenna and Edwin Janssen share a collaborative art practice which they regard as a creative and discursive site, integrating research, production, presentation, exchange and education. Areas of focus are issues of life and death, cultural identity, placemaking and visual publishing. Exhibition projects have taken place at e.g. Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich; Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh; P3 art and environment, Tokyo; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham and on the cities’ streets. Recent publications include ‘Truth, Error, Opinion’, Stills, Edinburgh, ‘Shotgun Wedding’, Atopia Projects and ‘A Perfect Image of Ourselves’, CCA Glasgow.Both work for Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD), University of Dundee, Scotland. Tracy holds the Personal Chair of Contemporary Art Practice and is Director of the Masters programme MFA Art, Society & Publics. Edwin lectures across programmes in Art & Media, prior to which he was Chairman of the Visual Arts Award Panels at the Foundation for Visual Art, Design and Architecture (Fonds BKVB), Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Academic Paper

Republished Matter: a philosophical story translated through time, medium and space.
This paper explores key issues in the exhibition and publishing project Micromégas. Extending their own artistic collaboration, Tracy Mackenna & Edwin Janssen invited artists Pavel Büchler, Dora Garcia, Jonathan Monk, Scott Myles, Thomson & Craighead, designer Marco Stout and Mark Dorrian, Professor of Architecture Research to respond through print media to Voltaire’s short story of 1752. Micromégas was a seminal work in the genre of science fiction that marked a significant development in the history of literature, functioning as a conversation piece to open up between giants from other planets and human philosophers key ideas that were offered to the artists; scale, human foible, scientific superstitions, anti-utopias, human essence and the formation of ideas.

The collection of large-scale posters and texts by the artists, designer and writer form simultaneously the components of a boxed edition/publication, and of an exhibition. The curatorial proposition in this project was the possibility of engaging critically in ideas through collective subjectivities, built through the action that co-located art and writing to publicly open out the resultant ‘publication’ as a series of ‘pages’.

The paper’s several foci include transmediation; how and why artists move between disciplines, whether there is an ethic in terms of how artists are expected to work with text, the aspects of a literary work that are transferable to visual art media, why disciplines may be in conflict, and how print media in artists’ publications contribute to innovative possibilities in ‘visual publishing’.

Issues central to the curator-artists’ collaborative art practice, such as recycling, appropriation, reproduction, re-presentation and curatorial practice are discussed in relation to contemporary art’s considerations of portability, distribution, and presentation, with reference to artworks including Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte en Valise.

The project is a partnership with Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA).

Exhibition

Micromégas
The exhibition project comprises new work in a range of print media commissioned from artists in response to Micromégas (1752), the short story by French philosopher and satirist Voltaire that, as a seminal work in the genre of science fiction, marked a significant development in the history of literature. The tale recounts the visit to Earth of a being from a planet circling the star Sirius, and of his companion from the planet Saturn who as ‘outsiders’ comment on aspects of western culture. It functions as a conversation piece to open up between the giants and philosophers key ideas which have been offered to the artists; scale, human foible, scientific superstitions of the age, science as ruse and as spectacle, anti-utopias, human essence and the formation of ideas. Each artist has produced a large-scale poster employing the range of print media available in DCA Print Studio, that when folded comprises one element of the boxed edition/publication, and when open is a component of the exhibition. Both the exhibition and accompanying essays explore notions of portability, reproduction, distribution and presentation in contemporary art practice and curation, with reference to Marcel Duchamp’s seminal work Boîte en Valise, of which number two in the series is in the National Galleries of Scotland’s collection. Issues central to contemporary art practice such as recycling, appropriation and curatorial practice are also explored, and the project draws upon DJCAD/University of Dundee’s ‘Centre for Artists’ Books’ collection, to highlight the innovative possibilities of ‘visual publishing’. The project is curated by contributing artists Tracy Mackenna and Edwin Janssen, in partnership with Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA).