Thanks to Paul Schmelzer for his wonderful series of posts tackling our Flash Points topic head-on. Follow his daily exploits back on his own blog, Eyeteeth.
Up next is Audrey Chan, a Los Angeles-based artist and writer whose work concerns politics, feminism, rhetoric, and satire. Her recent projects included co-organizing Exquisite Acts & Everyday Rebellions: 2007 CalArts Feminist Art Project, a collective and inter-generational investigation of feminism in the context of contemporary art practice that included a symposium, exhibition, and lecture, film, performance, and writing series (publication forthcoming). She moderated the panel discussion, “The Personal is Political, Revisited” with artists Andrea Bowers, Dorit Cypis, and Martha Rosler. Other recent projects include BOOMERANG (2006), a video concerning the memorialization of the Iraq War and the legacy of Maya Lin; and March 17-18, 2007 (Hoods), an anti-war performance that took place in Hollywood, California. With artist Elana Mann, Audrey is one half of the performance duo, Chan & Mann, whose recent motivational exercises include: Soul Satisfaction (2005) as part of the Sounding Out series at CalArts, NATURE! This One’s For You! (2006) in artist Fritz Haeg’s event This River Is Our Parade), and A MANNdate for CHANge (2008) featured in Mann’s election-themed performance project Exchange Rate: 2008. Her interviews and writings have appeared in Afterall Online and …might be good. Her projects have been reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, Artweek, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. She recently worked in the Education Departments of the New Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Audrey is currently an artist-in-residence at the École Régionale des Beaux-arts de Nantes (Nantes School of Art) in France. For her guest blog stint, she’ll be writing about her experience teaching two courses: “Contemporary Art in the United States, 2000-Today” and “Workshop: I am curious…(The Artist as Ethnographer).”
