Marisa Olson
| Marisa Olson | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1977 Augsburg, Germany |
| Known for | Art Artist, Curator, Critic |
| Notable work | "Marisa's American Idol Audition Blog", "Performed Listening" Series, "Time Capsules" |
Marisa Olson (born 1977 in Augsburg) is a new media artist, curator, critic,[1] and media theorist.[2] In 2004 she auditioned for popular American television show American Idol as an artistic project.[3] Over the course of three months of daily "training exercises," it is revealed that she is critiquing gender norms entrenched by the show, while also using the popularity of her site to speak to readers about using their voice to vote in elections as well as on the show. Olson is an active writer and lecturer in the field of media theory and politics. She occasionally teaches in NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program graduate program in the Tisch School of the Arts, was previously Assistant Professor of New Media at SUNY, Purchase,[4] and is currently Visiting Critic in the Digital+Media Department at RISD.[5] Her work combines performance, video, drawing, and installation to address the cultural history of technology, experiences of gender, and the relationship between pop culture and politics. Olson was a founding member of the Nasty Nets' "Internet Surfing Club", a web-based net art group documenting and remixing their experiences online. Through Nasty Nets and with the sponsorship of Rhizome she premiered a new DVD at the New York Underground Film Festival and was the subject of an exhibition at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.[6]
Contents
Creative practice
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Marisa Olson's work combines performance, video, net art, sound, drawing, and installation to address the cultural history of technology, the politics of participation within pop culture, and the aesthetics of failure. Her own work has recently been presented by the Whitney Museum of American Art, Centre Pompidou-Paris, New Museum of Contemporary Art, 52nd International Biennale di Veneia, National Museum of Contemporary Art (Athens, Greece), Edith Russ-Haus fur Medienkunst, Nederlands Instutuut voor Mediakunst/Montevideo, the British Film Institute, the Pacific Film Archive, a solo show at the Hessel Museum of Art, and the New York Underground Film Festival. She is a founding member of the Pro Surfer internet collective NastyNets (nastynets.com). She sculpts older technologies, such as cassette tapes and floppy disks, to be submitted to museums.
Projects
Black & White
In this colorless video, Olson listens to Michael Jackson's "Black or White." The audio signals of the song triggers disturbances, with aid of a "wobulator" by Nam June Paik, in the video's appearance. In Jackson's video, the faces of characters morphed into others, which left Olson with a deep interest in digital effects and later media change and the "performative aspects of spectatorship." She comments, "The new question, here, is about the similarities and differences between the ways that people and machines "hear." [7]
Time Capsules
In this piece, Olson resurrects "endangered units of time" and transforms them into golden sculptures with paint in "Fort Knox-style". Locations of the sculptures' display are made to resemble landfills or garbage piles, from which they were saved and are able to regain value.[8]
Assisted Living
Assisted Living was a futuristic parody of Martha Stewart's TV show focusing on the coping with the health & environmental challenges of living a life prolonged and polluted by technology. As hostess, Olsen devised craft projects and recipes for 150-year-olds, taping the show on-site before a "live studio audience." The show incubated at Wooloo's New Life Berlin festival and took an expanded form at PS122 in the Fall of 2009.[9]
Curator and critic
She has organized exhibitions and programs at the Guggenheim, SFMOMA, the Getty, White Columns, Artists Space, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and elsewhere, including SF Camerawork, where she was previously Associate Director. She's written for Wired, Mute, Afterimage, Flash Art, ArtReview, and others, and has written commissioned essays for the Walker Art Center, the Banff Centre's New Media Institute, Eyebeam,[10][11] and LACMA. She was previouslyis the Editor & Curator-at-Large for Rhizome.org at the New Museum[12] and is currently the Contributing Editor & Columnist there.[13]
Education
Olson holds a BA, MA and CPhil in Rhetoric, Film, and Digital Media from UC Berkeley; an MA in History of Consciousness from UC Santa Cruz; and studied in Goldsmiths' Masters in Fine Arts program before returning to the PhD program at UC Berkeley.
See also
References
- ↑ Rhizome.org, Information and Staff
- ↑ Tisch School of the Arts, Faculty Directory
- ↑ New York Times > An 'American Idol' Hopeful’s Blog, September 23, 2004
- ↑ http://www.purchase.edu/departments/AcademicPrograms/faculty/MarisaOlson/MarisaOlson.aspx
- ↑ http://dm.risd.edu/blog/people/marisa-olson/
- ↑ http://history.sundance.org/films/5691
- ↑ Olson, Marisa. "Black or White". <http://www.marisaolson.com/>
- ↑ Olson, Marisa. "Time Capsules". <http://www.marisaolson.com/>
- ↑ http://www.marisaolson.com/
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/7
- ↑ Rhizome.org, Information and Staff
