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The Buffalo News
HEAVY LIFTING
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The artists, Millie Chen, Andrew Johnson and Paul Vanouse,
are UB faculty members whose stated purpose is to play with "pedagogical
issues" and "the relationship between the university and the
greater Buffalo community." However, the topics addressed actually are
more diverse, from suburban sprawl to racism, segregation and a myriad of
other sociopolitical and environmental issues. The campus serves as a
metaphorical microcosm of suburban life. In the gallery itself, an innocuous floor installation consisting of
fragmented sections from an oversized campus map ostensibly serves as a
warm-up and orientation course. Smaller maps plot bike routes that bear names
like "Natural," "Safe," "Controlled" and
"Civilized." To begin, just sign a waiver, grab a bike, and select
a course. The helpful attendant pops in a cassette, and you're off. For those who prefer their art on walls and pedestals, all this may
require some adjustment. Though difficult to categorize, "PED"
broadly corresponds to what art historian Rosalind Krauss has termed
"marked sites," a concept dating from the early 1970s in which
outdoor sculpture is defined as "what is in the landscape, that is not
the landscape." With "PED," Krauss' notion has been merged with sound art,
linking it to Dada, Fluxus and contemporary artists like Laurie Anderson and
Chris Apology. The narrated passages, from sources as diverse as Talking
Heads' song lyrics and Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales," are in
turn amusing, informative, ironic and surreal. "Natural," for instance, begins with 1970s disco music, lurches
into a measured reading of UB promotional material, then on to a treatise on
landscape architecture. Next comes environmental history (UB was once swamp
land and habitat to diverse wildlife), then beat poetry and finally erotic
prose from bicycle to the rider. All the while the viewer passes quite
literally through time and space. One quibble: the artists might have narrowed the scope some, thereby
reducing sensory overload. It was somewhat disconcerting to try to
concentrate on the material while avoiding people, traffic, parked vans and
signposts. Lose yourself in the poetry, and you may literally get lost. (I
frequently drifted off the somewhat confusing trails.) But maybe that's the intent. The primary foil in all this is suburbia
itself, not exactly a new concept. What makes it fresh here is the means of
delivery. Traversing the campus by bike positions the viewer close to the
asphalt and road kill, enhancing the poignancy of cultural and environmental
loss. "PED" challenges the public while confronting provocative issues
in an enjoyable manner. In the process, both mind and body receive a
worthwhile workout.
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