Precipice / PostModem Art Exhibition (Locust Projects, Miami)
Hello, my name is Jillian Mayer and welcome to my latest exhibition at Locust Projects in Miami. My work generally crosses between film, installation, performance and web. This show, Precipice / Post Modem combines all.
The work here plays in the digital realm while incorporating interactive and technological elements to create a nonlinear meta-narrative.
This exhibition features sculpture, installation, websites, automated toll-free phone messaging services, and performance that satirically explores the concept of a technological singularity, the theoretical moment in time when the boundary between human and machine no longer exists.
I generally use dark comedy as a means to inspire introspection about technology's place as a surrogate for spirituality in our lives. Beyond spirituality, technology becoming much more than just a tool, regardless of whether or not the predictions of futurists like Ray Kurzweil come to fruition. Various pieces in this show explore the ramifications of this impending change, from sociological to parodic to sublime.
Research for Precipice/PostModem builds on a body of work that began with the experimental short film #PostModem which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013 and was later featured in the Filmmaker Magazine independent film retrospective at MoMA in New York as part of the Carte Blanche series.
1-855-9-VORTEX
Special Projects
Full Credits
PRECIPICE / POSTMODEM JILLIAN MAYER
in Collaboration with Lucas Leyva
Assistant: Kayla Delacarda
RGB Box Design/ Construction: Luke Jenkins
For U app and Aplaceforonlinedreaming.com Programmer: Vince Mckelvie
Host Avatar Animator: Brandon Smith
Video Special Effects: Dan Frantz
Vortex Sound Design: Cory Czajkowski, Diego Meza-Valdes
Installation: Leandro Vazquez, Julian Yuri Rodriguez
Morse Code Sculpture text from "Trolls and other Internet Creatures" by Robert Lorayn
Footage used in this video: Zach Balber, Jon Kane
Music used in this video: Jonathan Snipes
Thank you: Debra, Chana, Amanda, Gina, & Monica at Locust Projects
With support from Locust Projects, Harpo Foundation, David Castillo Gallery, Young At Art Museum, and Borscht Corp.
About the Artist
Jillian Mayer steeps her artistic practice in the verisimilitude of a generation that came of age in the 1980s. Indebted to the cultural constructions of the sitcoms of her childhood but looking ahead to the infinite implications of the Internet, Mayer uses photography, video, drawing, installation, online platforms and performance to enact scenarios of apathy, dysfunction, and disillusionment and tease out the pathways and pitfalls of postmodern identity formation while considering our increasing integration with the web.
She investigates the (im)possibility of authenticity and the multiplicity of authorship by co-opting the visual language and tools of Google, online chat boards, and viral videos. Cloaked with humor, fast editing, and pop soundtracks, Mayer's videos are designed for mass appeal but ask big questions about human connection and manufactured realities. Her work lives in, and is activated by, viewer participation.
In 2010, her video Scenic Jogging was one of the 25 selections for the Guggenheim’s Youtube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video and was exhibited at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy; Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain; and Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany.
Recent solo projects include Family Matters at David Castillo Gallery, Miami (2011), Love Trips at World Class Boxing, Miami (2011), Erasey Page at the Bass Museum of Art (2012), Precipice/PostModem at Locust Projects, Miami (2013) for which the gallery received a Harpo Foundation grant. Currently, Mayer has is the Salt9 artist with a solo show at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts till July 2014. Mayer is currently at work on an artist book to be released by [name] Publications and on a show at the University of Maine Museum of Art.
Her video works and performances have been premiered at galleries and museums internationally and film festivals such as SXSW and Sundance. She was recently featured in Art Papers and in ArtNews discussing identity, Internet and her artistic practices and influences.
Mayer is a recipient of the prestigious South Florida Cultural Consortium's Visual/Media Artists Fellowship 2011, Cintas Foundation Fellowship 2012, and was named one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker Magazine. This year she has been awarded the Elsewhere Museum/NEA Southern Constellation Fellowship, Zentrum Paul Klee Fellowship (Bern, Switzerland) and the Sundance Institute's New Frontier Story Lab Fellowship.
Mayer is the front woman for #PostModem, a performance collaborative that makes meta-pop music based in art/web theory. Their original songs will be used in a feature length musical film that Mayer is writing, directing and producing in collaboration with Lucas Leyva. The satirical film takes place in the future and tackles digital identity and net neutrality. The film extends to software apps, poetry, installations and Internet experiences.
Mayer is represented by David Castillo Gallery.
website: JillianMayer.net