MICHAEL JONES MCKEAN
The Drift is very pleased to announce their first artist in residence for 2015, Michael Jones McKean. Through this program, the Drift commissions artists to produce temporary art projects in the public sphere that address the three rivers in Pittsburgh as a context, site, and material. The development of McKean's project will span a series of several events that will be open to the public. On October 30th, 2014 through the support of the Center for the Arts in Society, McKean will present his work in a lecture titled Twice Performing Objects at Carnegie Mellon University.
Michael Jones McKean explores through sculpture the possibilities of de-anthropomorphism, a universe where human thought is not a correlate to reality - a place where objects, substances and things live equal to humans. In this construct the conditions of performance including its link to ceremony, theatricality, shamanism as well as its more basic utilities and capacities are re-coordinated. As we continue un-tooling anthropocentrism in philosophy, anthropology, art, ecology and the sciences more broadly, the inherent and largely functional link between art objects and their performed, twice behaved life begins to change. We will explore that change among other things in this speculative session.
This event is supported by The Center for the Arts in Society, a collaborative effort of artists and scholars at Carnegie Mellon University dedicated to the exploration of society in the arts.
Michael Jones McKean, certain principles of light and shapes between forms, 2012
Michael Jones McKean, The Religion, 2014