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Mark Dion in Conversation
On the history of Mildred's Lane
[Multimedia content blocked]
Listen to a 20 minute recording, or download the file
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Slought Foundation
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Slought Foundation is pleased to announce a public presentation by artist Mark Dion, followed by conversation with resident fellows at the Pennsylvania artist's colony Mildred's Lane. This event is presented in conjunction with the exhibition "An Ordinall of Alchimy" (here for more information), organized in partnership with Cabinet as part of their "999" exhibition series, and will take place at the Slought Foundation on Wednesday, May 5, 2010 from 6:30-7:30pm. Dion, along with fellows Matt Bettine, Joey Cruz, Kathryn Cornelius, Gabriella D’Italia, Scott Jarrett, Aislinn Pentecost-Farren, John Wanzel, Laura E. Wertheim, and Bryan Wilson, will discuss their contribution to the "999" project as well as their activities at Mildred's Lane.
Mildred's Lane (http://www.mildredslane.com/), founded by Dion and artist J. Morgan Puett in 1998, is a collaboration and long-term experiment in project-, research- and event-based practices, and maintains a living museum and educational institution. The project actively reassembles the terms of artistic exchange and collaboration, hosting international practitioners and institutions collectively engaged in research, theory, production, construction, performance, presentation, and documentation. It is an attempt to collectively create new modes of being in the world, incorporating questions of our relation to the environment, systems of labor, forms of dwelling, and new sociality. These issues are negotiated daily by participants at Mildred's Lane through the rethinking of one's involvements with food, shopping, making, styling, gaming, sleeping, reading, thinking and doing--a curriculum that rethinks being as a practice.
Mildred's Lane is founded in the spirit of other contemporary and historical outpost projects such as Olafur Eliason's Laboratory, Andrea Zittell's High Desert Test Sites, Rirkrit Tiravanija's The Land, Black Mountain College, and Donald Judd's Marfa, TX. In this conversation, Dion will address the history and practices of this experimental institution, whose projects and collaborations include a cemetery by Dion, an Amy Yoes pavilion, and a tree house by Scott Constable, as well as situational events including Allison Smith's Muster, readings from authors such as Nina Burleigh, John Haskell, and Rebecca Purcell, and varied performances and presentations. Upcoming projects include a wildlife habitat project, and the building of an Alchemist's Shack in collaboration with RISD's glass-blowing department.
Also participating in the conversation will be the Mildred's Lane fellows who worked closely with Dion on the "Ordinall of Alchimy" exhibition installed in Slought's galleries. They will address the role of collaboration and their activities at Mildred's Lane in shaping this project.
Mark Dion was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1961. He received a BFA (1986) and an honorary doctorate (2003) from the University of Hartford School of Art, Connecticut. Appropriating archaeological and other scientific methods of collecting, ordering, and exhibiting objects, Dion creates works that question the distinctions between objective (rational) scientific methods and subjective (irrational) influences. The artist's spectacular and often fantastical curiosity cabinets, modeled on Wunderkabinetts of the 16th Century, exalt atypical orderings of objects and specimens. By locating the roots of environmental politics and public policy in the construction of knowledge about nature, Mark Dion questions the authoritative role of the scientific voice in contemporary society.
He has received numerous awards, including the ninth annual Larry Aldrich Foundation Award (2001). He has had major exhibitions at the Miami Art Museum (2006); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2004); Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut (2003); and Tate Gallery, London (1999). Neukom Vivarium (2006), a permanent outdoor installation and learning lab for the Olympic Sculpture Park, was commissioned by the Seattle Art Museum.
This program was made possible in part through the generous sponsorship of the Society of Friends of the Slought Foundation.
Media files on the Slought.org website are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
MLA Style:
On the history of Mildred's Lane. "Mark Dion in Conversation." Slought Foundation Online Content. [05 May 2010;
Accessed 2 September 2010]. <http://slought.org/content/11453/>.
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