Organizers

Andrea Geyer. New York. Working in the cultural field within the current moment, the role and (ab)use of culture within the realm of politics has become increasingly apparent to me. As a response to this situation, I see my work as an artist as part of an active political scene and as a form of poetic document-making engaged in the struggles over agency and signification within this historic moment. Artists have the potential to reflect not only on content, employing cross-disciplinary fields of research, but also respond to the particular forms of representation that are used as cultural means within the political arena. One could of course say that culture, the everyday and politics can never be seen entirely separate, but feed each other meanings and forms. My recent works address this issues as follows: Spiral Lands, a project about land and identity in the American South West, reflects on the role of art and culture and particularly photography had in the gradual claim, under the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, over the lands that are now the United States of America. 9 Scripts from a Nation at War (collaboration with S. Hayes, A. Hunt, K. Sander, D. Thorne) analyzes the condition of speech available to citizens under the particular situation of their nation being at war. Both projects address the complicated relations and overlaps of culture and politics. Understanding a museum or gallery space as a site of public reflection on contemporary themes, both works create in their installations a discursive space where culture constitutes a woven fabric in which issues from different realms such as politics, history, media are brought together through the experience and the agency of the individual, the artist and the gallery viewer. All my artistic work in the recent years has found its origin in specific social and political situations, like the land rights in the US and the War in Iraq. www.andreageyer.info