P r e / a m b l e: A 2 day festival of Art and Psychogeography NOVEMBER 1 & 2, 2003 Home Festival Overview Participating Artists Schedule of Events About Join the Mailing List Contact PRESENTED BY: Western Front Upgrade 2.0 Special Airplane Kate Armstrong Year Zero One OTHER LINKS: What is Psychogeography? Algorithmic Psychogeography Guy Debord's Theory of the Derive Why Psychogeography? Social Fiction Glowlab Psychogeography.net	Robert Ladislas Derr T A L K : Psychogeography: Context of Meaning in the Still and Moving Image Western Front Date: Saturday, November 1, 2003 Time: 1 pm Robert Ladislas Derr will lecture on his use of psychogeography in his artwork. Derr is interested in how subtly the geographical environment shapes people's behavior and emotions. He observes the habitualness of our daily lives. While none of our daily events are exactly the same, the geographical environment renders them a shared collective. Creating installations that employ photography, video, and performance, he puts himself literally in the center of a barrage of questions about life and making art. Created in January of this year, Psychogeographical was the first of his psychogeography installations, while Psychogeographical: Cincinnati pushed him into the landscape to work with found structures. Psychogeographical (2003), combines six 3' x 3' photographs, along with two videos displayed simultaneously on mini LCD screens inside a box. In the videos, he and his wife continuously flip inside a 3' x 3' box that imposes laws of material constraint. Given this confined area with limited choices for continued movement, they repeatedly flip in the same position, illustrating human behavior defined by a structured environment. The structure housing the two videos resembles a stereoscope, constructed with viewing holes allowing the viewer to watch the two videos simultaneously. Watching the two videos in tandem, the viewer is reminded of the common bond between the male and female. Neither sex lives independently of the environment; both proceed through life according to environmental, cultural, social, political, and religious structures. In this case, the box imposes the structure. Placed vertically in the stereoscope, the videos distort the conventional space. It looks as if the male and female flip perpetually without touching ground. Changing the perspective not only negates the laws of gravity but also reinforces the incessant nature of the act defined by the environment. Photographs in the installation allow the viewer a life size still perspective, a vantage point from which he or she can scrutinize the literal constraints on the male and female body. Capturing different poses, the photographs give a glimpse into the behavior of individuals within a structured environment. While he and his wife find new ways of positioning as opposed to the continuous flipping in the videos, they are still bound by and exist within their environment. Psychogeographical: Cincinnati (2003), combines eight 16" x 20" photographs, along with two videos projected simultaneously. In the videos, Derr continuously crawls through two culverts laying side by side in the median of a four-lane road. Given a confined area with limited choices for movement, he is forced to crawl illustrating human behavior defined by environment. Two videos of the same act in two separate but identical culverts illustrate the monotony of daily life. Photographs in the installation allow the viewer a still perspective, a position from which he or she can scrutinize the literal constraints on Derr inside the environment. Capturing different vantage points, the photographs give a glimpse into the behavior of individuals within a structured environment. Hung in a vertical row capturing his forward movement, the sequential photographs reference the moving image in the videos. Derr continues to explore psychogeography with installations currently being developed. After creating Psychogeographical: Cincinnati, he finds that physically engaging in the landscape heightens his awareness of the intervention of man and effects of this constructed environment on our behaviors and emotions. Derr states, "We are so accustomed to the environment that we overlook the structures that shape as well as move us in a certain direction or cause an emotion. His work is somewhere between a documentary and artistically conceptual language of behavioral, emotional, and situational resonance. Derr's diaristic and conceptual approach mix to create the vernacular and psychology of the geographical environment. W A L K : Rational Structures, Broken Conventions Meet at the Western Front Date: Saturday, November 1, 2003 Time: 2 pm In his exploration of psychogeography, Robert Ladislas Derr, artist and assistant professor of photography/digital media at Stephen F. Austin State University is attracted to structures that dictate behavior and emotion, such as a bridge, stairs, incline ramps, parking curbs, doorways, etc. A type of predetermined functionalism, these structures by inherent design elicit predestined actions and feelings from people. Derr is interested in exploring this predetermined functionalism in a group walk around Vancouver. He will lead a group that will embark on a process of reinventing the uses of these structures designed with foreordained intent. This will be a spontaneous performance, allowing the group to react to the structures encountered on impulse. Group participants may follow his lead or come up with their own way of experiencing the structures. In his artwork, he interacts with found structures in unconventional ways such as repeatedly crawling through two culverts laying side by side on the median of a road or attaching himself to the bottom of a bridge. In essence, this will be a walk of performance sculpture, as participants interact with structures having predetermined functionality in irrational ways. Through physical engagement, the group gains empirical knowledge of a predetermined environment but also critiques this empirical knowledge gained by interacting non-rationally with supposed rationally predetermined structures. This walk will take approximately one hour. BIO: Born in Cincinnati, OH, Robert Ladislas Derr received a BFA in photography from the Art Academy of Cincinnati and an MFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design. Since 1991, his artwork has been exhibited in over seventy solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries throughout the United States including the 2002 Blur Conference at Parsons School of Design, Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, Peninsula Fine Arts Center, Huntington Museum of Art, Rhode Island Foundation, Virginia Beach Center for the Arts, New York University, and Woodstock Museum. Using a variety of artistic vernacular in his artwork, Derr employs photographs, video, and performance. He is interested in existence - in particular, the idea of self-determination, responsibility for one's actions, and one's interaction and responses within the frameworks of life. It can be said that he often times puts himself literally in the center of a barrage of questions about life and making art. In 2002, he received a stipend from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council to create If this window could see for their 9.11.01 commemoration site-specific exhibition Looking In. Other recognitions include a 2003 Research Enhancement Minigrant, 2002 Rhode Island Senate Fellowship, 1998 Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship for Eger, and 1994 American Photography Institute National Graduate Seminar Fellowship. OSHEAN of Rhode Island sponsored his 2002 streaming video installation Leap, which connected the Rhode Island School of Design, Brown University, University of Rhode Island, Northeastern University, and Parsons School of Design. Intellectual Economy, a two-channel video and photographic installation was recently exhibited at CAVE Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. Derr is also an assistant professor of photography/digital media at Stephen F. Austin State University. R L Derr Website