VoCA is pleased to present this blog post in conjunction with Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History, Gloria Sutton\u2019s Spring 2022 Honors Seminar, The Art of Visual Intelligence at Northeastern University. This interdisciplinary course combines the powers of observation (formal description, visual data) with techniques of interpretation to sharpen perceptual awareness allowing students to develop compelling analysis of visual phenomena.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Located in Emerson College\u2019s contemporary art platform, Emerson Contemporary, Boston-raised artist Kerry Tribe\u2019s \u201cOnomatopoeia\u201d depicts the complexities of language and communication in a variety of mediums from video projections to silkscreen prints and audio recordings. Tribe worked with Leonie Bradbury of Emerson College\u2019s Media Art Gallery to curate this exhibit with its location, and specifically Emerson\u2019s Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, in mind. \u201cOnomatopoeia\u201d demonstrates the artist\u2019s interest in topics surrounding cognizance and recollection, broadening her previous work discussed in the VoCA Blog article \u201cDocumentary Adjacent<\/a>.\u201d The exhibit debuts Tribe\u2019s newest work, Corner Piece (2022)<\/em>, her most personal work in the exhibition. Corner Piece<\/em> takes snippets of conversation from Tribes own day to day life, highlighting the challenges and differences of communication between family members and through generations. We had the pleasure of communicating with Kerry Tribe and together curated a Q&A in which we discussed her intentions behind her design decisions in each piece, how her work affects the communities she represents, and the challenges she faced when creating work outside of her native language.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What\u202fwere some considerations for your exhibition Onomatopoeia, which was on view January 26 to March 27, 2022?\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n Tribe: The works in Onomatopoeia are intended to encourage metacognition and awareness of the privilege that comes with fluency. Some works in the exhibition, such as\u202fAfasia\u202f(2007)<\/em> and The Last Soviet (2010)<\/em> rely on complex relationships among written and spoken words in more than one language and are uniquely challenging to viewers with cognitive disabilities. I consulted acquaintances with different forms of aphasia while making the work and trust that it \u201clands\u201d in meaningful ways for audiences of diverse backgrounds and abilities. But from the get-go, I was primarily thinking about Emerson College, a \u201cschool of oratory\u201d as a context for this exhibition. Known for its programs in film, media arts, and journalism, the small liberal arts college also houses a Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. From our first meeting, Leonie and I agreed we wanted to put together a show focused on communication. And because Boston is my hometown, we wanted to include some more personal works, like\u202fAfasia<\/em>\u202fand\u202fFantastic Voyage (2020).<\/em>\u202fCorner Piece (2022)<\/em>,\u202fthe most autobiographical work in\u202fthe show, came together as the exhibition developed.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Several of your artworks center on Aphasia, a neurological condition in which the brain has difficulty processing language.\u202fWhy might photography and video \u2014inherently visual mediums\u2014 be effective tools for understanding a neurological\u202fsense of linguistic disconnection?\u202f\u202f <\/strong><\/p>\n Tribe: This is a complicated question. I actually\u202fwouldn\u2019t\u202fargue that these mediums are especially useful tools for understanding the aphasic experience. I do, however, find them effective tools for engendering empathy in art audiences. Your word choice points to a subtle and compelling question: \u201cunderstanding\u201d suggests rationality while\u202f\u201csense\u201d suggests emotion. What does it take to \u201cunderstand\u202fa neurological sense\u201d\u202fother than our own?\u202f Clinically speaking, effective empathy demands the ability of one person to take the perspective of another both cognitively and emotionally. Understanding without affect tends to beget disengaged analysis. Feeling without the critical distance that cognitive analysis affords tends to produce pity. Compassion in action requires both thinking\u202fand\u202ffeeling.\u202fThis is precisely the dialectic that interests me. The complex play of identification and distancing that experimental documentary affords would seem to offer a step in the right direction.<\/p>\n Kerry Tribe, The Last Soviet<\/em>, 2010 <\/p>\n In many of your time-based media works you switch\u202fbetween\u202fspoken\u202flanguage\u202fand\u202fwritten\u202fcaptions\u202fwhen addressing the viewer. How do these techniques foreground the conceptual relationship between language and media, specifically ideas around fluency, synchronization and their inverses, breakdown and failure?\u202f <\/strong><\/p>\n Tribe: We\u2019re all fluent in the language of mass media whether we\u2019re conscious of it or not.\u202f\u202fMy use of multiple languages, captions that serve as translation, presenting the voices of people we never see and seeing people we never hear\u2014all these approaches are designed to suggest the feeling of being lost in language. I speak a little Spanish, and almost no Russian. I can\u2019t understand half the words in\u202fThe Last Soviet<\/em>,\u202fand I probably mispronounce half the words in\u202fAfasia<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kerry Tribe, Prueba de colores y palabras<\/em>, 2017 How does your work facilitate meaning and understanding by putting your audience in positions or situations that exceed their familiarity or own knowledge?\u202f<\/strong><\/p>\n Tribe: A number of the works in\u202fOnomatopoeia use cognitive dissonance as a way to encourage viewers to pay attention to the experience of paying attention. The silk-screened posters Pruebas de colores y palabras<\/em> (2017)<\/em>, for example, illustrate the Stroop effect: the delay in reaction time when subjects encounter incongruent stimuli\u2014in this case words referring to one color printed in a different color. This \u201ccolor-word interference test\u201d is frequently used in clinical assessments for learning and attentional differences. It\u2019s a point of departure for the silkscreens, whose tenor is decidedly friendlier, even goofier than it is clinical or scientific. Presenting the work in Spanish\u2013one of Boston\u2019s non-dominant languages\u2014connects the project to\u202fAfasia<\/em>,\u202fin which I describe, in faltering Spanish, my effort to improve my Spanish. Where your standard documentary narration would speak with authority, my voiceover, more characteristic of my approach in general, meanders through a series of questions, digressions and apologies.<\/p>\n Kerry Tribe, Corner Piece<\/em>, 2022 <\/p>\n Your most recent work, <\/strong>Corner\u202fPiece<\/em><\/strong> takes the form of iMessage exchanges between family members\u2014how does the piece extend your investigations into personal speech\u202facting as public?<\/strong><\/p>\n I was thinking about how dependent I\u2019ve become on these ubiquitous communication technologies in my effort to take care of the people for whom I\u2019m responsible. As the mother of two school-aged boys who recently emerged from the traumas of Zoom school only to enter the traumas of in-person school, and as the grown child of an elderly and infirm mother who lives across the country (in Boston, no less), the text exchanges in Corner Piece<\/em> have me ping-ponging across a corner of the room and a generational divide in my daily effort to keep the wheels from coming off the bus. People keep telling me they find\u202fCorner Piece<\/em>\u202f\u201crelatable,\u201d a term I actually had to look up the first time I heard it, because it seems to confuse an indirect object for a subject. This, as you might imagine, I think is just marvelous.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What\u202fare some considerations around accessibility and mobility in making an audio recording as a work of art, specifically Fantastic Voyage (2020) which was\u202fcommissioned\u202fby\u202fthe\u202fOrange\u202fCounty\u202fMuseum\u202fof\u202fArt\u202fwith\u202ffunding provided in part by the National\u202fArts and Disability Center at the University of California Los Angeles and Ability Central California,\u202fLos\u202fAngeles? \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Tribe: Fantastic Voyage<\/em>\u202fwas one of a series of audio projects OCMA commissioned for Soundcloud when the pandemic forced museum programming to go virtual. As I understand it, these projects were supported in part by grants OCMA received to optimize their programming for the visually impaired. So-called \u201cwalking meditation\u201d is easily modified for people with limited mobility, but until I sought the involvement of an advocate for the visually impaired, it hadn\u2019t occurred to me that, for example, walking outside with headphones might be dangerous if you count on your hearing to make sense of your surroundings. (Duh!)<\/p>\n \u202f <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n How do you think it syncs up with the themes you examine visually within Onomatopoeia? <\/strong><\/p>\n During the pandemic my family, like so many families, found ourselves isolated and stir crazy stuck in our home, at once together and alone. Taking walks around our neighborhood became for us a means of re-connecting with our bodies and one another, as well as with the larger world, in a time of environmental and social uncertainty. The soundtrack is punctuated by snippets of recordings made with my kids and husband at home. So, while it\u2019s ostensibly a \u201cguided walk,\u201d it’s more fundamentally a guided exploration into how it feels to be aware of our own subjectivity, moment to moment, in whatever form this embodied life offers up.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Onomatopoeia<\/em> offers unique perspectives on communication and language in a manner which addresses issues faced by various groups in her community. Presenting works in Boston\u2019s non-dominant languages, as well as including a piece that is entirely audio-based, aims to engender empathy from her audience by experiencing what it is like to face various communication limitations. While each piece focuses on a specific limitation, the works come together to generate a cohesive message on metacognition and privilege in interaction.<\/p>\n The post A Conversation with Kerry Tribe: Exploring Cognizance and Interaction<\/a> appeared first on VoCA | Voices in Contemporary Art<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week\u2019s contributing authors are undergraduate students Sarah Abeywardena and Ashlynn Braisted, both pursuing a BS in Computer Science and Design, Caeli Jackson, pursuing a BSBioE in Bioengineering and Biochemistry, and Jessica Xing, pursuing a BFA in Design, at Northeastern University. VoCA is pleased to present this blog post in conjunction with Associate Professor of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":159701,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[65634,12822,3965,49821,4133,18558],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-159700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","tag-cognizance","tag-conversation","tag-exploring","tag-interaction","tag-kerry","tag-tribe"],"yoast_head":"\n
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Single channel video with sound, duration: 10:44
Courtesy of Emerson Contemporary Media Art Gallery<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/voca.network\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/kerry-tribe-2.jpeg\")
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Silkscreen on paper, 36\u201d x 27\u201d each
Courtesy of Emerson Contemporary Media Art Gallery<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/voca.network\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/kerry-tribe-3.jpeg\")
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Video projection with sound, duration: 24:20
Courtesy of Emerson Contemporary Media Art Gallery<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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