[-empyre-] Introducing Millie Chen and James Way

[timothy murray <tcm1@cornell.edu>]

I join Renate in welcoming you to our discussion of Critical Spatial 
Practice.  We particularly want to thank Christina McPhee for 
initiating our discussion of this theme and for lining up some of the 
participants prior to taking her sabbatical from -empyre-.  Given our 
personal investments in critical spatial practice, we were thrilled 
to be given the opportunity to pick up the organization of this 
discussion.

Reflecting the fruits of our own collaborations as artist and 
theoretician, Renate and I have paired weekly grouping of 
practitioners and theorists who promise to lead us through intriguing 
spaces of criticality: Millie Chen (Canada/US) and James Way 
(Japan/US); Catherine Ingraham (US) and Kevin Hamilton
(US); Alice Micelli (Brazil/Germany) and Maurice Benayoun (France); 
and, at the end of the month, Teddy Cruz (US) and Markus Miessen 
(UK/Germany).

Our first set of guests speak to us from different sides of the globe 
while sharing combined interests in Western and Eastern artistic 
practice.

Millie Chen (www.milliechen.com ) is an artist who teaches at the 
University of Buffalo (New York) whose studio work crosses between 
Toronto and Buffalo. Her focus on sound,  installation, and geography 
should speak well to our -empyre- discussion.  Her work includes site 
specific installations in Toronto, collaborative performance projects 
from Buffalo to China, and multimedia installations combining sound, 
pig blood, rust and graphite.  Her interest in haptic practices is 
particularly interesting in view of critical spatial practice. We 
look forward to her discussion of her current sonic-video 
installation project based on river journeys down the Yangtze in 
China and the Niagara in Canada/USA.

We first came to know James Way (www.section-mw.com ) many years ago 
when he was studying graduate architecture at Cornell and working 
with the fascinating Texas/Mexico installation group, Parasite led by 
Dwayne Bohuslav, that specializes in temporary, non-invasive site 
specific installations.  Before recently moving to Japan where he 
works as a writer and designer (which has long been the site of his 
critical interventions), James worked in New York City for Rafael 
Vinoly Architects and most recently was an exhibition designer at the 
Guggenheim Museum.  Some of you may be familiar with James's writings 
in the Architect's Newspaper and the Cornell Journal of Architecture.

Given the differences in time zones, Millie and James are unlikely to 
be posting at the same moment, but we anticipate that their 
cross-global reflections will electrify us all.

Thanks for joining us, Millie and James.

Tim
--
Timothy Murray
Professor of Comparative Literature and English
Director of Graduate Studies in Film and Video
Curator, The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell Library
285 Goldwin Smith Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York  14853

office: 607-255-4086
e-mail: tcm1@cornell.edu