[-empyre-] Critical Spatial Practice launch statement from Millie Chen

[millimilli@milliechen.com]

Hello to all readers. I?ll begin by stating the intent of the work I do.

In my installations, actions and public interventions, I attempt  
cultural transgression. I experiment with the capacity of immaterial,  
non-visual elements (e.g. sound, scent), of unexpected sites, and of  
social interaction, for disrupting traditional definitions of art and  
generating altered perceptions. An integral part of my work are  
collaborative interdisciplinary projects that engage the public and  
public space. Stemming from my interest in site-specificity and  
interactivity, I often incorporate specific spaces and visitors'  
participation in installations and performances. The relationship  
between seeing and experiencing is shifted back and forth. Within my  
visual art practice, the act of looking is subtly interrogated.

The interrelationship of image and coded space is key to defining  
cultural experience. By articulating the links between sight, social  
systems, and (in particular, urban) geography, I explore the  
perceptual assumptions of the audience. My interest is to invent or  
appropriate strategies for collaboration and audience participation,  
and for a critical engagement of performative and relational issues.

The intravenous path between my collaborative and solo endeavors  
allows me a versatile practice that can adapt to wide-ranging sites  
and situations. Methodologies, tools and materials are always  
contingent on the needs of the moment. But at the core of all my  
projects is the attempt to integrate social responsibility within  
contemporary art making.

The work I do evolved from a frustration with what I perceive to be  
the continually hermetic state of art. My collaborators and I felt the  
need to venture out beyond the sheltered confines of the art gallery ?  
or any sanctioned space exclusively purposed for the viewing of art ?  
and intentionally agitate the boundaries between art and everything  
else. This was not to the exclusion of working in galleries, as that  
network for the display of work is still vital and occupies an  
important support system, but the range of strategies I?ve utilized  
over the years are attempts to disrupt established or complacent  
viewing habits and further push open the possibilities for  
contemporary practice beyond that which was standardized by museum  
culture. It?s amazing, and sometimes enervating, to consider that even  
after a century of experimental art making that attempted to break  
down the barriers between art and life (the everyday), even at times  
doing away with the term ?art? altogether, artists are still faced  
with a very limited viewership that is predicated on traditional  
notions of connoisseurship and rarefied knowledge. The average viewer  
would not look to art to find social critique.