Clarinda Mac Low

Do we always need to draw the line? 2021, Digital video collaboration. (8:26 minutes)

Sinking Shore (Timeline), 2021, Mixed media collage 52” x 67”

DESCRIPTION

At the end of 2020 Clarinda Mac Low and sTo Len, who had been working together as part of the artists collective/organization Works on Water for a few years, wanted to collaborate directly. Because the pandemic made contact difficult, they decided to engage in an Exquisite Corpse dialogue, passing footage back and forth, adding on and intervening. The video marks the passage of time through the various levels of contact, culminating in that elusive value, touch.

ARTIST(S) BIO

Clarinda Mac Low, was brought up in the avant-garde arts scene that flourished in NYC during the 1960s and ‘70s and now works in performance and installation, creating participatory events that investigate social constructs and corporeal experience. She is co-founder and Executive Director of Culture Push, an organization that links artistic practice and civic engagement and co-founder and co-director of Works on Water, an organization that supports art that works on, in, and with waterways, in response to a changing climate. Recent work and ongoing projects include: “Sunk Shore,” participatory tours of the future rooted in climate change data, made in collaboration with Carolyn Hall, a dancer and historical marine ecologist; “Incredible Witness,” a series of game-based participatory events looking at the sensory origins of empathy; and “Free the Orphans,” a project that seeks to “free” copyright orphans, investigating the spiritual and intellectual implications of intellectual property in a digital age. Residencies include as a Back Apartment Resident in St. Petersburg through CEC (2019), as a MacDowell Fellow (2000, 2016), through the Society for Cultural Exchange in Pittsburgh (2007) and as a guest at Yaddo and Mount Tremper Arts (2012). She received a BAX Award in 2004, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant, 2007 and a 2010 Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art grant. Mac Low holds a BA, double major in Dance and Molecular Biology, from Wesleyan University and an MFA in Digital and Interdisciplinary Arts Practice from CCNY-CUNY, and currently teaches at NYU, CCNY-CUNY, and Hunter College.

sTo Len is a genre fluid artist with interests in printmaking, installation, sound, video and performance. The cross-disciplinary nature of Len's work has included collaborations with bodies of water, transforming public space into art studios, recycling waste into art materials, and hosting performances at Superfund sites. Len is based in Queens, NY with familial roots in Vietnam and Virginia, and his work incorporates these bonds by connecting issues of their history, environment, traditions and politics. sTo Len was the first artist in residence at AlexRenew Wastewater Treatment facility in Alexandria, VA and is a member of Works on Water, a group of artists and activists working with water in the face of climate change and environmental justice concerns. www.stoishere.com @stoishere - Instagram