Press Release: And Therefore I Am

New Tang Exhibition Explores Nature of Human Consciousness

In his 1637 treatise Discourse on Method, the French philosopher René Descartes coined a concise and enduring definition of what makes us human: “I think, therefore I am.” Taking Descartes's famous dictum as its springboard, a new exhibition, “And Therefore I Am”; opens Feb. 11 at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Gallery, to explore human thought and perception through art.

On view through Sept. 10, 2006, the exhibition will present contemporary artworks by nine artists whose paintings, drawings, sculptural and video installations, and other works are rooted in conveying—and sometimes questioning—the nature of human consciousness. Curated by John Weber, Dayton Director of the Tang, the exhibition will be augmented by films and guest lectures focusing on both the artworks and the burgeoning new field of neuroscience.

A highlight of the exhibition will be Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller's audio-video installation, The Paradise Institute. Created for the Canadian Pavilion of the 2001 Venice Biennale, The Paradise Institute combines Cardiff's signature inner monologues, created using binaural audio recording technology, with a film-noir video installation housed in a freestanding mini-theater large enough to seat nearly 20 people. The theater's interior gives viewers the illusion of sitting in the balcony of an old-fashioned theater, watching an eerie, dreamlike movie. High-quality audio headsets convey the movie's soundtrack, overlaid with a female narrator's running commentary and ambient sounds such as the rustling of candy wrappers, the occasional cough, the crunching of popcorn, and comments of other moviegoers.

Critically acclaimed as unsettling, uniquely intimate, and exhilarating, The Paradise Institute leaves viewers with the impression “of being inside the narrator's mind as she watches the movie,” Weber explains, “or having her inside yours, sharing her conscious perceptions and participating in her mind's inner narrative.”

Among the other art works on view will be Hendricks's Brain of the Artist (1996), an exact one-to-one replication of his brain created by the artist in collaboration with an MRI laboratory in Frankfurt, Germany. Brain of the Artist, says Weber, “embodies the mystery implicit in 'And Therefore I Am'—how a three-pound mass of organic tissue inside our skull creates the animated, endlessly puzzling and fascinating sense of human identity and consciousness we each experience.”

Public events accompanying “And Therefore I Am” will include a spring reception from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 8; a film series featuring popular and experimental film and video (7 p.m. Thursdays Feb. 23 and March 2, 9, and 23); a noon curator's tour Thursday, Feb. 16; and a Dunkerley Dialogue beginning at 8 p.m. that day, featuring artist Matt Mullican and Flip Phillips of the College's Psychology Department.

All events are free and open to the public. For more information and additional public events to be announced, call 518-580-8080 or visit the Tang web site.

PDF: And Therefore I Am ATIA_PR.pdf