February 02, 2006
The Exchange Project
Performance of Technology Tracked Free Trade
The Exchange Project--by Nancy Nisbet--is an artistic inquiry that uses cultural resistance to unsettle questionable relationships between international politics, technological surveillance, and identity construction. Specifically this project addresses 1. The politics of trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 2. Myths of increased national security through technological surveillance of people and commodities and 3. Identity construction based on collections of economic and surveillance data. One outstanding feature of the Exchange project is a cross-border performance that combines Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) surveillance technology, a full-size transport truck, and all of Nisbet’s personal belongings.
In this sustained performance, Nisbet’s things will be inventoried, radio frequency tagged and freely traded with individuals encountered during the six month trip that circumnavigates Canada, the United States and Mexico. This project exchanges the studio for the roads, truck stops, border crossings and cities of North America. “Exchange” creates through the untidy weaving of politics, surveillance technology and identity construction. From the spaces between these coarse threads will emerge resistance, solidarity, vulnerability and moments of human connection.
BIOGRAPHY: Nancy Nisbet is a Vancouver-based artist. From a disturbing paintball gun performance enacting the chaotic fluctuation in the cost of crude oil during the lead up to the US-led War in Iraq/ War on Terror to the surgical implantation of 'identity' micropchips into her hands, much of her work considers the political, the technological and the personal. Of specific consideration in her mixed-media work are issues of power, economics, and surveillance and their cultural influences on entertainment/leisure, identity and community. Exchange 2006 is a large scale project currently underway.
Nisbet received her MFA in Photography from the California Institute of the Arts. She is currently Assistant Professor of Visual Art in the Department of Art History, Visual Arts & Theory at the University of British Columbia.
Launching May 1, 2006 at the Richmond Art Gallery. More information here [PDF]
Posted by jo at February 2, 2006 05:00 PM
