[spectre] New podcast: Matt Mullican circles around notions such as virtuality, cosmology, subjectivity, and the idea of a memory theatre

[Radio Web MACBA]

*New podcast: Interview with Matt Mullican*

Through a series of practices designed to examine all the folds and
psychological strata of the real, Matt Mullican circles around notions such
as virtuality, cosmology, subjectivity, and the idea of a memory theatre.
In FONS AUDIO #36 he tells us about life on the other side of the mirror,
explains different ways of handling a corpse, and talks about the mind’s
endless capacity to create imaginary or parallel worlds.

Link:  http://rwm.macba.cat/en/specials/matt-mullican/capsula
Text: http://rwm.macba.cat/uploads/20151028/Fons36_eng.pdf


Using both autobiographical strategies and complex systems for classifying
the world, Matt Mullican (Santa Monica, California, 1951) explores the
different ways in which subjectivity manufactures and organises reality.
His work is an architecture of practices built up over the years, assembled
with different languages such as drawing, video, installation,
architecture, and performance. The desire to enter images –to break through
the surface of matter so that content can become inhabitable space– is a
key to understanding his early performances under hypnosis, the emergence
of characters such as the stick figure Glenn, and his groundbreaking city
simulation and virtual reality projects.

'M.I.T. Project' (1990-2009), a work from the MACBA Collection, began as a
spatial adaptation of one of Mullican’s cosmologies. It consists of a
quasi-architectural three-dimensional space divided into five compartments,
with a series of objects systematically arranged in each, as in a cabinet
of curiosities. Each section is organised according to a colour code. The
green zone is 'the elemental world', for example, containing minerals,
mounted butterflies, embalmed animals, and a human skeleton. The red zone,
symmetrically opposite, is 'the subjective' realm and sets up a kind of
ideal polar opposite in which there is no matter, only pure meaning. The
three remaining spaces are like steps from form to content, and focus on
the in-between stages of 'the iconic' (black and white), 'the world framed'
(yellow) and 'the world unframed' (blue), which includes a giant flag, a
steam engine, and a boiler.

Mullican's work runs through him in first person. He uses himself as a
medium, while keeping his distance from simple biographical dramatisation.
He approaches his unconscious as a found object. In the videos 'Matt
Mullican under hypnosis' (1996) and 'Untitled -Matt Mullican under
hypnosis: Zurich' (2003), also in the MACBA Collection, he goes on stage
and improvises under the effects of a hypnotist. Over the years, this
recurring practice led to the emergence of “that person”, a multifaceted
entity of indefinite age and gender, a lover of beauty, coffee, and
everyday rituals who has the capacity to disrupt any taxonomy or rational
ordering system.

*Timeline*
*00:34* Caves
*02:25* 'M.I.T. Project'
*12:15* That person
*19:47* Going into the mirror
*25:52* Cadaver
*27:52* I will never forget this
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