“Desiring Machines for Living”
School of Visual Arts MFA Art Practice Thesis Exhibit
Installation and Performance by Nicole Finley
Opening Reception: 6-9pm, Thursday, July 11, 2019
LIC Gallery Night: 3-8pm, Thursday, July 18, 2019
Exhibit Dates: July 11-27, 2019
Gallery Hours: Wed-Fri, 3-8pm and Sat-Sun, 12-6pm
This exhibit is the first of the “Space 101” series, an ongoing investigation of space by Trailer Park Test Projects. The first project of visual evidence is “Desiring Machines for Living.”
“Desiring Machines for Living” is based on a statement by architect/designer Le Corbusier: “The house is a machine for living in” and Deleuze and Guattari’s “desiring-machines” construct that “desire is a machine, and the object of desire is another machine connected to it.” Le Corbusier’s statement refers to the idea that a house should be designed following the same logic as a machine and towards a standardization in architecture and in response to the basic needs of a human being. “To see dwelling as a machine in the manner of Deleuze and Guattari would also be essentially to make the same point as Le Corbusier: it would be an assemblage of elements coming together in a consistency, namely, the boundary of a dwelling. … The house is something that is made up of a collection of elements which become significant when made into a whole. …Both these notions of the machine, therefore, imply a form of determinism based on the material, of the machine as a limiting and containing form, which imposes an order and an organisation forced by the coming together of its constituent elements.” (King, Peter. “In Dwelling: Implacability, Exclusion and Acceptance”)
Considering these thoughts, the exhibit explores through different elements (object and imagery) how within the space of a trailer (machine) there can be a projecting onto one’s home a level of desirable-ness (from contentedness to making the best of it) or, conversely, undesirable-ness, projecting away from one’s home desire for something better, i.e. The American Dream; all of this through “a collection of elements (objects) which become significant when made into a whole.” Through an investigation of this collection of objects and imagery within the trailer space, the question is do we get what we desire through them? Or as Lauren Berlant explains as “cruel optimism…a relation of attachment to compromised conditions of possibility.”
Nicole Finley was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She is an interdisciplinary artist interested in personal narrative through visual and verbal storytelling, including place (home), possibility (the American Dream) and the materiality of and our relationship with objects (desiring). In addition to a career in graphic design, she has presented work in solo and group exhibits across Oklahoma; in New York City; and most recently during Miami Art Week 2018. Nicole Finley holds a BFA in graphic design from the University of Tulsa and will graduate from the MFA Art Practice program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 2019. www.instagram.com/nic_finley