[ISEA2011] Panel: Dee Hi­b­bert-Jones & Nomi Tal­is­man – Po­lit­i­cal Emo­tions, Art and Af­fect: From Psy­cho­log­i­cal Pros­thet­ics to Liv­ing Con­di­tion

Panel Statement

Panel: Emotion Studies in a Contemporary Art Debate

At a time when “pol­i­tics” evokes feel­ings of alien­ation, pas­siv­ity or abuse of power and per­cep­tions are that in­di­vid­ual needs and griev­ances are sim­ply ig­nored, artists Dee Hi­b­bert-Jones and Nomi Tal­is­man ap­proach vi­sual art as a set of ex­per­i­ments to an­swer ques­tions such as: Can hope­less­ness be trans­formed? Is there any­thing use­ful about guilt? Can anx­i­ety fuel our de­sires for a bet­ter fu­ture? Can a be­lief in utopia be res­cued and if so how? Hi­b­bert-Jones and Tal­is­man will pre­sent four cur­rent col­lab­o­ra­tive pro­jects ex­plor­ing the re­la­tion­ship be­tween af­fect and po­lit­i­cal feel­ings in com­mu­ni­ties and in pub­lic space. Each pro­ject in­ves­ti­gates so­cial con­nect­ed­ness, emo­tional well­be­ing, meth­ods of cop­ing and iso­la­tion. In Psy­cho­log­i­cal Pros­thet­ics, (“Help­ing You Han­dle Your Emo­tional Bag­gage in Po­lit­i­cal Times”) the artists uti­lize the per­sona of a cor­po­rate pro­fes­sional to offer a line of self-help prod­ucts and ser­vices to the pub­lic.  While of­fer­ing to mea­sure in­se­cu­rity, over­come anx­i­ety, and help to lit­er­ally, con­sume fear, the pro­ject en­gages the au­di­ence in dis­cus­sion, cri­tique and com­men­tary on no­tions of con­for­mity, co­er­cion and re­sis­tance. At the other end of these ex­per­i­ments the artists pro­duced Liv­ing Con­di­tion, a short an­i­mated film that ex­plores the trauma faced by fam­i­lies of pris­on­ers on death row. Col­lab­o­ra­tions with fam­ily mem­bers re­sult in an an­i­mated short film based en­tirely on their sto­ries. Each pro­ject will be pre­sented through short video clips, im­ages and de­scrip­tions of the­o­ret­i­cal in­tent, con­cep­tual ap­proach, meth­ods of ex­e­cu­tion and most im­por­tantly the re­sponses from the pub­lic.

  • Dee Hi­b­bert-Jones & Nomi Tal­is­man, work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tively, since 2004, en­gage in di­a­logues about power, pol­i­tics and emo­tions. Their videos, sculp­ture, in­stal­la­tion and street in­ter­ven­tions in­ves­ti­gate the ways in­di­vid­u­als man­age power sys­tems and han­dle emo­tional bag­gage from the mun­dane to the ex­treme.  Their work has re­ceived awards from the Na­tional En­dow­ment for the Arts, the Eu­ro­pean Cul­tural Coun­cil, the Cre­ative Work Fund and is ex­hib­ited in gal­leries, mu­se­ums and fes­ti­vals in­ter­na­tion­ally. Hi­b­bert-Jones holds an MFA, MA, and BA. She is an As­so­ci­ate Pro­fes­sor of Art at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Santa Cruz., USA. Tal­is­man was born in Is­rael and she has an MFA from Mills Col­lege Cal­i­for­nia, she works as an artist and media spe­cial­ist. They both cur­rently live in San Fran­cisco, Cal­i­for­nia, USA.