May 4, 2021 Jaclyn Wright, Spring 2021 Exhibition & Performance DM Faculty Grant
Marked
Jaclyn Wright is an interdisciplinary artist and educator from Chicago. She received her BA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and her MFA from Indiana University. Her work combines traditional analog photographic techniques with contemporary digital methods and fabrication processes. Through this hybridized approach she draws connections between the personal and political by examining the fraught relationship between the land and the body and its colonization by both patriarchy and photography. Wright has been exhibited nationally and internationally and published widely. Her work has been included in the collections at The Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, and the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection in Chicago, IL. Recent exhibitions of her work include: SF Camerawork (San Francisco), Indiana University (Bloomington), Sabine Street Studios (Houston), SFO Museum (San Francisco), Houston Center for Photography (Houston), and Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (Salt Lake City). She is currently an Assistant Professor of Photography and Digital Imaging at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, UT.
Briefly describe your project and the challenges, lessons learned, and obstacles overcome in the execution of it. What were the professional, academic, and personal motivations underlying your project?
My research combines traditional photographic techniques with contemporary digital processes, performance, and installation. With the support of Digital Matters, I am working on a new video piece that requires specialized equipment and production assistants. The new piece is an extension from my ongoing body of work, Marked.
The west desert, located outside of Salt Lake City, is the land that I-80 runs through, driving from Chicago to San Francisco. The west desert is managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and is referred to as “public lands.” These lands are often used for target practice, off-road vehicles, hiking, and other outdoor activities. While these lands are theoretically free to use, significant acreage is leased to private extraction companies and cattle ranchers, both of which have an ecological impact on the land. The west desert is also home to the Dugway Proving Ground, a US military-owned testing site for biological and chemical weapons. The landscape is a trope represented through many photographic surveys. It is inextricably linked to a deep fascination with the American West, which can be seen through westward expansion, cowboy fantasies, and the desire to secure resources – all of which used images as a form of propaganda. These photographs sought to document, aestheticize, and colonize the lands viewed through the camera’s lens. The new video piece (title TBD) references various sites in the west desert to critique contradictions regarding individual rights, access, land use, and their relationship to capitalism, manifest destiny, and power.
There have been several challenges throughout the production of this piece, one of which has been learning to use the new equipment that allows me to create more dynamic video footage. The other challenge has been the evolving conceptual framework of the project. This obstacle has presented me with more questions than answers, which is exciting as I begin to work on editing and sequencing the footage.
How did the Digital Matters Faculty Grant dovetail with your academic pursuits? What interested you in applying for this grant?
During my second semester at the U, I was introduced to the Digital Matters team through a Research Instrumentation Fund – Faculty grant I was writing. I was able to visit the Digital Matters space and speak with several staff members. I was immediately welcomed and felt a sense of community. The grant that I was awarded, the Exhibition & Performance Grant, fits well within my academic and creative pursuits. When I applied for this grant, I had many obstacles in terms of what I was able to produce with the equipment and support I had. The Digital Matters Grant allowed me the opportunity to remove those obstacles and create a piece that I had previously been unable to create.
What insights have you gained in regard to your specific field as a result of your project and grant experience?
It’s been exciting to be able to execute this new piece to the full extent of its potential. The grant has allowed me to physically realize the work that I had previously only conceptualized. The access to the necessary equipment and resources to make this video work has also required me to address additional conceptual concerns that wouldn’t have otherwise come up. I have also had the opportunity to learn how to use new high-tech video equipment, which I hope will extend into my teaching practice.
What would you tell potential faculty grant applicants to help them shape their own digital scholarship project?
I would tell potential applicants to be specific about their ideas, goals, and what they feel the Digital Matters Grant can offer them. The process to apply is relatively straightforward and the staff is incredibly helpful in providing feedback. I would also say if you applied once and don’t receive the funding, tailor your application, make it more specific, and submit it again.
What do you see as the upcoming important issues surrounding digital scholarship in your field? What areas/issues could students and scholars investigate to extend the knowledge in this area?
There are many significant issues surrounding digital scholarship within the field of visual art. Specifically, regarding images, there are continuing questions about the uses and abuses of images for political and capital propaganda. Photography is a medium that possesses an air of objectivity or indexicality that we know to be false or, at best, dubious. This coupled with advancing digital technologies, such as 3D rendered images, convolutional neural networks, and deepfake suggests that not only is our understanding of images changing but our ability to accurately read and understand images needs to rapidly evolve.
The new video piece (title TBD) references various sites in the west desert to critique contradictions regarding individual rights, access, land use, and their relationship to capitalism, manifest destiny, and power.
–Jaclyn Wright, Spring 2021 Exhibition & Performance DM Faculty Grantee