Media event responses fall 2013

Tony Allard Media lecture

          The media event was held here on the University of Nevada campus in room 107 of the knowledge center. About 37 people attended the Visiting artist lecture that evening which was titled; Drawing in the media stream workshop.

Tony Allard is a Performance artist, Electronic and media Artist and Writer. Tony Allard made the transition from 2d in art drawing and painting into Trans media post studio work which he calls Performance with single channel studio work. Allard taught at Kansas City Art Institute for 2years and then relocated to San Diego where he now teaches at California State University, San Marcos. His most famous installation was called 1995 corpse and mirror, performance montage 2003 street art. He is currently on campus with his interactive project called Bio art or UNR dims (drawing in the media stream) project.

Allard created an alter Ego named Heckety in response to the Bush administration and the right wing practices. Heckety is a mask that does not talk and derives its creation from mythology, Coyote the trickster god of several Native American cultures or Loki the prankster god from Norse mythology. He walks the streets with his mask on and a mail box on his back. Allard said; “His goal is to uncover the things that the eye will not normally see, whether hiding an object or opening the unconscious” He said the mailbox “Is an entity that make things disappear”. When asked about the meaning of that he said “That what is visible becomes invisible and it makes invisible, what is visible again and goes against normalcy”. He is unaware of what the public places into the mailbox. What is placed in the mailbox disappears then at the end of the evening it is emptied and it all becomes visible again. He studies the objects statements that people place inside.

I found most of his quotes and statements quite interesting in response to the normal flow of art or the description of things. Such Quotes were. “Artists put things in places they do not belong, like using Rembrandt for an ironing board”, “bad tools require more skills to operate”, and “Rational though is an experiment that should be phased out. I enjoyed the presentation and made me think in a different way about media and how I could possibly utilize it with my art.