Starcom Mediavest
2015
During January and February of 2015, I was an artist in residence at the corporate headquarters of the media communications agency Starcom MediaVest Group in the Leo Burnett Building in Chicago, Illinois. The program was initiated by CEO Laura Desmond with Ben Foch and Chelsea Culp of New Capital.
The CEO has a motto, one that is common within companies that take a “disruptive” approach to their industries: “Ask forgiveness, not permission.” Somehow this motto trickled down to me—a temporary non-employee—when I asked her executive assistant (my primary liaison) if I could breed mosquitos in the office. Though the corporate hierarchy was intricate and veiled, I not only felt more autonomy from it than expected, I was barely instrumentalized toward any concrete goals. The CEO never made herself available to meet with me.
I’m finding it difficult to explain what happened there, as it was all too quick and overstimulating to process. I had lived in Chicago before, but this was a different Chicago—the Chicago in the sky that sought to get Marlboro, McDonalds, and Coca-Cola into every body in America and to mobilize those bodies with General Motors, Pfizer, and Hallmark Cards. I had 24-hour access to all 10 of the company’s floors in the building and exposure to thousands of employees. I lived directly across the river from the office in Bertrand Goldberg’s Marina City. Every day—weekends included—I would take an elevator down from my apartment on the 38th floor of Marina City, walk across the bridge over the river, and take an elevator up to my large office on the 32nd floor of the Leo Burnett building. The rigor of this routine, which also included an hour a day at the gym, seeing friends only on weekends, and eating pistachios every night while looking out onto the city through my apartment’s transparent wall, felt necessary amidst the chaos of starting on too many ideas with not enough time.
A research-based project within this timeframe was both impossible and undesirable. It felt like the settlement of an artistic frontier—reacting to the environment quickly, grabbing whatever corporate resources I could get my hands on, and constructing often without permission. At night my freedom blossomed, after the thousands had vacated the tower. It was then I could use a 200,000 BTU blowtorch to melt industrial heat shrink-wrap in my office. Or have a date with a former Disney on Ice star turned art student. A few times I fell asleep there. Yet it wasn’t totally empty. A member of middle management who often stayed late would happily field my questions about his time as a Scientologist. One of the guards was autistic, and I would give him all the free company Apple Jacks he wanted to critique my work. And the custodian who cleaned floor 32 every night would stand in the doorway of my studio and ridicule me, in jest, for working late hours to make “a bunch of nonsense.”
My liaisons—which included the executive assistant to the CEO—were part of a committee organized especially for me. They were immeasurably helpful and, as one would expect from a voluntary artist-in-residence committee, curious. But because an exhibition had to be made, I barely had enough time to casually talk to people, and they seemed to have even less time for me.
My hope was to emphasize the “raw footage” of life that is typically edited out of these climate-controlled, brand-focused corporate offices: non-human life forms, processes of decay, atypical subjectivities, and uselessness. I’m not quite sure what effect this all had, because my former committee seems too busy to deal with what is effectively an optional survey to them.
The following four images started with documentation of work made in the office, and ended up becoming interpretations of the works in hindsight. My friend Nick Bastis joined me for my first few weeks in the office, and we collaborated on the work seen in numbers 2 and 3.
Belief Systems and the Conquering Gaze from Nowhere
Status Anxiety and the Individual
Autistic Perception and the Form of Sense
Unfixed Spacetime and the Imprints of Experience
Documentation:
mobile mosquito city
utility cart, mosquito netting, mosquito larvae, mosquitos, water, lambskin condom, pig blood, orchid plant, Salerno
butter cookies, glass, industrial heat shrink wrap, vinyl, CGI print outs
When I think of those coal miners trapped in a mine, there may be empathy. But my empathy would probably be towards the flashlight batteries of the coal miners if there happens to be a selection on my part. Or my empathy would perhaps be towards the trapped air around those coal miners. There would be me watching through the eyes of the flashlight cell the utter hopelessness of those unfortunate miners as my last chemicals struggled to glow the faint bulb so that I didn't leave them dying in darkness. As the air around them, I would try to find a way to let myself squeeze every bit of oxygen I have to allow the doomed lungs to breathe, for I am responsible for their doom. And while I found myself trapped, I would smell the burning rice being cooked with neglect in an earthen pot.
industrial heat shrink wrap, vinyl, Herman Miller office chair
Sunshine
3D powder print, copper, vinyl
normal children with abnormal numbers of chromosomes
industrial heat shrink wrap, Emirates Airlines flotation vest, Dasani, ink, found photograph from Rockland Psychatric Center
Austin Mahone as an analogy for the workings of the universe (collaboration with Nick Bastis)
cardboard cutout, handmade stainless steel frame, plastic
For Scott
propane tank
dog song
laser cut Karelian Birch burl veneer panel
Rachel
CGI print out, ethernet cable, telephone shoulder rest
Guided Meditation (collaboration with Nick Bastis)
secret executive parking garage, Ford E-350, video
Table of Contents (collaboration with Nick Bastis)
reception desk, industrial heat shrink wrap, employee computer, raw steel, iron fittings, 3D printed hardware, crutch tips, Helix Aspersa snails, Spot the Dog book, wallpaper
Group Therapy(collaboration with Nick Bastis)
raw steel, iron fittings, 3D printed hardware, crutch tips, melted PVC patio chaise lounges, lamp, wallpaper, carpet
*Each 3D printed hardware piece has the name of a 70s/80s soft rock group set into it, or those two decades. Here you see "1980s" and Seals and Crofts misspelled as "Seal & Croft."
Courting Chairs (collaboration with Nick Bastis)
Motivational Posters (collaboration with Nick Bastis)
raw steel, iron fittings, 3D printed hardware, crutch tips, PVC blinds, acrylic corporate award, wallpaper, ink, video
Manifesto (collaboration with Nick Bastis)
utility closet, refrigerator, raw steel, video, speakers, found diagram
floor arrangement (Vernazza beach version) (collaboration with Nick Bastis)
plumbing, hose, bike tire, pipe, boot, office chair leg, Tommy Hillfiger underwear, wood, plastic, fiberglass, toy knife, car radiator, rake, doll head, weapon sheath, circuit board, screwdriver
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masonry beachrock
Kimbell (collaboration with Nick Bastis)
Helix Aspersa snail, work station
Adriana (collaboration with Nick Bastis)
Helix Aspersa snail, work station
Anonymous (collaboration with Nick Bastis)
Helix Aspersa snail, work station
Maddison (collaboration with Nick Bastis)
Helix Aspersa snail, work station
Scott (collaboration with Nick Bastis)
Helix Aspersa snail, work station
Live at Starcom Mediavest: <3 by Andrew Norman Wilson on Mixcloud