Julia Christensen
Brief Info
Julia Christensen is a multidisciplinary artist and writer who is currently based in Oberlin OH. Christensen is Associate Professor of Integrated Media in the Studio Art Department at Oberlin College. She previously taught at Stanford University, California College of the Arts, and State University of New York Albany [1]. She is also a board member of SPACES, and a member of the New Agency at MOCA Cleveland. [2]
Education [3]
MFA, integrated electronic arts, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, 2005 MFA, electronic music and recording media, Mills College, Oakland, CA, 2003 BA, integrated arts, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, 2000
Selected Works
Big Box Reuse
Big Box Reuse (2003-2010) is an interdisciplinary research project about the reuse of abandoned “big box” buildings in the United States. Christensen interested in how other communities were dealing with abandoned big box stores. She spent years taking a series of road trips that led her to visit dozens of reused Walmart and Kmart sites, and documenting how the community reuse of these structures across the United States. This project led her to produce photographs, interdisciplinary installations, illustrated lectures at venues across the country, various websites, numerous articles. The project also took form in Christensen’s first book, Big Box Reuse, published by MIT Press in 2008. [4]
[4]
Technology Time Technology Time is an evolving series of photographs of obsolete technology in electronic waste dumps around the world. It documents the global e-waste industry that stems from upgrade and consumer culture. The photographs show the material flow created by upgrade culture, the aggregate of which is toxic e-waste. Christensen attempts to introduces the audience to the critical need for design practices that transcend “technology time” and the life span of evolving technology [5].
[5]
Phoney
Christensen explores the ways in which systems of technology affect human cognition in her work Phoney. The piece is a response to the 2016 election in which Christensen developed augmented reality technology for mobile phones to alter recently published articles about U.S. immigration policy.^ The headlines and associated images that appear in the photo mural come from articles about people who have been directly impacted by President Trump’s executive order, including stories originating in Ohio. Phoney draws attention to the Trump administration’s relationship with the mainstream media and how ubiquitous computing can change the way people consume and participate in politics [6].
[6]
Exhibitions, Presentations, Performances
Her work has been exhibited internationally at the Eyebeam (NYC, NY), Ronald Feldman Fine Arts (NYC, NY), 21C Museum (Louisville, KY), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN), Carnegie Museum of Fine Arts (Pittsburgh, PA), and internationally in Finland, France, Greece, and beyond. Christensen is a 2017-2018 fellow at the LACMA Art + Tech Lab in Los Angeles. Her work has been supported by a Creative Capital fellowship (Emerging Fields, 2013), Ohio Individual Excellence fellowship (2015), New York State Council on the Arts (2007), Turbulence commission (2008), and residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Wexner Center for the Arts Film/Video Studio, and the Experimental Television Center.
Christensen has also given presentation located in:
Brigham Young University, Visual Arts Lecture Series, Provo, Utah (2018) Los Angeles County Museum of Art, “Preserving Obsolescence: Julia Christensen in Conversation with Geoff Manaugh,” Los Angeles (2018) Media Archaeology Lab, University of Colorado, Boulder, Boulder, CO (2018) Women’s Center for Creative Work, Los Angeles, CA (2018) Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, Art on Artists series, Cleveland, OH, (2018) Gallery 400, University of Illinois, Chicago, Voices series, Chicago, IL (2018) Cleveland Institute of Art, Lunch on Fridays series, Cleveland, OH (2018) Syracuse University, Visual Arts Lecture Series, Syracuse, NY (2017) 2731 Prospect Gallery, panel with Jacob Ciocci and Luca Buvoli, Cleveland, OH (2017) Columbia University, Sound Art MFA Program, New York, NY (2016)
Along with dozens of other universities across the United States [7].
Art Practice
Julia Christensen’s work explores systems of technology, consumerism, landscape, and obsolescence. She examines how technology and other consumerist items flow through society, with focuses on reusing e-waste caused by “upgrade culture”, the endless need for the continual upgrading of technology. This can be related to planned obsolescence, which critic Vance Packerd claims that this trend is wasteful, on top of exploiting the consumer with what are often cosmetic changes [8]. Christensen address this issue in one of her current projects in which she is taking e-waste and turning it into working projectors[9]. The artist is giving new life to trash in the form of functioning electronics, disrupting the perceived lifetime of evolving technologies
Another topic that the artist has examined is the landscape of small towns in her long term interdisciplinary research project called Big Box Reuse. This piece looks at how communities deal with abandoned “big box” stores such as Wal-Mart. Often, these sites in the American suburbs, are a product of consumer culture and economic downturns. In her book, Big Box Reuse, lives a collection of different stories as to how different communities dealt with these large abandoned buildings. Author, Theodore Georgreen, states that this “hints at how to build more easily adaptable and reusable boxes tomorrow”, even though the repurposing of these structures is not a cheap or easy feat [10]
References
[1] “Fellows: Julia Christensen.” John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, John Simon Guggenheim
Memorial Foundation, 2018, www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/julia-christensen/.
[2] “Julia Christensen.” Creative Capital, Creative Capital Foundation, creative-capital.org/artists/julia-christensen/. [3] “Julia Christensen.” Oberlin College and Conservatory: Julia Christensen, Oberlin College and
Conservatory, www.oberlin.edu/julia-christensen.
[4] [5] “TECHNOLOGY TIME.” JULIA CHRISTENSEN, www.juliachristensen.com/portfolio/technology-time/. [6] “PHONEY.” JULIA CHRISTENSEN, www.juliachristensen.com/portfolio/phoney/. [7] Christensen, Julia. “CV.” JULIA CHRISTENSEN, www.juliachristensen.com/c-v/. [8] Park, M. "Defying Obsolescence." In Cooper T (ed) Longer Lasting Products: Alternatives to the Throwaway Society, 2010 Gower, Farnham, UK." [9] Christy, Zach and Will Roane, directors. Faculty Profile: Julia Christensen. YouTube, Oberlin College &
Conservatory, 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyvgq0yGPco.
[10] Theodore, Georgeen. “Big Box Reuse.” Journal of Architectural Education, vol. 63, no. 1, Oct. 2009,
pp. 151–152. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/j.1531-314X.2009.01043.x.
Julia Christensen (Artist)[edit]
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