bio:
Ash Arder (b. 1988, Flint, Michigan) is a transdisciplinary artist whose research-based approach works to expose, deconstruct or reconfigure physical and conceptual systems – especially those related to ecology and/or industry. Ash manipulates physical and virtual environments to explore materials, mark making, mechanical portraiture and sound design as tools for complicating dynamics of power between humans, machines and the lands they occupy.
Ash Arder (b. 1988, Flint, Michigan) is a transdisciplinary artist whose research-based approach works to expose, deconstruct or reconfigure physical and conceptual systems – especially those related to ecology and/or industry. Ash manipulates physical and virtual environments to explore materials, mark making, mechanical portraiture and sound design as tools for complicating dynamics of power between humans, machines and the lands they occupy.
statement:
At the very core, my creative practice is concerned with the idea of relation. Relation is, for me, a basic tenet for understanding how collaboration between ideas and entities might occur. I use the idea of speculative collaboration as a framework to expose, deconstruct or reconfigure physical and conceptual systems - especially those relating to ecology and industry. I understand collaboration to be a form of intimacy.
These systems, “exercises,” and “meditations” take on forms including installation, sculpture, sound, drawing, electronics, video and performance. Each ponders the role of agency, both active and passive, in co-creating an event or phenomenon. I am interested in complicating viewers’ own understanding of their proximity to and participation in the systems and cycles reflected in my work and subsequently at larger societal and ecological scales. These complications or moments of tension between living entities, objects and space serve as a catalyst for interrogating the very conditions responsible for the glitch. My work and research probe historical events, popular culture, and industry for insight into what I think of as “relational glitches,” or ruptures in empathy.
At the very core, my creative practice is concerned with the idea of relation. Relation is, for me, a basic tenet for understanding how collaboration between ideas and entities might occur. I use the idea of speculative collaboration as a framework to expose, deconstruct or reconfigure physical and conceptual systems - especially those relating to ecology and industry. I understand collaboration to be a form of intimacy.
These systems, “exercises,” and “meditations” take on forms including installation, sculpture, sound, drawing, electronics, video and performance. Each ponders the role of agency, both active and passive, in co-creating an event or phenomenon. I am interested in complicating viewers’ own understanding of their proximity to and participation in the systems and cycles reflected in my work and subsequently at larger societal and ecological scales. These complications or moments of tension between living entities, objects and space serve as a catalyst for interrogating the very conditions responsible for the glitch. My work and research probe historical events, popular culture, and industry for insight into what I think of as “relational glitches,” or ruptures in empathy.