About
As an artist and maker of “things” I’ve become more and more interested in how the process of production, fabrication, and craft have come to inform a conceptual artistic practice. I have focused my work on issues of “illicit capitalism”—bootlegs, knock-offs, and the reworked commodity—in an attempt to address being an ambivalent subject of forces larger than myself—politics, global economics, capitalism, and the corporate culture machine—all the while maintaining that there is a way to mutate a given set of laws, icons, or imagery, and place them at a new and different service. My recent projects use objects and surfaces that look strangely familiar, manipulating conventions of style and structure to create “mixed-use” items.
The “Autonomous Manufacturing Zone” is based on the idea of Hakim Bey’s “Temporary Autonomous Zone” (TAZ) — a “socio-political tactic of creating temporary spaces that elude formal structures of control.” Rooted in the history of high-seas piracy, pirate utopias and creative anarchy movements, the TAZ provides a fertile inspiration for ideas of autonomy and making. As an artist/maker invested in issues of production, consumption, and how one can carve out a personal and even political space within larger systems of globalization and power, the resulting AMZ is my attempt at formulating a psychological (and sometimes physical) space in which to play hit-and-run with different projects.
I think of the AMZ as being located in various places at various times: it has temporarily rested in my studio, in my hands, in the classroom, and in the collective and public arena.
While also serving as a repository for documenting my general process and studiolife, this blog serves to accumulate and illustrate some of the ideas I’ve been thinking of that may also never find a manifestation in a formal art project.
Think of it as “backstory” or a trapdoor entry into the studio.
For archived projects, reviews, and more “formal” texts, visit http://www.stephaniesyjuco.com
“Wirtschafts-werte (Economic Values)” 2003; foamboard, contact paper, industrial shelving
