Episode 55: Alyssa Taylor Wendt

"As an artist you have to remember that you are always working. And you’re not just working when you are in the studio actually making something. You are working when you’re sleeping, dreaming, reading, looking at other peoples art, having conversations, and tripping over a rock. It’s all a part of your practice. To be able to embrace every element of your life as being a part of your practice takes the pressure off of going to the studio and the blank page. Just think of your studio as another tool."
Bio courtesy of Alyssa's website Alyssa Taylor Wendt (http://alyssataylorwendt.com/projects/) is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker and curator that works in Austin, Texas and Detroit, Michigan. Her recent projects reference themes of ritual, animism, monuments, mysticism, the primordial, architecture, gender and mortality using video, sculpture, staged photographs, sound and performance. The work tends to provoke questions in the viewer with dark and evocative aesthetics and multiple layers of perceived truth. She earned her BA from NYU and her MFA from Bard College. Transplanted from New York City, she has shown in numerous national and international exhibitions and performed at The Museum of Art and Design in New York, envoy gallery, The Fusebox Festival and Deitch Projects and completed residencies in Iceland and Norway. She is currently finishing her opus multi-channel video work HAINT and just curated an epic exhibition about death and transformation with over 60 artists at DEMO Gallery in Austin. She enjoys darkness, gospel blues and bad jokes.
The following text courtesy of the Visual Arts Center website Alyssa Taylor Wendt: HAINT (https://sites.utexas.edu/utvac/alyssa-taylor-wendt-haint/) January 25 – February 22, 2019 HAINT is an immersive, three-channel video installation by Austin-based artist and curator Alyssa Taylor Wendt. Filmed over the course of three years in Croatia, Detroit, and Texas, the individual channels unfold in counterpoint with one another to create a haunting meditation on the ways we process history, both as individuals and as a culture. The piece draws on motifs from Wendt’s personal cosmology and explores the associative powers of perception, cycles of history and ruination, and the spiritual energy that objects, the landscape, and architectural spaces carry with them. Using Eastern European songs, voiceover, opera, black metal drones, and ambient sound, HAINT combines images of post-war architecture, monuments, and ruins to create a poetic investigation of war, memory, and storytelling. In addition to the video, the exhibition includes sculptural elements and a collection of staged production photographs that intersect with the video’s multifaceted narrative. This exhibition is organized by MacKenzie Stevens, Director, Visual Arts Center, with Clare Donnelly, Gallery Manager, Visual Arts Center and Robin K. Williams, Ph.D. candidate in Art History at The University of Texas at Austin. Visual Arts Center The University of Texas at Austin Art Building 2300 Trinity St (directly north of DKR – Texas Memorial Stadium) 512-471–3713 Hours Tuesday – Friday 10am – 5pm Saturday Noon – 5pm Sunday / Monday Closed HAINT Viewing and Q&A with Alyssa Taylor Wendt Tuesday, January 29, 2019 12 PM Visual Arts Center Artist Talk: Alyssa Taylor Wendt Tuesday, February 5, 2019 4 PM Art Building, Rm. 1.120 HAINT Viewing and Q&A with Alyssa Taylor Wendt Tuesday, February 19, 2019 5:30 PM Visual Arts Center
Some of the subjects we discuss: Intro Project based Bard college MFA Starting with photography Nayland Blake Using all her skills Artistic origins/childhood Getting into music The punk scene New York/NYU San Francisco Acting in movies Back to NYC Studying acting Dilettante? ICP photo program Thesis project Highlights Move to TX Austin career Current practice Vulnerability Listening/animism Communication Art fairs/zeigeist Collaboration Filmmaking Utilizing skills Everything Too polite/pleasing Embracing darkness Personality vs work Haint details Drone metal Singing & Music Inter-editing Narrative film Fathers stories Ruins/cycles VAC event details Film/photography Thanks!
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Intro music generously provided by Stan Killian (http://stankillian.com/main/) Support this podcast. (http://www.austinarttalk.com/supportpodcast)