BIO
F. C. Zuke creates audiovisual and interactive artworks that investigate how beliefs are acquired, transmitted, and performed in society. His latest installation, animation, and video projects examine influential historical texts, American talk radio, human-canine relationships, intelligence tests, and other systems of belief and power. In addition to his individual practice, he has collaborated with filmmakers, choreographers, musicians, scholars, and other artists to produce video works, performances, and short films. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Digital Media at the University of Mississippi and has taught courses that explore video, sound, digital imaging, installation, performance, creative coding, and interactive media. His works have been exhibited, performed, and screened nationally and internationally, including at the Museum of Contemporary Sculpture (Matera, Italy), SKC Gallery (Rijeka, Croatia), College Art Association Annual Conference (Chicago), Experimental Music Studios (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Jan Hus Church (New York City), Culture Centre Saldutiskis (Lithuania), the Hokin Gallery (Chicago), Screen Power Festival (London), Kimball Recital Hall (Lincoln, Nebraska), Art and Design Gallery (Lawrence, Kansas), Cinema dei Piccoli (Rome, Italy), Tagore Hall (Bangalore, India), the Wexford Arts Center (Leinster, Ireland), and other venues for art, music, and the moving image.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My motivations as an artist are fueled by a desire to put audiences inside of art experiences that reveal and question systems at the heart of our existence as 21st-century beings. I believe art is useful for investigating the differences between peoples. I also believe it holds extraordinary potential for exploring the connectedness of systems that are seemingly disparate. Systems theory plays a significant role in my research-based practice, and I am particularly interested in systems of belief, classification, and epistemology. My works invite viewers to enter systems that are alive and moving, listening and watching, and reactive to their actions. My aim is to create situations where people not only think about a system, but physically see, hear, and feel how it responds to their presence. I think this visceral and interactive nature of my work makes the presence and structure of systems more poignant and recognizable when they appear outside of the art world. The experiences I create involve immersive sound and video, light, darkness, interactive objects, and emergent technologies that allow viewers to become entangled with art—and each other—in meaningful ways. Viewers are often collaborators in my work, using their bodies to engage installations that are sensitive and reactive to their actions. My artistic philosophy is influenced by Barthes’ Death of the Author (1967), and I truly believe that meanings are made manifest through the viewer. Barthes writes that a work’s unity “lies not in its origin but its destination,” and the destination of my work is in the audiences who experience it. Many of the sounds and forms in my work do not present themselves until audiences perform actions that activate them.
Collaboration is a significant element of my practice. I am inspired by collective intelligence and the prospect of working as a team to accomplish projects that would be difficult or impossible for an individual to achieve. I have worked with artists, musicians, and choreographers to produce work that speaks to systematic social problems and the histories of underrepresented peoples. I believe collaboration is apt for producing works about societal issues and the ways that we are impacted by these structures. It is fulfilling to be a part of projects that spark conversations around these issues, and it is important that we show how the arts play a role in shaping our future.
My artistic practice grew out of a background in music composition. I am drawn to sound as an artistic medium because of its mystery. Sound is an invisible, ephemeral energy that further informs our visual experience, and I believe the potential for pairing sound with the visual arts is profound. It can evoke intensely specific emotions, it is incredibly useful as a mnemonic device, and it is naturally immersive and omnipresent. At times, I use it to disorient and overwhelm the viewer. At other times, I visualize and demystify sound so that audiences can better understand the power of sound as it functions within societal systems. My projects often challenge the invisible boundaries between art, sound, and music, and I do not think that art experiences need to be restrained to one of these areas. My installations and audiovisual works are designed to be accessed by diverse audiences: the general public, historians, philosophers, other artists, other researchers, and those who have never entered an art gallery. As an artist, and as an educator, I am interested in the ways that art can be broadly applicable to all disciplines and all areas of life.
I am more interested in posing questions than prescribing answers. Here are some of the questions that my works ask.
From where do we obtain our beliefs and what authority do we give these sources?
How can we visualize the invisible sounds and algorithms of contemporary culture?
What happens when secular beliefs become sacred?
What happens when censored information is hidden in plain sight?
What can we learn from our non-human companions?
How does the chemistry of the human brain impact our conceptions of others?
How are tensions between rationality and creativity institutionalized?
When do patterns become so complex that they can no longer be called patterns?
How do social systems influence our beliefs and actions?
How can we reveal, confront, and influence the systems we exist in?