An Aleatory History of the Stick

2014 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

Michael Linares

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After two years of research in close conversation with anthropologists and archaeologists, Linares eventually enrolled in classes to study archeology—specifically the history of material artifacts. He became obsessed with the origin of metaphor, and the stick as the Ur (earliest) object used by humans that led to the formation of meaning itself. This video, which accompanies the “Museum of the Stick,” is part of major work surveying material culture collected and presented by the artist through a complex narrative of associations and anthropological research. Here “aleatory” means not just random but subject to the complex and organic forces of chance. “As early as the Pliocene epoch, the stick as a specific, three-dimensional form has played a vital role in the technological, social, political, aesthetic, and religious development of humanity and some animal species. The chimpanzee’s tool that catches termites, the facial ornamentation of the Yanomami people, the Shulgi of Ur’s weaponry—as well as the toothpick, knitting needle, and vaulting-pole—all represent a minute slice of the myriad transfigurations that this form has undergone throughout history.”

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Michael Linares (San Juan, Puerto Rico) asks critical questions about the most fundamental forms and concepts of art. His recent work has combined physical comedy with formal abstraction, scholarly research and quotidian material culture. Through staging conceptual acts, often as ruptures of artworld conventions, he slyly invites new ways of seeing what’s been in front of us all along.

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Colors:

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• artifact.n.01
• anthropology.n.01
• archeology.n.01
• instrument.n.01
• technology.n.01
• stick.n.01