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Justine CooperHAVIDOL: when more is not enough 2007If you don't Havidol, you'll want to get it soon..., Reuters, Feb. 16, 2007, http://blogs.reuters.com/2007/02/16/if-you-dont... 'HAVIDOL is a play on 'have-it-all', and has the ring of a pharmaceutical drug you've only just now heard of. Justine Cooper's Havidol TV Spots are faux advertisements for a psychoactive product that taps into collective desires for personal improvement. Capitalising on the fine line between self-deprecation and self-diagnosis, the marketing message of Havidol assures us that we are never good enough, and can never have enough; contentment is articulated by the advertisements' American actors as a kind of drug-induced false consciousness. Cooper's work also comments on western medicine, built upon treating the symptoms of a malfunctioning body or mind, as well as the belief that everyday life, and its distance from the American dream, can be remedied.' SAVED by SCIENCE 2004 (photographs and DVD)During an art residency at The American Museum of Natural History in New York, Cooper explored the back passageways, storage rooms and specimen cases where the majority of the museum's treasures are stored. Cooper used an 1910s, wooden 4x5 camera to create large scale photographs, which prisent the collections as both an evolution of the collecting and storing process, and a historical and contemporary perspective on how we systematize and assign value to nature. Editioned photographs are aviable in three sizes 20''x26'', 30''x39'', 46''x60''. S.O.S (Sounds of Science) 2004 (DVD, 4:46, col., sd.)A single uninterrupted tracking shot winds through the immense corridors of the fifth floor of the Museum, past the scientific collections. Layered sounds from nature related to the contents of the cabinets being passed create a lush, alive soundscape. TRANSFORMERS 2002(multi-channel video installation)"With this work I was interested in the significance of bio-technologies on the individual, or on the idea of Identity. For Transformers I collected physical evidence of identity from twelve subjects: hair, from which I use the follicles to extract DNA to sequence, fingerprints and photographs, along with more intangible and cultural identifying information like personal histories. Although the project grew our of my interest in genetics, ultimately it serves as a cultural point of view of Identity."– JC EVANITION 2001 (sculpture/installation)This piece uses synthetic DNA, liquid crystal glass panels, proximity sensors and the existing architecture of the gallery. The DNA sequence was created by translating the light patterns of the architectural site into the 4 bases that make up DNA. By approaching the wall, proximity sensors alternate the state of the glass between transparent and opaque. The viewer on each side has some control, but not all. The installation evokes both ephemerality and mass, absence and presence. MOIST 2000-2002 (video, photographs)For this work Cooper developed microscopy images of body fluids such as blood, mucus and tears, and translated them out as meterological phenomena, interstellar geographies, and studies in pattern and randomness. "I choose to use the body because it's a universal platform. We are all working out of the same organic framework. That must have consequences for who we are and how we relate to our world." – JC REACH 2000 (sculpture, photomedia)Magnetic Resonance Imaging scans of Cooper's hands were used for the creation of this sculpture. At the point of imaging, solid organic tissue is transposed into a digital language of zeroes and ones, in much the same way that a cipher uses substitution to encrypt information. In the resulting physical work the ephemerality of this translation into digital space is offset against the apparent tangibility of the body. Instead of a simple dichotomy between invisible and apparent, virtual and physical, continuity and displacement, an attempt at a less distinct disclosure is being made where the gap becomes the viewer's space. TRAP–self portrait 1998 (sculpture, photomedia)A Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award Finalist 2003, the work was exhibited together with the selected finalists in the gardens of Werribee Park, Victoria – a spectacular setting for the public to experience and appreciate the wide variety of sculptural works. As with REACH, Magnetic Resonance Imaging scans of Cooper's head were used for the creation of this stunning self-portrait. RAPT I 1998 (video)RAPT II 1999 (print media installation)Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans map the water content of a body and produce images as axial slices. For Rapt, the artist used MRI scans of her own body to create a virtual 3D body accessible on any plane, navigable and viewable internally and externally. The result is a riveting poetic work of art, which Cooper has presented as a video and a print media installation. "The resulting video is elegant and chilling, finishing with an image of Cooper's face, which has the powerful spiritual impact [and] has been [compared] to the Shroud of Turin." – Ashley Crawford, The Age "Cooper transliterates lived experience across the virtual-actual interface using high-end medical imaging technologies to expose the body's recondite innards in 5 mm transverse slices. Her bloodless eviscerations in Rapt I, while seemingly anodyne, still pack a potent punch, resembling grisly snapshots from the vivisector's high-tech photo-archive." – Alessio Cavallaro (Co-Editor), 'Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History' |