Laurie McKenna
2020 - 2022: Aggregate, Press Badge, (X)trACTION
Aggregate and Press Badge are supported and made possible with funding from the Bisbee Arts Commission, the Arts Foundation of Tucson and Southern Arizona Creosote StART to Heal Grant, and an award/ mini-grant from the Confluence Center of Creative Inquiry, as part of the Fronteritades program at the University of Arizona, which was supported by the Andrew Mellon Foundation.
PRESS BADGE
“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of the truth upon them.” Ida B Wells
Press Badge
work in progress
Drawings, assemblage, QR code interactivity, video.
Honoring the first amendment, and in particular, the freedom of the press.
Using the U.S.Press Freedom Tracker , an online database which tracks abuse against journalists, this project transforms data into a mixed media installation honoring the journalists working in the US in the time frame of May 2020 to January 6, 2021.
David Huerta, who is associated with the US Press Freedom Tracker which is under the umbrella of the nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists, has been a technical consultant in the creation of this project.
Aggregate
Drawings, video, and objects 2020- present
1. A whole formed by combining several (typically disparate) elements.
2. A material or structure formed from a loosely compacted mass of fragments or particles.
Work in Progress
(X)trACTION
2022: A rough cut of the video short "Aggregate" (2021) has been published by the UArizona Libraries' Special Collections within the Family and Community Archives website as part of the Fronteridades program.
The final version of the video Aggregate is part of a program entitled (X)trACTION created by 5 media artists. This group effort, was initiated by artist Cathy Lee Crane in 2021 and includes Cathy Lee Crane, Jason Livingston, Nicole Antibe, and Erin Wilkerson. Their work reflects on and maybe even destroys the term “extraction.” The program has been screened in Central School Project, Bisbee, Cornell Cinema, Cornell, NY, and in July at the Harun Farocki Institut, Berlin, Germany.