As an aesthetic practice, historical re-enactments draw tension between the respective differences of those being compared. In a contemporized rendition of Jean Luc Godard’s film entitled ‘La Chinoise’ (1967), artist Mark Tribe stages a conversation between a student and a former 60’s radical turned professor set in New York City in late 2004. For audiences today, the conversation topic—bombing a university—resonates as a specific response to a very specific set of historical conditions that implicate political currents in NYC today. The project’s title, ‘Chinoise A’, implies the presence of subsequent versions of the same tableau—’Chinoise B,’ ‘Chinoise C,’ etc.—iterated over time and place.
Mark TribeMark Tribe is an artist and curator whose interests include art, technology, and politics. His art work has been exhibited at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, National Center for Contemporary Art in Moscow, and the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. He has organized curatorial projects for the New Museum of Contemporary Art, MASS MoCA, and inSite_05. He is the co-author, with Reena Jana, of New Media Art (Taschen, 2006). He is Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media Studies at Brown University, where he teaches courses on digital art, curating, open-source culture, radical media, and surveillance. In 1996, he founded Rhizome.org, an online resource for new media artists. He received a MFA in Visual Art from the University of California, San Diego in 1994 and a BA in Visual Art from Brown University in 1990. He splits his time between Providence and New York City.