Campus News Society & Culture

Interdisciplinary artist Clarinda Mac Low to bring “Cyborg Nation” to UGA

Interdisciplinary artist Clarinda Mac Low to bring "Cyborg Nation" to UGA

Athens, Ga. – Clarinda Mac Low, an interdisciplinary artist who stages her work in non-traditional environments, will visit the University of Georgia campus Oct. 8-9. Her visit will include an interactive performance titled “Cyborg Nation” at Ciné, 234 West Hancock Ave., downtown Athens on the evening of Oct. 8 from 6 to 9 p.m.

Clarinda Mac Low uses art to connect people across communities and to each other. Her collaborative performances and public art take place in theaters, city streets and unusual sites throughout the world. Mac Low’s background includes both art and science, with degrees in dance and molecular biology and biochemistry. She is a former HIV lab researcher, medical journalist and the recipient of prestigious grants and fellowships from arts organizations such as the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire and the Dance Theater Workshop in New York.

Since 1988, Mac Low and her collaborators have presented work in New York City at performance spaces such as P.S. 122, the Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, and the Kitchen. Her recent work includes “Salvage/Salvation”, which explores abundance and decay, a solo multimedia project based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and “Cyborg Nation,” a technologically enhanced performance that takes the form of public dialogues.

During “Cyborg Nation,” Mac Low will wear a costume that is also a portable media environment, with a built-in miniature camera, microphone, amplifier and video projector. The project investigates how technology both extends and limitssenses by combining remote communication in the form of e-mail and phone messages with one-to-one conversation, providing a 21st century version of the Socratic dialogue. Members of the public are invited to visit Ciné during the performance or to participate by sending messages to scope@culturepush.org or calling 646/229-7895.

Clarinda Mac Low’s UGA visit is supported by the Department of Theatre and Film Studies and Ideas for Creative Exploration, an interdisciplinary initiative for advanced research in the arts at UGA.

For more information about “Cyborg Nation,” see http://culturepush.org/?q=node/150.