Bio // Craig Dongoski

Craig Dongoski is an artist living and working in Atlanta since June 1999. He has taught painting and drawing full-time at Georgia State University, and has been hired as a permanent faculty member. This summer, he presented a fragment of a film and soundtrack he is currently involved titled "The Wisdom Connected with Children Freezing to Death" which was on display at the Raymond Lawrence Gallery for the month of August 2001 in Atlanta. Prior to this summer, he has been living and working in Boston since 1991, and is on the permanent faculty at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. He has been very active in exhibiting in the United States and in Europe, Further involvements include organizing outreach programs such as the International Print Symposium in Boston and co-curating a major exhibition and print exchange for the First Africus Biennial in Johannesburg, South Africa. Dongoski's work is a continuous and ongoing exploration of the self.

PROJECTS:

WAR WORLDS, CD taking the audio of an immediate/uninterrupted CNN television report of September 11, mixed and then intermittently cut with the original Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast of 'The War of the Worlds'.

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Frozen Wisdom, CD produced using a mixture of personal field recordings to produce an ambient soundtrack of an ambient film of the same name, exhibited at Raymond Lawrence Gallery this summer and at the Brooklyn Community Film Festival, Brooklyn, NY in October.

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Drawing Aloud, CD (work-in-progress) began by making contact recordings of GSU faculty members executing 20-minute drawings. This has lead to the idea of directing a performance of various artists making drawings and orchestrating these sounds live in the fashion of a symphony. It has also paved the way for a good deal of investigation, expansion and revisiting the realm of automatic drawing.

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Aberrations and Shadows, CD produced by recordings made in my DP4000 spring course of drawings being interpreted into sound compositions.

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The Face of Sound, CD produced by recordings made in my DP4500 fall course of drawings being interpreted into sound compositions.

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The World of Silence, CD produced by recording DP3100/4100 students describe their journeys back to when they were first aware of the sense of hearing, while they were plugged into a biofeedback machine.

I am proposing to make a Digital Video Disc (DVD) piece to accompany an existing sound work made from the audio of an immediate/uninterrupted television report of September 11, mixed and then intermittently cut with the original Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast of 'The War of the Worlds'.

Project Description: This project takes the media's coverage of the September 11 event as a point of departure to employ an experiment in randomness, sound, and the visual, offering an interpretation outside of the media report. The project evokes a meditative state through the regular intermittence of the two broadcasts produced by intercutting two-second splices. The two broadcasts take on several forms throughout the piece. They are (at times) easy to discern from each other; they reverse identities; evoke irony and coincidence; and fuse together to become something unified and altogether other. I have also injected a manipulated piece of Arabic music that modulates and meanders in-and-out of the 57- minute recording. The choice of this juxtaposition occurred somewhat serendipitously as I stumbled onto the recording of the H.G.Wells story while browsing through an obscure section at a record store shortly after I made the TV recording. I am very interested in connecting to history. I am also interested in how reality is formed and transformed. Ultimately, I want to call attention to the overwhelming power media has in controlling behavior, creating a reality, using fear to reach these aims, and the continued reliance on clichés. We are at a critical time in history where we cannot let fear produce our perceptions. The sound component is in a post-production state. The digital video component is in pre-production.

The composition and conceptual basis of the piece owes itself to random and chance operations that John Cage and the tradition of Fluxus employed. My impulse toward exposing the word and control is connected to the cut-up experiments of Brion Gysin and W.S. Burroughs. The choice of the DVD format in its accessibility and dissemination potential has its roots in the way Stan Brakhage thought of his films: moving paintings/pictures which are affordable, accessible, and easy to project within one's own home or venue of choice. The ambient nature of my piece might be compared to the work of Derek Jarman's ' In the Shadow of the Sun' or 'The Last of England', for instance. I think of this project as one that can be entered and re-entered numerous times. The juxtapositions yield coincidences and new interpretations each time the piece is experienced. The piece, as it is set against the events (that continue to occur) adds even more variables, making this project poetic and continuously realized. It is a vehicle for meditation.

I am interested in blurring the line between sound, film, photography and painting. The inventive nature of this project comes from working within an experimental tradition, yet continuing and advancing this tradition through new technology. The inventiveness of this project lies in the form, because it is produced as a result of the combination of technologies as well as the combination of historical events. Additionally, this is also an experiment in new technologies and how their potential for access, dissemination and consumption could help to shape a new consciousness. The project will be an unlimited edition produced for nonprofit mass distribution. Also, it must be made clear that the piece will exist beyond the September 11. It is not a sentimental editorial of a topical event. The piece is startlingly familiar at some points while drifting into abstract realms at others. In fact, it is too soon to release it. The time is too sensitive. More distance from the situation will add more complexity to the piece. Although, sensitively dealt with, it is a call to think of the world in deeper and less materialistic way.

I'm hoping this piece can exist on an experimental plane that continues the tradition I mentioned above, yet I would also like to expand my audience. I feel that by working within an experience that we have all encountered in our own homes, makes this piece more accessible and potent. However, by applying techniques of randomness and producing an ambient form from this experience, I hope to add to an evolutionary trend that leans toward our commonalities as human beings. The fact that the enemy is invisible makes the need to respond in visible form even more necessary. Because the work will exist in 2 forms (as a gallery production and as a moderately-produced digital work that will be given away), I feel it has a wide scope of audience. Appropriate venues for the project would include galleries, film festivals, cable TV broadcasts, and institutions (e.g. history centers, libraries, political or spiritual demonstrations). I am also equally interested in having the piece be experienced in one's home, particularly because this is where the news and opinions are formed for the most part. I plan to exhibit the project in the US and several foreign venues. I have a commitment from a gallery in Kobe, Japan, which will show the work in 2002. I have a exhibition possibility in Florence, Italy this summer as part of a workshop I will be giving at Santa Reparata. A third venue is an invitation to exhibit at a university in the United Arab Emerits. Additional opportunities include the Trieste Latin American Film Festival, which will be including one of my films in next years' festival, Georgia State University Art Gallery and other national venues.