Dave McKenzie, Resident Artist Lecture 2024

Dave Mackenzie gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking about his artistic practice which spans video, performance, writing, sculpture, paintings, and choreography. McKenzie talks about his work having the potential to produce relationships, and how he would imagine an object in its production and distribution if it were to have another life. McKenzie then goes on to talk about the sounds a painting can make; the sound it makes when a reception knocks, the sound it makes when it is in a crate, the sound it makes when its in a box, the sound it makes when its on the wall. For McKenzie, all these sounds are a possibility; the possibility that the painting could be forged and formed for viewers to come together differently in order to produce new ideas. McKenzie then speaks about effort and labor and how one can understand these things from the sense of feeling that one has to find another path and another way of thinking. This type of thinking has led McKenzie to also be interested in movement; particularly those with a certain type of body. McKenzie continues in his lecture by focusing on some current interests in his practice: an interest in the perverse, an interest in ideas of spectatorship, the resistance to being watched, making the farce more farcical, and the success that comes in the act of making, and how everything that comes after making is excess. McKenzie ends his lecture by thinking about the audience and how this comes from the desire that the audience remain imaginary.