CARRIE MOYER: UNITED SOCIETY OF BELIEVERS

Cultural Politics
Vol.3, Number 3, November 2007

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See also:
http://carriemoyer.com
http://www.canadanewyork.com/artist/carrie_moyer

 

CARRIE MOYER IS A NEW YORK-BASED PAINTER AND A CO-FOUNDER OF THE RENOWNED PUBLIC ART PROJECT, DYKE ACTION MACHINE! HER PAINTINGS AND AGITPROP INTERVENTIONS HAVE BEEN WIDELY EXHIBITED BOTH NATIONALLY AND INTERNATIONALLY, INCLUDING SUCH VENUES AS PS1, THE PALM BEACH ICA, THE WEATHERSPOON, COOPER-HEWITT AND TANG MUSEUMS, SHEDHALLE (ZURICH), LE MAGASIN (GRENOBLE) AND THE PROJECT CENTRE (DUBLIN), AMONG OTHERS. MOYER CURRENTLY TEACHES PAINTING AT YALE AND RUTGERS UNIVERSITIES.

 

> UNITED SOCIETY OF BELIEVERS

Remember the Sixties? I do. Or, at least, I think I do. All that patchwork and long, straight hair. My first taste of “tofurkey.” There are palpable images of women offering me food as we warmed ourselves around a bonfire in Washington D.C. I was nine years old and, beyond the flaming oil drum, a column of shivering marchers from the 1969 Anti-War Demonstration trudged by. The next year my parents threw their two kids, dog and meager stash of possessions into the back of a utility van and fled Detroit for the Promised Land: Berkeley, California. I still have my copy of Mao’s “Little Red Book,” given to me at the local film co-op by some creepy, string y man who distributed them like candy to all the young girls.

As a painter, graphic designer and all-around purveyor of agitprop, I know full well that the best way to connect with a viewer is by using the familiar to arrive at the unknown. I am also aware that, despite a visual environment that continues to expand exponentially, the parameters of the “familiar” are actually quite small, as only a few items from this image explosion register widely enough to be repurposed. This subset becomes fodder for the infinite renditions posted on YouTube and Flickr by professional and amateur image-makers alike. So, while a steady stream of pictures certainly accelerates the viewer’s visual fluency, a Mobius strip of clichés drains any sense of pleasure or discovery from the act of reading an image, turning it instead into a humdrum game of cut and paste.