2009 MFA Artist: Willard Tucker
Williard Tucker's Artist Statement
My thinking is rooted in energy politics and the struggle against mountaintop removal in Appalachia. By stripping away the insulation that secures a risk-free electrical grid and exposing the raw current, I mean to challenge the temporal constructs that create the illusion of a frictionless technological present removed from its coal-fired sources. Using the nervous system as a metaphor for the energy grid’s relation to the body politic, I want to offset the paradigm of rhizomatic flows.
Once the system hallucinates a global network, it needs its fix of “energy independence.” My work takes a baroque-futurist form, conflating the triumphalist ethos of both eras. Splicing “back to nature” with “no future,” I emphasize mutualism and improvisation over top-down design and technocratic imperative. With materials like electrified toaster wire, cannibalized neon sign transformers and microwaved light bulbs, I make works that trace and reveal the irrational flows of electricity. Like the outgrowths of the Tennessee Valley Authority and other utopian improvement schemes, the effects of my work spill under and short out the hard edges of efficiency.
