MAN BARTLETT
Photo by Mengwen Cao
Man Bartlett is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in New York. His diverse practice includes sound, drawing, collage, video, performance and digital projects. Bartlett has exhibited or performed in a variety of venues including: The Barnes Foundation (Philadelphia), The V&A Museum (London), his bedroom, The Brooklyn Museum, a Best Buy store, Freies Museum (Berlin), Arebyte Gallery (London), Eyebeam (New York), Flux Factory (Long Island City), iMOCA (Indianapolis), Port Authority Bus Terminal, The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Bert Green Fine Art (Chicago), Secret Project Robot (Brooklyn), and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among many others.
Bartlett has also participated in residencies at VCCA, Signal Culture, The Institute for Electronic Arts (iea), Flux Factory, The Wassaic Project, and with Residency Unlimited as a Social Media Artist-in-Residence.
Interview by Hayley Owens
The most recent work on your website is SPACE ON EARTH V. Having been released towards the start of the COVID pandemic, was that an influence on the piece? How has the pandemic had an effect on your work (or why hasn’t it)?
I started following the news out of China shortly before the last track on the album was recorded, in early January, but it was too early to have any real impact on its creation. It wasn’t until late January/early February when I began to really understand just how bad it was about to get. As for how the pandemic has affected my work, practically speaking my output has decreased substantially. Conceptually, I trust that this period of reflection — on so many levels — will have a massive impact on my future work, but there’s no rushing that process, and I’m just not there yet.
Both SPACE ON EARTH V and END GAME explore this journey of our psychic energies following some catastrophic event. Through creating these works, does it give you an answer to your questions: “What is the transference method of our psychic energies after the destruction of our planet? Where might the remaining matter of our essence travel to when our physical home is no more?” How does art play a role in answering some of these more existential questions?
Some days I wish these works gave me answers! Instead they often lead down deeper avenues of exploration, with more questions along the way. Which is often a reward unto itself! In the example of “where might our psychic energies go,” for END GAME I set a vessel in motion with humanity’s collective consciousness inside. But getting to that point entailed years of other questions coming out of other bodies of work. The next phase in this project (EXIT PLAN) involves encounters with alien intelligence as the vessel leaves the heliosphere for interstellar space, at which point I expect more questions to arise! In general I think if art can get us thinking more deeply about the questions themselves, then it has served a noble purpose.
END GAME installation photos by Nathan Keay
Many of your works involve combining a multitude of different kinds of elements, whether it be dichotomous emotions in SPACE ON EARTH V, or different faces/characters in the Gifs series. Is this an intentional part of the art process?
I’ve been drawn to the role that dichotomies can play in experience since my early drawings of circles, where the elements were effectively just positive and negative space. With these and other works it’s often a reduction of form to hold ideas — sometimes complex, sometimes jokes — in the starkest light possible.
You’ve worked in quite a few different kinds of mediums. How do you decide on what type of media you want to work with?
It can sometimes take years for ideas to take their form. While there’s no set process for how I decide what media I work with, it usually starts with a nagging sensation that there’s something missing. In the case of my work with sound, it started as a way to counter-stimulate my brain from the visual onslaught of New York, and a general feeling that I had ideas about time and space that only sound could attempt to answer.
Your work RAGA/PEAK allows an audience to listen to audio by visiting three stations. How and why did you choose those specific locations (HVCCA, The Field Library, Peekskill waterfront)?
Each location offered a different potential relationship between audience and experience that intrigued me. For the public library, I really liked the idea of presenting a sound work in a quiet-by-design place where one could get lost in the stacks, with an equally meditative soundtrack. Installing the work within the museum subversively sought to re-contextualize the work within a museum experience, while the waterfront offered the ability for listeners to wander freely outside, taking in the elements as well as the occasional passing train.
Photos courtesy of the artist
With interactive works like RAGA/PEAK, do you ever notice any interesting behaviors from visitors? How does an audience’s interaction with a work impact the work itself?
Especially with my sounds works — which are often transmitted via FM radio to headphones — I really enjoy watching how different people react. There is a shared intimacy in the collective listening, and folks can choose to either listen alone, or connect via eye contact. Sometimes my work puts people to sleep, which I take as the highest compliment!
Are there any artistic mediums you look forward to experimenting with in the future?
I’ve been thinking now is a good time to get back into mail art. Related, SAVE THE USPS! Register to vote! Fill out your census!
View more of Man’s work on his site and Instagram
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