"Neukom Vivarium"
Mark Dion
In this film, Mark Dion leads a discussion of his installation Neukom Vivarium (2006) at the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle. “I don’t really care if people call it art or not; that’s really not my question,” says the artist. “As far as I know, that question was solved. You know, Duchamp’s urinal was complacently sitting in MoMA before I wet my first diaper.”
The artwork of Mark Dion straddles science and fine art, as he configures natural ecology and decay into his practice. “What I care about is: is [the artwork] interesting?” Dion persists. “Am I making a kind of contribution to visual culture that’s engaging, that brings up questions, that produces dialogue and discourse?”
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About the artists
Mark Dion’s work examines the ways in which dominant ideologies and public institutions shape our understanding of history, knowledge, and the natural world. Appropriating archaeological and other scientific methods of collecting, ordering, and exhibiting objects, Dion creates works that question the distinctions between “objective” (“rational”) scientific methods and “subjective” (“irrational”) influences. By locating the roots of environmental politics and public policy in the construction of knowledge about nature, Mark Dion questions the authoritative role of the scientific voice in contemporary society.
