James Coupe is a Seattle, Washington-based artist who works with a broad range of technology in his up and coming exhibit at the Prichard Art Gallery, “Exercises in Passivity.”
His work has been shown in Seattle, New York City and internationally in Berlin, Germany.
Becoming an artist was challenging, and one of the hardest things to do, Coupe said.
“Art is a really difficult thing to do,” Coupe said. “I like the challenge of trying to make sense of the world we live in, experiences to find a way to articulate how I see things. (I) try to make things visible that we wouldn’t normally see, or in some cases wouldn’t be allowed to see. So, I think art has an important role in doing that.”
Roger Rowley, the director of the Prichard, discovered Coupe’s work after an art history professor pointed him Coupe’s way. As the Prichard’s schedule opened, timing around the election season seemed perfect, and everything came together to make the right fit at the right time, Rowley said.
“(In the exhibit) there are things about sort of labor, gig economy and the changes how human work patterns have changed because of technology,” Rowley said. “… So, there are issues that do relate to what happens, decisions that are made by politicians, but it’s not, strictly speaking, a political exhibit.”
“Exercises in Passivity” can be viewed at the gallery from Oct. 23 to Dec. 31, and patrons must follow COVID-19 guidelines.
Much like other public spaces at the university, the Prichard is mask mandatory and asks patrons to stay socially distanced. They have hand sanitizer available and will be proactively sanitizing surfaces and interactive elements in the gallery. They have a limit of 10 visitors at a given time but are flexible when people come as groups or family units.
“(We are) trying to follow all the CDC and university guidance to make sure we’re keeping people safe and the place clean,” Rowley said.
The exhibit’s overall theme is concerned with artificial intelligence and automation, Coupe said. It answers the question of what it means to be human in an age of automation.
“The point is that these technologies are a part of our everyday life and to some extent we kind of rely on them,” Coupe said. “We’re organized by them, we’re controlled by them and so when we think about how labor and education workplaces operate nowadays, increasingly, humans interfacing with machines. And what we get as a result that often is quite ideological.”
Coupe works with the same technologies we are exposed to every day, and during the pandemic, we rely even more on the internet and video to see people.
His eight pieces encompass the entire gallery and patrons can interact with some of them. Alexa’s line the walls and will laugh rather than answer questions, what they are programmed to do. A prayer piece, that is coin-operated, will pray for those who operate it. On the second floor, there is a karaoke machine that patrons can sing along to.
“Hopefully, some of these (works) will respond to how it feels to be around during the pandemic, and it’s going to be a little bit of a challenge to see our technicians nowadays,” Coupe said. “So hopefully people will take advantage of this opportunity to come check it out.”
Emily Pearce can be reached at [email protected].