Emilio Martinez Poppe, End Credits for the Places That Make Us, 2018–19. Website, single-channel projection, interactive kiosks. Courtesy of the artist.
Emilio Martinez Poppe, End Credits for the Places That Make Us, 2018–19. Website, single-channel projection, interactive kiosks. Courtesy of the artist.
Emilio Martinez Poppe, End Credits for the Places That Make Us, 2018–19. Website, single-channel projection, interactive kiosks. Courtesy of the artist.
Emilio Martinez Poppe, End Credits for the Places That Make Us, 2018–19. Website, single-channel projection, interactive kiosks. Courtesy of the artist.
Emilio Martinez Poppe endcredits.info
The web application which underlies this work was created on the occasion of a previous exhibition in a close knit community of peers where it engaged with a performance on the opening night and functioned as a guestbook. The intent was to honor the many people and groups who made the exhibition possible through their support or collaboration. As soon as visitors arrived at the space they encountered a computer set up with a "login portal" inviting them to enter their contribution to the exhibition and how they’d like to be recognized. This information was then projected across the largest wall in the space in a scrolling format akin to movie credits.
When I was invited to exhibit the web app at the Queens Museum I was challenged by how a work which was meant to speak to such a close community could be adapted to a space that welcomes hundreds of visitors on a daily basis. The central motivation of the app is the possibility of recognizing, through self-selection, the ecology of participants which make a creative work—or anything for that matter—possible. In this case the audience is recognized as a multitude of individuals whose viewership/participation is central to the manifestation of any artwork into reality and collective memory.
Unlike databases populated through automatic data capture, this one is built slowly through the labor of participants in exchange for dialogue within the application and the institution hosting it. The app’s database is intended to accumulate a copious amount of entries providing a seemingly endless scrolling list which extends beyond a normal attention span. The scrolling format of the projection on the wall emerges from the floor and disappears into the ceiling, reaching beyond a human field of view. The struggle to capture the database’s entirety is meant to evoke the sublime in both ways while offering insight into the array of prompts accumulating in the database over time.
Emilio Martinez Poppe (b. 1993, Baltimore, MD) earned a BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art (2016), and was a recipient of the SOMA+CU 2016 Scholarship for research in Mexico City. Emilio has exhibited their work internationally in group exhibitions at Abrons Art Center, New York, NY (2018); CUE Art Foundation, New York, NY (2017); Flux Factory, Queens, NY (2017); The Cooper Union, New York, NY (2016); Framer Framed, Amsterdam, NL (2015); Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, NL (2015); and Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, NL (2015). Emilio is currently enrolled in The Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program (2018). They have been an artist in residence at Pratt Institute’s Project Third (2018), a participant in the EmergeNYC program at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics (2018), a Create Change Fellow at The Laundromat Project (2017), and a member of NEW INC at the New Museum (2016-2018). Emilio is currently a member of the collective BFAMFAPhD and is contributing to the forthcoming book Ways of Being. They live and work in Long Island City, Queens.
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