Tribal Complex Number 88

A collage of overlapping social clichés that fuse the most ancient and the most civilized types into an experiential installation. Styled as a living symbolic structure, each user enacts a unique edition of the piece based on their media choices. Constructed with an intended puzzling hyper-textual complexity, #88 invokes the primary narcissistic claim of creative omnipotence phrased succinctly as "I am a creator, therefore I am a god." Tribal Complex #88 is the first in the series, and as the ur piece of the project, it functions metaphorically as both first and last, alpha and omega, of these works.

"Shapeshifter Self-portrait with a few extra pounds." Back Panel of Tribal Complex #88 - Acrylic on Canvas - 4' x 6' - © Copyright Ken Hudson 2005 This painting is for sale $2200.00 usd contact Ken Hudson for details.

Artist Statement

"...satellites transform the planet into a work of art by placing it inside a [constructed] environment." - Marshall McLuhan

Once a fantastical claim, today's digital world of instant information is evidently a global theater, with every person "more or less aware of being on-stage and in role." Contemporary performance, in all its forms, must acknowledge this state, and extend itself to include all potential participants. My art seeks to involve people directly in the experience of performance as a "cumulative tonic for the regressive trends of mass culture."

The Tribal Complexes are a series of overlapping media installations that allow spectators to be performance artists, by putting on, enacting and interacting, with my perspective. The user is immersed in an environment charged with a complex range of cultural clichés. As the span of referents within each piece is extensive, each work becomes a puzzle that can never fully be solved, as each user brings an entirely unique cognitive approach to the experience.

Each of these installations seeks to express the complexity of our mixed-media corporate environment by attempting to reveal previously hidden multidimensional patterns of understanding in each user, who, in effect, becomes the content of the performance itself. If, under the proscenium of the satellite, each individual media plays a role in the global theatre, then the patterns of private media usage become the narrative structures of billions of personal unfolding operettas.

"They became what they beheld." - Edmond Carpenter

The Tribal Complexes combine all of my previous styles, forms, and interests including performance art, collage, ritual, and architecture. They are inspired by my study of contemporary media through the lens of the Toronto School of Communications, specifically the works of Marshall McLuhan and Edmond Carpenter. I am also indebted to the insights I have gained from discussions with McLuhan scholars Bob Dobbs, Eric McLuhan, B.W. Powe and Frank Zingrone, and by the performance works of Antero Alli, Frank Moore, and Joey Skaggs among others. Each installation is created associatively by expressing the gamut of my personal references, including history, art, popular culture and dreams.