The Nature of Political Art

Multimedia artist N.B. Aldrich discusses the intersection of art and politics.

Aldrich will compare and contrast several different works from his portfolio as examples of how art and politics commingle, successfully or not. Art is a way of presenting information and can be used to question, comment or critique. How that fares as political speech is contingent on the skill of the artist as much as the potency of the message.

Following the presentation there will be an opportunity for questions and an open discussion on political responses and responsibility in art.

Aldrich is a new media artist, musician, and educator residing in Sedgwick who creates installation, video, performance, and acousmatic art. He is also a founding member of the Island Soundscape Project and performs with the experimental music trio Aldrich, Norton & Ross.

Aldrich earned an MFA at Bennington College studying electronic music composition. His work focuses on collecting, refining and redistributing information, both aesthetic and practical, across varying mediums, but focusing particularly on sound and audio. In the process, the methods and metaphors of the information age become instruments of their own critique. He has shown work internationally at such venues as Artists Space, Engine 27, the Banff Centre, the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, the Festival de Arte Sonore, Hipersonica Festival, The National Museum of Singapore, the Optica Festival, Dance Theatre Workshop, Bates College Museum of Art, and many others. Aldrich has interviewed and written about sound art and sound artists including Chris Mann, Annea Lockwood, Alvin Lucier, and Stephen Vitiello, and has taught courses in music, electronic music, electronic art, and installation art at Bennington College, Rockport College, and University of New Hampshire. He is currently an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Maine at Orono teaching in new media and the Intermedia MFA program.