Artist Talk & Reception - Sarah Buckius: !!!techn010ffspring!!!

Join us in the Lane Hall Exhibit Space (first floor) to celebrate Sarah Buckius’ innovative exhibition !!!techn010ffspring!!!

Refreshments, community, and conversation will be available starting at 4pm. At 5pm the artist will give a talk on the exhibition, its origins, and her process in Lane Hall 2239. There will be time for Q&A.

About the exhibit:

Sarah Buckius’ “!!!techn010ffspring!!!” is an exhibition where feminist art meets science and the history of invention. On view at Lane Hall as part of U-M Arts Initiative’s themed semester on Arts & Resistance, “!!!techn010ffspring!!!” critiques the patriarchal paradigms of the STEM field by highlighting the history of women inventors. This exhibition brings conceptual invention in fine art and performance to the disciplines of information technology, robotics, and engineering. Buckius creates “technoffsprings”: complex machines that weave together the history of inventions related to the gendered labor of women, especially regarding women’s social roles as caregivers and subjects of care themselves.

Trained as an engineer and an artist, Buckius’ machines are intentionally complex, layered, and illogical or absurdly logical. In the nature of women’s caregiving, they teeter between order and chaos. Her “digital tinkerings” tell epic tales of motherhood, technology, female bodies, and commerce—both personal and externalized through women’s inventions and early forays that bridged caregiving and commerce. Buckius' work proposes improvisation as a form of absurdist resistance to, and alternative to, patriarchal, capitalist, production-based, and seemingly rational, useful, logical systems.

About the Artist:

Sarah Buckius is an artist, educator, and engineer who lives in Santa Cruz, California. Originally from the midwest (Champaign, IL), she holds an M.F.A. from The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her creative work, which incorporates digital media (video, photography, collage, animation) and performance, has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Through her work, she weaves "Intertwined HerStories" that originate from the cross-section of -gender--technology--lens-based-media--the human body--caregiving-. She works in the space of absurdity that emerges at the point of disconnect between the seemingly coded / structured / ordered / production-based space of technology and the messy / complex / idiosyncratic space of humanity and is interested in uncovering the ways in which working with and creating technology illuminates humanness, including gender biases. With an underlying goal of supporting DEI in STEM fields, her work illuminates the ingenuity of diverse groups of people.

“!!!techn010ffspring!!!” is open for viewing M-F, 9am-4pm or by appointment. University of Michigan instructors can email LaneHallExhibits@umich.edu to request a group tour or schedule a class visit.

This project was made possible by a grant from the Arts Initiative at the University of Michigan and co-sponsored by U-M’s Department of Women’s and Gender Studies and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender with support from the Arts Council Santa Cruz County.