This upcoming Sunday, October 12, 3pm: we are excited to host a Dialogue between Olivia Mole, Casey Kauffmann, and Matthew McGaughey in the midst of Matthew’s ongoing solo exhibition, “Staged” . Each of these artists work between various mediums, disciplines, and contexts that seem to run-up against the limits of “Art” itself: as a field, as a discipline, as a practice, as an economy—as an ideological order that continuously reproduces itself through anyone attempting to subvert it. (And at the moment of this reproduction, there is a momentary blurring between “seams” and ‘seems.’ This seems to be a moment where these artists work.) The particular materials of their work share connections in what they are—video, installation, sculpture, performance—as well as in why they are: the particular mediums of a work seem to come from a conceptual necessity more than a specific technical affinity alone. There’s no telling where this conversation will end-up, but since it’s starting within the context of the Staged exhibition, possible places of interest may or may not include: > mass surveillance and collective watching > mis-recognition, identity, reference—“what you know already” > re-staging, re-producing, re-enacting: performing > popularity, fame, ‘syndication’—and failure, error, bankruptcy, entropy > voyeuristic states > subjectivity (in the expanded field) > socials / medias > parallel realities, all at once > loops, repetitions, recursions > commercialism > consumption, desire, ‘joy’ > nostalgic lifeforms > spectral bodies and psychic materials (and vice-versa) > art history and (un)popular culture > humor > corporeal economies > virtual whiteness > artist as artwork A necessarily shared delirium: What is reality? (How would anyone define its limits—where it starts and stops?) And how do artists work with reality in a way that is distinctive from other modes of production, other forms of work or labor? Anyway, in the meantime, a good starting point for all that’s being said before we get talking might be something Olivia mentioned at the gallery: the “I speak no English” sketch from Kids in the Hall. After all, the ‘talk’—the Dialogue— really starts before anything’s said.