Bates College in Lewiston, Maine has launched Cryptozoology: Out Of Time Place Scale, a Web site supporting their upcoming symposium and exhibition exploring the intersection between art and cryptozoology. (Of course, the wonderful Jill Miller, who was publicly “Waiting For Bigfoot” this past summer, will be participating.) The physical art exhibition doesn’t open until June 2006, but there’s a symposium October 28-30. My cryptozoologist pal Loren Coleman will give the keynote. Panelists include the likes of Jeffrey Vallance, Rachel Berwick, and the incredible photographer Rosamond Purcell, whose work is seen here.
From the project Web site:
Under the umbrella of cryptozoology (CZ) this project including a symposium, exhibition, book and film series aims to explore a pursuit where the disciplines of science and art share a mutual focal point, a desperately desired visual encounter. By [Rosamond Purcell] virtue of its collective scientific aims CZ is forced to engage in subjective longing and constructions as a primary tool towards discovery, comprehension and legitimization. It is this subjectivity, this means to an end, that is often at odds with the scientific community. As a practice CZ is based on the search for visual and material evidence where every piece of proof, every proposition is questioned and placed under extreme scrutiny. Nearly all accumulated data is saved, regardless of authenticity, so that when the puzzle is solved the data can be objectively classified or cast aside as meaningless.
CZ is a fascinating zone of inquiry for contemporary artists interested in the fertile margins of the history of science and museums, taxonomy, myth, creativity and discovery. The theme out of time place scale provides an opportunity to challenge the taxonomic limitations of hierarchy, linearity, chronology and/or context that museums and art history manipulate to control presentation and reception. Staking out a position or non-site that blurs the boundaries between time place scale and choosing not to deconstruct predominant museum ideologies this project constructs an alternative mode of address that favors a return to the organized mayhem, wonder, delight, spiritual and intellectual adventurism of pre-enlightenment curio cabinets.
The very definition of CZ implies a quest, a search of something not yet realized; Loren Coleman, the pre-eminent cryptozoologist, suggests that CZ is the interest in animals out of time, place, or scale.