Maddie
Butler
Bio
Maddie Butler
Maddie Butler was raised on an island in the middle of a lake in Minnesota. Her highly interdisciplinary practice explores the way machines shape human relationships. Much of the work springs from her research into the evolving material conditions of the image, from pre-cinema animation technologies to AI. In the past year Butler has been a fellow at the Banff Centre (Alberta, Canada), the Sass-Fee Summer Institute of Art (New York, NY) and the Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles, CA). She has exhibited internationally and received support from the Qualcomm Institute, the Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts, the Russell Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation. Butler holds a BA from Yale University and is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of California San Diego, where she also teaches media history and production courses.
Pieces
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Artist's Statement
I am interested in how the digital apparatus mediates lived experience. Through sculpture, film, collage and installation I explore how technology transforms contemporary mechanisms of intimacy and communication.
Much of my work springs from research into pre-cinema imaging technologies and the material evolution of the apparatus. I am inspired by Marxist, feminist and psychoanalytic theories that extend the definition of apparatus beyond the technological, to include the broader systems of control (social, political, psychological) that condition our lives.
My practice begins with fragments. I collect, sort and dismantle discarded electronics alongside my own cache of personal data. These resulting materials evidence a bridge between the personal and the systemic, the digital and the analog. I employ a diversity of methods to defamiliarize and recontextualize these materials, transforming them into meditations on the spatial, temporal and emotional complexity of digital life.