Lee Blalock is L[3]^2 is lee++ is leeeeeee is sy5zen creations & hybrid augmentations & behavior modifications & n3w_b0dy amplifications, computations, appreciations, and sonifications & narrative fragmentation & offline restoration & image laminations & drawing gesticulations & lyrical animations & electronic ideations & human investigations & inexplicable excavations.
Short bio: TheSongOnlyMattersWhenYourThroatBleeds. Lee Blalock is a Chicago-based artist, 80D1punk, and educator who presents alternative and hybrid states of being through curiosity-driven processes. Interested in how technologies support the concept of impossible anatomies, behaviors, and expanded perceptions, her work is an exercise in body modification through amplified reactions or "change-of-state." Lee's interests include embodied cognition, anatomy and biomechanics, kinesiology, bionics, mechatronics, human/non-human entanglement, and computational abstraction. Her DIY mode of studio practice translates to one set of hands working in a small, non-traditional studio space. Here, the immediate goal is to express that which is censored in daily life, and to celebrate its strangeness. She has presented work domestically, internationally, and virtually at many institutions, including The Gene Siskel Film Center, Slash, Feral File, Ars Electronica, the wrong biennale, NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery, Experimental Sound Studio, Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, 205 Hudson Gallery at Hunter College, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Lee is an Associate Professor in the Art & Technology / Sound Practices Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and practices various forms of embodiment as an amateur athlete and movement practitioner.
80D1punk comes from my preoccupation with how identity challenges agency through recognizable and indexical visual signals and reductionist informatics. 80D1punk approaches this very human situation through an appreciation for human and non-human bodies, mechanics, and behaviors with a healthy dose of creative engineering. My interests in biomechanics and kinesiology intersect with my interest in posthumanism, as I explore what happens when we lose certain aspects of human movement or gain access to movement demonstrated by non-humans or negotiated through objects. The protagonist in my work may be surgically altered by language, strewn about by otherworldly physical laws, or reconfigured through restriction or a dramatically altered silhouette. In my various origin stories, the lead character seeks access to liberation, modularity, sentience bashing, ways of knowing, and a more natural and holistic form of capital.
- Lee
w: leeblalock.com, e: lee@leeblalock.com