Tyler Coburn's (b. 1983, New York) Ergonomic Futures, 2016— comprises a series of ergonomic furniture, designed for imagined future humans, available for use in the exhibition area. Accompanying this furniture is a website of short stories, www.ergonomicfutures.com, which mimics the structure of Aristotle’s “great chain of being”: a hierarchical diagram for the heavens and Earth, one of the oldest evolutionary models. Coburn’s project combines research with evolutionary theory and interviews with geneticists, paeleoanthropologists, and evolutionary biologists. Working with New York architecture firm Bureau V, he translates these inquiries into new ergonomic designs—transitional objects as such—which are contemplative platforms for the tactile subjectivities prospected by an unarrived-at future.
Coburn's practice often challenges the cultural friction between the intangible materiality of computation and the object histories brought forward by the passage between physical information and the digital archives. In doing so, he presents us with a series of handful-humoured fictions from the age of the infosphere. Whether through performative readings, or photographic and sculptural fictions, his narrated objects and curiosity-led forensic approach are full of anecdotes. Coburn's ironic gaze upon the mechanisms and behaviours raised by the expanding technocratic regimes of today is contrasted with the slapstick tension of automated bodies and defamiliarized scenarios.
Waste Management (2013–15) is an example of the artist’s object fictions. In this work, viewers are presented with found artworks (“stones” made of CRT monitor glass, epoxy, and fibber powder from printed circuit boards) and a handout text to take away. This includes a story written by the artist from the perspective of the “it-narrative,” described as “a sub-genre of eighteenth-century literature in which currencies and commodities narrated their circulation within a then-emerging global economy. This story first meditates on the history of this obsolescent literary genre, then narrates the circulation and eventual transformation of a CRT monitor into the stone artworks.” The stone artworks in question are scholars' stones: traditional objects of contemplation in Korean and Chinese culture, which are often displayed as collectors’ trophies. MM
self-presentation:
1. My first job out of college was content farming. Little did I know that the innocuous topics—cleaning tips, dust mite prevention—would inspire my later artwork.
2. When asked how a straight woman could write queer theory, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick said something to the effect of: “Yes, I’m straight. I’m also overweight, Jewish, a woman…”
3. My cologne simulates the scent of its maker’s crotch. This creates problems when dating, i.e., boys don’t know whether they’re longing for me or the perfumer.
4. For my mother’s first trip from Alabama to New York City, her mentor provided sustenance: fried chicken and a bottle of Drambuie.
5. I forget when I discovered the Papermate mechanical pencil, but I’m glad I did.
6. My family was displaced by Hurricane Sandy for six months. During this time, I went to Niagara Falls and had words with nature. I hope they’ll help.
