This virtual talk from Dr. Jane Blocker approaches the problem of disorientation for contemporary art through an analysis of an installation called "Beacon" (2007), by sound and new media artist Abinadi Meza, in which the viewer sees a radically slowed, tightly cropped video of a streetlamp during a snowstorm.
Examining themes of orientation and disorientation, Dr. Blocker asks how we move beyond the modernist logic of conversion through disorientation, away from the patronizing idea that art is a mode of ideological correction that converts the viewer to a different political, religious, or aesthetic belief. She argues that art might be more productively understood as a beacon: a contradictory sign that both illuminates dangers and lures us to foundering.
