Ellen Mueller
Resist in Place (still), 2019
Digital Video, 0:01:54
On loan from the Artist
On view in the E. Craig Wall, Jr. Academic Center from October 4 – November 21st, 2020.
Please note: All buildings on campus, including the Wall Center, are only open to Davidson students, faculty, and staff due to the pandemic. We are planning to re-screen videos at a later date when the campus opens to the community! Sign up for our mailing list to stay in the loop.
Ellen Mueller’s Resist in Place, which features airplanes and their condensation trails slicing across the sky in various directions, invokes a childlike sense of wonder at first glance. Gazing at this video is reminiscent of looking up at the sky and daydreaming about who is flying overhead and to what far-off lands they are traveling. Mueller uses this wonder to spark conversations about engagement, privilege, capitalist systems, and the environment. In a nuanced and minimalist way, she highlights how every individual is inherently part of bigger systems of resource use and exploitation that we have to actively recognize and engage with to be able to resist, even if just for a moment.
In talking to Mueller about this piece, I learned that it will be part of a larger collection that explores natural common spaces and how our capitalist actions affect them. Beyond exploitation of the Earth, Mueller also explores privilege on a number of levels. She calls into question those who will be affected by the pollution of industries, people who have the time and space to practice “resisting in place,”, and even the individuals who exist up in the faraway planes, benefiting from their capitalist exploits without experiencing the repercussions. As the condensation trails fade in and out of focus before finally dissipating at the end of the video, Mueller subtly stresses the environmental effects these planes are having and who they will invisibly impact. Resist in Place serves as a window (or maybe a skylight) into the world that encourages us to slow down and engage with the systems in which we are constantly subsumed.
Artist Statement
“To resist in place is to make oneself into a shape that cannot so easily be appropriated by a capitalist value system,” states author Jenny Odell. Much of my artistic practice begins by examining how capitalism affects everyday living. As a mode of resistance to the commercial attention economy, I am interested in the idea of re-training oneself (changing one’s shape) to pay closer and longer attention to seemingly non-commercial spaces, such as the sky, undeveloped land, and water. This type of playful and in-depth exploration is not profitable and resists the idea of monetizing each minute of every day.
In these videos, I engage with orientation, scale, reflection, and repetition in order to invite viewers to imaginatively play with these same spaces the next time they view them. This work invites questions about the human impact on these seemingly ‘natural’ or non-commercial spaces, such as the growing effects of climate change, or a lingering trail of condensation left in the sky by an airplane. The work also poses questions about privilege, highlighting who can and cannot afford to look at these particular spaces, and how this type of looking can act as a type of care and maintenance. [1]
Resist in Place, 2019
Digital Video, 0:01:54
On loan from the Artist
About the Artist
Ellen Mueller is an interdisciplinary artist who explores the environment and larger social, economic, and political issues through video, collage, sculpture, performance art, and other media. Mueller has exhibited her work and held residencies nationally and internationally. She earned a BA in Theatre and Art, and a BS in Design Technology from Bemidji State University, and her MFA in Studio Art from the University of South Florida. Ellen Mueller was a member of the faculty at UMass Dartmouth, West Virginia Wesleyan College, and Colorado State University-Pueblo. She is now the director of the MFA Program at Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD).
[1] https://ellenmueller.com/gallery/2020-2/resist-in-place/