Mary Ellen Carroll

Mary Ellen Carroll
Nationality	American
Field	Conceptual art, installation art, performance art
Works	Federal, prototype 180, Doppelganger Tapes

Mary Ellen Carroll is a conceptual artist who lives and works in New York City and Houston. The artist has exhibited at Whitney Museum, ICA London, Museum fur Volkerkunde in Munich, ICA Philadelphia, MUMOK in Vienna and the Renaissance Society in Chicago.

Early Life and Education

Mary Ellen Carroll was born in 1961 in Danville, Illinois.^[1] In 1986 Carroll received a BS from The University of Colorado at Boulder, with having studied MLM, Geology and Finance, with a minor in Fine Art. During her time in Boulder she studied filmmaking with Stan Brakhage. In 1989 she received her Master of Fine Arts from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago working in Film, Sculpture and Architectural History.

Notable artworks

Mary Ellen Carroll, prototype 180, 2010. (photo credit: Kenny Trice)

• prototype 180^[2] is a work of art that "will make architecture performative."^[3] It is literally a ground-shifting exercise, in that it structurally involves the rotation, back to front, of a house and its surrounding land in the development of Sharpstown, a suburb of Houston, Texas.^[4] Following the rotation, it is to be retrofitted and rehabilitated to become an occupied structure that will be become an institute for the study of considered urbanism.^[3] In planning for 10 years, prototype 180 is described as "reconsideration of monumentality that combines live performance, sculpture, architecture and technology."^[5] Carroll is a visiting lecturer in the Department of Architecture at Rice University.^[6]

• In 2006, Carroll was invited to participate in an exhibition and presentation at the Foundation Telefonica in Ostende, Argentina. For this project, titled Nothing, Carroll walked out of the door of her New York residence with no possessions for use or exchange. With only her passport and the clothes on her back, she left traveled to and spent six weeks in the foreign country.^[7]

• With support from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, Carroll made a 24-hour, two-theater movie Federal. The movie is screened at 9am and continues until 9am the following day,^[8] the same time the footage was shot in Los Angeles in 2003. The project title comes from the building where the movie was filmed, the Wilshire Federal Building^[9].

Mary Ellen Carroll, Indestructible Language, 2007.

• Indestructible Language was a 2007 project and the inaugural commission for the Precipice Alliance, the first international organization commission high-profile, large-scale works of art on the subject of global warming.^[10] The project was located at the former American Can Company factory in Jersey City, New Jersey and consists of illuminated characters spelling out: IT IS GREEN THINKS NATURE EVEN IN THE DARK.^[11][12]

• Carroll has an ongoing performance project called the Doppelganger Tapes,^{[13][14][15][16]} and she has realized 16 of these enactments. In 2009, Carroll performed^[17] as Yale University Professor of History of Art David Joselit^[18] at OUR LITERAL SPEED,^[19] a conference hosted that year at the University of Chicago.^[20]

• My death is pending … Because is a series of artworks and performances begun in 1986 and scheduled to end in 2014 (originally 2012.)^[21] The series will end with an all-female demolition derby at Irwindale Speedway in Los Angeles to be filmed by Danish director Jorgen Leth. ^[22] The series conception and production was influenced by Rube Goldberg’s stream-of-consciousness methodology. ^[23] My death is pending … Because exhibition and performance at at Third Streaming gallery, and at 192 Books^[24], all in New York City.

Mary Ellen Carroll, Alas, poor YORICK!, 2008.

• Alas, poor YORICK!, 1998/99 - 2008, is the inclusive title of four artworks. In 1998/99 the entire text from Laurence Sterne’s novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman was drawn on a 72 x 50 inches sheet of Arches paper, from which a silkscreen print was produced. On the ten year anniversary of the drawing, August 8, 2008, Carroll procured a fire permit from the National Park Service in Truro, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The drawing was burned at Long Nook Beach which is located on the ocean side of the Cape in Truro. The burning of the drawing took 00:10:15:07 minutes to complete and was filmed in Super 8 which was then transferred to MiniDV and finally to 16 mm film. The ash and charcoal was removed from the sand and was used to make a drawing of the black page on Arches paper. The film was screened in New York City, through the organization Light Industry, alongside Rachel Harrison as presented by David Joselit.^[25] Artworks from the series were included in The Evryali Score an exhibition at David Zwirner Gallery.^{[26] [27]}

Publications

MEC^[28] was published by Steidl/Mack in May 2010 and is designed to reflect the conceptual system by which Carroll makes art. Its chapters bear the titles of sixteen of the 209 categories that Carroll has used since 1988 to organize a card catalog index of her ideas and potential works.^[29]

Awards, Grants and Honors

Carroll is the recipient of numerous grants and honors including:

• a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award^[30]
• a Guggenheim Fellowship^[31]
• a Rockefeller Fellow Grant
• a MacDowell Colony Fellowship

• In 2006, Carroll was nominated and awarded a grant from the Pennies From Heaven Fund, which is a part of the New York Community Trust, for her contribution to New York City as a visual artist for work that is advanced, experimental, and ‘socially’ visionary.

• Recently, Carroll has been awarded a 2010 Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts Fellowship for prototype 180 and innovation territory and the AIA’s Artist of the Year Award.^[32]

See also

• prototype 180
• Robert Blanchon
• Conceptual art

External links

• http://prototype180.com/
• http://www.artlies.org/article.php?id=1750&issue=62
• http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/octo.2009.129.1.143
• http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/garden/07qna.html?_r=1
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OMxn98_bj4

References

1. ^ "http://www.renaissancesociety.org/site/Benefit/Preview.html?benefitID=1&benefit_auctionsID=9"
2. ^ "http://www.prototype180.com/"
3. ^ ^{a b} "http://artforum.com/words/id=23335"
4. ^ "http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/garden/07qna.html?_r=1"
5. ^ "http://www.media.rice.edu/media/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=14815
6. ^ "http://www.media.rice.edu/media/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=13796"
7. ^ Carroll, Mary Ellen. Flatley, Jonathan. Walker, Hamza. "MEC." Steidl, 2010, p.179
8. ^ "http://www.storefrontnews.org/exhibitions_events/exhibitions?e=246"
9. ^ "http://www.storefrontnews.org/archive/2000?y=0&m=0&p=3&c=1&e=246"
10. ^ Carroll, Mary Ellen. Flatley, Jonathan. Walker, Hamza. "MEC." Steidl, 2010, p.29
11. ^ ” http://www.prleap.com/pr/51762/”
12. ^ ” http://thecaseandpoint.com/2011/01/indestructible-language/”
13. ^ Carroll, Mary Ellen. Flatley, Jonathan. Walker, Hamza. "MEC." Steidl, 2010, p.121
14. ^ Carroll, Mary Ellen. Flatley, Jonathan. Walker, Hamza. "MEC." Steidl, 2010, p.135
15. ^ Carroll, Mary Ellen. Flatley, Jonathan. Walker, Hamza. "MEC." Steidl, 2010, p.149
16. ^ Carroll, Mary Ellen. Flatley, Jonathan. Walker, Hamza. "MEC." Steidl, 2010, p.157
17. ^ "http://www.artlies.org/article.php?id=1750&issue=62"
18. ^ "http://arthistory.yale.edu/faculty/faculty/faculty_joselit.html"
19. ^ "http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/octo.2009.129.1.143"
20. ^ "http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/opc/text/2009/05/our-literal-speed-2009/"
21. ^ ” http://www.steidlville.com/news/248-Mary-Ellen-Carroll-Book-Signing.html”
22. ^ ” http://thirdstreaming.com/events/29-my-death-is-pending-because-mary-ellen-carroll”
23. ^ ” http://thirdstreaming.com/events/29-my-death-is-pending-because-mary-ellen-carroll”
24. ^ ” http://www.192books.com/eventsoldpix.htm”
25. ^ "http://www.lightindustry.org/timebatteries"
26. ^ ” http://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/220/work_4783.htm”
27. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/arts/design/29score.html?scp=1&sq=evryali&st=cse&pagewanted=2
28. ^ "http://www.steidlville.com/books/734-Mary-Ellen-Carroll.html"
29. ^ Carroll, Mary Ellen. Flatley, Jonathan. Walker, Hamza. "MEC." Steidl, 2010, p.ii
30. ^ "http://www.pkf-imagecollection.org/html/artistslist.asp?artist=all"
31. ^ "http://www.gf.org/fellows/2327-mary-ellen-carroll"
32. ^ "http://www.art-agenda.com/shows/mary-ellen-carroll/"

Persondata
Name	Carroll, Mary Ellen
Alternative names	MEC
Short description
Date of birth	1961
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death