Maddie Butler

Lives and works in Saint Paul, MN, USA

Artist statement

I am interested in how technology shapes human relationships and intimate experience. Through sculpture, film, collage and installation I explore the spatial, temporal and emotional complexity of digital life. My primary subject is the entwinement screen and psyche. I explore such topics as: the politics of fantasy in the age of the Internet, the bodily effects of device-mediated communication, and the way tools shape human conceptions of self and other. Much of my work springs from research into pre-cinema imaging technologies and the material evolution of the apparatus. I am inspired by Marxist, feminist and psychoanalytic theories that extend the definition of apparatus beyond the technological, to include the broader systems of control (social, political, psychological) that condition our lives. My practice begins with fragments. I collect, sort and dismantle discarded electronics alongside my own cache of personal data. These resulting materials evidence a bridge between the personal and the systemic, the embodied and the incorporeal. I employ a diversity of methods to defamiliarize and recontextualize these materials, reasserting ethics, agency and tactility into the machine.

Artwork