Artist Statement:
My video work is an extension of my awareness of the ecological webbing that supports and includes human life. I create videos as a response to the losses and increasing precarity shaping ecological and social relations in the wake of capitalist exploitation. These works also explore the complex relationship of technology and imaging to the body and to the landscape. I work from the position that it is necessary to grapple with the affective experience of crisis to cultivate resources for repair, solidarity, resistance and resilience.
In previous works, I’ve combined first-person narrative with references ranging from cultural theory, to survivalist subcultures, to scientific writing, using multiple sources and voices to grapple with concepts of extinction and climate grief. This approach is informed by traditions of experimental documentary and video art, and ongoing research into the representation of nature in popular media. I often blend material that I record myself with a range of appropriated material. This traffic between the personal and the social is a central focus in my work.
In addition to my work as an artist I am also an organizer and contribute to an eco-socialist working group in my region—the mid-hudson valley— that is leading a grassroots effort to purchase our local power-company and run it through the state as a public utility with a citizen board of directors. This organizing work is, for me, a necessary companion to my art practice, balancing the conceptual and research orientation of my videos with collective, outcome-oriented action.
Bio: Carolyn Lambert is an artist working in video, installation and performance. Her work focuses on the increasing precarity of ecological and social relations in the wake of capitalist exploitation. Lambert has exhibited at venues including the Drawing Center, Picture Theory, and SculptureCenter (New York). Screenings of her work have occurred at the European Media Art Festival in Osnabrück (Germany), Bomb Factory (UK), and MUMOK (Vienna, AU). She lives and works between New Jersey and New York, along the Hudson River.
Email her at carolynlambert00 at gmail dot com