MFA Lecture Series: A.L. Steiner

Last Wednesday I sat in on A.L. Steiner's MFA lecture.

Steiner works in the mediums of photography and video but started out as a communications major as an undergraduate and worked as a photo editor after graduating. And from the sound of it, she didn't go to graduate school, which is pretty rare for a working artist getting representation from galleries. I thought her process of making photographs was refreshing. She works mostly in 35mm and digital, which I also think it rare for photographers working right now who mostly seem to be using 4X5 and 8X10 cameras to make their work. She takes her cameras with her everywhere and photographs whatever she feels like, slowly building an archive of thousands of images.

One of the works I was most interested is called, "One Million Photos, One Euro Each," where she covered the walls of a gallery, floor to ceiling, with photographs that could be bought for one euro by anyone who came into the gallery. She's done this project in several locations all over the world.

I especially liked her work C.L.U.E., which stands for Color Location Ultimate Experience. It's a collaborative video dance piece where two women wearing different sets of the same colored clothing and dance through various environments. It reminded me a lot of being a child and playing with friends, which is probably one of Steiner's intentions for the piece as she mentioned a lot of her work is about play.

Steiner also works with the music/performance group Chick on Speed and W.A.G.E., an organization that fights for fair wages for artists as they do work for educational institutions and non-profits.

I couldn't find actual footage of C.L.U.E. but I did find this performance with parts of the video playing in the background.