Roski MFA Lecture Series: Dexter Sinister

Wednesday afternoon, I attended the lecture of visiting artists David Reinfurt and Stuart Bailey, collectively known as Dexter Sinister, over at the Roski Graduate School of Fine Arts. I felt compelled to go, not just because of the class extra credit that I was offered (though I must admit that it was nice incentive too) but more because I was curious to hear the duo speak about their work as a collaborative team.

For the past several months, I've been working on my first collaborative project, tentatively called Fantasy IRL, with a fellow Roski student, which investigates fantasy and science fiction fan culture and their members methods of enacting their fantasies in-real-life (IRL). I've found that people often underestimate the added pressures and responsibilities of working as a collaborative team as opposed to by one's self and I was interested in observing the ways in which Reinfurt and Bailey interact and work with each other, in this case particularly in the public sphere.

They spoke they way their work looks: direct, plain and and well-researched. Their way of speaking was regimented and almost seemed planned, but not in a stiff or unnatural way. When there was a pause in the conversation, one would fluidly pick up where the other left off with plenty of things of his own to say, almost like they had their talk rehearsed down to an art in itself, which I've found that many artists do. Though I regret not asking them any questions during the Q&A about their practice as a collaborative team versus their individual practices, I later spoke with Shannon Ebner, artist, professor and head of Roski's Photography Department, who, having collaborated with Dexter Sinister on a number of occasions herself, was able to further illuminate some of what I was further interested in knowing. From what she said, while working as Dexter Sinister, Reinfurt is more hands on with the actual designing of works and has a small design company of his own. Bailey, though still a designer, is more of the front-of-the-house kind of guy, talking and dealing with galleries, museums and whoever else they need to keep in contact with while making their work. This sort of pragmatic division of labor is something I find most helpful in my own collaborative dealings and processes and one that I hope I can further implicate in mine and my partner's practices as we continue on with our project.

Aside from the inner working of Dexter Sinister as a team, I was particularly interested in how they deal with mechanical reproduction, copyright, and dispersion of information in their work, all things that I've been dealing with myself in my own artwork lately (and things that in today's world, designers should concern themselves with). Though photography itself is a form of mmechanical reproduction, the issue has only become more exaggerated with the current digital revolution. And as I have been using more and more digital means to produce my own work, work that also often deals with aspects of the digital age and a movement toward the future and technological singularity, I found their words and interests particularly applicable. Also, having recently become an avid blogger, I've had to become more and more aware of copyright laws and ways of legally dispersing information that might otherwise be illegal and I was interested to see the way they delt those issues as well. In one of their works in particular, the piece consisted of a copy machine and a number of loose chapters of a book laid next to it. Dexter Sinister found a loop hole in the book's publisher's copyright laws that allowed them to at any one time let any person make one photo copy of one chapter from the book and keep it without technically doing anything illegal. This also meant that technically the same person over the course of many days could go into the gallery and copy a different chapter of the book each time until they collected the whole book without ever having to pay for it.

Though designers they may be, I've come to see, appreciate and respect Dexter Sinister more for their ideas and conceptual work as artists, rather than as designers (thought I must say, I do love the clean simplicity of their visual designs). Not only am I interested in now keeping up with their various publications, such as dot dot dot, but I'm excited to observe the way they will further adapt to the world in which they live and work as it continues to evolve around them, as well as keep track of more future incarnations of Dexter Sinister.