ThoughtGallery.org > Educational Complex | John Miller, Johanna Fateman, Nicolás Guagnini, Piper Marshall, Howard Singerman | An Art Book Series Event

Educational Complex | John Miller, Johanna Fateman, Nicolás Guagnini, Piper Marshall, Howard Singerman | An Art Book Series Event

In a video clip, featured on the Whitney Museum of American Art’s website, Mike Kelley gives a capsule description of Educational Complex, one of his most complex works:

“I decided to build a reconstruction of every school I ever went to with all the parts I could not remember left out. And then these were combined to one super school. They were cut apart and reconfigured, in a kind of very formalized way that made it look more like a kind of modernist architecture….

“Educational Complex was done directly in response to the rising infatuation of the public with issues of Repressed Memory Syndrome and child abuse…. The implication is that anything that can’t be remembered is somehow the result of trauma.

“So the parts I could not remember of these buildings were the majority of them, probably like 80 percent. So that meant 80 percent of these buildings that I had been in for most of my life were the site [sic] of some kind of repressed trauma. “

This seemingly facetious approach proves to be deceptive; the work exceeds a simple parody. Through his avowed inability to remember, Mike Kelley ultimately implicates a Benjaminian dialectic: that there is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.  The emergent controversy concerning rape in U.S. colleges and universities is only one of the most recent examples.  With Educational Complex, Kelley challenges his audience to understand esthetics—and esthetic education—vis-à-vis realpolitik.











When: Wed., Jan. 27, 2016 at 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Where: New York Public Library—Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
476 Fifth Ave.
917-275-6975
Price: Free
Buy tickets/get more info now
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In a video clip, featured on the Whitney Museum of American Art’s website, Mike Kelley gives a capsule description of Educational Complex, one of his most complex works:

“I decided to build a reconstruction of every school I ever went to with all the parts I could not remember left out. And then these were combined to one super school. They were cut apart and reconfigured, in a kind of very formalized way that made it look more like a kind of modernist architecture….

“Educational Complex was done directly in response to the rising infatuation of the public with issues of Repressed Memory Syndrome and child abuse…. The implication is that anything that can’t be remembered is somehow the result of trauma.

“So the parts I could not remember of these buildings were the majority of them, probably like 80 percent. So that meant 80 percent of these buildings that I had been in for most of my life were the site [sic] of some kind of repressed trauma. “

This seemingly facetious approach proves to be deceptive; the work exceeds a simple parody. Through his avowed inability to remember, Mike Kelley ultimately implicates a Benjaminian dialectic: that there is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.  The emergent controversy concerning rape in U.S. colleges and universities is only one of the most recent examples.  With Educational Complex, Kelley challenges his audience to understand esthetics—and esthetic education—vis-à-vis realpolitik.

Buy tickets/get more info now