Mat Rappaport’s art work has been exhibited in the United States and internationally in museums, galleries, film festivals and public spaces including the United Kingdom and the former Yugoslavia. His current work utilizes mobile video, performance and photography to explore habitation, perception and power as related to built environments. Rappaport is a co-initiator of V1B3 [www.v1b3.com], which
seeks to shape the experience of urban environments through media based interventions. Rappaport has published essays in the iDMAa Journal and a chapter in the book Beyond Globalization: Making New Worlds in Media, Art and Social Practices by Rutgers University Press. Rappaport’s photographic work is included in the Midwest Photographer’s Collection at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. He has received fellowships from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Howard Foundation, the Mary L. Nohl Fund, the Montgomery County Ohio Cultural District, and University of Wisconsin Milwaukee’s Center for 21st Century Studies. Rappaport received his MFA from the University of Notre Dame. Rappaport is an Associate Professor at Columbia College in Chicago. ARTIST STATEMENT
My media art projects explore the designed sites of architecture and media representation that program and enforce meaning/s and power. In particular, I am interested in the rise of mass tourism, the intersection of political ideology and architecture, and the commodification of time and space. In architecture, the term “program” refers to the intended use of built spaces including how people migrate, congregate, and inhabit them. The resulting built environment aims to shape and control the use, and experience of real, and virtual spaces. Similarly the proliferation of media, remediated images, and sounds are also a training ground for their reception. Through distribution systems, like television, film, web pages, blogs, podcasts, et. al, narratives are repeated and reformed until their tropes are anticipated when experiencing only a fragmentary image or sound. I approach these complex themes by employing research methodologies that excavate infrastructure, use patterns, and history of place, economic data, and documentary interviews. The resulting work takes the form of video, photo, installation, architectural projection, and public media performances formulated as fragments and modules that can be recombined into forms that provide a flexible response to specific contexts and audiences.
