geoffrey pugen

2004-2008
Utopics Video Guide, 5min30, DV, 2004
Aerobia! 7 Steps To True Love, 6min, DV, 2004
Zenith, 5min45, HD, 2008
Utopics, 24min, HD, 2008

Utopics Community Web, 2006



“Both science and popular culture are intricately woven of fact and fiction….Primates are a way into thinking about the world as a whole.”
- Donna Haraway

The digital age has given humans the ability to extend and modify their identity via cyberspace. In response to this new cultural climate, artists are returning to metaphors of the ‘animal’ and the ‘natural’ to investigate the character of our post-millennial environment. Theorists like Haraway have examined how we project our desires onto animals: as noble ideals, as sentimental fantasies, as repositories of evil, as the sublime or the abyss. Utopics is a media project that attempts to contribute to this complex terrain, a satirical yet deeply serious work that explores the myriad dysfunctional ways that humans attempt to ‘master’ our fellow animals and nature as a whole.

Installations of Infomercials, altered video documentation of performance, social experiences, digital imagery, sculpture, and masks are used in actualizing the Utopics project in an art gallery or online virtual environment.


Utopics Simulation Nature Performance True Love Aerobia Utopics Freedom Transform Animal Utopics Video Simulacra