Resume - Joseph and Donna McElroy

Cor[porat]e [Per]form[ance] Art[ists]
The POINT

940 Garrison Ave

The Bronx, NY 10474

646-279-2309

joseph@corporatepa.com

donna@corporatepa.com

 

Joseph & Donna McElroy have worked together to provide many art services, including sculpture, painting, performances, installations, video, computer, multimedia, and conceptual.

 

The McElroys are a husband and wife collaborative artist and business team. They met in Philadelphia while joseph was studying at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and donna, a student at Temple University, was working at The Academy as an artists' model. They soon began working together on poetry and performances in the area. After relocating to New York, joseph & donna began to exhibit their art at such us places as: The Living Room Festival at HERE Center for the Arts, The Alternative Museum, The Art Alliance, The Kitchen, and other various venues for art and performance in Manhattan. joseph & donna have extensive expertise in building and using innovative software programs for art and business. joseph, is a graduate of Computer Science from Duke University and former team leader at IBM. He has been a CEO of several companies, and has been responsible for raising funding for several startup companies, including EveryDayOffice.com, which while part of the dot-com boom and bust, he managed to bring to profitability and which still survives to this day. He was the leader of the Open Source Sig for the New York Software Industry Association. And was track co-chair for Open Source at the 2001 New York Software Industry Summit. He is on the advisory board for PostgreSql, Inc - the leading Open Source Database. He has had articles published by Lutris Technologies and Open Magazine on Open Source business models and technology solutions. He is a database expert with extensive Fortune 500 experience. Among other awards, he won an IBM Division Award for Technical Excellence.

donna was an operations manager and PR specialist in they firms they have started together. She has recently been credited by several business leaders in the Bronx as being "top spokesperson for the Bronx." She is active in many community development projects, such as participating on the Bronx Community Arts Grant Panel Review Board and the Board of the Bruckner Arts and Antique District, and working to promote many Bronx activities through an online newsletter called Cupcake Kaleidoscope. joseph & donna have achieved re-known as Open Source visionaries with interviews by Interactive Week, Infoworld, Fortune Technology, Open magazine, and others.  joseph & donna are on or have been on the advisory board of the Alternative Museum, the Executive Board of the National Visual Artists Guild, the Advisory board for Jennifer Muller The Works dance company, the Benefit Committee for the National Design Museum, the Board of Directors for the Jaycees, the Art & Technology Board for the Bronx Council of the Arts and various other cultural honors.

 

Corporate Performance Artists (CorporatePA), founded in January 2003 by joseph & donna, is both a performance/exhibition practice and a business/technology practice. In the past, it was rare that art knowledge was shared other than in a museum space or theater. We bring this creative knowledge to the work environment through shared technical and cultural exchanges with businesses (and employees of the businesses) and community organizations for which we consult and produce. Our intentions are to propagate the wealth created through the creative process, both financially and spiritually, to everyone involved.

CorporatePA represents the mutual desires of both joseph & donna to live a complete life; mixing business and artistic abilities into a new reality, resulting in a newfangled way of doing business.

ARTISTS STATEMENT

The world can be beautiful; we must envision it. 

 

Performance has become a key term that in turns applies to experimental art, worker productivity, and functionality of technical, corporate, and military systems. Extrapolating from the purist corporatist bent, when we call Performance artistic, it references a cultural production that is meaningful and has definable roles in relation to the subjects of experience. Within a corporate context, Performance as artistic must be expressive within the experimental art domain, but also address issues of productivity, repeatability, and functionality. In the greater cultural context, Performance as a work of art does not exist. What, does exist, are services (acting, singing, dancing, design, labor, practices, management, etc) that we call art. We explore these services as discrete departments working towards a holistic goal.

 

Service is an act (or when considered a process - an action, series of actions) done for others. Creation is an act (or process). Prior to the Object there is Creation. Prior to Maintenance, there is Creation. Prior to destruction, there is Creation. Or perhaps better, transformation (an act), since the only true act of Creation would be from nothing into something (the initial act of God?).

Objects never exist or existed, unless we remove the dimension of time, which we are incapable of doing, except conceptually. Concepts never exist or existed - for the very act of thinking transforms them. Art, we understand to be acts (process-actions) of creation (or better - transformation). Art is a paradox, struggling to bring into existence that which cannot ever exist.

The question - are these acts for others or ourselves? For money, for god, for country - these are arguably acts for others. For self expression, perhaps we look at concepts of the "self" or the "other" or the "Other" or identity or a myriad other ways of theorizing about the construct we call ourselves, and see that if any abstraction is accepted, then we have some form of an audience. Even when performing an act for our self, we are performing it for an abstract version of our self. Once accepted, then self-expression is performed for others.

So Art is an act (process-actions) for others - a Service. Artists, who are providers of the Service of Art (exactly which acts constitute the field of Art is a continually negotiated process), are Service Providers. We like to think that if we accept a Joseph Bueys' version of art as something performed by everybody, then we reach a conclusion that everybody is a service provider. We serve each other; even when we perform for ourselves, we are still serving.

In Allan Kaprow's book of essays "The Blurring of Art and Life", he is interested in an intersection between art and life...mainly, does a line have to exist at all ... maybe it is possible to bend art space to the Life Standard or life space to the Art Standard. Our Art Service is to explore this line, and extend the line into virtual space or Virtual Standard. As a matter of belief, we offer services without property. The ownership of knowledge, a recent feature of our society, is not in the interest of the public. We believe knowledge should be free and freely given. Our services explore Open Source, the concept of free knowledge and the Gift Economy.

Finally, our emotional need is for Community. To build neighbors both online and offline, who interact, share, converse, and play with each other and us. Thus, the final form, the destination of delivery of our Art Services is the in context of Community. The expected result for our audience and us is EXPERIENCE, the apprehension of an “object”, “thought”, or “emotion” through the senses or mind, via participation in events or activities. We accept payment in kind.

PRESS

From article on Rethinking Wargames Activate - online journal, July 2003 “… I met the 'Corporate Performance Artists' in New York in March this year. I recognized a project with ambitions to increase the agency of not only the initiating artists but of every person that received one of their 'services'. Their strategies appear not only to be imaginative and truly (r)evolutionary but informed by and connected to an experience and understanding of life greater than the sum of its parts.” By Ruth Catlow, editor

From article in Tri-City News in Vancouver, BC, March 2003… "The installation of Cult of The Corporate Performance Artists Temple of the Bird at Evergreen is a perfect example of how technology and art are coming together in non-commercial applications using tools that were created for business".   by Diane Strandberg

From Review in Suite101.com by Lewis Lacook, September 2002“The relation between this dynamic process and the concept of ritual can at times seem tenuous; it is, however, the land that Joseph F. and Donna McElroy inhabit. I bring ritual into play because it often seems to me that this dynamic duo of net art are the closest things we have to true shamans today. That they bill themselves as "Corporate Performance Artists" shouldn't scare anyone interested in truly innovative work away: yes, the McElroy's do do corporate work (that is, work for corporations); but there's nothing plebeian or mundane about their net art.” http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/15239/94995

From Review inMuseum of Computer Art by JD Jarvis March 2002. "Shoot the Bird’, MOCA's first exhibited Flash animation created by the artistic husband/wife team, Joseph and Donna McElroy, is a respectable entrée into this genre of New Media; having been included in the Electronic Orphanage online Whitney Biennial 2002 exhibit, it is a fine example of the current work being done… http://www.museumofcomputerart.com/newmedia/jarvis_nm.htm

From magazine "Open" issue September 2001...
"…every so often, there's also a McElroy, who defies business stereotypes that polarize button-downs vs. 501s. The McElroys kick open the doors of old business models and capitalize on what they believe…"

From magazine "Gallery & Studio" issue Jan/Feb 2001....

”McElroy is an artist with a boldly eclectic vision reminiscent of the young Julian Schnabel for his epic ambition.  McElroy thinks big and seems to generate imagery effortlessly, mixing visual metaphors and mediums to create complex assemblage paintings that merge figures and abstract forms in dynamic, often funky compositions..." by Maurice Taplinger

EDUCATION      

Duke University, August 1980 - May 1984.

Bachelor of Science of Computer Science & Economics, minor in Mathematics. Cum Laude, 3.3 GPA, Class Honors, Dean's List, Full-tuition math scholarship.

ART EDUCATION      The Summer Institute at The Kitchen, 1999

                             Intensive three weeks art, technology, and performance work.

                             Studied With…

                             Lynn Book  - voice and movement

                             Annie Lanzillotto – writing

                             Molly Davies – video art

                             Pia Massie – video art

                             Dan Hurlin – physical theatre

                             Roselee Goldberg – performance art history

                             Philip Glass – Collaboration and Technology

                             Lucienne Vidah – Yoga

                             Kyle deCamp – Writing

                             Treva Offutt – voice and movement

                             Meredith Monk – voice and performance

                             Shirley Kaplan – theatre

                             Martha Bowers – site specific art

                             John Kelly – performance art

                             Sara Roberts – new technologies in art

                             Laurie Anderson – performance art

            Pennsylvania Academy Of The Fine Arts,  

            1993-1995.

                             Scholarship and Teaching Assistantships.

            University Of North Carolina,

                             September 1992- May 1993.

                             Candidate of Bachelor of Fine Art.  GPA 4.0.

                             Durham Arts Council, 1991-1992

                             Studies of the human form.

         

                             Truro Center for the Arts, Cape Cod

            Summer 1992.

                             Painting, Sculpture.

                             Sidney Simon, Sculptor. Co-Founder of

            Skohegan, Summer 1992

                             Sculpture assistant

                             Joan Schonburg, Painter 1989-1991

                             Painting instruction

                             Duke University, 1983-1984

                             Art History

PERFORMANCES 

                             “El Dia de Los Reyes” performance celebrating The Three Kings Day for

                             Affinity Health Plan.  Starring joseph & donna and featuring children from

                             the Hunts Point community & Ashanti Myke from the POINT. Peformance

                             held in Yonkers, NY at the New York Public Library, Riverfront Branch in

                             conjunction with a health fair sponsored by Affinity Health Plan.

                             January 2004

                             “El Dia de Los Reyes @ The POINT”  This performance was presented by

                             CorporatePA to The POINT to share in the annual Three Kings Day

                             celebration at The POINT. January 2004

                             The Cult of the Corporate Performance Artists was first performed at

                             The POINT before being invited to show again in February 2003 at The

                             Evergreene Cultural Centre in British Columbia as part of Digitalis II –

                             Concerning the Spiritual in Art. This piece, which began as an interactive

                             online performance, grew to include both a performance piece and an

                             installation component. 

                             Sp[ring] Clean[sing] is the title of a show that included two new

                             performance pieces – “Balance” and “Mediated Reality” and a return of

                             “The Cult of theCorporate Performance Artists” as we were invited to

                             perform again at The POINT upon our return from British Columbia.

                             Global Poetry Net Action , March 21, 2002

                             http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/kareninazoom/index.htm

                             Into My Moody Mind Comes Fear. Performance at CBGBs.

                             November 1999, NYC

                             Placid Ennui – Performance at The Kitchen

                             July 1999, NYC

                             Fashion Performance – with Hunger World

                             October 1998

ONLINE EXHIBITIONS

                  

                             Screenburn - New Work: Lehmus, McElroy, Bruno, Floyd, LaCook, Deed,

                             Szpakowski, Niss

                             https://www.electrichands.com/sketches/collab2/index.html

                       

                             Neural.it - Italian Net Art Portal - ‘Renga’, collaboration amongst 8 artists…

                             http://www.neural.it/nnews/renga.htm

                             Computerfinearts Collection ---netart collection and archive --- ‘Cult of the

                             Cor[porat]e [Per]form[ance] Art[ist] - Shoot the Bird’ and ‘Jimmy’ accepted

                             into collection. www.computerfinearts.com

                             SideReality.com- journal of speculative and experimental poetry “After

                             Death” a musing on simultaneous space. www.sidereality.com

                             Le Musee di-visioniste - {self}_representation 2003 - “Getting Dressed”,

                             intimate self portrait of joseph and donna at home.

                             www.le-musee-divisioniste.org

                             CyberKitchen - collaborative net.installation with its starting point in the

                             cyber-domestic aesthetic www.the-cyber-kitchen.com

                             Furtherfield.org - several pieces featured on this mainstay of network

                             based art during 2001-2004, including several reviews.

                             www.furtherfield.org/displayartist.php?artist_id=40

                             Rhizome.net - Cult of the Cor[porat]e [Per]form[ance] Art[ist] - Shoot the

                             Bird accepted as Cloned art object in their repository. September 2002

                             http://www.rhizome.net

                             Museum of Computer Art – New Media Art Show, curated by Candice

                             Robinson . www.museumofcomputerart.com Cult of the Cor[porat]e

                             [Per]form[ance] Art[ist] April 2002

                             BannerArt - The Banner Art Collective creates, collects, and distributes

                             net.art and poetry within the limitations and context of web advertisements

                             http:// www.bannerart.org

                  

                             Freemanifesta - GLOBAL EXPERIMENTAL POETRY NET-ACTION

                             (virtual&real) - 122 international artists. Co-operative work of the most

                             important experimental poets in the world

                             www.freemanifesta.org/artists/davinio.html

                       

EXHIBITIONS