Employing art as insertionary idea within a social realm, Mel Chin compares his social artworks and their hosting organizations as a virus existing in creative and symbiotic relationship with the host-body. Mel revels in the analogy and multidimensional play of this relationship across fields as diverse as land reclamation, urban renewal, the virtual culture of video games depicting vanishing tribal culture, the tv soap opera Melrose Place, and the new San Jose Library. SWiTCh found Mel in North Carolina under the weather, with a virus of another kind. Perhaps, we may catch similar contagion from an art virus with, Mel Chin, as host.

 

Glen Sparer is currently an MFA candidate at SJSU in digital arts at the Cadre Institute under Joel Slayton.