In Depth: Empire

Arden Bendler Browning, Empire, 2010, Gouache and flashe
on Tyvek, Courtesy of the Artist

The world is becoming more and more like a computer--or is it the other way around? With the rising popularity of internet maps that allow a person to virtually "walk" through an area that could be as close as two feet away or as far as half a world away, the lines between reality and virtual reality are blurring at record speed. In its turn, technology has left an indelible mark on how we move through the world. As we walk along a street, it is possible to check one's workplace, one's home, and any number of virtual spaces. Our consciousness is not unlike the window of an internet browser that contains many open tabs. In such a world their is an infinite potential for expanding one's consciousness. Simply put, we see and are capable of seeing more than we were even as little as ten years ago. At the same time, we overlook certain details; certain treasured moments that can only be enjoyed when one's is fully immersed in one's immediate surroundings. It is this balancing act of consciousness that Arden Bendler Browning explores in her painting Empire.

The word "empire" usually brings to mind a powerful political state that is comprised of a variety of smaller territories. This description, however, can be applied to anything from a county to a country. Empires have a little something extra that makes them stick out from all of the other political  units. That something extra is usually a reputation for conquering neighboring political states and the existence of an all-powerful emperor. Browning's decision to name this piece Empire, then, is an interesting commentary on what it means to be conscious of one's environment. There is an implication that the very act of experiencing or seeing an environment--to codify and identify individual elements--is an act of conquest.



In the world before the addictive habit known as "google walking," our interaction with the world was limited to our physical  surroundings. If we rule what we see, as the title of Browning's painting suggests, pre-iPhone Mankind could only exercise influence over one environment at a time. In other words, each of us could probably be a feudal lord, at best. The advent of new technologies, however, has made it possible for individuals to experience multiple spaces at once. Far-distant lands are now just a tap of the finger or the click of a mouse away. Because we are able to see and experience multiple locales without moving more than one inch, our sphere of influence is expanded--we conquer the far-flung territories to which we have access and, in so doing, build our own empires of consciousness.

Browning's painting captures this phenomenon by presenting viewers with snatches of broken color and abstractions that allude to metropolitan structures with the most basic of forms. In the upper left hand corner the suggestion of a building jostles with  a quickly sketched fence. Two grassy splotches border a swiftly narrowing strip of gray that may or may not represent a roadway. Scattered amongst these grassy nooks and psuedo-roadways are planes of color that are, in turn, gradated, transparent, opaque; and which defy categorization. The space of the painting is not organized according to traditional spatial logic. Instead, shifting viewpoints collide with each other in a hodge-podge of scenes and settings.

It would be impossible for all of the spaces depicted in the painting to fit together in the physical world. Virtual reality, however, can easily accommodate each of these divergent views. Browning has given us a visual representation of the empire that technology--as well as the increasingly fast pace of modernity--has created within our consciousness. The truly interesting point about Browning's painting, however, is her decision to limit the scope of her virtual conquest to city spaces. Her empire is her own neighborhood--the places and spaces she inhabits in her daily life. While technology might allow Browning to practically the entire Earth, she chooses, instead, to build her empire out of multiple views of her immediate environment.

The word "empire" in Browning's piece, does not signify a collection of political states so much  as a collection of different consciousnesses--one that is built from bits and pieces found on google earth and similar technological innovations.  The artists neatly sidesteps the danger of overlooking small, wondrous moments inherent in such technology by deepening her visual conquest of space rather than widening it. Browning examines and re-examines her home city of Philadelphia, ultimately transferring her many and varied impressions of the city and her neighborhood onto her tyvek canvas. The result is not a depiction of the landscape but a portrait of the empire of consciousness that lies within Browning's--and perhaps everyone else's--mind.

It is a wonder of the human mind that, unlike those browser tabs I mentioned earlier, it is able to incorporate divergent impressions and consciousnesses into one unique experience of the world--we need look no further than Browning's painted synthesis of her impressions for an example of this process. A computer and the programs it runs can only act as tools for accessing different experiences. After all, we must remember that the internet was not the first land of nebulous information. The land of imagination and consciousness came well before the world wide web. It is from the imagination that Empire was ultimately produced.

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"In Depth" is a series of posts dedicated to taking a closer look at (and maybe completely misinterpreting) individual pieces exhibited by the DCCA. If you would like to nominate a piece at the DCCA for an "In Depth" feature, feel free to write a comment and let me know!