Artist's Talk Constance De Jong

Performance artist and author Constance De Jong speaks about her site-specific installations, her collaborations with artist Tony Oursler and composer Philip Glass, and other elements of her work in this talk presented by Ohio State's Department of Art. Constance De Jong was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and lives and works in New York City. Her first novel, Modern Love (1978)--published in serial form as mail art then presented on the radio and as a performance set to music--signaled her interest in exploring and experimenting with hybrid forms. De Jong's interdisciplinary work has been performed or installed in arts institutions and museums including Dia Center for the Arts and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, Berlin, Germany; and the Arc Festival, Graz, Austria. Her collaborations include writing the libretto for Philip Glass's opera Satyagraha (1983) and the performance work Relatives (1990) with Tony Oursler. De Jong's public projects include Fantastic Prayers (2000), a CD-ROM collaboration with Tony Oursler and Steven Vitiello; Ally (1989), a spectra sign for Messages to the Public in Times Square; and Duets for Animals and People (1994), a permanent installation at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. De Jong created site-specific talking benches, Speaking of the River, alongside the Thames and Hudson rivers in London and New York, commissioned by the Public Art Trust, London, 2000, and Minetta Brook, New York City, 2002, respectively. Her commisioned site-specific audio installation for Bear Mountain Park in New York State ran for two years, 2003-2005. She received another commision to create a new audio installation in the Engadine region of Switzerland in 2003. De Jong has also received a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship (1976); New York State Council on the Arts Media Production (1985), New York Foundation for the Arts New Genres (1989); and a residency at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, (1995). At present, De Jong is a visiting professor in the art department of Hunter College, City University of New York.

Presented by the Ohio State's Department of Art.