In the years they spent living in Missoula, the pair of artists found themselves engaged in projects that variously mystified, inspired, and enraged locals. There was the video of the mouse dying in a trap, and the “Slap Booth” - a performance-art project in which Peters wandered around town with a pair of attractive women, offering to slap passers-by across the face for a dollar. There was the Bowhead project, which involved Peters visiting various local events and establishments wearing a full-head, face-obscuring mask made of colorful gift bows; and Bloch's column in the Entertainer, which explored the artistic qualities of, among other things, Mike Tyson and extreme sports.
A couple of years ago, Bloch and Peters left Missoula for Walla Walla, Wash., where Bloch took a job as an art professor at Whitman College. (Peters now teaches art history and theory at Colorado State University-Pueblo). This week, the two return to Missoula for the opening of “Portraits from an Ark,” a video art installation at the Missoula Art Museum.
I was one of the people invited to participate (spoiler: I'm the blowfish). So in advance of the show's opening at the MAM, I caught up with Peters and Bloch to ask them about the inspiration behind the project, and to explore the motives that drive the two artists in their work.
JOE NICKELL: I became vaguely aware of the “Ark” project when you were working on it, and then you asked me to participate. But it didn't seem like you were treating it as something particularly serious or museum-bound at the time; I recall you asking me pretty casually if I wanted to come have my face painted, and that was about it. As you were first working on this, what was the idea you were working with, and how did it change over time?
CAROLINE PETERS: It changed a lot actually. It started as a really potent idea: Tell someone to be an ant and see what they can do just with their face. This was right after the Slap Booth thing, so we had the idea that we would tell people to pretend to be an ant, we'd paint their faces, they'd try to be an ant and we'd tell them, “bad ant!” - and we'd slap them across the face. (laughs)
BEN BLOCH: That's how it started, seriously. We were interested in how humans intersect with animals, and the lines between creativity and our limited human potential, and how the animal sort of comes out when punishment and humiliation is involved.
PETERS: It was the idea of telling someone to be an animal, and then when they can't do it, treating them like an animal.
We did that a couple of times and then when we watched the videos, it seemed like, no, that's not the idea. The people who were acting in the videos were so creative and amazing: The tiger would come in and instead of doing what we expected and being ferocious, the person's personality would come into it and it would be really sensual.
So the whole project changed to be about the creativity in everybody. The people painting didn't necessarily know what the animals looked like, and the person being painted didn't know what we were painting until it was done; so it was an improvisation on both parts. We were really shocked and amazed at the results.
BLOCH: Even after we figured that out, we didn't really know what it could be; we had all this footage eventually, tapes and tapes, and then we moved away with the tapes in a box and it didn't really start to seem like it would become something really substantial or resolved until the following summer.
PETERS: The problem was, being there when the painting sessions happened was really amazing; but the moment doesn't transfer to video. It's not the same as being there. So you have to change it to make it its own thing.
That's how we eventually worked around to adding music, the digital treatment and the voice interactive software that lets the viewer actually pick what they want to see. It's supposed to capture the creativity and spontaneity and collaboration of those original sessions, and draw the viewer into that process.
NICKELL: I'm sure you both realize that there are people in this world who would say, “What? That's at the Art Museum?” This whole realm of conceptual video art - art that you can't really hang on the wall - is probably lost to some people.
PETERS: When I think of art, I think of something amazing that restructures your thoughts and opens the way you think, something that makes you wake up - even if it's just for a moment. That can happen in a painting, but that can also happen in an experience. So I think an experience can be art.
You go into the museum and you're not going to get an idea of how to decorate your house from seeing this. But you're going to get an idea, I would hope, about people; and an emotional, aesthetic experience.
BLOCH: There are definitely things in this piece for people to grab onto, though. This piece relates a lot to traditional portraiture, in the sense that it's very much about what the face can tell.
PETERS: A painting is an object that's always done. This is a painting because the faces are being painted; but it starts and then it's finished and then it's in the past. With this, there's no concreteness; it happens like magic, and I like that magic of using computer code and your voice to create things and using the medium of light to create a painting on a blank wall that only exists for a short time.
BLOCH: Going back to the question of whether this is art, if I get excited about something, if I feel emotional about something and I aecognize the aesthetic layers, I think it doesn't matter if it's some famous historical painting or a Rihanna music video. I like her video “Umbrella,” for example, because it's refined and has all these layers of aesthetics: color, design, effects, dance, music. It's a composition that is rich. Why isn't that art?
PETERS: One of my favorite quotes is, “Art makes life more interesting than art.” Art can help you see the beauty of everyday life.
BLOCH: I used to have much stronger feelings about categories of art and what qualifies; but now, you see these people on YouTube who are making what I consider art. They don't consider themselves artists, they're just doing what they're interested in and they're elevating it to a new level. I think that art is something that should create empathy and shared experience and joy, it helps people feel not so isolated; and anything that does that I would at least discuss as being potentially art.
That's why I definitely think YouTube is an artistic medium; it's art itself. It's a joining of people, a sharing between people, coming together in a huge conglomerate force. Anytime I see that happening when it's not forced or contrived, I think about it artistically. There's nothing that more accurately reflects who we are than YouTube: if you want porn you can watch porn; if you want to watch cute animals you can watch cute animals.
NICKELL: There are those who believe that art should not be simply a reflection of what humanity is, but rather something elevated, something abstracted out of the human experience to be greater than what we are; something perhaps to aspire to or to put on a pedestal, whether literally or figuratively.
PETERS: If you're talking about a sublime, huge feeling you get when you put something up on a pedestal, I think when you really reflect yourself it's the same sublime feeling, the same amazement. An accurate reflection is really an impossible and amazing thing. The Internet comes close, but it's not exact. You're looking at a gem and you see one thing on one side and another thing on the other side; how do you get a full view? You can't. The Internet, it's always changing while we are always changing and so there's this sense of always aspiring and never quite reaching mixed in with these amazing things that people have already done.
That kind of relates back to what (“Portraits from an Ark”) is all about. There's this underlying theme of people reaching and failing, trying to be something they can't be. In one sense that's frustrating, but in another sense it's really inspiring, just to see these people putting themselves on the line and doing these amazing performances.
There is something really beautiful and moving in knowing you're going to fail, and trying anyway.
Reach Joe Nickell at 523-5358 or at jnickell@missoulian.com.
Preview
“Goatsilk: Portraits From an Ark” opens this week at the Missoula Art Museum with a First Friday reception, Aug. 3, from 5-8 p.m. Admission is free.
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