RPInsider

EMPAC being a bit bashful and trying to hide behind a tree. That only works in cartoons!

Continuing our “Uncovered” series, we look into the people behind perhaps the most mysterious building perched on the side of campus: EMPAC. We interviewed the Director of EMPAC, Mr. Johannes Goebel, and EMPAC’s Curator for Music, Mr. Micah Silver. More info about them is available on EMPAC’s site.

Mr. Goebel tackles the hard questions and perhaps has stumbled upon EMPAC’s new slogan: “Now Here Jump”.

Our new favorite way to think about art comes from Mr. Silver:

It’s about falling in love with things that we’d never dreamed to exist.

Interviews after the jump!

Johannes Goebel –Director of EMPAC

RPInsider: Please describe EMPAC in 3 words.
Johannes Goebel: Now Here Jump

RPInsider: What’s the best thing about EMPAC?
Johannes Goebel: That its program (events, lectures, productions, research) is challenging to the emotional, the artistic, the intellectual, to the technical and to the scientific type – and that it challenges at the same time that such boxes are useful when we are trying to find “the meaning of it all”.

RPInsider: What is your biggest challenge?
Johannes Goebel: The answer to the previous question.

RPInsider: How would you describe a successful show at EMPAC?
Johannes Goebel: You come because you know that EMPAC’s shows are always at the highest level of quality – you are not quite sure what it really will be – you leave the show you either liked or did not like so much – and you know you come back the next time.

RPInsider: How do you think students perceive EMPAC?
Johannes Goebel: I prefer to speak with students on this, I invite them to come to me and voice their opinion. I do not like rumors so much and I would like to learn more to keep “I think that you think” and “I think that you think that I think” at bay. I prefer to meet in person.

RPInsider: Do you take suggestions for exhibits/performances? How?
Johannes Goebel: Any suggestion can be sent to us (email or snail mail) – we like when in the case of a negative response we can give clear replies about our programmatic direction and our mission and that this is not taken as “they don’t want me”; that we can communicate that EMPAC is not a traditional campus performing arts center but has an extensive program in production, presentation, research; that we do have a curatorial staff, i.e. professionals who shape the artistic program of EMPAC as a team that does not exist to my knowledge in this combination and with this program in any other cultural institution

RPInsider: The E in EMPAC is for Experimental.  Is there ongoing research?
Johannes Goebel: We are still searching for the EMPAC Director for Research. We have already quite a bit of research integrated in the projects which have an artistic nucleus. We have a handful of faculty and their students using EMPAC for their research. The E for Experimental does not stand necessarily for “research” – there is also quite a bit of potentially experimental stuff going on in the arts and for you mind in general.

RPInsider: A lot of students question the cost of EMPAC. We know the building was a gift but who pays for staffing/maintenance?
Johannes Goebel: The Institute. Now, if you would like to question how EMPAC serves the Institute and if the cost is “justified”, I have a lot to say regarding all areas from cultural change, education in general and specifically on a research driven campus, all the way  to discussing research in facilitates that exist on no other campus in the US and how EMPAC is at the forefront of any other university that tries to do similar projects. Any exchange on this topic would be most appropriate and desirable – it cannot be done in three lines, it is really intricate and not a one-liner but it takes time to meet and talk about it. Like the time it takes to talk about any complex and expensive project, be it EMPAC or some high-end research lab, be it athletics or the question of humanities and engineering in their potential for exchange.

RPInsider: Who was your favorite artist to perform at EMPAC?
Johannes Goebel: I do not have favorite artists, I have only pieces or performances I like (I was asked this question often when I was still a composer.) I think we learn more by discussing what you and I have not liked and why not. Each time I am in a show at EMPAC – and I try to go to all of them – I am extremely happy (even if I don’t like something) because the quality of everything, from content to all aspects of the production, is so great that I think it was worth putting eight years of my life into all details of the building and the program.

RPInsider: Perhaps the most common criticism about EMPAC that we hear around campus is that students don’t really have access to it.  Are there future plans to allow more students to take advantage of the wonderful spaces? Whether research, or performance.
Johannes Goebel: As I mentioned above, I would like to speak about this and not write about this – because it takes quite a bit different angles to take into account. Just a few words (which may give rise to misunderstanding, so I prefer to talk about it, again): EMPAC has four venues. EMPAC is not a traditional performing arts center that only supports invited acts and campus presentations, but EMPAC has a programmatic mission regarding arts, science and technology. So, if we have a team using a venue for an extended period of time (say 2 or 4 weeks), nothing else can happen in that venue during the period. This excludes regular use like from clubs or classes of EMPAC venues. This just to give one direction this discussion has to go into. Then we have a staff which other professionals from performing arts centers regard as small to operate a building of such size and with such scope. And these colleagues do not even know about production and research and what that requires from staff. Our staff is limited, everyone is working “overtime” all the time – the program of EMPAC has never been done anywhere else. We have about 100 students working at EMPAC. NOW: we have indeed established a process for students to use the venues – they go through the student union and then we look into if and how we can accommodate them. Please be aware of what I just wrote: our staff time is limited, we have four venues which are given to projects for extended periods, we have a mission and an open agenda. We have Studio Beta which can be easily booked through the Student Union. We had 16,000 visitors using EMPAC in one way or the other in the fall of last year. And student should come and talk or invite me and other from EMPAC for a discussion – whatever makes it possible to communicate.

RPInsider: Some say EMPAC doesn’t fit with RPI’s tech-school culture.  What do you say to people who think that EMPAC has no place at RPI?
Johannes Goebel: Rensselaer is the only campus in the US (and probably anywhere in the world) that has a place like EMPAC – the combination of building, infrastructure, staff, programmatic directions, integration of extremely diverse modes of thinking and experiencing. If there is a tech-school culture it can only benefit from other cultural approaches. With EMPAC, Rensselaer has a unique opportunity to offer approaches beyond what we do every day anyhow.  “Why not change the world” includes all aspects of life, including Rensselaer itself and our “usual ways” of going about things. Any culture needs to be challenged; culture is not a static situation. Culture is what shapes us – so we have to shape it. Offering the opportunity to expand a “tech-school culture” mind-set is – from my personal perspective – an extremely important part of education and has a potentially great effect on how we view life and what we see as important. In the end, our personal view of the world determines how we travel our life, how we do our work, what we think is important. And everything should be done and offered to go beyond what we were trained to see as given.

RPInsider: What happened to the roof?
Johannes Goebel: Oh well, it just needed some more insulation.

Micah Silver – Curator, Music

RPInsider: Briefly, what is a Curator?
Micah Silver: The word has come to mean many different things in different disciplines. Like in Paleontology, it might mean I was running around with a sensitive shovel: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/museumstheme/museums/curators-paleontology.asp

At EMPAC, it’s a combination of planning/conceptualizing programs (residencies, events, commissions) that support the mission and then it’s all the details or bringing this program, the idea, the artwork, into our community. What we’re NOT is professional shoppers! Curating is not about what I think is fundamentally “best”, but setting fires between content and context.

RPInsider: How is being a curator at EMPAC different from other curatorial positions?
Micah Silver: One major difference is that we’re mostly working with time-based art works, so the “exhibition” in a way is a season, or a year, or two years. We have to tell the story of EMPAC over time, through a topography.

RPInsider: What’s the one piece you’ve curated this semester that you think students will like the best?
Micah Silver: I think the most fun way to approach art is to forget about like and dislike! Seriously — I think this is one of the key differences between art and entertainment — that art is not about getting what we already love in slightly unusual ways, it’s about falling in love with things that we’d never dreamed to exist.

So in that spirit: I’ve been working for a couple years on a new commission that will premier in March. It’s called Upending and is the most radical experiment in 3D animation I’ve ever seen or heard of paired with an equally unusual spatial recording of a string quartet. I think this piece will really blow minds, but is challenging, too. It’s a piece where as an audience member you have to follow the artists down a rabbit hole and come up 80 minutes later seeing the world just a bit differently than before. This is my favorite kind of art and was what I was looking for while I was a student myself. On the other hand — everyone should come hear Extra Life and dance like mad on Feb 13 with Dan Deacon and then come back and hear the most unusual classical music around: Lachenmann on the 27th of March.

Thanks again to Mr. Goebel, and Mr. Silver for taking the time to answer our questions, and Jason Steven Murphy for helping arrange the interviews!

Having been wow-ed by events at EMPAC, we can only echo the the advice of Mr. Goebel: Don’t let yourself be discouraged by an event and never return to the space. You never know what cool thing you’ll be missing. No one does.

photo courtesy of EMPAC

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