Action Studio – Ben Damir

Statement

Understanding the role of art in my life, whether academically, professionally, or simply for joy and fulfillment, has been tumultuous. My artistic ideals—not rushing inspiration and giving away, rather than selling art, for instance—often oppose the business structure of professional or corporate art careers, and, while many graduates plan to enter the same field as their major, the path to professional success as an artist is far more ambiguous.

Drawing from these anxieties, Action Studio inverts the joy I experience in art production into an engineered-for-efficiency commercialist endeavor, distilling my fears into a satirical cubicle-studio. Iterating on Robert Propst’s Action Office I/II (1964) and George Tooker’s corporate surrealism, the studio is engineered for the task of monochromatic relief print, featuring carefully designed workspaces, social media marketing tools, and a mail slot for cash transactions. In the accompanying performances and video pieces, I construct the studio around myself, then operate it through the full process of printmaking, and finally resist it by tearing it down and giving away the prints I had produced to gallery patrons. The prints, which replicated Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893), contrast the high status afforded to hand-crafted art with the impersonal marketability of an unoriginal image, calling into question the value —financial or otherwise—of the prints. Simultaneously, The Scream allows discomfort for the artist to shine through in their work, reflexively embodying a primal aversion to the restraint that such a studio demands.

Action Studio therefore stands as a reminder of what art must not become for me. Just as I can allow productivity and commercialization to strain and corrupt my art, so too can I deconstruct this anxiety and cultivate a craft born out of spark and joy. —Ben Damir

Bio

Ben Damir (day-mur) is an artist and themed entertainment designer from Los Angeles, California. His current works use print and installation to capture vignettes of daily life and to consider the intricacies of art production, reception, and distribution. He also works extensively in theatre and theme park design, and has led the design and production of escape rooms, murder mysteries, and other interactive experiences. At Vanderbilt, he exhibited in Ode to Kara (2022) and A La Carte (2022) group exhibitions, designed for stage at Neely Auditorium and Rothschild Theatre, and creative-produced three attraction projects through the Themed Entertainment Association at Vanderbilt. After graduation, he planned to continue exploring the sociology of art, artists, and art spaces, and was excited to give away as much artwork as possible.