"Eating Light" video still (2021)
Meredith Tromble Performance and Talk
Madam Entropy: How to See the World
January 29, 7:00 - 8:20 p.m.
Peterson Hall, UC San Diego
Free & Open to the Public!
Madame Entropy is a persona who began participating, unannounced, in public lectures about contemporary art in 2011. Appearing intermittently over the past decade, she is intent on transmitting knowledge about art that doesn’t fit into words. Madame Entropy takes “lecture” into unfamiliar territory, using an interplay of image, text, speech, and gesture to unsettle the experiences of “learning” and “knowing.” The format carries her message, embodying the dynamic relationship between theory and practice. She can be identified by her yellow gloves and citrine earrings.
Meredith Tromble is an artist and writer whose work mingles drawing, text, and performance. Her talks, installations, and performances exploring art, science, and technology have been presented at venues ranging from the Mills Museum in California to the Tate Britain and the University of Manizales, Colombia. As artist in residence at the Complexity Sciences Center at the University of California, Davis, she worked with geobiologist and Mars Curiosity Scientist Dawn Sumner to develop artwork with interactive, 3-D projection. One iteration of their work became a “dancer” in performances by the Los Angeles-based company Donna Sternberg Dancers. Writing from the viewpoint of an artist, Tromble has also published extensively in books, web, and radio. Her art writing began with regular commentaries on art for KQED-FM in San Francisco. She was active in broadcasting for fifteen years and has authored many print and digital publications. From 2000 to 2010, she was a core member of the artist collective Stretcher, publishing Stretcher.org and organizing performative art events. Her blog "Art and Shadows,” on contemporary art in light of contemporary science, was honored with an Art Writers Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation. Tromble is Professor Emeritus, San Francisco Art Institute and Affiliate, Feminist Research Institute, University of California, Davis.