Facetime by Dennis McNulty, as installed in the Canzani Center Gallery, CCAD. Courtesy of the artist and Green on Red Gallery.

It was there on the newsstands, staring out at me, just before Christmas. I still haven’t signed up for Facebook, partially because I’m a little worried about the latent potential of large mounds of data and partially because I know that I would probably become completely addicted to it. But there was something compelling about that image: Mark Zuckerberg’s blank, almost symmetrical face on the cover of Time magazine—magnetic, calm, unsettling, unreadable. Person of the Year. It seemed significant that a bastion of the old ways was paying tribute to the king of the new ways. The top-down distribution of information by self-appointed gatekeepers versus the flattened hierarchies of networked distribution. Physical objects versus invisible information on magnetic storage devices. People 1.0 versus People 2.0, as Zadie Smith would have it. But things are never that simple. I bought the magazine and read the feature.

Zuckerberg intrigues people, me included, because his motives are unclear. He doesn’t seem to be interested in money or coolness. In David Fincher’s movie The Social Network, Zuckerberg’s portrayed as a young guy trying to find a way to hook up with girls. As incredible as Aaron Sorkin’s script is, this was patently not the case in reality—but it’s clear why Sorkin felt he needed to create this motive for the leading man. Otherwise, where’s the plot? How can we identify with a character who makes choices for no discernible reason? You can imagine Jesse Eisenberg, the actor who plays Zuckerberg, standing on set asking Fincher, “Okay, so what’s my motivation?” and Fincher looking at his feet and saying, “I’ve told you before, Jesse, we don’t have any idea what your motivation is.”

Studying ancient Greek and Latin, as Zuckerberg has, usually means studying the ideas that were formulated in those languages, the ideas that form the basis of the society in which we live. Initially, Martin Schoeller’s Time cover shot reminded me of the award handed out to actors at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards—a mask that is in turn based on the masks used in classical Greek theatre. It’s static, almost symmetrical, impassive. I began to think of Zuckerberg as the king of a vast virtual city-state.

Dennis McNulty

But after reading the Time feature, I found myself coming to a different conclusion. I was intrigued by the descriptions of Zuckerberg targeting key people who were very focused on their own projects and ultimately converting them, persuading them to aid him in creating his vision of a world connected and re-ordered by Faceboook. What strikes me now is how Facebook, in its desire to re-engineer society, in many ways resembles a cult. Its software provides an ever-increasing number of users with a series of rituals and the language to accompany them—poking, writing on walls, friending and de-friending. However, if Facebook is a cult, it’s one where the figure of the charismatic leader has been replaced by one with a calm, inexpressive stare, a face-void to be filled with your own data.

Dennis McNulty is an artist based in Dublin, Ireland, whose practice is concerned with memory, potential, and flow. His work emerges from research, suggesting possible narratives through the overlapping of pieces in various media. McNulty’s extensive exhibition record includes representing Ireland at the São Paulo Bienal and participating in solo and group exhibitions in Ireland, Northern Ireland, France, Canada, Japan, Brazil, Colombia, and the United States. His 2011 works The Crash, Facetime, and Carbon Dating were commissioned by CCAD and Bureau for Open Culture for the exhibition Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven, presented at CCAD from January 27–March 12, 2011.

The opening of "Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven" brought large crowds to the Canzani Center Gallery.

The opening of  CCAD’s most recent exhibition, produced by the Bureau for Open Culture, brought large crowds and several international and award-winning artists to CCAD’s Canzani Center Gallery Thursday evening.

The opening event culminated in a participatory psychic event and a post-reception dance party.

Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven features 42 works by 17 artists in a wide range of media, including photography, video, painting, sculpture, social intervention, and sound installation. On-hand for the opening reception were featured artists Dennis McNulty (Dublin, Ireland), Ben Kinsley (Pittsburgh, PA), Lara Kohl (Brooklyn, NY), Jeremy Kost (New York, NY), Alejandro Vidal (Barcelona, Spain—actually, he was stuck in New York due to the weather, but he was there in spirit), Malcolm Cochran (Columbus, OH), and Cassandra Troyan (Chicago, IL).

After the opening, Kinsley invited guests to circle around his work—a blown-glass bowl filled with water in an all-black room with around-the-clock audio and video surveillance—for a participatory psychic event. Attendants chanted while Kinsley and Columbus-based psychic Larry Copeland clapped their hands and joined in the rhythmic song. After a minute or so, Copeland instructed the audience to cease their chant and pass all their energy toward the bowl. Some pointed their hands at the vessel, others shouted, most took on the more passive approach, sharing their energy with their minds.

Every Friday through March 4, musicians will play music to the installation. On March 11, Kinsley and Copeland invite the community back to review the surveillance footage with them, identifying and discussing any paranormal action caught on tape and the affect the performances made on the object.

Curated by Director of Exhibitions James Voorhies, Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven explores the way life is charged with an underlying awareness of the passage of time and marked by residues of our culture. The show features the works of Guy Ben-Ner, Joachim Brohm, Gerard Byrne, Malcolm Cochran, Peter Dayton, Ben Kinsley, Lara Kohl, Jeremy Kost, Mark Leckey (Turner Prize winner), Mary Lum, Dennis McNulty, Timothy Nazzaro, Johannes Nyholm (films selected for Cannes 2008, 2009), Pipilotti Rist (honored by Guggenheim Museums), Cassandra Troyan, Jeffrey Vallance (John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation award winner), and Alejandro Vidal.

The exhibition is open through March 12. Information about gallery hours and location is on CCAD’s website.

Guy Ben-Ner, I'd give it to you but I borrowed it, 2007 single channel video with color and sound, 12 minutes courtesy of POSTMASTERS GALLERY, New York

Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven, an exhibition opening Jan. 27 in the Canzani Center Gallery, explores the way life is charged with an underlying awareness of the passage of time and marked by residues of our culture. The exhibition will feature 42 works by 17 artists in a wide range of media, including photography, video, painting, sculpture, social intervention, and sound installation.

Participating artists include 2008 Turner Prize winner Mark Leckey, Malcolm Cochran, professor with the Department of Art at The Ohio State University, with a specially-commissioned work, and Dublin, Ireland-based artist Gerard Byrne, who will show part of a work he presented at the 2007 Venice Biennale.

Taking its title from a 1985 album by the British pop band Love and Rockets, the exhibition examines how culture creates and sustains deeply personal connections with past moments. Collective and individual memories are embedded in materials, sounds, and sites. A publication also accompanies the exhibition.

Upon entering the gallery, viewers encounter a video and companion installations that set a slightly innocent, optimistic tone, evoking what viewers might readily conjure upon hearing the word “teenager.” As visitors proceed through the exhibition it becomes increasingly dark and foreboding.

Eight of the featured artists will be in Columbus 6-8 p.m. Jan. 27 for the opening reception, including Dennis McNulty (Dublin, Ireland), Ben Kinsley (Pittsburgh, PA), Lara Kohl (Brooklyn, NY), Jeremy Kost (New York, New York), Alejandro Vidal (Barcelona, Spain), Malcolm Cochran (Columbus, Ohio), and Cassandra Troyan (Chicago, IL). A few will be in residence for a week or more to produce site-specific works. Dublin-based Dennis McNulty, for example, will make a sound and video work called Carbon Dating. It investigates Brutalist modernist architecture and is especially commissioned for this exhibition.

Exhibition artists are Guy Ben-Ner, Joachim Brohm, Gerard Byrne, Malcolm Cochran, Peter Dayton, Ben Kinsley, Lara Kohl, Jeremy Kost, Mark Leckey, Mary Lum, Dennis McNulty, Timothy Nazzaro, Johannes Nyholm, Pipilotti Rist, Cassandra Troyan, Jeffrey Vallance, and Alejandro Vidal.

Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven, curated by James Voorhies, director of Exhibitions and adjunct graduate faculty, is produced by Bureau for Open Culture and funded in part by the Greater Columbus Arts Council. In addition the Ohio Arts Council helped fund this program with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, educational excellence and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans. Media sponsor is WWCD-FM 102.5.

The exhibition is open through March 12. Information about gallery hours and location is on CCAD’s website.