ETA is an exhibition of works by Mollye Bendell, JLS Gangwisch, and Christopher Kojzar, members of the Baltimore-based collective strikeWare. Curated by VisArts’ 2024 Emerging Curator Jordan Horton, the exhibition seeks to address spaces in between and the people who exist there.
The title references the acronym “expected time of arrival,” a phrase derived from the popular concept based on the speed by which a vessel has covered the distance traveled. Online, these spaces are known as liminal, expanding beyond the physical realm to exist in technology through mediums such as buffering webpages and loading pages. Although this method cannot account for unexpected events, it provides a useful estimate for planning purposes. ETA, therefore, represents a journey from point A to B, naive to any sudden disruption or error.
As a collective, strikeWare utilizes multimedia to comment on the lines of human and user experience. While the trio is best known for their site-specific works informed by historical events in the places they show, this exhibition strives to abstract place and spatial relations, querying the concept of the journey over the destination and all that one may encounter in between. For these newly commissioned works, Bendell, Gangwisch, and Kojzar bridge the liminal spaces we subliminally encounter physically and digitally.
Beyond mere object kinetics, ETA (the concept) is also a metaphor for situations where nothing physically moves. One of those metaphors can be adapted to describe the time calculated to complete a task, be it work undertaken by an individual or a computation undertaken by a computer program. This metaphor plays out in the artists’ use of AI computer processing and virtual reality in their practices.
Inspiration for ETA came from a wide array of transit-related happenings in Maryland, from the sudden and tragic Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore to the placement of VisArts in Rockville, which is situated in the Interstate 270 Technology Corridor. The artwork aims to comment on the spaces many people move through, the unnoticed aspects until disturbed, and the political implications of the state of transportation and movement.
To further illustrate the show’s theme, the three artists live in different parts of the United States, adding a compelling dimension to their exploration of transitory dwelling and how a collective continues to stay together despite being miles apart. VisArts’ Kaplan Gallery reunites their collective while allowing the artists to meditate upon how distance has challenged and alternated their joint practice and allowed their separate ones to prosper.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
strikeWare
strikeWare is a Baltimore-based art collective formed to create action-oriented experiences. Our recent work aims to uplift and amplify stories critical to our American history, often using new technologies to emphasize the nowness of that history. strikeWare members are Mollye Bendell, Christopher Kojzar, and JLS Gangwisch. Together, we work and play with virtual and augmented realities, time-based media, customized hardware, digital fabrication, and interactive media.
Mollye Bendell
Mollye Bendell is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus on immersive and electronic media. She has received grants and residencies from Wave Farm WGXC, the Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center, and the Tides Institute and Museum of Art. Awards include the GBCA Baker Artist Award, the MSAC Independent Artist Award, and the RW Deutsch Foundation Rubys Artist Grant. She is also a founding member of media arts collective strikeWare. Bendell’s solo work has been exhibited in venues such as the Baltimore Museum of Art, the New York Electronic Arts Festival, and Maryland Art Place. Her public art commissions include Ladew Topiary Gardens and the City of Redmond, Washington. She has recently exhibited at CURRENTS New Media Festival, the BlackRock Center for the Arts, and National Sawdust.
Bendell is an assistant professor of art in the immersive media design program at the University of Maryland, College Park. She holds a BA in sculpture from the Glasgow School of Art and an MFA in intermedia and digital arts from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.
JLS Gangwisch
JLS Gangwisch is an interdisciplinary artist working with the interaction of digital and physical media, focusing on the human figure, identity, and empathy. With a professional background in film and video production, their most recent work experiments with volumetric capture, extended realities, and networked cinematics. Gangwisch has pursued and earned academic degrees in film, television, and digital art from the University of New Orleans, Falmouth University (UK), and UMBC, respectively. In the summer of 2018, they co-founded the new media arts collective strikeWare, collaborating with artists Chris Kojzar and Mollye Bendell to create interactive installations that explore both individual and political conditioning. Gangwisch is an assistant professor of foundations at the Hartford Art School, University of Hartford, in Connecticut.
Christopher Kojzar
Christopher Kojzar received a BA from the George Washington University and an MFA from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. In 2021, he was selected as an Andrew Harris Fellow at the University of Vermont, where he is now an assistant professor. He is one of three members of strikeWare, a collective that has received several awards and grants for their interactive exhibitions, displaying new media art objects that people can touch. Kojzar is currently designing two public art sites for 2025. Dance in Place is the newest sculpture that symbolically preserves the legacy of queer sites of interest in Burlington, Vermont and memorializes moments in time by referencing poster ephemera and LGBT Pride Parade dance poses.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Jordan Horton is a curator and scholar from Newark, New Jersey whose scholarship primarily focuses on the internet as a geographical space, with a special interest in sonic and visual aesthetics, virtual subculture, and the translation of internet-based communication systems into everyday life.
Horton completed a BA in art history at DePauw University (2019) and an MA in art history from Williams College/Clark Art Institute (2023). They previously served as a Mellon Curatorial Fellow at the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA). At WCMA, they assisted with exhibitions such as Sweaty Concepts (2021) and Remixing the Hall (ongoing). They have also worked with living artists for shows such as Frantz Zéphirin: Selected Works (2022), Beatriz Cortez: The Portals (2023), and Mirrored Interiors: Films by Cecilia Aldarondo (2023). Horton’s curatorial practice is centered around community and accessibility. They currently curate at the Visual Art Center of New Jersey.
VisArts’ Emerging Curator Program pairs an emerging curator with an experienced mentoring curator to produce new exhibitions and related programming.
Learn more