Jon McKenzie

Jon McKenzie
Jon McKenzie
Nationality	American
Occupation	Professor of English
Known for	Author, scholar, theorist, artist, and designer.

Jon McKenzie is a performance theorist, media maker, and transdisciplinary researcher and teacher at Cornell University. He is founder of the StudioLab pedagogy and former director of DesignLab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. McKenzie's main interests are in new media, performance theory, and the role of art and technology in cultural research, contemporary processes of globalization, and emerging forms of social activism. His website labster8.net contains articles, interviews, experimental videos, and information on his courses and workshops.

Throughout his career McKenzie has achieved the following degrees: BFA (with honours) at the University of Florida, Department of Fine Arts (1984); MA (with honours) at the University of Florida, Department of English (1987); and finally a PhD at the New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, Department of Performance Studies (1996). McKenzie has held a number of professional positions including; Writing Instructor, Department of English, University of Florida (1985–1987); Assistant Professor, Department of Multimedia, The University of the Arts (1999–2001); and Associate and Full Professor, Department of English, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (2006–2007); Full Professor, Department of English, University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Dean's Fellow for Media and Design and Visiting Professor of English at Cornell University.

During his time as an undergraduate at the University of Florida McKenzie was heavily influenced by the work of Professor Gregory Ulmer and his theories of applied Grammatology. By taking film classes with Ulmer and fellow Professor Robert Ray, McKenzie began to explore art informed by theories of relativity and psychoanalysis. This led to an interest in the and projects of Jacques Derrida. The first lesson that Ulmer taught McKenzie was that even the most critical of theories, such as Marx and Freud, came from creativity and invention. Therefore, for McKenzie theory became a form of applied conceptual art. The second lesson Ulmer taught McKenzie was to approach the classroom as a performance space, a site where materials (bodies, ideas, media) could be mixed together to create events.

Another influence for McKenzie has been performance artist Laurie Anderson as he was fascinated by the complexity and simplicity of her work. He wrote his master’s theses on Anderson’s United States Parts: I-IV where he explored Anderson’s multimedia performance art using Derrida’s notion of grammatological, generalised writing, while also trying to explore the relation of experimental performance and the highly normative theory of performativity articulated by Lyotard. In his essay ‘Laurie Anderson for Dummies’ McKenzie analyses Anderson’s performance stories from the Never Bible and her CD ROM, ‘Puppet Motel’; and how they are related to his interest in performative .

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