STUN Lecture
Noah Barker: A long wave with an undertone of expansion
W.M. Keck Lecture Hall
February 12, 2025 at 6:00pm
Noah Barker is an artist, writer, and curator based in New York. His recent exhibitions include Cloudscape, Climate Control, San Francisco, 2024; Barker Gillick & Jones, Air de Paris, Paris, 2024; Midnight Climax, Jacqueline, Athens, 2024; A vast machine, Weiss Falk, 2024; A New Concept in Sailing, Lodos, Cologne, 2023; Refrigerator Dilemma, Fanta, Milan, 2023. As a writer, he contributes to Texte Zur Kunst, May Revue, and Mousse Magazine. Barker currently programs an exhibition venue within a midtown Manhattan office building under the guise of empire.
In the 20th century a unique ecology blossomed on the Pacific coast of the United States that accommodated various new lifestyles. Among laboratories and think-tanks, flexible systems and self-realization developed under the auspices of the Cold War. Presenting his work, Barker will examine the relation of the surfer’s cybernetic ethos to the crosshairs of the intercontinental ballistic missile and the managerial control expanded by bohemianism.
A New Concept in Sailing. 1969/2023 foam, fiberglass, epoxy, nylon, polyester, laminated pine, mahogany, stainless steel, fabricated by Jonas Buchholz and Gert Martin from designs by James R. Drake (developed in collaboration with Fred A. Payne, Jr., Vice President of Technical Operations, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Hoyle Schweitzer of Legal Billing Systems, Inc., Allen Parducci, Professor of Psychology, UCLA), presented in the paper WINDSURFING: A NEW CONCEPT IN SAILING, delivered at a symposium of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and published by The RAND Corporation. Vessel: 458 cm. Mast: 427 cm.