BANGOR, Maine — It used to be a loud, bright space. White fluorescent lights shone stark overhead. High-definition images flickered on 52-inch, flat-screen television sets. Car stereo models pumped bass in a demonstration of audio power.
But on Friday afternoon, the building that used to house a Circuit City store was barely lit inside, the only sound coming from an occasional hammer or chatter as several University of Maine students worked to transform the space from defunct electronics warehouse to art gallery space.
Students in UMaine’s intermedia graduate program have taken over the building this week for an exhibition called “Class Action.” The exhibit features more than 20 video, audio, performance and visual art displays from a combination of 27 graduate and undergraduate UMaine students.
“Class Action” will be on display for three days starting at 5 p.m. Thursday, which is the only day when all of the live performances will be presented and the only performance of Laura Chakravarty Box’s piece based on the work of Egyptian writer Edmond Jabes.
The exhibition also will be open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday.
“It’s not just visual [art], and that’s what makes the Circuit City space kind of a wonderful place to do this,” said Owen Smith, a UMaine art and new media professor who developed the intermedia program six years ago. “It’s a double meaning in terms of a lot of the works being done using electronics, new media, video, audio.”
It’s an opportune time of year to display art in the building, which is located at 668 Stillwater Ave., near a Chili’s restaurant and a Home Depot and across the road from the Bangor Mall. By the time the exhibition opens Christmas will be eight days away and the area should be bustling with shoppers.
This is the third time Smith’s students have displayed their work in a building no longer being used as originally envisioned. Other sites included the former Freese’s department store building and an empty storefront in downtown Bangor.
“Being able to be in areas that are really busy — you never know who’s going to come through the door — is really important,” said Kate Dawson, a Bangor native and UMaine student who helped Smith organize this week’s show. “It’s kind of scary at first, to say all of a sudden in the first semester of a master’s program you’re going to display your work to the whole community, but it’s a good challenge. And it brings in different people from the community who might not go to Orono or might not know where [UMaine art department] Lord Hall is.”
Bangor-based Cross Insurance owns the building and gave the students permission to use it, Smith said, while other local businesses have helped students with equipment and materials.
The UMaine students are using every room in the building, from the public entryway to a cage in the back storage rooms which, of course, were never meant to be seen by the public. Smith said part of the challenge for students was to choose a space that will work for their own piece while making sure the it won’t distract from the neighboring work.
Rylan Shook chose the area that used to house the Circuit City’s audio installations — both the space meant for the public and a winding corridor behind the scenes — for his piece, which will ultimately ask participants to examine themselves at a deeper level.
Dennis St. Pierre, an international stage and television actor and singer who now lives in Hallowell, found a narrow, high-ceilinged space to re-create an intimate nightclub where viewers will get a taste of St. Pierre’s Sinatra-themed performance piece, “Channeling Frank.”
Reese Inman’s portraits of four pop stars will be installed in the large glass door at the front of the building. Inman is pulling images off the Internet and using a mathematical formula, or algorithm, to inter-relate them to get interesting, shifting portraits.
“It’s sort of like, what our image is, in our head, of someone we’ve seen many images of,” Pittsfield native Inman said. “If someone says Madonna, what do you think? It’s probably a mix of lots of Madonna images seen over many years. It’s just another take on creating a portrait. They’re such an old art form and there’s so much history associated with them.”
Several students are working together, too. Dawson is working with William Giordano on a visual and audio piece in which a former display space will be filled with a maze of cheesecloth, on which images of water will be projected and in which sounds of water will be played.
“It’s based on the idea of a class-action lawsuit being something that comes from a group of people who are being represented in one issue, going against a larger company or corporation. The fact that we’re all here and able to use this building in a new way, I think, plays on the idea of a small group being able to take over a large space.”