Craig Dongoski’s chimpanzee collaboration lives in ‘Primates Notebook’

The visual artist talks about his creative process with the deceased Panzee

By Muriel Vega Monday June 2, 2014 12:48 PM EDT

Courtesy Whitespace Gallery
MAMMAL MARKINGS: “(Pronounce) BLUE” by Craig Dongoski and Panzee.

For more than two years, Craig Dongoski collaborated and interacted with a language-trained chimpanzee named Panzee. In The Primates Notebook, currently showing at Whitespace, Dongoski explores the line between drawing and writing and finds inspiration within Panzee’s marks on the paper. A professor at Georgia State University, Dongoski is known for investigating language through multimedia and basic drawing tools.

The Primates Notebook is dedicated to 28-year-old Panzee, as she died earlier this year unexpectedly. Dongoski talks to CL about his relationship with Panzee, his new show, and upcoming projects.

How did the concept for The Primates Notebook come about?

Craig Dongoski: I have been working with writing from a language-trained chimpanzee named Panzee at the Language Research Center for three years.... This particular lab works with a developed set of lexigrams, consisting of arbitrary symbols. There are two panels that include 128 lexigrams per panel. A lot of them are food-based - like a banana, an apple, a sweet potato - but some of them are more abstract, like different feelings and actions.

There are four chimps at the center, but Panzee was the one that I’d become engaged with the most because she had developed a propensity for writing.

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__How did you incorporate Panzee’s marks into the show?
The show is a display of the collaboration/interaction between her and I. I receive what she writes then copy it as a way to internalize her mark making. The majority of the show is based around a particular note page. It is framed alongside a hand-print made by her after biting the pen’s top off and ink oozing and being covered in the ink and having the thought to stamp her hand on paper. I see these pieces representing the two forces that were evolving Modernism, i.e., Surrealism and (German) Expressionism. I think of Arnulf Rainer falling at the end of Expressionism and Michaux as an end artist of Surrealism. The two pieces done by Panzee are representative of these two strands. The glyph/writing resides in Michaux’s impulses while the handprint is a reference to Rainer. I’d like to think I am within that conversation.

What are some other ways you hope to incorporate multimedia into your work?

I am in the midst of creating an animation with Panzee’s marks. This big project is focused on pronouncing these marks with an attempt at forming a quasi-spoken language.

__What’s next for you?
I am collaborating with a chef in creating dishes based solely on the food that Panzee ate. I am also evolving toward pronouncing the marks as a sound poetry performance.

The Primates Notebook. Through June 21. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed-Sat. Whitespace, 814 Edgewood Ave. 404-688-1892. www.whitespace814.com.__