Mark Pauline

Mark Pauline (b. 1953) is an American artist and founder of Survival Research Laboratories (SRL), established in San Francisco in 1978. SRL produces spectacular machine performances in which remotely controlled mechanical devices — designed by Pauline and collaborators — interact in displays of violence and destruction staged in industrial and public spaces. These events interrogate the aesthetics of technology and military machinery as extraordinary experiences. Pauline's practice draws on engineering, scavenged materials, and a disregard for risk — shown in 1982, when a rocket fuel accident cost him most of his right hand, an injury he absorbed into the work rather than letting it end it.