W I N T E R 2 0 1 1 — 2 0 1 2
Editors: Brooke Chroman and Nil Santana
On a strangely warm day during this New York City winter, IDSVA students gathered
at The Morgan Library. It was the IDSVA Annual New York Lecture—the day’s event: a presentation by renowned
scholar, Bill Brown. Dr. Brown asked his audience to consider: What is contemporary art now? But before
answering this question, he posed: “What is the contemporary and when is now?” In this Newsletter, we
hope to give you a glimpse into the events, projects, and people that make IDSVA what it is now.
Yet, with the rhizomatic structure of our institution now seems incessantly behind us, beside or, in front
of us once one attempts pin it down on a page. At IDSVA now is not a point or a place, but a roving
constellation that defines itself precisely through movement. What began with a mission and single class
of ambitious students, is now an institution with five cohorts of scholars, forty-one students, seven international
residency locations, and a worldwide community of artist-philosophers. Maybe this is precisely what makes
this institution so terribly exciting— that in the process of defining what this institution is now, it has
already become something else.
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IDSVA featured on MPBN's Conversations with Maine IDSVA's President Dr. George Smith, talks about the importance of a Ph.D. program for artists, and the vital relationship between philosophy and art. |
New York City Residency, 2012 by Mary Anne Davis, IDSVA First-Year Student  I arrived at the Gershwin Hotel on east 27th on January 2nd. The hotel's exterior looked like a cross between something from Jurassic Park and Men in Black. I rolled my suitcase into the lobby and was greeted by Alaskan cohort and classmate, Jean Bundy and her husband, Dave. The IDSVA NYC residency was underway. Tuesday I scoped out the coffee shop, the Birch, which turned out to be the place to hang and bounce around thoughts about Hegel, Lacan and Derrida. It was good to be back with warriors from our Spannocchia residency! Each morning we awoke and headed down Lexington Avenue to Baruch College where we heard each other’s presentations. Much hair pulling went on during the week as we whittled some 15-20 page papers down to a manageable 7-8 to fill a 20-minute presentation slot. Not always easy, but a valuablelesson. After presentations and lunch were off to various museums throughout Manhattan. The Met, Guggenheim, Whitney, Museo del Barrio, MOMA and finally the New Museum in lower Manhattan were all visited. MOMA was a special treat, as we were given a private talk by director of exhibitions, Ramona Bannayan before our launch into the de Kooning blockbuster. For me, the most moving exhibition of all was the 911 Memorial. I am a New Yorker and left the city in 2000. I hadn’t been to the site since my last visit to the Trade Towers in 2000, so braced for an emotional experience. The inverted fountains are an apt monument to the tragedy of that day. The academic week ended with an electrifying discussion with scholar Bill Brown followed by his public lecture at The Morgan Library. The evening concluded perfectly with a dinner for all including members of the board and friends of the school. After lots of toasts a passing comment from a guest at the dinner summed it up nicely: “You guys really like each other!” After the NYC residency, I feel like my tank has been fueled for another bracing and intellectually challenging semester. Next, it’s on to France! Venice Residency by Tatiana Klacsmann, IDSVA First-Year Student  It was love at first sight. Well, almost first sight. First, outside the train station, I wanted a sandwich for under $5. I didn’t find one. But as soon schlepped my bag onto the vaparetto and saw the moldering buildings sprouting from the lagoon – Love. Or so I thought. I was 19 and studying abroad. Narcissistic in a typical way, the city existed only for me – I got drunk, I got lost, I left. But maybe it was love. After graduation, I took an internship whose main attraction was a visa. I was surprised when things looked different in the city that time forgot. In art Disneyland for grown-ups I run late for work – again. A tourist has stopped short in front of me on a narrow bridge – again. To take a photo – again: a bridge, a gondolier, a pigeon. I learn to appreciate Spritz Aperol, I get lost, I leave. Years go by. I’m an intern with nicer title and a Master’s degree. I’mstill in love. I see a website with a photo of domes and canals in the sunset - a PhD in Art Theory. The worldwide web has been good to me. My love surprises me still. I arrive at the hotel by bus. Lido, a whole new mystery. I know where to find a sandwich for under $5, but have a spritz and gelato instead. Art Disneyland awaits me. I don’t take any pictures. The Biennale and the incessant footfalls of "30 Days of Running in Place," another city, in Egypt – a revolution and a dead artist. I love the infamous Italian pavilion, and question my taste, for darkness and beauty, combined. I get lost, I leave, and still, I’m in love. Venice, my petit object a, the city through which I see myself. A Brown Residency Accounting by Bob Carroll, IDSVA Third-Year Student  I experienced the Brown residency in July as a trope unpacking lesser tropes, including any subjective varieties one might be tempted to hold onto until death do us part. What is a trope anyway? While the dictionary describes it as a word or expression used in a different sense from that which properly belongs to it in order to give life or emphasis to an idea, the etymology of the term is more apropos here. The wanderings of "trope" include the Latin tropus, from Greek tropos turn, way, manner, style; akin to Greek
trepein to turn, Latin trepit he turns, and perhaps Sanskrit trapate he is ashamed. While the Brown residency schedule allows no spare moments for indulging in shame, or anything else, it does mark a turn in studying for a doctorate since its purpose is to initiate the dissertation stage. Likewise, a few individual turns and turnabouts may be required of participants in order to release entrenched ways of thinking, or to turn away from whatever stray or unfounded intellectual posturing that might obstruct or stain (shamefully or otherwise) the validity of oneís own process. Succinctly put, the Brown residency is an accounting, thematically speaking, of where you intend to go with your doctoral studies. To call the residency easy would be inaccurate, something on the scale of saying Schopenhauer loved Hegel, and since Schopenhauer variously described Hegel as "a charlatan, humbug, and windbag," suffice it to say that the Brown residency both challenges and serves the first steps, however stumbling, towards a dissertation proposal. While usually something humorously supportive might be said for the advice of Saki (H.H. Munro), who knew a trope when it passed his window: "A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation," inaccuracy or vagueness will not even get you to the cafeteria at the Brown residency. You need to be clear or at least moving towards clarity
about where you are going. The faculty—who were there to help each wandering soul find his or her way to a viable dissertation thesis—did not hesitate to point out how a swampland of an idea might contain, intellectually speaking, quicksand and potential disaster. I would hesitate to call it tough love. The collective erudition of George Smith and Margot Kelley is impressive, and each of them freely shared useful titles, questions, and advice. Likewise, the intelligent guidance of IDSVA Executive Vice President Amy Curtis corralled any stampeding anxieties about practicalities. Having colleagues to talk with, in seminar and out, was near the top of the assets list. Working in the library and talking with a few residents confirmed that Brown University is indeed a longtime site of quality scholarship. The exhibitions at the nearby Rhode Island School of Design Museum provided a weekend treat, and the closing IDSVA dinner with the more advanced group just arriving to take their orals left a memorable stain of enjoyment as well. Summer in Spannocchia by Jean Bundy, IDSVA First-Year Student Spannocchia is an Italian feudal castle, now an organic farm, hotel and conference destination for academics. Its history can be Googled but arriving as I did, a first-year IDSVA student, is an interesting story not found on-line. Once at the castle,
jet-lagged students goon a tour. We climbed stone stairs to the large library eyeing the tomes of Etruscan books that surround a massive fireplace, walked through olive groves and stood atop the castle’s turret overlooking miles of greenery, resembling backgrounds in Renaissance masterpieces. Why does IDSVA send American students of all ages and varied backgrounds thousands of miles from home/work space to engage in art-theoretical dialogue, sleepless nights bend over laptops in dimly lit study areas, eating a diet of delicious Tuscan risotto, pork, and frittatas garnished with spoonfuls of parmesan cheese and marmalade? My conclusion: it was good for me to leave the comfort of my studio and my art colleagues and be metaphorically turned upside down in a strange environment. Daily, we students met at 9 am in the castle library and listened to IDSVA founder George Smith. In his beguiling way, we absorbed new perspectives on the likes of Manet and Degas. Castle afternoons with the farming machinery humming outside the library’s old leaded window panes, we read theoretical essays that had evolved from the textbook, Art In Theory 1900-2000. Reading your essay in public was scary for some (it was my worst nightmare). After three weeks of reading rough drafts and more polished essays, I am at least a little less stressed when confronting the podium alone. As an art critic, I recently assessed the Boston Museum of Fine Arts fall 2011 exhibition and was able to look at Degas’ painting “Interior” with new insight, (I even engaged exhibition-viewers with what I had learned at Spannochia). IDSVA teaches you how to thoughtfully discuss art, to listen, and to ask insightful questions. There were days when it rained cats and dogs, maybe that’s how the castle acquired several sheep dogs and fifteen cats. Occasional evenings were spent viewing colleagues’ artwork, celebrating birthdays or dreaming about a weekend day trip to neighboring Siena or Florence.  Student Updates: Jen Hall’s Wondrous World of Neuroaesthetics, Fourth-Year IDSVA Student This fall I was invited to join a group of researchers from MIT’s Brain Lab and Media Lab: engineers, biologists, and chemists working on the mechanics of expanding brain potential by observing brain function. With a focus on the coupling between properties of brain and technology, the group’s research involves the low-level functioning of the nervous system and how these structures may hold relevance for cognitive dysfunctions and the pathophysiology of embodied action. My dissertation research on embodied interactivity in neuroaesthetics presents a very different perspective, but on many of the same topics. I have been preparing papers for a few upcoming conferences. The first is for the College Art Association in Los Angeles entitled, “Redefining Health through a Post-Cybernetic Aesthetic.” I stake the claim that organic matter no longer has a singular hold on life and then ask how this affects our understanding of body and health. The next conference is the “National Art Education Conference” in New York City, where I will present on a panel entitled, “Learning through Contemporary Art – The Occupied Student.” In the spring, I will give a presentation at The International Association for Philosophy and Literature in Tallinn, Estonia. With the paper title, “Neuroaesthetics and Interactivity in Contemporary Art,”I am building bridges between neuroaesthetics and
neurocriticism. In addition, I have been asked to write a chapter for the forthcoming book, "Aesthetics and the Embodied Mind" edited by Alfonsina Scarinzi and published by Georg-August Universitaet Goettingen (Germany). Again, it will be on the topic of action-based issues that neuroaesthetics can bring to the body in contemporary art. I expect all ofthese writings to serve me well in my dissertation. I am just now starting, Chapter 2: Behavioral Aesthetics of the Transgenic. Student Updates: Conny Bogaard’s Impressions from a Museum Conference (Antwerp, October 17-20, 2011), Third-Year IDSVA Student Recently, I had the opportunity to present a paper at an International Museum Conference in Antwerp, Belgium. The paper was based on an independent study featuring composer Richard Wagner and the Gesamtkunstwerk, also known as the total work of art. The topic was my response to the conference theme: “Catching the Spirit. Theatrical Assets of Historic Houses and their Approaches in Reinventing the Past.” The goal of this conference was to explore the current impasse in historic houses and museums. Visitorsoften experience historic house museums as boring because of the static presentation of the past. In
contrast, modern visitors want to experience something ‘authentic’ in an otherwise fake world. So, how can museums tap into this modern perception of authenticity, and what is authenticity in the first place? These were some of the intriguing questions discussed at the conference, most notably by the keynote speaker, filmmaker Peter Greenway. After seeing his multimedia spectacle “Last Supper” in New York in January, I anticipated something “Wagnerian,” and by Jove, he did not disappoint. “Historians are liars” and “fuck the narrative” were some of the bold statements that could beheard from the maestro’s voice. According to Greenaway, modern cinema is dead because of its failure of imagination. Historians are suffering from the same ills as they try to reinvent something that is necessarily a personal interpretation. Therefore, the only thing we can rely on is our imagination, Greenaway says. One of Greenaway’s latest projects includes the ‘repopulation’of historic houses with huge video installations in which he seeks to replace the historic narrative with something that holds sway between art and entertainment. Listening to Greenaway, it dawned on me that authenticity is in the viewer’s response. If we want to cure the ills of museums we may. From IDSVA Faculty Denise Carvalho Innerspacing the City  JaeWook Lee, All men are created equal Bullshit, 2011Innerspacing the City explored the ambivalences of experiencing the city in the performative body, inhuman relations, and through language. Our perception of what we call “real” has gone a long way, from the Cartesian split between mind and body, overlooking the Kantian transcendental through reason, toward the phenomenological perception of space via the body in motion, taking a detour in the realization that all is constructed in language, to finally return to the subject in the collective body, a subject aiming at losing subjectivity by gaining collective consciousness. The question remains: Is what we call “real,” or its lack, merely symbolic and ideological? Or is the “real” the fragmentary, the particularized of the personal actions that allow us to dream with something beyond
itself? The city is the focal point of exploration in the dialogue between reality and ideality. In the artist’s minds, the ideal city is still perceived as whole, abstract, and distant, beyond their ability to intervene directly with it. In their performative actions, the city is personalized, limited to their emotional and critical response to it. MChelsea Art Museum, New York, NY Nov 17 – Dec 20, 2011  Conny Bogaard Historic Houses and the Modern Gesamtkunstwerk The Gesamtkunstwerk - the "total artwork" conceived by the composer Richard Wagner in the mid nineteenth century - challenges traditional conceptions of modernism. A synthetic, multimedia entity, the Gesamtkunstwerk clashes with the autonomy and medium specificity extolled by such modern critics as Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried. Moreover, assailed by Friedrich Nietzsche in the late nineteenth century and later embraced by Adolf Hitler, Wagner and his dream of a total work of art were dealt a series of critical blows. Most devastating was the critique delivered by Theodor Adorno who excoriated the composer’s theories as little more than fascism avant la lettre. What then should we make of artists' engagement with forms of the total artwork during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century? More specifically: What is the meaning of Gesamtkunstwerk’s influence on the interiors of some well-known collector’s houses that were conceived around the same time? This paper examines adaptations of Wagner's project in collector’s houses attending to both their aesthetic and political dimensions. Conference: ICOM'DEMHIST: Catching the Spirit. Theatrical Assets of Historic Houses and their Approaches in Reinventing the Past. 17-20 October 2011 - Antwerp, Belgium Emily Putnam Living Walls Albany, NYS Museum Lecture Series, Albany, NY Kalia Brooks Virtual Baartman: Visualizing Saartjie Baartman in Second Life As digital technology pervasively infiltrates human consciousness by way of connectivity, sending and receiving information, and the formation of networks of all kinds - it is necessary to take into account the ways in which representation is manifest within this system and how it opens new possibilities within the spectrum of subjectivity and cultural movement. I intend to unveil the conditions by which difference, as it relates to identifying the subject such as Sarah Baartman, is reinscribed in cyberspace. My paper will analyze theories that focus on artists’ representations and subject formation in media culture along with studies on representation and subjectivity in post-colonial and social theory. I will discuss how Baartman’s body has been explored in virtual space, and how artists in the 21st
century are reconfiguring her as ‘subject’ in Second Life. Conference: CAA 2012 David C. Driskell: The Artist as Scholar David C. Driskell’s scope and influence as a cultural producer is reflected on a multiplicity of levels and enacted on a number of fronts within the field of art. This paper will focus on his roles as an artist, as a curator, as an educator, and as a collector intertwine within a complex and multi-faceted practice. Dirskell's approach is the embodiment of human connectivity that performs the subversion of boundaries and contains the numerous elements that indicate his awareness of the field as a complex system. In contrast to the notion of pure form in the canon of Western Art, time and time again Driskell has challenged the canon by adding in that which is most often excluded from the ranks of art history. The David C. Driskell Center  Kalia Brooks The Cause Collective: The Truth Is I am You Building 10: LMCC's Art Center on Governors Island New York, NY August 26-September 25, 2011 Art in Odd Places: Ritual Along 14th Street NYC, from Avenue C to The Hudson River October 1-10, 2011 Feed Your Head: The African Origins of the Scientific Aesthetic MoCADA, Brooklyn, NY November 17, 2011-February 25, 2012, Bob Carroll Robert Percy: Toward the Invisible, Works on Paper Link to essay: Transcultural Intuition and Beauty in the Paintings of Robert Percy by B. Kalivac Carroll Marin County, CA Mary Anne Davis The Birding Life Artists included in new book entitled, "The Birding Life" Clarkson Potter Publishers Ferrin Gallery Pittsfield, MA October 29 - December 31, 2011 Jessica Doyle Hive/Cave Pageant Gallery 607 Bainbridge Street Philadelphia, PA May 6 - July 17, 2011 Heather Dunn Documentary video screening: The Vault Celebration BNL Arts Festival Berkner Hall Upton, NY December, 2011 Faculty Group Show Saint John’s University Gallery New York, NY July - August, 2011 Kate Farrington (and Richard Cutrona) Confronting the Towers (Not a Memorial) This exhibition also includes an extraordinary piece of lenticular sculpture that Cutrona created in collaboration with Kate Farrington. It is located outside the building in the pedestrian plaza. Public artwork by Richard Cutrona and Kate Farrington, in conjunction with the show: "The Lenticular Image: Politics, Pop-Culture, & Popcorn" Fitchburg State University Fitchburg, MA Jan. 25 – April 10, 2012 Tatiana Klacsmann Southern Observatory (Group Exhibition) Bowie Arts Center Erskine College, SC Sept. 26 - Oct. 21 Ancora Imparo (Group exhibition) as part of Westobou Arts Festival Augusta, GA Sept. 29 – Oct.8 Elvis and Other Kings (Juried exhibition) Estel Gallery, Nashville, TN Sept. 3 - 24 Patricia Tinajero Artnouts Show Ecological Imperative Museum of Contemporary Art Valdivia Chile January 12 to March 12, 2012 Emily Putnam (also curated by) Memento Mori Memento mori, Latin for “Remember your Mortality” has provided inspiration for artists for centuries. Even in the twenty-first century, ways of coping with the shadow of death continues to haunt aesthetic imaginations. The works in this exhibit explore the themes of mortality, mourning, remembrance, and memory. Mobius Art Space Cambridge, MA October 2011 Living Walls As an extension of Living Walls Albany, an art and urban education conference, Living Walls Performs will be presenting some of the must cutting-edge and avant-guard performative works from a broad spectrum of emerging and established performance artists. Spanning between hyper-reality to surrealism the works showcased at Living Walls Performs will be exploring the modalities of 3d, 4d and live action works while repurposing one of the many vacant spaces in the capitol city. 99 Pine St., October 16 and 17, Albany, NY |
New IDSVA Blog  Photo Gallery 2011  by Jessica Doyle  by Jessica Doyle  by Heather Dunn  Taryn, Jeff, by Conny Bogaard  by Conny Bogaard  by Conny Bogaard  by Conny Bogaard |
