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The idsvaNewsletter
Edited by Alexx Shaw Associate Editor: Nil Santana
Welcome to the first Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts (IDSVA) Newsletter! This newsletter will be appearing twice annually and will hopefully transition into a journal within the next year. We will be bringing you all the latest updates on our students’ happenings, including interviews, images, descriptions of our recent intensives/residencies, and anything else of entertainment or importance that pertains to IDSVA! So look out for future editions and enjoy!
Publications/Conferences/Symposiums Greg Blair National PCA/ACA Conference “Sociogenic Aesthetics: The Merger of Art and Life” 2009 New Orleans, LA Have we come to a place in the history of art where the distinction between art and life is no longer great? Is it possible that with new technologies, shifting cultural concerns and the increasingly prolific production of art, to have a form of art that is impossible to discern from everyday life? A specific trend within the art world, emerging in the middle of the 1990’s has been concentrated on this very question. This trend has emerged as a confluence of myriad factors. As an evolution of Fluxus happenings and 1980’s street performance collaborations this new trend has emerged as the next phase in interactive art. Influenced by the writings of Barthes, Foucault, Bourriaud and Guattari, many of the artists in this trend have begun to modify the focus of their work toward social relations and interactions of everyday life,
rather than the production of an object or performance. We can refer to this trend as “sociogenic aesthetics”, implying that which is concerned and modified by social influences, values and constraints. The sociogenic artists generate situations where participatory authorship, intersubjectivety and social relations form a dialogical relationship. In this still developing trend, the expression of these artists is often tentative, as they wrestle to bring form to this new aesthetic. Yet the future is bright as new expressions of sociogenic aesthetics continue to emerge.  Kalia Brooks CAA Panel: My So Called Second Life “Eracial” Thursday 2:30 – 5:00 PM, February 26, 2009 LA Convention Centre, Room 515A The Massachusetts Institute of Technology held a conference in 1998 to put forth the question of race and cyberspace. Its organizers and participants shared a common goal to ìforeground the various ways that digital media are shaping our conception and experience of race in America.î In the ten years since the conference, user interfacing on the Internet has expanded significantly with the advent of Web 2.0 and online platforms, like Second Life, where users can inhabit a virtual world through the creation of an avatar. This essay will consider the avatar, a graphic representation of a person in cyberspace, as a type of techno-being that can embody a cyber-racial identity in contemporary Internet culture. eracial is a concept that describes the intersection of racial identity and virtual space. It is an example of how race is
enacted in cyberspace, especially in connection with the digitally rendered body on the avatar. Kathy Desmond Feminist Research Methods: Everyday Reloaded: Reconceptualizing the Everyday as Starting Point for Feminist Research “Speaking Their Stories: Placing the Everyday in Art” February 4 – 6, 2009 Centre for Gender Studies, Stockholm University The Centre for Gender Studies at Stockholm University arranges an international conference on feminist research methods and methodological issues and dilemmas. Most feminist researchers have long since agreed that there are no specifically feminist research methods. The expression “feminist research methods” is therefore used as shorthand for methods used by feminists in all fields of research. This international conference is devoted to the exchange of experiences and innovations in the doing of feminist research, specifically the methods and research tools we use. Notes: Kathy has also received a Faculty Research Award from Endicott College for research to explore social patterns and commuters in the context of public art. This project investigates everyday human existence from the vantage points of commuters and work. Nil Santana World Congress on Communication and Arts (WCCA 2009) “Language-Game in Visual Arts” April, 2009, Sao Paulo, SP Brazil Wittgenstein’s concept of a language-game is at the core of his later philosophical contributions. The comparison of language with game replaces from his earlier writings, the conceptions of language as logic; substitutes the possibilities of either ‘true-false’ statements, and suggests plurality to meaning. Although language-games are determined by the usage of simple rules, they play an important role in the learning of language. Wittgenstein writings posits a type of cognitive relativism, and that the world is structured by the rules in language. In this essay, I explore not only the implications of how the language-game relates to forming one’s reality, but I also investigate temporal qualities of private-public-languages in the visual arts. Alexx Shaw White Hot Magazine of Contemporary Art “Three Quick Reviews: SHE: Images of Women by Wallace Berman and Richard Prince, Reindeers and Spheres, and Danielle Eubank: Oil on Water" January, 2009 Los Angeles section Flavorpill Magazine “Chris Stain: ‘Up on the Roof Countin’ Pigeons" January, 2009 Upcoming Exhibitions Greg Blair Interaction of Objects and Space YC Art Gallery, Yavapai College Prescott, AZ On view from March 27 – April 17, 2009 Gregory Blair explores the evolving complex relationship between contemporary western culture and the natural world through three-dimensional sculpture. Person, Place, or Thing Gallery 621 Tallahassee, FL On view from February 6 – 27, 2009 In February, The 621 Gallery presents “Person, Place or Thing,” an exhibition connecting history with the present through artistic narrative. Inga Huld Tryggvadottir incorporates others' experiences by relating her own personal memories through objects and icons. Yoko Iwinaga recalls childhood memories by piecing together her past with her present in abstract compositions. Sonja Hinrichsen maps urban locales with multi-media installations that track the history and diversity associated with each place. Greg Blair connects nature with culture through examples of co-dependence in mixed-media installations. Sara Christensen Blair Cultural Distortion Gallery 621 Tallahassee, FL On view from January 2 – 30, 2009 The 621 Gallery presents “Cultural Distortion,” an exhibition analyzing cultural perceptions through various mediums. Artist Sara Christensen Blair explores gender roles by tracing the domestic roots of craft into a contemporary context. Jason Urban distorts perception through the juxtaposition of pattern and color in digital media and printmaking. Min Kim Park uses her large-scale media installations to dismantle social taboos associated with femininity and eastern cultures. Patterns of Femininity: Works by Sara Christensen Blair and Sara Merkel-Jacobs Larson Gallery, University of Minnesota, St. Paul Campus On view from January 22 – February 19, 2009 Both artists incorporate patterns from textiles and domestic craft in their work to create a unique style and theme. Kalia Brooks (curated by) Progeny Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University New York, NY Opening April 29, 2009 “Progeny” is loosely defined as descendents, or children. It can also relate to a body of followers, disciples, or successors. The artists in the exhibition are Deborah Willis and Hank Willis Thomas, mother and son. The idea derives from Willis’s and Thomas’s maternal relationship that has been enriched by the influences of family and a desire to document, by means of the photograph, in order to pay testimony to those who have come before. The photograph has long been used as an instrument of memory. Deborah Willis is a mother, photographer, educator, and curator. She has used photography to explore stories about family life. As a mother of a photographer, she finds it both inspiring and amusing that her son, Hank Willis Thomas, also uses photography to critique stories about family events, however tragic or
comedic. They use memory, text, and images to relive family tales and phrases from the “oral archive” of African American folk culture and transform them into contemporary images exploring the nuances of memory. Notes: “Progeny” debuted at the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, Miami, FL in 2008. Subsequent to the Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University, it will travel to the Forty Acres and a Mule Gallery in Sacramento, CA. Eun Woo Cho Two Person Juried Exhibition School 33 Art Centre Baltimore, MD On view from January 9 – February 7, 2009 The two artists selected for this opportunity not only exhibit a high level of merit and rigor in regards to their studio practice, but also because of their unique approach to installation in gallery settings. Similarly, both of the artists could be considered social activists through their work because of the issues in which they confront related to the historical and modern day political realities of our world. Tamara Fox Meaningful Minutiae Keeler Gallery Grand Rapids, MI On View from May 29 - June 24, 2009 Tamara Fox is exhibiting her recent small-scale mixed media collage works on paper. These works include many images of hands which she has come to see as expressive as the human face or figure, without limiting the associations to a specific period or culture. Tamara's interest in working with found images and ephemera is that materials bring with them their own history. Tamara's works reflect months or years of collecting, but typically any finished image comes together quite quickly. This element of serendipity is always a marvel to the artist. Jennifer Hall Generations Arnheim Gallery, Mass College of Art and Design Boston, MA Opening reception: February 4, 2009; 4 – 5 PM This exhibition explores the relationship between the artist and the teacher. As we understand it today, the artist and the teacher inform each other through the process of learning and information exchange. Conceptually, this begs the question - what is transferred in the learning process? How do both participants reflect each other? Notes: Total of 16 artists -- students and teachers. Jennifer has invited one of her first graduate students from 20 years ago and one of her professors from MIT. Jennfier will show sculptures from the series: Epileptiforms: 5 Rem Consciousness as a Property of Matter. Flying Fish Project: Phase 1 Field Research Research at the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Refuge Mexico April 9 -15 2009 Working with small robotic video cameras, Artist Jennifer Hall and Captain Avery Revere of Massachusetts USA will follow baitfish off the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve of Mexico through the mangroves and flats to study the intersection of group behaviors with individual swimming characteristics. Notes: This will be the first flight for the experimental cameras. Video feed and website will follow collection of material in the spring of 2009. EL Putnam, Nil Santana (and Kurt Schneider) Artificial (Re)covery: a Collection of Video, Photography, and Sound by EL Putnam, Nil Santana, and Kurt Schneider Washington Street Art Centre Opening reception: March 7, 2009; 6 – 9 PM On view from March 7 – 28; 12 – 4 PM or by appointment Some things always come back to you, but they do not just repeat themselves as before. This exhibit is more about subtle relationships than grand vistas or representations, the objects devoid of themselves, and how technology can be used to create a simulacrum of experience. The exhibit incorporates the video and photographic works by EL Putnam and Nil Santana, accompanied by the sound work of Kurt Schneider. Michael R. Smith Jr. devotion Kruk Gallery, Holden Fine Arts Building, University of Wisconsin-Superior Superior, WI On view from May 1 – 15, 2009 Michael R. Smith Jr. will juror the Senior Honors Exhibition at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. In conjunction with this he will be showing a series of collages entitled "devotion" which are meditative reflections, altars, and relics built to pay homage to the texts of philosophers throughout the history of the western tradition. |
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