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, 2011
Innerspacing 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
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
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News From IDSVA's President Prof. George Smith
Bill Brown served as this year’s Visiting Faculty at IDSVA’s New York Winter Residency in New York. In addition to working with first and second-year students, he gave a public lecture on “The Time of Painting” at the Morgan Library. Considered one of the world’s preeminent critics of contemporary visual culture, Bill Brown is Karla Scherer Distinguished Service Professor in American Culture Professor at University of Chicago and Co-editor of Critical Inquiry.
This year’s Visiting Faculty at the Spannocchia Castle Summer Residency for first-year students will be Peggy Phalen, Ann O'Day Maples Chair in the Arts; Professor of Drama and English at Stanford University. Peggy is the author of Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (1993) and co-authored Art and Feminism (Themes & Movements) with Helena Reckitt (2012).
Starting in summer 2012, second-year students will start their summer residency in Berlin. IDSVA Visiting Faculty Howard Caygill, author of A Kant Dictionary and currently professor of Visual Culture, Paris 8, will lead the Kant/Hegel seminar intensive. In addition to seminar discussions on the Kant/Hegel divide, students will conduct field work in metropolitan Berlin, focusing on architectural and cultural history as well as the contemporary art scene, currently one of the hottest in the world.
Following the Berlin residency, second-year students fly to Paris. There they will meet up with first-year students, to do field work at the d’Orsay, the Pompidou, and the Louvre, etc.
Starting in Academic Year 2013/14, IDSVA second-year students will do their January residencies in Havana.
On the institutional front, it is worth repeating that IDSVA received Candidacy Status for Accreditation in December and received eligibility for Federally Guaranteed Student Loans in April. These two developments mark huge strides for IDSVA, as we continue to educate leadership for the future.
Three Questions for IDSVA's Interim Director Margot Kelley
Interviewed by Kathryn McFadden, IDSVA Third-Year Student
How have your first six-months been as Interim Director of ISDVA?
Fast-paced, intense, occasionally bewildering. But always amazing. Every single day, I get to talk with smart people about ideas they are passionate about, and even have the chance to help them nudge those ideas a little closer to fruition. Plus, all of us here at IDSVA are adding to some cultural conversations that I think are pressingly important: not just about art and philosophy, but also about educational access and about alternative models for teaching and learning—models that might well be both more effective and more environmentally sustainable than the business as usual approach.
You are an artist, too. How do you describe the intersection of philosophy and art in your own work?
Evolving. And that’s not meant to side-step the question. One of the truisms of Darwinian evolution is that over time, organisms grow increasingly complex and increasingly specific or precise. It’s not that more recent ones are more complicated, necessarily; but over times, natural selection arrives at more and more elegant arrangements. Throughout my work, a few key nodes where one sees art and philosophy interacting have been questions of how we can know an (often non-sentient) other, what the contours of that relationship are/can be/(dare I say it) ought to be; and how linguistic and other categories pre-define what we perceive. If you laid everything that I’ve made out in front of you, I think you’d find that my way of working through those pre-occupations is becoming more precise and complex—if
not yet elegant. I’m honing what I’m exploring and how I’m doing it. I think my art-making also reflects an important pair of political/philosophical commitments: on the one hand, I make work that can be understood in relation to a number of contemporary conversations that matter deeply to this quixotic self. On the other, I have the wildly democratic wish that folks who comes to my work with good will and openness can leave having found something that makes them glad they looked.
If you could be any character from fiction who would it be? Does this character overlap with any aspect of your work at IDSVA?
Now THAT’S an intimate question! Here’re the folks who come to mind: Mama Day, from the novel of the same name, Case from Gibson’s Neuromancer, the grandmother in Silko’s Ceremony, Sylvie from Robinson’s Housekeeping, Sonnyin Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues.” Probably you already know that I taught American Lit for a decade at a small liberal arts college before going to MassArt to get my MFA, hence the overwhelming Americanness of this off-the-top-of-my-head list. But what’s striking to me isn’t the Americanness, it’s that when you asked this question I started to think of novels and stories I love, I suddenly realized that I wouldn’t want to be the characters in most of them. What I want to read and who I want to be are quite different. The
characters that I can actually imagine aspiring to be are folks who are endlessly curious or deeply compassionate, or who have come early to wisdom. So I guess those are traits I admire and desire. Would I really want to be Sonny? Probably not really. But I’d be humbled to imagine myself in the same breath as someone with that kind of hard-won grace.
Margot Anne Kelley is a New England native who cultivates creative possibilities and heirloom vegetables. She is especially happy when helping students, growing rare beans, and developing new recipes for small-batch soaps. She lives in the fishing village of Port Clyde, Maine with her husband, Rob, who shares her passions for bold ideas and equally bold oceans.
An Interview with IDSVA First-Year Student, Larry Decker
Interviewed by Laura Brittain, IDSVA Third-Year Student
Would you share a bit about your history and what lead you to study at IDSVA?
When I think of my life, from my first year of school where all eight grades were in one room, and my high school class of 27—with me the only one going to college, it seems strange and wonderfully impossible. From a small Kentucky town to living in Sedona, Arizona also seems such an unlikely outcome of life. I often say I am blessed to have been born when I was, to whom I was, and where I was, otherwise my life would have been so different…most likely not nearly so rich with happiness, love, and experience. I am blessed.
My "official" education was in the sciences and ultimately medicine. I trained as a nephrologist but bored with dialysis and transplants, went into emergency medicine and was one of the first twelve specialists in the country. Along the way I got an MBA in finance, which stood me well as when I took my company public. I have always been interested in art, but previously never had time to pursue it beyond becoming a docent at the Cincinnati Museum while I was working. I then moved to NYC for a year to get my MA at Christie's: a most spectacular year, and a wonderful art experience with a lot of hands-on experience, field trips to foundries, conservators at the great museums, etc. I came across IDSVA and it fit in so well with my interest in Philosophy and Art. I thought the program was made for me....and here I
am.
What have you learned since you've been in the program?
I have learned so much during the last 6 months in the program, relating to the great interrelationship between art and philosophy. I’ve learned about aesthetics from a personal and practical view and from a more ethereal philosophical one. It has furthered my belief that art is philosophy!
How have your ideas changed since the Italy residency?
Italy was fantastic. The idea of an immersion in art was exciting, and the lectures, readings, papers all contributed to this environment. The residency wetted my appetite for more and more integration of various environments artistically and culturally. I can't wait to go back to Berlin for our residency in June of 2012.
My ideas changed since Italy in several ways. Prior to the trip I thought the idea of an immersion type of residency was unnecessary and especially one so 'inconvenient' as in Italy—that the necessity of getting to know your cohort in depth was superfluous. Now I feel just the opposite. I would never appreciate the program so much without these requirements! It is inspiring to see all these young and bright students. They are so eager and so smart and so full of energy. It’s daunting for someone of my age. It is supposed to be the older and questionably wiser who leads the youth, but I have found the reverse. I learn so much from my cohort and absorb so much of their energy that it is rejuvenating to me. I can't wait to be with everyone, from professors to students in NYC.
Larry Decker was born in Clarryville, Kentucky. His early school years were spent in a tiny one-room school where he received a wonderful education. The sisters of St. Mary High School were tough and caring, and along with his twenty-seven classmates prepared him for the big transition to the University of Cincinnati. He received his BS in Zoology (summa cum laude) and moved on to the College of Medicine, earning a MD followed by residency in Internal Medicine and a fellowship in Nephrology at Boston City Hospital and Boston University. He is a board certified Emergency Medicine Physician but no longer practice medicine. Larry has been married to Carol Scribner for 30 years and have two sons, Peter and Chris, and two grandchildren, Amy and Michael. During his years in medicine he went back to school and got an MBA in finance
and took his urgent medical care business public traded on NASDQ. With his developing love of art he became a docent at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Larry and Carol went into transition (retirement) in 1955 and moved to the southwest (Sedona, AZ) to escape the gray winters of the Midwest.
Examining the Orals by Emily Putnam
The experience of the oral exams began months before stepping foot in the room at Brown. In preparation for this major event, I worked diligently with my study group as we reviewed three years of coursework at IDSVA. As we combed through the texts, posed potential questions to each other, and wove together an intertextual interpretation, I discovered new insights into the books and theories that I already thought were familiar. I felt truly engaged with this material as I attempted to delineate my position in this conversation. This study period was one of my most fulfilling and enriching experiences as a student.
Actually taking the oral exams is simultaneously an exercise in celebration and humility. As I engaged in conversation with the faculty that day, I was able to display the array of knowledge and participate in complex, thought provoking dialogue. At the same time, the limits of my understanding were revealed, reminding me that I still have room to grow. The discomforts I experienced during the exam were due to my anxiety surrounding the outcome. Even though the conversation was pleasant, I could not forget that I was being judged. My recommendation to future students: take some time to relax before the exam. Do yoga, meditate, or do whatever you can to put your mind and body at ease. It is important to remain in a position of acceptance, since this allows you to be open to suggestions and constructive criticism. Discomfort is also an
inevitable consequence of transitioning from the phase of being a consumer of knowledge to a producer. Passing the oral exams is a great accomplishment, but it is just one step in the long process of doctoral work.
I left the room that day in a state of elation, exhaustion, and shock. In commemoration of the experience, I got a tattoo that reads “sous rature.” The Derridean phrase translates to “under erasure” and functions as a reminder that the process is not over yet. Rather, I have entered a new phase in my research where I will be incessantly revising, editing, going over, and stepping back in order to move forward. Nothing is final, only inadequate but necessary.
Dissertation Work Update by Nil Santana
I was quite thrilled for taking another major step forward, after all this was something I envisioned ever since my first day in the program.
Some of you may have already realized how the individual nature of the dissertation work makes it an inherently lonely process. Especially after intensely collaborating with my cohort in preparation for the Oral Qualifying Exams. There is a noticeable change in pace, and a change in the course of action.
My project deals with videosthetics, so at the core of my research prevails a simple yet fundamental question: what is video? Or in other terms, what is the essentia of video? How can we reformulate the new paradigms of the medium? How has the aesthetic discourse changed from video art in the 60’s to video practices nowadays? How do we locate the tenets of exchange between the artist and viewer, content and production, under the rubric of the moving image? I explore these important questions throughout a Heideggerian phenomenological method. If you would like to know more, you can read a short introduction of my research here.
Although I am excited for defending it this summer, I cannot imagine what is going to be like after I am done. One feeling is sure, I will be missing all and everyone whom I have interacted with during my time at IDSVA.
"—Trust the process." As George Smith always tells me.
Coming Soon! Eye and Mind
From the Editorial Committee
Eye and Mind has the singular goal of providing space for the germination of the scholar's voice in the dialogue between philosophy and aesthetics. The journal presents the independent writings of our colleagues as they negotiate the Seminar Studies of IDSVA. As each work serves as a critical investigation of the relationships between art and ideas, Eye and Mind endeavors to foster that creative thought and allow for the dissemination and integration of ideas. We at the Editorial Committee are dedicated to support the scholarship of our peers and provide a platform for their academic dialogue as it pertains to aesthetic philosophy.
"The poverty of philosophy remains a failure to act. And yet a philosophy of action seems the only hope remaining in the face of our present conditions of existence. Such a philosophy will materialize, I believe, when the philosopher has learned to engage body, mind, and spirit in the concrete representation of a philosophical abstraction. Who will this philosopher be, if not the artist-philosopher?"
George Smith
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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
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