Annual Theme (2008-2009)
Activism and the Arts - click here for a full schedule of events.
Call for Proposals:
(2009-2010 Annual Theme)
A year-long theme will be selected in late January 2009 for the following academic year - click here for more information on how you can be involved.
Director
Laurie Monahan, History of Art and Architecture
Associate Director
Holly Unruh, IHC/UCIRA
Advisory Board
Sabine Frühstück, East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies
Lisa Jevbratt, Art
Harry Reese, Art/College of Creative Studies
Sven Spieker, Germanic, Slavic, Semitic Studies
Jeffrey Stewart, Black Studies
Kim Yasuda, Art/UCIRA
Full Schedule of Events – 2008-2009
ARI sponsors many events throughout the academic year including a weekly lecture series, visiting artist residencies, academic courses, and seminars.
Fall 2008
September – November, 2008:
Hugo Hopping, Artist in Residence.
“Regeneration: A Graphic Arts Intervention at UCSB.” In conjunction with the Black Studies Department, Hugo Hopping was named the first ARI artist in residence for 2008. As part of his residency, Hopping taught three courses: Criticality: The Politics of Evaluation; 1968:2008 - Post-Medium Collaborative Art Production workshop; and Curatorial Art Practices after 1968. These courses tied into the November 20-22 conference, 1968: A Global Year of Student-Driven Change organized by Jeffrey Stewart and the Department of Black Studies.
November 20- 22, 2008:
1968: A Global Year of Student-Driven Change
Marking the 40th anniversary of the Black Student takeover of a computer building on campus, this conference addressed pivotal issues related to education and focused on a particular subject—the place of ’68 for considering students as political and cultural innovators today. One of the aims of the conference was to place such Black student agency in a global context, one that includes such other student driven awakenings as the Paris uprising in May of 1968, the university student protests in Mexico City on the eve of the Olympics, and the "Prague Spring" in Czechoslovakia.
November 25, 2008: Screening, Clemens von Wedemeyer’s film The Inner Campus.
7:30 pm / Arts 0641
Clemens von Wedemeyer, prior artist in residence, will return to UCSB to screen the film resulting from the footage shot in Spring 2008 with student collaboration. The film documents life on the UCSB campus and in Isla Vista. Organized by Sven Spieker (Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies, UCSB), the artist residency was sponsored by the IHC’s Visiting Artist Program, Isla Vista Arts and other campus partners.January 2009
Continuing through February 11, 2009: Special Collections exhibition: Roots of Community: African American activism in Santa Barbara. Location: UCSB Special Collections / 4th floor Davidson Library. Drawn from the vast collection of the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives (CEMA), this exhibition focuses on the African American leaders of Santa Barbara and their legacy of activism for civic improvement, equity, and social justice. Their many decades of selfless dedication contributed to the betterment of Santa Barbara, lifting the quality of life for many of our citizens. *affiliated event*
January 13: Gina Werfel - Artist talk [Winter 2009 Lecture Series]. 4:00-5:30pm
McCune Conference Room / 6020 HSSB
Gina Werfel teaches painting at UC Davis. Over the past two decades, she has developed a way of painting that tantalizingly walks the line between landscape and abstraction. In recent works Werfel uses brushes an inch or more wide, making blunt marks that loosely articulate the contours of her subjects. While the scenes may be read from afar, up close the paramount impression is of individual brushstrokes.
January 20: Sally Stein – Talk: Close–Ups from Afar: The Still-Contested Framings of the Spanish Civil War, 1936 – [Winter 2009 Lecture Series]. 4:00-5:30pm / McCune Conference Room / 6020 HSSB
The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939) was the first war that could be covered by mobile photographers using modern hand-held precision cameras (e.g. the Leica and Rolleiflex), at a time when the periodical press was integrating photographic reports into its regular news coverage. The causes and course of the war were intensively covered in the U.S. press. This lecture considers the ways such photographs were used ideologically in the U.S. press—both mainstream and leftist. It addresses the continuing debates about the authenticity of the most famous and contested photograph, by Robert Capa in 1936, that has become an icon of the failed defense of the Spanish Republic as well as an icon of modern “live,” “in-the-heat-of-battle” photojournalism. Sally Stein is Associate Professor (Emerita), Art History and Film and Media Studies, UC Irvine.
January 26: Nancy Hom – Artist Talk: Nancy Hom - Chances and Choices: A Community Artist Reflects on Life, Art and Activism. 5:00 pm / MultiCultural Center Lounge
San Francisco-based multifaceted, award-winning activist, Nancy Hom is a visual artist, writer/poet, independent curator, and community arts leader. Renown for her silkscreen prints, Hom has produced images for over the past 30 years that engage social, political, and community issues. She will share her work and related personal experiences that were initially shaped by 1970s intercultural social movements. Selected artwork by Nancy Hom will also be on exhibit in the Multicultural Center meeting rooms throughout Winter 2009. Co-sponsored by the UCSB Davidson Library Special Collections, the Multicultural Center, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives of the UCSB Library, Women's Center, Department of Asian American Studies, and Department of the History of Art and Architecture. *affiliated event*
January 27: Shana Lutker - Artist talk [Winter 2009 Lecture Series]. 4:00-5:30pm /
**University Art Museum**
This talk will take place at the UCSB University Art MuseumShana
Lutker investigates the psychological associations between objects through drawings, sculptural installations and photographs. Most recently, she has examined the relationship between individuals and the larger collective society. Her current work takes its cues from recent presidential campaign speeches and debates and their public forum format. Lutker seeks to empower viewers by giving them the same access available to political or cultural figures and allowing them to express whatever they wish, thereby putting the public unconscious on display. This talk is presented in conjunction with the University Art Museum’s (UAM) participation as at an off-site venue for the highly anticipated CB08, the California Biennial, mounted by the Orange County Museum of Art with the current exhibition organized by UAM Curator of Exhibitions, Elyse Gonzales.
February 2009
February 3 – Sara Wookey - Artist talk [Winter 2009 Lecture Series]. 4:00-5:30pm
McCune Conference Room / 6020 HSSB
Sara Wookey is a choreographer and multi-disciplinary artist working between the mediums of dance, performance, photography, and video. Sara was based in Europe (Amsterdam) from 1996-2006 where she created a total of eight performance works, both evening-length and site-specific projects, that were funded by the Netherlands Funds for the Performing Arts and Amsterdam Funds for the Arts and where she formed her independent production company, Wookey Works in 2003. Her most recent work, "Walking LA", a performance project at the culmination of two years worth of research walking in and around the city of Los Angeles premiered at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego in 2008.
February 10 - Laurel Beckman - Artist talk [Winter 2009 Lecture Series]. 4:00-5:30pm
McCune Conference Room / 6020 HSSB
Working with and nurturing eccentric public spaces, Laurel Beckman highlights perception and public display. Attending to themes at the crossroads of consciousness + social conditions, meta-physics + science, Beckman’s practice investigates perceptual phenomena, language, the built environment, and animal-human relations. Employing a wide range of media and distribution strategies, her sanctioned and unsanctioned projects often enlist commercial and civic spaces in her efforts to contribute meaningfully to the cultural landscape and to our understanding of empathy. She is an associate professor of art at the University of California Santa Barbara.
February 13: "Made in Germany" exhibit. 5 German book artists/presses will talk about their work from 4:00 - 5:30 pm at the 8th floor, Davidson Library. A reception for the exhibition of their work immediately follows this conversation in Special Collections, 3rd Floor, Main Library. *affiliated event*
February 17: Luminous Green - Artist/Collective talk [Winter 2009 Lecture Series]. **5:30-7:00pm
McCune Conference Room / 6020 HSSB
Luminous Green/FoAM is an international collective committed to growing inclusive, resilient and abundant worlds. They do this by providing a context and a structure to research, design and reflect on transdisciplinary creative practices.
February 17-20: Luminous Green - Artists in Residence. Co-sponsored by ARI, the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA) and the UC Riverside Palm Desert Research Center, this two-part residency includes the Luminous Green Desert Research Open Space gathering in the Palm Desert and the Luminous Green Open Space Workshop at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The gathering in Palm Desert and the workshop at UCSB are part of a series of events that were initiate by FoAM (http://fo.am) in Belgium, calling on the creative sector encompassing arts, sciences and engineering to enrich the public debate about environmental sustainability, ethical living, eco-technology and design. The workshops aim to encourage transdisciplinary discussions between artists, designers, academics, engineers, activists, social entrepreneurs, tactical media workers, economists and policy makers whose practice is informed by ecological thinking as a core value or major concern. http://www.ucira.ucsb.edu/Desert%20Residency%20CFP.html
February 23-24 - Just Seeds/Visual Resistance Artists’ Cooperative, Artists in Residence. Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures, 1960s to the Present.
Joint workshop with artists Josh MacPhee, founder of the Artists Collective: JustSeeds.org and Dara Greenwald, graduate student, Rensselaer Institute.
Greenwald and Macphee will conduct an open, two-day workshop intersecting their activist practices through class, studio and public events. Working with the graphic poster collections at UCSB and student print production, the artists will engage in the history of collectivists practice and connect it with contemporary formations, including their work with Justseeds, a contemporary, on line artists collective that engages at the intersections of politics, multiples, design, and audience.
February 24 : Josh MacPhee (JustSeeds) + Gregory Sholette - in conversation [Winter 2009 Lecture Series]. 4:00-5:30pm / McCune Conference Room / 6020 HSSB
Justseeds/Visual Resistance Artists' Cooperative is a decentralized community of artists who have banded together to both sell their work online in a central location and to collaborate with and support each other and social movements. Their website is not just a place to shop, but also a destination to find out about current events in radical art and culture. Their blog covers political printmaking, socially engaged street art, and culture related to social movements. They believe in the power of personal expression in concert with collective action to transform society.
Gregory Sholette is a New York-based artist, writer, and founding member of the artists’ collectives Political Art Documentation/Distribution and REPOhistory, as well as co-editor ofThe Interventionists: A Users Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life (MassMoCA/MIT Press, 2004, 2006) with Nato Thompson, and of Collectivism After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945 with Blake Stimson, (University of Minnesota, 2007). He frequently collaborates with the artist Janet Koenig and is currently working on a book about the political economy of the art world and his concept of creative dark matter for Pluto Press. He is Assistant Professor of Sculpture in the Department of Art and Art History at Queens College.
February 25, 9:30am-noon / LA Convention Center
2008 College Art Association Panel:
Relocating Art and Its Public
http://conference.collegeart.org/2009/sessions.php?period=2009-02-25
Kim Yasuda, UC Institute for Research in the Arts + UC Santa Barbara
Gregory Sholette, Queens College, City University of New York, co-organizers
February 26-27, Christina Ulke, Journal of Aesthetics and Protest - Artist in Residence
http://www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/
This two day multi-disciplinary workshop will give students the opportunity to think through the format and formation of a publication, to consider how the form and content of a magazine can relate to a community, a public and a place. The workshop begins with the Journal's concept of sited theory- where printed language, content and form is responsive to particular contexts. In this workshop, students will identify a space that they want to communicate with and develop a 'zine' to make a conversation happen. The goals of the workshop would include:
1) Learn how different magazine projects have used different forms of language and forms to identify, stay in touch with, and move particular communities.
2) Consider what Sited Theory for UCSB would be
3) Make a magazine that answers to a context of UCSB.
March 2009
March 3 : Eda Cufer - Artist talk [Winter 2009 Lecture Series]. 4:00-5:30pm / McCune Conference Room / 6020 HSSB
Eda Cufer is a dramaturge, curator and writer. In 1984 she co-founded an art collective NSK based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She has collaborated with many contemporary theater, dance and visual art groups including the Sisters Scipion Nasice Theater, the dance company En-Knap, the IRWIN group and Marko Peljhan’s Project Atol. She has co-curated exhibitions for museums in Germany, Austria, and Italy. Her essays on theater, dance, visual art, culture and politics have appeared in many books and journals. Her recent text, "Enjoy Me, Abuse Me, I am Your Artist: Cultural Politics, Their Monuments, Their Ruins," was included in East Art Map: Contemporary Art in Eastern Europe, published by Afterall Books/Central St. Martins College of Art & Design. "A Journey from the East to the West" was included in Participation, edited by Claire Bishop and published by Whitechapel Gallery, London, in 2006. Cufer is an Adjunct Professor of Art History at the Maine College of Art.
ARTIST TALK: Edgar Arceneaux - 4:00 PM / McCune Conference Room / 6020 HSSB
Edgar Arceneaux's practice takes advantage not only of his intellectual
restlessness but also his wide-ranging technical adroitness, a mix of
multidisciplinary skills -- including drawing, photography, sculpture,
and filmmaking -- that figure into the unorthodox installation scenarios
he has developed and refined over the last decade. He is the Director of the Watts House Project in Los Angeles, an on-going collaborative artwork in the shape of a neighborhood redevelopment. Arceneaux
has shown his drawings, sculptures, installations and films in solo
exhibitions at The Kitchen, New York; San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art; Kunstwerke, Berlin; UCLA Hammer Museum and the
Studio Museum, New York.
Sponsored by the IHC's Arts Research Initiative as part of its Winter Quarter lecture series.
