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
Schedule – ARI Arts Lecture Series +
CCS Interdisciplinary Symposium
Tuesdays 4-5:30 pm. / McCune Conference Room / 6020 HSSB
Unless otherwise noted, all events will take place from 4-5:30 pm in the McCune conference room, 6020 HSSB. All events are free and open to the public. Students may also sign up for 2 units of academic credit for attending the whole series. Course number: INT 185AR/CCSINT/CS120.
Registration information will be available at the first lecture. For further information, contact Teaching Assistant Elizabeth Folk [spaceshaper@gmail.com]. Grading information follows at the bottom of this document. This lecture series is a special project sponsored by ARI, the UCSB College of Creative Studies and UCIRA.
January 13 - Gina Werfel
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
Close–Ups from Afar: The Still-Contested Framings of the Spanish Civil War, 1936 – . 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.
>> Watch Video
January 27 - Shana Lutker
**This talk will take place at the UCSB University Art Museum**
Shana 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.
>> Watch Video
February 3 – Sara Wookey
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.
>> Watch Video
February 10 - Laurel Beckman
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.
>> Watch Video
Artist Residencies **Students may also participate one or all of these artist residencies. Please see TA Elizabeth Folk spaceshaper@gmail.com for more information** February 17 - Luminous Green 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. Our website is not just a place to shop, but also a destination to find out about current events in radical art and culture. Our blog covers political printmaking, socially engaged street art, and culture related to social movements. We believe in the power of personal expression in concert with collective action to transform society. 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. February 23-24 - Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures, 1960s to the Present. February 26-27 - Journal for Aesthetics and Protest: Sited Theory |
March 2 - Writing Roundtable: Roger Conover, Dick Hebdige and others
**Please note: this event will be held at 4pm in the Crowell Reading Room (6th floor, HSSB)**
Join Roger Conover (Executive Editor, The MIT Press); Dick Hebdige (Professor, Media & Cultural Studies; Director of Arts & Interdisciplinary Programs, Palm Desert Graduate Center, UC Riverside); Sven Spieker (Professor, Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Languages, UCSB) and graduate students in a round table discussion about innovative ways to transform graduate dissertations into books. If you wish to present your work, please contact Laurie Monahan (History of Art & Architecture) at monahan@arthistory.ucsb.edu or Sven Spieker at spieker@gss.ucsb.edu.
March 3 - Eda Cufer
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. She recently received an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Foundation grant in support of her current book project, Art as Mousetrap, which looks at the ideological dimensions of contemporary art. Cufer is an Adjunct Professor of Art History at the Maine College of Art.
March 5 - The Guerilla Girls
**Please note: This event begins at noon in the Multicultural Center Theater.**
The Guerrilla Girls are feminist masked avengers in the tradition of anonymous do-gooders like Robin Hood, Wonder Woman and Batman. They use facts, humor and outrageous visuals to expose sexism, racism and corruption in politics, art, film and pop culture. They exhibited at the 2005 Venice Biennale and are authors of several books, including The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art, Bitches, Bimbos and Ballbreakers: The Guerrilla Girls' Illustrated Guide to Female Stereotypes, and The Guerrilla Girls' Art Museum Activity Book. Founding members Frida Kahlo and Käthe Kollwitz will talk about their work, their philosophy of activism, and their campaign against the appalling lack of ethics in the art world. Co-sponsored by ARI, Department of the History of Art & Architecture, and Feminist Studies and Hull Chair.
March 10 - Edgar Arceneaux
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. His drawings, sculptures, installations and films have been featured 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.
Additional information for students attending the lectures for credit:
*This course is taken for 2 units of academic credit as a CCS or INT course.
*Attendance at all lectures is required and will be documented through a weekly attendance slip and question. If you need to miss a meeting, please consult your teaching assistant, Elizabeth Folk [spaceshaper@gmail.com] who will provide you with an approved list of make-up events to attend.
*Please note, for every lecture missed without an approved make-up event, your course grade will drop one full grade.
*A final paper will be due for this class. For your final project write a 3 page paper and submit a hard copy to Elizabeth Folk by March 10, 2009. Papers must be 3 pages double spaced, in 12 pt. font. All references and quotations must be properly cited using a bibliography, and in text citation, footnotes, or endnotes. You may choose from one of the following topics:
* Choose 1-3 artists whose work relates to or is informed by your discipline/ area of interest. Giving brief background information about each artist, expand upon the exchange of discourse between the fields and how the crossing of traditional academic boundaries enriches/effects developments in both fields.
*Choose 1-3 artists whose work has informed your own practice, or whose work relates to your practice. Explain how their work serves to contextualize your artistic lineage within the greater conversation of contemporary art. Where do you fit into this conversation?
ARI Arts Lecture Series/ CCS Interdisciplinary Symposium: Approved Make Up Events
Additional events will be announced in class – if you have a lecture/event you would like to attend that does not appear on this list, please consult your TA, Elizabeth Folk before attending the event.
- Monday, January 26th /5:00 PM / MCC Lounge
Artist Lecture: Nancy Hom
Chances and Choices: A Community Artist Reflects on Life, Art and Activism
Nancy Hom will discuss her artwork and related personal experiences that were initially shaped by 1970s intercultural social movements.
- Tuesday, January 27 / 7:30 PM / Campbell Hall
Lecture: Keith Harmon Snow
An independent journalist, war correspondent and photographer, Keith Harmon Snow has worked for more than a decade to contest official narratives on war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide while also working as a genocide investigator and consultant to the United Nations and other international bodies.
- Thursday, January 29 / 5:00 PM / Theater and Dance room 2512
TALK: Dead Bodies/Live Bodies: Myths, Memory and Resurrection in Contemporary Mexican Performance
Ruth Hellier-Tinoco (Theater & Dance, UCSB)
- Wednesday, Feb 11 / 6:00 PM / MCC Theater
Meet the Filmmaker: Jill Freidberg
Un Poquito de Tanto Verdad (A Little Bit of So Much Truth) captures the unprecedented media phenomenon that emerged when tens of thousands of school teachers, housewives, indigenous communities, health workers, farmers, and students took 14 radio stations and one TV station into their own hands, using them to organize, mobilize, and ultimately defend their grassroots struggle for social, cultural, and economic justice.
- Friday, February 13 / 4:00 PM / 8th Floor, Davidson Library
"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. *all students are encouraged to attend this special event*
- Saturday, February 14 / 8:00 PM / Campbell Hall ($)
Patti Smith & Philip Glass in concert
Performing Arts: Punk-rock poetess Patti Smith and the founding father of minimalism, Philip Glass, pay special tribute to their dual inspiration, in an evening of poetry, music and song honoring the great Beat poet Allen Ginsberg
- Thursday, February 12 / 8:00 PM /Campbell Hall ($)
Lecture: Edward Albee
Three time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee will discuss the state of theater today, followed by a candid Q & A.
- Tuesday, February 17 / 6:30 PM / MCC Theater
Race Matters Series: Gustavo Arellano – Reading and Discussion
Orange County: A Personal History. Gustavo Arellano, staff writer for OC Weekly and author of the nationally syndicated column “¡Ask a Mexican!,” will share from his latest memoir Orange County: A Personal History.
- Wednesday, March 4 / 6:00 PM / MCC TheaterMeet the Filmmaker: Lillian Benson, A.C.E., is a television Emmy Award nominated editor, who made her directorial debut with the documentary All Our Sons: Fallen Heroes of 9/11, a half-hour film in honor of the firefighters of color who died at the World Trade Center.
