2^ND ANNUAL CDRL CURATORIAL SLAM!
What is Curatorial Work Today?

Friday, April 22, 2016
4–7pm
The Orozco Room (A712) / 66 W. 12 Street

Parsons’ Curatorial Design Research Lab (CDRL) is a community of practice comprised of faculty, staff and students from across The New School whose research expands the field of contemporary curatorial practice to include activities that lie both within and beyond the white cube. CDRL is proud to host its Second Annual CURATORIAL SLAM! ­­ a lively array of fast­paced ideas and images mixed with drinks and delectables. This public event offers a sampling of diverse curatorial models recently developed by New School community members, from international site­specific platforms to participatory online exchanges to research projects. Topics include explorations of local ecologies, gentrification, incarceration, global political histories and reticent artistic practices. Pecha Kucha­style presentations will be followed by a “happy hour” reception and informal discussion.

Part 1: Pedagogically-inspired Curating

Laura Belik (MA Design Studies, ADHT, Parsons)
Quizayra Gonzalez (MA Design Studies, ADHT, Parsons)
Veija Kusama-Morris (BA Film/Global Studies, Eugene Lang College)
“Futurographies:  An Ethnographic Curatorial Experience”
Resulting from interdisciplinary workshops led by three faculty members, a cross-divisional team of graduate and undergraduate students co-produced Futurographies, an exhibition merging ethnographic and curatorial methodologies to explore the complex relationships amongst the United States, France, and Cambodia.

Laura Sanchez  (MA Design Studies, ADHT, Parsons)
Elizabeth Caroscio (MA History of Design + Curatorial Studies, ADHT, Parsons)
Rachel Hunnicutt – (MA History of Design + Curatorial Studies, ADHT, Parsons)
“How Do You See Rikers? Curating A Plurality of Perspectives”
Students from The New School branch of the Humanities Action Lab explain how working with classmates, the HAL network, and The Fortune Society led to a collaborative curatorial approach to addressing mass incarceration at Rikers Island in NYC.

Rowan Katz (BA Culture and Media, Eugene Lang College)
“Internet Radical Media SPACE”
Inspired by the anonymous Syrian film collective Abounaddara, Space is a scalable, Internet-based project intended to problematize our engagement with global media—especially that of the Middle East–by asking participants to create their own representations of graphic and iconic imagery.

Part 2: Generating Place-based Dialogues

Lydia Matthews (Professor of Visual Culture, AMT, Parsons)
“Rubble Riches Treasure Trash”
Focusing on an ecologically-oriented curatorial project in post-Soviet Georgia, Lydia will describe a series of DIY workshops for local students, artists and designers culminating in an exhibition to provoke dialogue about the problems and possibilities of material re-use in a country keen to embrace consumer culture.

Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani (Principal, Buscada; Adjunct Assistant Professor, Urban Studies, SPE)
“Intersection | Prospect Heights : Making Space for Dialogue”
How do we talk about, argue about, and even laugh and cry about gentrification? Gabrielle will discuss her most recent public art project in Brooklyn, in which curatorial practices happen in the supermarket and photographs and oral histories of a diner spur much-needed conversation on this radically changing city. 

Christiane Paul (Associate Professor / Associate Dean, School of Media Studies, SPE)
“What Lies Beneath”
Christiane will discuss her recent exhibition at Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, in relation to curating within shifting cultural contexts and preview her work on the outdoor park 38 30 Art Valley.

Part 3:  Artists’ Projects as Curatorial Acts

Fernando do Campo (MFA Fine Arts, AMT, Parsons)
“Yet To Live In A Place Without House Sparrows”
Fernando will discuss the research that triggered the formation of, and current projects within, the “House Sparrow Society for Humans,” inviting a conversation on the role curatorial methodologies can play within–rather than around–studio art practices.

Melanie Crean (Asst. Professor of Communication Design and Technology, AMT, Parsons)
“Ellipses: A Project for Waterbury, Connecticut”
Crean’s Ellipses is an interdisciplinary project considering the idea of remediation as applied to site, body, and the political history of post-industrial mill towns in Connecticut.

Margot Bouman (Program Director Visual Studies, Eugene Lang College, Assistant Professor of Visual Culture, ADHT, Parsons)
“Christopher Williams and an Ethics of Anti-Spectacle”
Artist Christopher Williams makes attribution into an artistic practice, evidenced in his forty-year career exhibition The Production Line of Happiness. Margot considers how he uses the Debordian concepts of “derive” and “détournement” to produce an ethics of anti-spectacle.

Macushla Robinson (MA in Liberal Studies, NSSR)
“Grief for the Object”
Macushla will offer a meditation on the philosophical implications of performance artist Tino Sehgal’s resistance to documentation, and how that impacts the work of a contemporary art curator.

CDRL WISHES TO THANK:

The Parsons Dean’s Office for their ongoing support of our Research Lab; The New School Provost’s Office for awarding us a 2015-16 Mutual Mentoring Grant; CDRL Graduate Student Fellows, Gabriela Carnabuci,  Jonathan Beilin, Sinead Petrasek, Agnes Szanyi, and Fernando do Campo for their inspiring critical insights and research; Leonie Cicirello for her brochure design; Caitlin Hickey from Parsons School of Art, Media + Technology for her administrative support; Joseph Pastor for videotaping this event; and the staff at Grey Dog Catering.

For further information about the Curatorial Design Research Lab activities, see: cdrlab.parsons.edu

View videos from last year’s slam here
View information from last year’s slam here