Project X Foundation and Armory Center for the Arts present:
Where do art practice and theory meet?
Panel discussion between artists about their work, research, and the academic discipline of art.
with Claire de Dobay Rifelj, Amy Howden-Chapman, Christiane Kues, and Tim Ridlen
Organized by Christiane Kues, Project X Desk at Outpost@Armory Resident
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
7 – 9 pm
at Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA
Where do art practice and theory meet?
This question invites consideration of the diverse, hybrid field of research, current debates about higher education, and conflicts and tensions around organization and academic institutionalization of theory and art practice, all of which are shaping doctoral programs in art practice.
Practice-based theory and a shift to art-making practices situated in the context of cultural studies (including art and politics, philosophy, sociology, and science studies) has framed contemporary art discourse.
Today, contemporary theory proposes a practice turn, just as contemporary art proposes a practice turn to (practice-based) theory. This panel brings together practitioners with different backgrounds in theory, writing and art. The panelists will introduce their work, to be followed by a conversation about the intersection of practice and theory, and their institutionalization.
About the Participants:
Claire de Dobay Rifelj is a curator and art historian currently at work on a dissertation that explores collage and narrative in postwar Los Angeles. Her recent curatorial projects in Los Angeles include Subject Matters, the 2013 graduate exhibition for California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, and coordinating the Hammer Museum’s Venice Beach Biennial (2012). Her writing has been published in the LA Weekly, on ForYourArt.com, and in Area Sneaks, and she has presented papers at Yale University, University of California/Los Angeles, and Harvard University. She has also worked in the curatorial departments of the Dallas Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She received a BA from Princeton University, an MA in art history from Williams College, and her doctoral work is through the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.
Amy Howden-Chapman is a New Zealand-born Los Angeles-based artist and writer. She holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, and an MA in creative writing and a BA with Honors in Art History from Victoria University Wellington. Working primarily in performance, moving image, and printed matter, Howden-Chapman’s work analyzes language and images as means to investigate the confluence of social conventions and personal narratives that underlie economic, ecological, and cultural change. She is a founding member of TheDistancePlan.Org, which aims to promote discussion of climate change within the arts, and a co-editor of The Distance Plan Journal. Recent work has been presented at The Living Art Museum, Nylo, Reykjavík; ArtSpace Auckland; Night Gallery, Los Angeles; and City Gallery Wellington.
Christiane Kues is a visiting artist and PhD student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria, working on academic writing, essays, and art practice. Her research topic traces genealogies of theoretical practice in the arts since “the turn” to “the concept.” She received a one-year travel grant to Los Angeles for art practice and research from the Cultural Foundation Hesse, Germany. Her work has been shown in several group shows in Germany. She has published essays: Subject matter: Investing more time and energy in the logic of incongruence and the pleasurable game of text, 2010, and in collaboration with Sarah Kürten, I know why the cage bird sings, 2008 and Easy Living, 2007. She holds a Diploma from Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany.
Tim Ridlen was born in St. Louis, Missouri and first started shooting home video as a child of the early ‘90s. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Visual Art department at the University of California/San Diego. His research looks at practices of art among other practices within academia and examines the relationship between art and experiential knowledge. Ridlen received an MFA from Bard College in New York, and a BA/BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been screened and exhibited at the Stuttgarter Filmwinter Festival for Expanded Media, Renwick Gallery, New York; Laxart, Los Angeles; Tät Gallery, Berlin; Roots and Culture, Chicago; Galerie West, Den Haag; and the Academy for Media Arts, Cologne.