As a collaborative of art historians and students of visual culture, Material Collective seeks to foster a safe space for alternative ways of thinking about objects. Read more about us.
From the Blog
Posts and contributions View all posts and articles-
Reflections on “Medieval Art History After the Interdisciplinary Turn”
Marian Bleeke’s inspired thoughts on some of the papers and ideas discussed at the recent conference held at Notre Dame.
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New Materialisms at CAA
The 2014 Annual Conference of the College Art Association didn’t feature any participation by the Material Collective as a group, but did feature quite a lot of discussion about issues of continuing interest to the Collective, particularly around materiality and objecthood.
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Looking at Gleaning
Several of us have been talking about slow looking, of late, including me, a term that I think probably borrows from the “slow food” movement. I found myself connecting food and art and slowness in my mind, listening, of all things, to a story on NPR about the recent trend toward a sort of postmodern gleaning.
From the Manifesto
May 10, 2012 Read More-
For us, this is not a mere exercise—we stand by our manifesto. And we revel in this opportunity to raise a glass with all y’all, right here and now.
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We encourage spontaneity in writing art history, including an acknowledgement of our subject positions; therefore we embrace the incorporation of personal narrative and reflection in our historical interpretations.
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As a collaborative of students of visual culture, Material Collective seeks to foster a safe space for alternative ways of thinking about objects.
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We are as much a support group as a scholarly group. We share the joys and sorrows of career, life and our academic work.
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We are also working to increase the legitimacy of these approaches in the academic world, primarily by practicing them, loudly and often.
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Our specific interests vary, but we are all committed to prioritizing the materiality of things, the relationships between those things and the human beings who experience them, and the intimacy of past and present moments in time.
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We strive for transparency in our practice, and we encourage the same in our institutional surroundings.
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As we celebrate, dwell in, and embrace the basic materiality of our objects, we work to find ways to foreground the material of the objects themselves into larger historical analysis.
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Central to this effort is a desire to support each other as we attempt to create experimental approaches, and to embrace both the successes and potential failures of our ventures into new ways of thinking.
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Our project touches upon both form and content, as we pursue a lyrical and experimental style of writing along with a more humane, collaborative, and supportive process of scholarship.
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We are the Material Collective, a group of medievalists interrogating visual materials. We seek to cooperate, encourage, share, promote transparency, touch, desire, destabilize, amuse, and blunder.
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We value: experimental processes; risk-taking; transparency, revelation; a blank space; joy in faltering, together. So say we all. So say we all.
