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.
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.
I have a few, very distinct memories of a day in the spring of 1987 when the mother of two of my dear friends came to New York, where I was in college, and took me to several galleries and then out to lunch or dinner, I can’t remember which.
Collaboration: what we think of it, how we do it, what its value seems to be in our fields and in academia.
In ignoring the history, we ignore an important step in the process by which the tusk assumed its current form—and also deny the real possibility that aspects of the production of ivory could adhere to, or inform, the eventual processed material.
Recently, I mentioned to a friend that I had been appointed Director of my university’s undergraduate core curriculum. “The WHOLE THING?” she asked. Yup. The whole enchilada. Little ol’ me.
Once, while we were both in college, I went to visit my best friend from high school at Princeton University. As we were looking at a Calder, Scott told me he had heard that two workers had died during the installation of the sculpture.
Material Collectivites respond to Michael Landy’s Saints Alive at the National Gallery in London.
Saints Alive, was, for me, a disappointment, but one worth a bit of thought.
It’s funny — I loved the show. It was playful and surprising and smart and I stayed for an hour and a half.