Time for Change

This post is republished from HASTAC and was written by Dante Noto:

I have recently attended some exciting meetings related to arts education in California.  In preparation for these meetings, I’ve taken the opportunity to read through the University of California’s “a-g” requirements in Visual and Performing Arts (VPA).  For those of you unfamiliar with the a-g requirements, they are a series of courses required to be eligible for admission to UC and the California State University system.  “F” (ironically) is Visual and Performing Arts:  one year-long course in dance, drama/theatre, music or visual art. (A-E are history, English, math, lab science, and language; G is an elective.)

Being UC, of course, we have policies.

• Visual Art:  Examples of acceptable courses (italics crucial–one must wear pince-nez) include painting, drawing, sculpture, art photography, printmaking, video/film production as an art form, contemporary media, ceramics, and art history.  Examples of unacceptable courses include craft courses, mechanical drafting, web page development, yearbook, and photography offered as photojournalism (i.e., as a component of yearbook or school newspaper publication).
• Drama:  Acceptable courses include acting, directing, dramaturgy, theory…  Unacceptable courses include speech, debate, or courses that require students to perform occasional skits.

Also excluded are ballroom dancing and musical groups that perform for competitive field events.  (I don’t know which word is more ridiculous–competitive or field–but together they’re gorgeous.)  And heaven forbid that these policies are not clear enough, there are policy clarifications.

“Technology courses, visual and performing arts courses that utilize technology must focus primarily on arts content.  If the technology (i.e. software, equipment) is used as a tool of artistic expression, as a paintbrush would be used in a painting course, and all other component strands are adequately met, then such courses are acceptable.  If the technology/software is so complex that the primary concern becomes learning the technology, then the course will not be approved to meet the requirement.”

In the FAQs section, the question is asked, Why is it so difficult to get UC approval for arts courses that focus on design?  Answer:  “Often, design type courses (architectural, graphic, floral, interior, fashion, et cetera) focus more on the technical aspects of these disciplines, rather than the art.”

So today I stand up for the H-Z curriculum, those courses where you actually get to do something, possibly useful and even more possibly fun.  Remind me during my next recruitment for an open position whether I should hire the ace web page developer who was a champion debater in high school and possesses keen architectural design skills or the student who took dramaturgy and ceramics.  It’s time for a change.

–

Dante Noto serves as Director of Resource Development for Education Partnerships, a department of the University of California Office of the President responsible for programs that produce high quality teachers for California and that enhance the K-12 and community college transfer pipelines to bachelor’s degree and the workforce.

Political Equator – Press

The U.S./Mexico border photographed by Quilian Riano

Teddy Cruz of UCSD collaborated with Oscar Romo and Andrea Skorepa to organize Political Equator #3 last week. Here is a round-up of press received by the 2-day cross-border conference:

• BLDG BLOG ”Peripheral Porosity”
• Washington Post ”Art festival organizes unusual border crossing through a drain from San Diego to Tijuana”
• Sign-On San Diego ”Unusual border crossing is called performance art”

Check SOTA for a report-back from Liz Losh (UCSD) soon.

Curating People: A Round Up

Last week in Berkeley the Arts Research Center sponsored a symposium entitled Curating People. ARC director and UCIRA advisory board member Shannon Jackson diligently led up to and followed up the gathering with posts and guest-posts on her blog ARC Muses.

Posts appeared in this order:

• Shannon Jackson on the ideas behind the symposium:
• Erika Balsom (a Townsend post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Film & Media Studies at UC Berkeley)
• Betti-Sue Hertz (Director of Visual Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco)
• David Henry (Director of Programs, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston): 

“What type of institution is best suited to present the hybrid art forms of today? How does the economic structure of museums and the visual arts affect attitudes towards performed art which has a significantly different economic structure? How does the traditional mission of museums to preserve and collect impact its receptivity to non-object art? How do the differing histories and practices of performing arts and visual arts influence criticism of hybridized art forms in art museums?”

• Susan Miller (currently Associate Director of the Berkeley Center for New Media and formerly Executive Director of New Langton Arts)
  
• Constance Lewallen (Adjunct Curator at the Berkeley Art Museum)
  
• Leigh Markopoulos (Chair, Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice, California College of the Arts)
  
• Michele Rabkin (Associate Director of the Arts Research Center)
  
• Kristan Kennedy (Visual Arts Curator at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art): 
  

“I often have difficult conversations with the community of artists and others that surround me about art and money, and art and meaning, and art and value, and art and community. I use words like “hybrid” and “discursive” and “dialogue” and “ practice” and “ intention”. I often talk about “de-historization” the “current moment” and “ collapsing forms”. I love to put the word “post” in front of everything. I like to think we are post- everything. Sometimes those words sounds right, and sometimes it sounds like the shifty language of the art world and therefore, flawed and contradictory and awful. The not so secret, secret is we are all still looking for the words to describe the now.”

• Erin Boberg Doughton (Performing Arts Program Director at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art)
• Lisa Wymore (Assistant Professor of Theater, Dance & Performance Studies at UC Berkeley and Co-Director of Smith/Wymore Disappearing Acts)
  
• Post-Show Reflection by Shannon Jackson where she addresses big issues discussed at Curating People, such as “How to un-silo communities of arts and culture?”; “Economies that support hybrid art work”; “More Writers and Writing Venues”; “Future Research”; and “Future Spaces for Reflection”

Arts Research at University of Michigan

“The Role of Art-Making and the Arts in a Research University” will be held May 4-6 in Ann Arbor, at the University of Michigan. Below are excerpts of an interview with Theresa Reid, the conference organizer, from “Montage” an online magazine at the University of Michigan. See the full interview here.

Excerpts:

Montage: Why is that process important to the research university?

Reid: It’s important that universities serve the whole student.  We talk a great deal about diversity, because we know that diversity of all kinds enriches learning and life in many ways.  Integrating art-making into the university introduces a certain kind of rigorous cognitive diversity – it helps students learn to use their whole brains.  This is deeply rewarding and exciting on a personal level, of course.  But also, the world’s incredibly complicated problems need graduates who can use their full creative and cognitive endowment.

Montage: So, why the need for this symposium?

Reid: Art-making has not thrived in research universities, generally.  U-M is highly unusual in having mature, very highly regarded professional programs in Art & Design, Music, Theatre & Dance, and Architecture, as well as in creative writing and filmmaking. In addition to these professional programs, we have UMMA, UMS, and hundreds of voluntary student art groups.   In most research universities art-making is a very faint echo.

Montage: Why is art-making not thriving at most research universities?

Reid: One reason is revenue.  Art-making can be expensive, and doesn’t bring in revenue like, for instance, scientific or engineering research does.   It’s a sad fact, but somebody has to pay the bills.  Also, the value of the products of art-making might not be immediately evident, as it often is in science, math, and engineering: the value of the product of “art-making” is harder to quantify, especially in the short-term.

Montage: So why do art-making and the arts belong in the research university?

Reid: Because art-making is integral to the project of being human.  Human beings evolved making art, and every human culture produces art.  This essential part of who we are as a species cannot be left behind in the greatest engines of culture in the world:  U.S. research universities.  All research universities do support the humanities – that is, the study of the arts.  But the humanities, important as they are, are not enough.  The making and the doing of original creative work is categorically different:  it’s the hands-on creative work that provides the really deep cognitive diversity and opportunities for groundbreaking collaborations.

Shannon Jackson On Her New Book

Shannon Jackson (UCIRA Board Member, ARC Director, and UC Berkeley Professor of Theater, Dance & Performance Studies and Rhetoric), is interviewed in Art Practical by Christina Linden about her forthcoming book Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics  (Routledge, 2011) and the symposium “Curating People,” which she is coordinating for April 28 and April 29 at the Performance Art Institute and UC Berkeley. See her blog here.

Excerpt:

CL: Do you think that the nature of the relationships to the state or other institutions is specific to the kind of experimental performance and social works we’re talking about here, or would you say this applies in a more blanket way to all artwork?

SJ: As to whether it applies to all artwork, I guess I would say that it does. Painting depends upon frames and canvases but also upon the gallery system. Theatre depends on stage managers and agents. But I do think that certain art forms are less able to deny that they need a supporting apparatus and that some have a vested interest in looking the other way. The works that I ended up selecting were all works that I think are posing questions about our relationship to interdependent systems, state based or otherwise. In some instances I’m really talking about places where a state-based mechanism did not come through. When Paul Chan began to work in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, you could say that that is a situation where FEMA did not come through. It may be that the state did not come through because it had been defunded up until then, but Chan was pretty clear that there was a DIY quality to his work; the supporting systems were part of a very mixed economy that included private funding, community grants, philanthropic donations, and the gallery circuit, along with inadequate state funding.

CL: What about the way the institution of the museum is taking up these practices? Recently, the education departments are often the ones commissioning really interesting new work in this mode, and in some cases it operates as a kind of substitute for programming they used to produce more directly. Given the topic of the symposium you are organizing for April 29, I guess this must be on your mind?

SJ: You are alighting upon something that I hope we will talk about at the “Curating People” symposium in April. My hope is that we’ll have a continuous, wider Bay Area conversation about this. You spoke of the conference you attended at MoMA. Pablo Helguera, in the education department, organized that gathering. Why are education departments doing, as you call it, “substitute programming”? Education departments are interested in the experience of receivers. There can certainly be a didactic quality to that role. At the same time, artists who work in social practice and performance are also very concerned about engagement with receivers. If that it is your goal, it can be incredibly interesting to work with someone in education who thinks continuously about what it means to engage people, to address them, to challenge them. Supporting these new art forms begins to challenge the traditional divisions between the curatorial department and the education department.

I ended up deciding to focus on “curating,” specifically “curating people,” because the curators and the staff of the museums and theatre are in the trenches of all of this. We really get a complex picture of what it means to support interdisciplinary art when we think about the kind of work that curators, installers, and stage managers are doing daily. They’re living it every day and also re-skilling every day. A visual art curator might have been trained in a particular way, but then a certain kind of hybrid artist comes to town and needs you to secure a street permit or to do a casting call.

See the rest of the interview here

UCIRA Board Member on Egypt

Bruce Ferguson, current UCIRA Advisory Board member, is currently working in Egypt and did this interview about his experiences:

http://www.studio360.org/media/audioplayer/player5.swf//

 

Bruce W. Ferguson has been a curator and critic for more than thirty years. Bruce previously served as the Dean, School of Arts at Columbia University; President and Executive Director of the New York Academy of Art, and is the founding Director and first biennial curator of SITE Santa Fe, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.Bruce has curated more than 35 exhibitions for institutions such as the Louisiana Museum in Copenhagen, the Barbican Art Gallery in London, the Winnipeg and Vancouver Art Galleries in Canada and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. He also organized exhibitions in the international Biennale of Sao Paulo, Sydney, Venice and Istanbul.A prolific writer, Bruce has written for art publications like Canadian Art, Art Forum, Art in America, Art + Text, Flash Art, Bomb Magazine, Art Press, Borders Crossing and Parachute. Along with Reesa Greenberg and Sandy Nairne, he received a Getty Senior Research Fellowship grant, which resulted in the publication of a seminal anthology of essays on the theories of exhibitions titled, Thinking About Exhibitions (Routledge: 1996). Bruce received his B.A. in Art History from the University of Saskatchewan and his M.A. in Communication from McGill University in Montreal.

“Ambient Happening” Performance at UCIRA 2010 Conference

Check out this documentation from the ICAM 40/VIS 40 course taught by Brett Stalbaum (UCSD. The performance was called “Ambient Happening in C Octatonic” and used location triggered audio (GPS) during UCIRA’s 2010 “Future Tense”  conference at UC San Diego on November 19th.

The video is by Yada Khoongumjorn and the performance is by ICAM/VIs Arts Students at UC San Diego. Made with tools from walkingtools.net.

November Regents Meeting

A re-post from defendcapubliceducation.wordpress.com:

With hundreds of layoffs, unfair labor negotiations between the UC and Academic Student Employees, and up to a 20% fee increase to be voted on by the UC Regents, it is necessary for UC students to mobilize and act. The following is a 3-day state-wide call to action meant to coincide with the Nov. 16-18^th Regents meeting:

• Nov. 16th: Local direct action at individual campuses to bring awareness about the fee increase and Regents meeting
• Nov. 17th: Mass state-wide demonstration at the UC Regents meeting at UCSF Mission Bay
• Nov. 18th: Mass local celebrations/escalations depending on the circumstances

The Student Worker Action Team of UC Berkeley calls on all UC campuses to come to the Regents meeting on Nov. 17 in order to prevent it from happening. On Oct. 7^th, an assembly of hundreds voted to shut down this meeting. If transportation to the Regents meeting is not possible, we call on campuses to follow through with local direct actions as stated above.

If you would like to coordinate with folks from UC Berkeley and don’t have any contacts here, please email: shutdowntheregents@gmail.com.

In Solidiarity,

UC Berkeley Student Worker Action Team

 

Crisis of the Humanities Debates

Stanley Fish recently wrote two pieces entitled the Crisis of the Humanities Officially Arrives and Crisis of the Humanities II for the NY Times and UC bloggers Chris Newfield and Bob Samuels have produced some compelling responses everyone should check out.

October 30-31st State-Wide Mobilizing Conference

A re-post from the Statewide Coordination Committee:

Regardless of who is elected after the November 2nd, on November 3rd, we still face a long-term systematic attack on public education and public workers.

October 30-31st State-Wide Mobilizing Conference Against the Privatization of Public Education and Public Services
@ San Francisco State University

Conference Information & Registration

We, the people, have the democratic power to ensure that our public institutions effectively serve the public. But to do so, members of all regions and sectors — students, teachers, staff, unions, adult-ed, activists, and community organizations — must unite, take action, and contribute our voices and thoughts to the October 30-31st conference.

The purpose of the October 30-31st conference is to democratically propose demands, devise an action plan, and create a structure capable of defending public education and public services for the benefit of all.

We invite all supporters of education across the nation to attend and participate in the conference.

For more: http://defendcapubliceducation.wordpress.com

Making of the Corporate University

Graphic from chronicle.com

Check out this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education where there are several articles addressing the corporatization of the university, including the following texts without paid subscription password protection:

• Library Inc. By Daniel Goldstein
• The Corporate Analogy Unravels By Andrew Ross
• The Making of Corporate U: How We Got Here By Marvin Lazerson
• The Future of Wannabe U.How the accountability regime leads us astray By Gaye Tuchman

Liberal Arts Holding Steady

From http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/

W. Robert Connor and Cheryl Ching from insidehighered.com just posted a new article about the relative stability of liberal arts, humanities and arts programs despite the general trend towards “employment friendly” fields. Here is an excerpt:

The liberal arts seem to have a particular endurance and resilience, even when we expect them to decline and fall.

One could imagine any number of reasons why this is the case — the inherent conservatism of colleges and universities is one — but maybe something much more dynamic is at work. Perhaps the stamina of the liberal arts in today’s environment draws in part from the vital role they play in providing students with a robust liberal education, that is, a kind of education that develops their knowledge in a range of disciplinary fields, and importantly, their cognitive skills and personal competencies. The liberal arts continue — and likely will always — give students an education that delves into the intricate language of Shakespeare or Woolf, or the complex historical details of the Peloponnesian War or the French Revolution. That is a given.

But what the liberal arts also provide is a rich site for students to think critically, to write analytically and expressively, to consider questions of moral and ethical importance (as well as those of meaning and value), and to construct a framework for understanding the infinite complexities and uncertainties of human life.

And here is a link to the whole article: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/10/01/connor

Updates on UCSD’s Dominguez

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a new piece about UCSD’s Ricardo Dominguez. Here is an excerpt and a link.

His field, variously known as new-media art, tactical media, or digital art, emerged in academe in the past few decades. The first generation of new-media artists who migrated to academe include Mark Tribe, now at Brown University, and the social-activist pranksters the Yes Men, Andy Bichlbaum (real name: Jacques Servin), at Parsons the New School for Design, and Mike Bonanno (real name: Igor Vamos), at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. They are, like Dominguez, “deeply anti-establishment,” says Grant Kester, chair of San Diego’s visual-arts department. As one journalist put it, Dominguez has spent a lifetime “utilizing electronics and the Internet to piss off just about every high-level administrative authority in the U.S.” So it was perhaps inevitable that he would eventually grate on the mores of a large institution like the University of California system.

Read more here http://chronicle.com/article/Digitally-Incorrect/124649/

After the article went to print, the editors posted this note:

Shortly after this article went to press, the University of California and Ricardo Dominguez settled the investigation into the March 4 “virtual sit-in” at the Web site of the university system’s office of the president. Dominguez will stay in his current position and has agreed not to interfere with the server of the office of the president or use university resources in any way that “might result in permanently or temporarily damaging the integrity or availability” of other Web sites.

But as of now there is no updated information about the case on the b.a.n.g Lab’s website or anywhere else

You can find out about virtual sit-ins for this upcoming October 7th day of action here: http://october7thecd.wordpress.com/

Calls for Action on October 7th

For the National call and the California Call visit http://www.defendeducation.org/

and check out:

Arts in the California Governor’s Race (ACGR) project

Just got this in the mail from California Arts Advocates:

Dear California Artists,

California Arts Advocates is proud to introduce you to the ARTS in the CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR’S RACE (ACGR) project – an initiative to insert the arts into the California gubernatorial campaigns.

Value of Education?

Just revisiting this article “The Humanities Really Do Produce a Profit”, By Robert N. Watson (Chronicle of Higher Education March 21, 2010) and appreciating this quote:

No sane citizenry measures its public elementary schools by whether they pay for themselves immediately and in dollars. We shouldn’t have to make a balance-sheet argument for the humanities, either, at least not until the balance-sheet includes the value, to the student and to the state, of expanded powers of personal empathy and cross-cultural respect, improved communication through language and other symbolic systems, and increased ability to tolerate and interpret complexity, contemplate morality, appreciate the many forms of artistic beauty, and generate creative, independent thought.

Robert N. Watson is a professor of English at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Why I made a formal statement to the UCSD Police

Brett Stalbaum at UCSD Police Department to out himself over virtual sit-ins 7/21/2010 (Image: Paula Poole)

Many people have heard about the criminal investigation of UC San Diego Professor Ricardo Dominguez related to his symbolic protest actions aka Virtual Sit-ins this past March 4th on the servers of the UC Office of the President (UCOP). Republished below is a report back from one of Dominguez’s frequent collaborators and fellow UCSD faculty Brett Stalbaum. This case is extremely important as a precedent setting conflict, bringing together the activism around the UC budget crisis, academic freedom, tenure, and the intersections of online and border activism.

To learn more about the “investigations” and support for Professor Ricardo Dominguez and Electronic Disturbance Theater/b.a.n.g lab click here read and watch these news reports about the “investigations”:

• Digital Zapatismo and the Threatened Persecution of Prof. Ricardo Dominguez (UCSD) by John Armenta: http://thevirtualcampfire.org/garibaldi/2010/05/ricardo-dominguez
• UC San Diego professor who studies disobedience gains followers – and investigators By Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/07/local/la-me-ucsd-professor-20100507-53
• Ucsd Hacktivism “Affective – Not Effective!” – Fox News Video: http://bang.calit2.net/2010/05/ucsd-hacktivism-fox-news-eeek/

How to help:

• Donate to the legal fund supporting Dominguez here.
• Sign the “Stop De-Tenuring of Ricardo Dominguez” petition here.

Reposted from Walkingtools.net:

“I hope you agree that our tradition
of view-point neutral application of
policies governing professional
conduct by faculty and staff is one
of the great strengths we rely on to
demonstrate our commitment to
the public good.”

University of California President Mark Yudof
(Response to UC MRG Core Members Letter of concern over the persecution of Professor Dominguez, April 20^th 2010.)

In this post, I would like to highlight the issue of view-point neutral application of University of California Policy by both the University of California Office of the President and UCSD. On July 21^st2010 I went to the UCSD Police Department to give a formal statement on the criminal investigation of Professor Ricardo Dominguez. Dominguez is being investigated for a Virtual Sit-in held on March 4^th of this year, and yet apparently not (the Police seemed not to know of it) for a virtual sit-in held on March 19th-21^st 2008. In fact, as noted elsewhere, UCSD Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Paul Drake actually promoted Dominguez for the latter, yet two years later is trying to fire him for the former, in spite of some very disturbing facts including that both virtual sit-in events involved the same servers (ucop.edu and bang.calit2.net.) First you love him then you hate him. What really is happening here?

The history of Virtual Sit-ins is something that Ricardo and I both know something about, having co-founded the Electronic Disturbance Theater and produced the original FloodNet Applet (along with Carmin Karasic and Stefan Wray) in 1998, and further having implemented many performances (peaceful online protests against President Bill Clinton, his administration and “his” Pentagon, as well as Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo and others) in support of the Zapatista indigenous communities of Chiapas. In the interstice between then and now, Ricardo has remained one of the leading theorists and art practitioners of Electronic Civil Disobedience (a term he helped coin with the Critical Art Ensemble previous to our work with the Electronic Disturbance Theater.) Also in that time, I worked on other collaborations (C5 Corporation, paintersflat.net) where I developed a practice in location aware media in the arts. (GPS, mobile phones, code…) Our practice as active collaborators was rekindled in recent years working on an Artivist project titled the Transborder Immigrant Tool, which has been denounced by Republican Congressmen, and has generated troubling death threats from the public.

There was a reason I moved on from EDT for what has turned out to be close to a decade now. Simply stated: Virtual sit-ins occupy a gray area between (as Ricardo often says) affect in effect. Virtual sit-ins don’t hurt anything or anyone, yet they have some of the appearances of being a bot-net attack, the latter being unambiguously illegal. Our development of virtual sit-in technologies was always focused on playing in the gray spaces of the affective and appearance, specifically designed for purposes of 1) Artivism, and 2) conceptual art practice exploring the unique material and social dimensions of a new medium: the internet. Virtual sit-ins have never been effective in terms of damaging servers, and have been ridiculed by hackers as technically ineffective. But the only reason I quit developing new software myself (circa 2000) was that professional system admins – and no doubt many public relations consultants – were onto our game. (And, probably unimpressed with artivistic gestures such as causing the names of the people massacred at Acteal to appear in President Zedillo’s web server’s error logs.) With few exceptions – and at that mostly triggered by under-trained government bureaucrats – virtual-sit ins simply stopped garnering much of the kind of art, media, public and critical attention that we had previously been able to divert to Chiapas. And when my friend and C5 colleague Bruce Gardner gave me a GPS device to use in 2000, and shared some of his early computer code with me, I became interested in a practice exploring another new medium that for me, frankly, had very little political dimension.