Saturday
May212011
Radical Art Caucus Update, Conferences
Saturday, May 21, 2011 at 3:42PM Dear RACers,Greetings from your executive officers! It is hard to believe that summer is upon us. We would like to take this opportunity to review some of the high points of the past year. Also, although next year’s CAA conference is still in the distance, we would like to fill you in on some of our tentative plans. CAA Conference in New York, 2011It was great to see many of you in New York. Our presence at CAA was robust. We sponsored two excellent panels. Environmental Sustainability in Art History, Theory, and Practice, organized by RAC co-president Travis Nygard, included presentations by Max Libroiron (www.maxliboiron.com) and Cindy Persinger on current art practices involving trash, recycling, and traditional technologies while Kaylee Spencer presented on the aesthetics of Maya portraiture as responsive to shifting environments. Video Art as Mass Media? Was organized by Nate Harrison and Benj Gerdes (www.16beavergroup.org). Presentations by Jason Simon, Angela Dimitrakaki, William Kaizen, Ernest Larsen, and Priscilla Neri examined video art in terms of populism, activism, human rights advocacy and oppositional culture. For each session, we had an impressive 60 to 70 people in attendance. Thanks again to Travis, Nate and Benj for organizing such successful and provocative panels. RAC also sponsored a well-attended reception with a topical focus, Union Organizing in Academia. Two union organizers were present to lead discussions with attendees. The first was Nayla Wren, Director of Organizing for the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), and the second was Andy Cornell, a leader in organizer at the Graduate Students Organizing Committee, United Auto Workers, at New York University. Those in attendance shared their own experiences related to employment in academia. Topics of discussion involved issues of fair hiring and employment, abusive labor practices, strategies for forming unions, and how to negotiate with institutional employers. At both the sessions and receptions, we had many requests for information about our group, and several new members have signed up subsequently. As always, we encourage you to spread the word about the Radical Art Caucus to your friends, colleagues, and anyone else who will listen!
We were also pleased that to announce that two conference attendees, who presented in our panels, were the beneficiaries of our Scholar/Activist grants. These grants, which cover CAA registration fees for students and underemployed members, have been made possible by generous donations from you all. Thank you to those who have continued to support our organization with your membership dues and generous gifts. Our visibility at CAA this year was enhanced by our use of social media and posters. Thanks to Dan Wang for designing, writing, and publishing a special issue of the experimental Journal of Radical Shimming for the Radical Art Caucus (http://www.red76.com/jrs.html). It was as a visually arresting way to reach the art community, which took the form of a broadsheet with innovative images, typography, and content. CAA Conference in Los Angeles, 2012 When looking ahead to our next conference, we are pleased to say that there are interesting sessions and activities in the works. We hope to see you there!. The Radical Art Caucus member Alan Wallach, who is on the faculty at The College of William and Mary, will be chairing our long session. It is titled Politics of the Panoramic: Spectacle, Surveillance, Resistance. His session abstract reads “The simultaneous invention in the early 1790s of the panopticon, a type of prison, and the panorama, a form of mass entertainment, marks the beginning of a new epoch in the history of visual domination. Today, the panoramic and the panoptic so thoroughly pervade our culture that identification with the “eye of power,” as Foucault termed it, has become habitual, reflexive, unconscious, seemingly innocent. Yet with the increasing proliferation of technologies of surveillance (e.g., CCTV), we find ourselves caught between the positions of viewer and viewed, of subject and object. If the panoramic inspires identification with regimes of surveillance, being the object of surveillance suggests a different response. The former implies a politics of complacency, the latter, a politics of resistance. This panel welcomes studies of artists and artworks both high and popular as well as investigations of applications of, and responses to, technologies of panoramic vision, representation, and surveillance.” Kaylee Spencer, one of our co-presidents, will be chairing our short session on
Administrative Abuses and Faculty Resistance in the Fine Arts: Case Studies in Academic Labor. In this panel discussants will consider the ways that fine artists and art historians, working in higher education, are laborers. Presenters will address questions such as: Is the recognition of creative expression as equivalent to academic research and scholarship being eroded by administrators? Are administrators increasingly less inclined to regard visual artists and art historians as essential contributors in a liberal arts curriculum? Are administrators increasingly more prone to consider the visual arts and its practitioners as expendable extras? Are institutions prone to rely increasingly on adjunct labor in the fine arts? And, in the face of the present vulnerability of arts professionals, what is the role of unions and what strategies of resistance can be employed? We are hoping that this session will spawn a greater critical discussion about the state of artistic employment in academia, which will resonate in longer-term conversations. We don’t want to be serious all of the time in Los Angeles, so we think that a party is in order! We discussed this with many of you in New York, and the consensus was that a party should be held off-site. There is a longstanding desire among our members to make the CAA conference extend into the community, allowing members to enjoy the broader city life. This will also enable us to avoid the often exorbitantly priced hotel catering. If anyone has location suggestions for a good off-site party venue, please let us know. Ideally we would like to find a venue with good food at affordable prices near the Los Angeles Convention Center, which also serves alcohol. If none of you have ideas, then we will rely on some recommendations from the Los Angeles-based union organizer who was at our conference in New York, Nayla Wren. As always, you are all encouraged to share with us items of interest that will take place at the conference, such as sessions or papers that we may also be interested in. If you would like to organize additional “shadow” events in conjunction with the conference, we would all be happy to hear it. We all know that Los Angeles has a robust arts scene, so we can imagine innumerable possibilities. CAA Conference in New York, 2013It is hard to believe that we already need to be thinking about the conference in 2013, but it is true. Institutions like CAA plan things far in advance. To that extent, we would like to invite all members of RAC to either individually or collaboratively submit a proposal for our sponsored session to be held at the 2013 conference in New York. In the past, themes for our sessions have been proposed by the elected officers of RAC or at business meetings. In the interest of expanding member involvement, we are opening up the process this year in order to explore a wider range of topics. The proposal should include a one-to-two page description of your topic and a brief (no more than two page) c.v. These documents should be sent to Joanna Gardner-Huggett, RAC Secretary (jgardner@depaul.edu) by email as attachments by May 30th. RAC officers will select one proposal, which will be submitted to the board of CAA for approval at the end of the summer. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions about the process. We hope that many of you will take this opportunity to contribute ideas for a stimulating session. Thank you all for your continuing involvement with our organization. We are looking forward to continuing to work toward making RAC the best that it can be. All the best,
Travis, Linnea, Kaylee, Joanna, and Heidi Travis Nygard, Co-president, travis@travisnygard.com
Linnea Wren, Co-president, lwren@gustavus.edu
Kaylee Spencer, Co-president, kspencer@gmail.com
Joanna Gardner-Huggett, Secretary, jgardner@depaul.edu
Heidi Cook, Treasurer, hac45@pitt.edu
We were also pleased that to announce that two conference attendees, who presented in our panels, were the beneficiaries of our Scholar/Activist grants. These grants, which cover CAA registration fees for students and underemployed members, have been made possible by generous donations from you all. Thank you to those who have continued to support our organization with your membership dues and generous gifts. Our visibility at CAA this year was enhanced by our use of social media and posters. Thanks to Dan Wang for designing, writing, and publishing a special issue of the experimental Journal of Radical Shimming for the Radical Art Caucus (http://www.red76.com/jrs.html). It was as a visually arresting way to reach the art community, which took the form of a broadsheet with innovative images, typography, and content. CAA Conference in Los Angeles, 2012 When looking ahead to our next conference, we are pleased to say that there are interesting sessions and activities in the works. We hope to see you there!. The Radical Art Caucus member Alan Wallach, who is on the faculty at The College of William and Mary, will be chairing our long session. It is titled Politics of the Panoramic: Spectacle, Surveillance, Resistance. His session abstract reads “The simultaneous invention in the early 1790s of the panopticon, a type of prison, and the panorama, a form of mass entertainment, marks the beginning of a new epoch in the history of visual domination. Today, the panoramic and the panoptic so thoroughly pervade our culture that identification with the “eye of power,” as Foucault termed it, has become habitual, reflexive, unconscious, seemingly innocent. Yet with the increasing proliferation of technologies of surveillance (e.g., CCTV), we find ourselves caught between the positions of viewer and viewed, of subject and object. If the panoramic inspires identification with regimes of surveillance, being the object of surveillance suggests a different response. The former implies a politics of complacency, the latter, a politics of resistance. This panel welcomes studies of artists and artworks both high and popular as well as investigations of applications of, and responses to, technologies of panoramic vision, representation, and surveillance.” Kaylee Spencer, one of our co-presidents, will be chairing our short session on
Administrative Abuses and Faculty Resistance in the Fine Arts: Case Studies in Academic Labor. In this panel discussants will consider the ways that fine artists and art historians, working in higher education, are laborers. Presenters will address questions such as: Is the recognition of creative expression as equivalent to academic research and scholarship being eroded by administrators? Are administrators increasingly less inclined to regard visual artists and art historians as essential contributors in a liberal arts curriculum? Are administrators increasingly more prone to consider the visual arts and its practitioners as expendable extras? Are institutions prone to rely increasingly on adjunct labor in the fine arts? And, in the face of the present vulnerability of arts professionals, what is the role of unions and what strategies of resistance can be employed? We are hoping that this session will spawn a greater critical discussion about the state of artistic employment in academia, which will resonate in longer-term conversations. We don’t want to be serious all of the time in Los Angeles, so we think that a party is in order! We discussed this with many of you in New York, and the consensus was that a party should be held off-site. There is a longstanding desire among our members to make the CAA conference extend into the community, allowing members to enjoy the broader city life. This will also enable us to avoid the often exorbitantly priced hotel catering. If anyone has location suggestions for a good off-site party venue, please let us know. Ideally we would like to find a venue with good food at affordable prices near the Los Angeles Convention Center, which also serves alcohol. If none of you have ideas, then we will rely on some recommendations from the Los Angeles-based union organizer who was at our conference in New York, Nayla Wren. As always, you are all encouraged to share with us items of interest that will take place at the conference, such as sessions or papers that we may also be interested in. If you would like to organize additional “shadow” events in conjunction with the conference, we would all be happy to hear it. We all know that Los Angeles has a robust arts scene, so we can imagine innumerable possibilities. CAA Conference in New York, 2013It is hard to believe that we already need to be thinking about the conference in 2013, but it is true. Institutions like CAA plan things far in advance. To that extent, we would like to invite all members of RAC to either individually or collaboratively submit a proposal for our sponsored session to be held at the 2013 conference in New York. In the past, themes for our sessions have been proposed by the elected officers of RAC or at business meetings. In the interest of expanding member involvement, we are opening up the process this year in order to explore a wider range of topics. The proposal should include a one-to-two page description of your topic and a brief (no more than two page) c.v. These documents should be sent to Joanna Gardner-Huggett, RAC Secretary (jgardner@depaul.edu) by email as attachments by May 30th. RAC officers will select one proposal, which will be submitted to the board of CAA for approval at the end of the summer. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions about the process. We hope that many of you will take this opportunity to contribute ideas for a stimulating session. Thank you all for your continuing involvement with our organization. We are looking forward to continuing to work toward making RAC the best that it can be. All the best,
Travis, Linnea, Kaylee, Joanna, and Heidi Travis Nygard, Co-president, travis@travisnygard.com
Linnea Wren, Co-president, lwren@gustavus.edu
Kaylee Spencer, Co-president, kspencer@gmail.com
Joanna Gardner-Huggett, Secretary, jgardner@depaul.edu
Heidi Cook, Treasurer, hac45@pitt.edu
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It was great to see many of you in New York. Our presence at CAA was robust
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