Events: Symposium
On October 13, 2007, Southern Methodist University will host the symposium Collecting & Collectivity. Professors Noah Simblist and Charissa Terranova will mediate talks by and round-table discussion between the theorist WJT Mitchell, curator Michelle White, and two artists, Mel Ziegler and K8 Hardy.
SCHEDULE
9:00 Charissa Terranova – opening remarks
9:30 WJT Mitchell lecture
10:30 questions
10:45 Mel Ziegler lecture
11:45 questions
12:00 lunch break
1:30 panel
Noah Simblist - moderator
Mel Ziegler
WJT Mitchel
Michelle White
K8 Hardy
3:30 reception
BIOS
W. J. T. Mitchell is Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago. He is editor of the interdisciplinary journal, Critical Inquiry, a quarterly devoted to critical theory in the arts and human sciences. A scholar and theorist of media, visual art, and literature, Mitchell is associated with the emergent fields of visual culture and iconology (the study of images across the media). He is known especially for his work on the relations of visual and verbal representations in the context of social and political issues. Under his editorship, Critical Inquiry has published specialized issues on public art, psychoanalysis, pluralism, feminism, the sociology of literature, canons, race and identity, narrative, politics of interpretation, post-colonial theory, and many other topics. He has been the recipient of several awards including the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Morey Prize in art history given by the College Art Association of America. In 2003, he received the University of Chicago's prestigious Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching. His publications include: "The Pictorial Turn," Artforum (March 1992); "What Do Pictures Want?" October (Summer 1997); What Do Pictures Want? (2005); The Last Dinosaur Book: The Life and Times of a Cultural Icon (1998); Picture Theory (1994); Art and the Public Sphere (1993); Landscape and Power (1992); Iconology (1987); The Language of Images (1980); On Narrative (1981); and The Politics of Interpretation (1984).
Mel Ziegler received his B.F.A. in sculpture at Kansas City Art Institute; afterwards, he attended California Institute of the Arts where he earned an M.F.A. Since that time he has lectured throughout the United States, Europe and South America. He has received numerous awards including National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Awards in 1989 and 1993, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, the Pollock-Krasner Award, and an Augustus Saint-Gaudens Fellowship. His work is shown both nationally and internationally. In 1989, he was included in the Whitney Biennial and was invited to Art Pace in San Antonio as part of their residency program. Professor Zeigler's work includes many permanent public projects including the Downtown Seattle Transit project in Seattle, Washington, "Wall of Words" at the Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago, and "Come and Go," a project commissioned for the Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition, Spaces, in Cleveland. Ziegler’s collaboration with his late wife and partner Kate Ericson has recently been explored in “America Starts Here: Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler” curated by Ian Barry and Bill Arning. The exhibition started at The Tang Museum, and traveled to the MIT List Center, the Austin Museum of Art, The Kansas City Art Institute and the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center.
K8 Hardy was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1977. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, as a video and performance artist. She received her BA from Smith College and also attended the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. Hardy is co-founder and editor of the queer feminist journal and artist collective LTTR. Her performances and collaborations are informed by her preoccupations with feminist aesthetics, the body, representation, and explorative expression. She often collaborates with artist Wynne Greenwood for their amorphous project New Report. Hardy’s work has shown in several group exhibitions domestically and abroad, recently including “Media Burn” at the Tate Modern (07), “Uncertain States of America” at the Moscow Biennial (07), “Shared Women” at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibition (07), and “Exile of the Imaginary” at the Generali Foundation, Vienna (07). Hardy has also served on panels that engage conversations on the material and political concerns of feminist and queer art in the contemporary art world.
Michelle White is an Assistant Curator at The Menil Collection, and is a co-curator of the museum's current exhibition, "Lessons from Below: Otabenga Jones & Associates." She is the Houston regional editor of Artlies, and frequent contributor to Art Papers. She received her MA in Art History from Tufts University in 2005 and has been an adjunct instructor of contemporary art at the Glassell School of Art. Prior to her position at the Menil, she worked in the curatorial department of modern and contemporary art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the department of Prints and Drawings at the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University.