2010 SALON Series

posted January 20, 2010 in events, news, salons  |  tags: ania szremski, book arts, cartography, curating, reproducibility, salons, the doctoral artis  |  no comments

The Work of Gambling Historians: Oblique Glances at the Present

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Image: Eric Fleischauer, Assigned + Recommended Reading, 2007. Image courtesy of the artist.

2010 Schedule:

The  Doctoral Artist: Research and Art Practice
Tuesday, January 26, 7:00 p.m.

Cartography 2.0
Tuesday, February 23, 7:00 p.m.

Curating the Page
Tuesday, March 23, 7:00 p.m.

Art in the Age of Infinite Reproducibility
Tuesday, April 20, 7:00 p.m.

Join threewalls this winter for the 2010 SALONS series, The Work of Gambling Historians: Oblique Glances at the Present, a special series curated by Ania Szremski. Held on Tuesday evenings at 7:00 pm, SALONS feature guest respondents in round table discussion with the public about currents the contemporary visual arts.

The pictures of race horses crossing the finish line in The Truth Will be Known When the Last Witness is Dead from Walid Raad’s Atlas Project show the horse’s nose right before, or right after, crossing the finish line—never at the exact moment that the horse wins. This project eloquently demonstrates our inability to capture the precise moment in which we live; we need temporal and critical distance for lived experience to coalesce into something recognizable. Perhaps because of this very difficulty, there is an inevitable anxiety to understand, define and delineate the present.

The Work of Gambling Historians is a discussion series that intends to take a sidelong glance at the present moment in cultural production, while remaining cognizant of the fact that these glances will inevitably result in blurry, distorted visions. The series is inspired by a perhaps contentious intuition that technological developments over the past two decades have produced an epistemic shift in terms of our relationship to the concept of “knowledge.” A cursory glance at contemporary art production may reveal certain trends related to this hunch: today, we see art practice steeped in personal or scholarly research, that is often archival in nature, and that doesn’t necessarily result in an end product; a turn to the map and diagram to connect ideas and reveal the patterns hidden under experience; and a resurgence of interest in the publication, parallel to a voracious plundering of the possibilities of the internet and new technologies.   The Work of Gambling Historians proposes to investigate this evolution in contemporary ways of receiving, processing, and ordering information, and how this evolution is made manifest in artistic, curatorial, and critical practice.

threewallsSALONS are an ongoing project that invites creative producers and thinkers into the gallery for an open-forum discussion about currents in contemporary visual art and culture. SALONS pose a discussion topic, gather a few key contributors and then open up the floor for discussion between those actively engaged in the 'question' and anyone and everyone who would like to come and be apart of the conversation. This year’s series was curated by Ania Szremski, a dual MA candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Art History, Theory and Criticism and Arts Administration and Policy. This project was funded in part by The Presidential Urban Engagement Grant distributed by SAIC.

Discussions are gently moderated to keep the discussion flowing.

Check the calendar for more details.

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