Banff Centre - 27 Our Literal Speed: Stuff Near Art That Is Not Art, Which Is Treated As If It Were Art, Is Now The Substance of Most Serious Art

Much of the visual art of the twenty-first century vivifies the formerly neutral, decorative surfaces that have surrounded the discussion, production, and display of artworks: the gallery opening, the white cube, the PowerPoint lecture, the auction house.

Faculty: Abbey Shaine Dubin
Guests: Theaster Gates, Christopher P. Heuer, Matthew Jesse Jackson

Materials and situations, atmospheres and activities that had once been very near art but not art, are now very often art. Much of the visual art of the twenty-first century vivifies the formerly neutral, decorative surfaces that have surrounded the discussion, production, and display of artworks: the gallery opening, the white cube, the PowerPoint lecture, the auction house. And over the last decade a renewed sense of art’s expressive possibility has flourished as more stuff began to be treated as if it were art, a process that has developed in dialogue with painting, photography, sculpture, performance, and video; the media that have come to dominate our imagining of modern art’s historical achievement. As a result, a cloud of evaluative anxiety accompanies this new art. It is as if today, only if we are unsure who did it, what they did, where they did it, why they did it, and how they managed to do it, only then are our minds constructively engaged. Perhaps we have so much information today that only its deficit can bring about a truly arresting art experience. Or maybe we can put it this way: if the twentieth century was defined by the Readymade, then perhaps the twenty-first century belongs to the Nevermade.

Our Literal Speed is open to all practices, scholarly and artistic, that engage the question, “Why is contemporary art contemporary?”

The residency will consist of two seminars each week, studio visits with faculty and guests, video screenings, and weekly readings.