Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program
Based in New York City, The Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program is designed to facilitate the examination of both dominant and under-recognized epistemological frameworks that inform the system of art, including its production, consumption, distribution, and exhibition. Grounded in the global tradition of critical theory, the Program is focused on questioning discursive frameworks through which notions of culture and politics are conceptualized. It is intended for practitioners across all fields related to the Fine Arts, including artists, critics, curators, and others. The Program has been conceived to help art-makers to deepen and develop their understanding of the art institution, as well as its place in confronting the violences and inequalities of the present.
Every year, the program will be structured around a general theme or concept, which will be studied in more specific terms through readings and seminars hosted by seminar leaders and visiting faculty. Ten students will be selected to participate in the program each year.
Every year, the program will be structured around a general theme or concept, which will be studied in more specific terms through readings and seminars hosted by seminar leaders and visiting faculty. Ten students will be selected to participate in the program each year.
Seminars
The core of the Program is a weekly seminar (10 meetings per semester) based on readings in theory, as well as a selection of related images and videos. The seminars will alternate between a guided discussion by the core seminar leaders, and a presentation and discussion with an invited guest. Students will have the opportunity to help lead the core seminars, as well as act as a first respondent to the invited guests.
The theme for the 2024-2025
seminars will be: Critique: Why, How, When.
The seminars will focus on the history and role of critique in contemporary art: How do we carry out critical analysis? When do we do it? And what is its purpose or effect? The notion of critique has become ubiquitous in the fine arts, naming both a pedagogical approach (group critique) and a more general attitude or process of examination (institutional critique) and studio processes and approaches such as institutional critique. We will consider how and why critique has become integral to contemporary art; the relationship between critique and secularism; critique and its effects on aesthetic output (such as an emphasis on research methodology and presentations in exhibitions settings); formal and informal critique; as well as normative and unconventional ways of critical analysis.
Application Deadline
All application materials and supporting documents must be received by June 30th, 2024. Applicants will be notified by July 29th.
The theme for the 2023-2024 seminars is ‘alternative spaces.’
Throughout the year, we will consider the ways in which practitioners have envisioned the idea of the alternative as a counterpoint to conventional or dominant ways of making, exhibiting, and selling art; funding projects; and engaging with educational institutions and residencies, research methodologies, and knowledge production. We will examine the political, cultural, and technological contexts out of which a range of recent ‘alternative’ projects and practices have grown, exploring their limits and possibilities, and studying the attendant risks of cooptation and institutionalization. With the input of guests, we will problematize the concept itself by examining how and for whom a practice exists as alternative, thinking together through ways of understanding the mainstream and its antitheses in an expressly global contemporary art context. Our seminars will be guided by established and thoughtful artists, curators, gallerists, theorists and writers, who will respond to these questions from the perspective of their research and work. Following the lead of our guest seminar leaders, we will be unpacking the phenomena of the alternative, reading from a range of historical and contemporary texts that spans various disciplines including art-history, philosophy, and politics.
The 2022-2023
seminars will examine themes around art and labor. Within this framework, we will focus on historical, political, and aesthetic perspectives related to conventional and non-conventional notions of art and labor practices. Particular attention will be paid to: the historical materialist method and critiques of the eurocentrism therewithin; organized and spontaneous labor movements and their theorists; theories of class constitution and formation; intersections between class and identity formations; and the vexed relationship between postmodern theory and materialist analysis. We will consider ways of framing cultural labor and the role of artists within the context of different political economies (especially socialism vs. capitalism). To this end, we will look at historical and recent theoretical texts published by and about arts workers as well as adjacent global art historical movements. We will also take into account the recent wave of unionization in museums around the United States and beyond, and study the political and aesthetic issues that have arisen as a result. We will historicize this recent activity by looking at comparable movements in the artworld (1930s, 1970s, 2000s) wherein artists have organized around certain labor related demands and strategies of protecting their rights such as the use of artists’ contracts.
The theme for the 2021-2022
session is
"Differencing Art."
Differencing, as Pollock argues, is a verb that means contending with fixed ideas, hegemonic structures, and standard procedures. Differencing refers to continuous negotiations or re-negotiations of the boundaries of a discourse or practice. Throughout the year, we will examine how artists challenge conventions, categories, hierarchies, power, norms, and histories of various artistic movements across a global geography. We will consider how art intersects with topics including ecology, environmental justice, decolonization and anti-colonial strategies, indigeneity, and concepts of value.
For the 2020-2021
session, the IATP will focus on the various notions of "Representation."
We will use theoretical, philosophical, economic, pedagogical, and political approaches to representation. And we will especially focus on the relationship between representation and the idea of “the other,” through topics including\: race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, and other identitarian matrices. We will track this relation as “the other” oscillates within representation between that which is “unfamiliar” (rooted in particular forms of ethnocentrism) and that which is unknowable or opaque, and therefore one that the self cannot identify with or assimilate. At the same time, we will address how the other informs identity and identification –the conscious and unconscious emotional attachment we form with “other” objects and peoples as a part of forming or informing the self. Equal emphasis will be placed on Western and Non-Western bodies of knowledge. The primary avenue for these investigations will be through Art and other forms of cultural production.
For this session, we will not be accepting applications or meeting in seminar format weekly. We will instead invite participants to meet once a month in a larger space to accommodate health guidelines. If you wish to participate in the monthly session, please send us an email by September 2020
For 2019-2020, the Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program will take up: “Aesthetics and Pedagogy.”
we will explore the overlaps between aesthetics and pedagogy. Our interest will be to collectively understand how the aesthetic functions as a way of thinking, making, and being that both educates and requires an education. We will work across the history of the concept of “an aesthetic education” (from Friedrich Schiller to Gayatri Spivak) and then move to consider the rise of professional art education, the role of art institutions, and the place of pedagogic practice within artworks. Using an interdisciplinary methodology, we will explore these questions across philosophy, critical theory, history, and art history. Review of applications will begin June 1st. We will accept applications until June 15th.
For 2018-2019, the subject of the Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program will be “Humanisms”. By considering various approaches aligned with humanism, anti-humanism, and post-humanism, this year’s theme will interrogate systems of thought that center and decenter the secular notion that history is something that is produced and can be rationally understood by the human subject. Equal emphasis will be placed on non-Eurocentric and Eurocentric (wherein humanism is one of the ideal democratic projects that aims at producing and promoting a critical and progressively freer mind) approaches to humanism.
Seminars will be held at 513 W 20th Street, New York, NY 10011 on Fridays.
