Press Release: CMU School of Art's Fall Lecture Series Features Artistic Stars Across Disciplines
Contact: Lauren Goshinski / 412-268-1533 / laurengo@andrew.cmu.edu
PITTSBURGH—Internationally acclaimed artists and curators whose work and research span performance and sound art, public sculpture, human-computer interaction, subversions of public media and the lesser known facts about Andy Warhol's influential works are featured in the fall lecture series at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Art.
Speakers include Melissa Ragona, Pauline Oliveros, Nobuho Nagasawa, Stelarc, Simon Leung, Carolee Schneeman and collaborative duos Eva & Franco Mattes, and Carol Conde and Karl Beveridge. All lectures are free and open to the public. The schedule follows.
5 p.m., Sept. 13, Melissa Ragona, Kresge Theater, College of Fine Arts (CFA) building
Melissa Ragona, associate professor of critical theory and art history at CMU, leads off with "POP NOISE: From Maryanne Amacher to Andy Warhol." Ragona is completing a book on Warhol's tape recordings, tentatively titled "Readymade Sound: Andy Warhol's Recording Aesthetics." The book will be published by the University of California Press, Berkeley.
5 p.m., Sept. 20, Pauline Oliveros, Kresge Theater, CFA
Pauline Oliveros, an important pioneer in American Music, has forged new ground for other artists by creating a body of work across four decades with such breadth of vision that it profoundly affects those who experience it, and eludes many who try to write about it. Through improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation, she has developed the concept of Deep Listening, which John Cage described as "finally know(ing) what harmony is ... it's about the pleasure of making music."
5 p.m., Sept. 27, Nobuho Nagasawa, Kresge Theater, CFA
Interdisciplinary artist Nobuho Nagasawa's lecture is co-presented by the City of Pittsburgh's Office of Public Art, the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, and Point Park University in advance of her 2011-12 project in downtown Pittsburgh, which will make a connection between the Mon Wharf and the Point Park campus. Nagasawa's site-specific work explores the places, politics, ecology, and psychological dimensions of space and people, involving deep research into cultural history and memory, and extensive community participation.
4:30 p.m., Oct. 5, Stelarc, Rashid Auditorium, Gates Center
Stelarc, a former STUDIO for Creative Inquiry fellow and honorary professor of art and robotics at CMU, returns to Pittsburgh with his Internet-enabled "Ear-on-Arm" (literally, an ear he surgically affixed to his arm). Stelarc has used medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, Virtual Reality systems, the Internet, and biotechnology to explore alternate, intimate and involuntary interfaces with the body. His lecture is co-presented by CMU's Human-Computer Interaction Institute.
5 p.m., Oct. 11, Simon Leung, 5 p.m., Kresge Theater, CFA
The work of artist Simon Leung serves as a companion guide for examining the dislocation and disparities that are left in the aftermath of war. Using video, performance and other media, Leung obliquely reinvents the war stories of our time.
5 p.m., Oct. 18, Carolee Schneeman, 5 p.m., Kresge Theater, CFA
A pioneer of performance art, Carolee Schneeman works in a wide variety of media including performance, assemblage, photography, film, video, and installation to examine discourse on the body, sexuality and gender. Her work has been shown at innumerable venues around the world including the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC; the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), LA, Barcelona and Vienna; the New Museum of Contemporary Art, NYC (major retrospective), MOCA, LA; Stadtische Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf, Germany; Venice Biennale, Italy; and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
5 p.m., Oct. 25, Eva & Franco Mattes, 5 p.m., Kresge Theater, CFA
Eva and Franco Mattes are the Brooklyn-based artist-provocateurs behind the infamous website www.0100101110101101.org. Pioneers of the net.art movement, they are renowned for masterful subversion of public media such as an unauthorized Nike advertising campaign, a fake Vatican website, and a radioactive children's playground made with scrap metal from Chernobyl.
5 p.m., Nov. 3, Carol Conde & Karl Beveridge, Kresge Theater, CFA
The fall series concludes with Toronto duo Carol Conde and Karl Beveridge, who have an amazing track record of socially concerned and politically committed art making. Since 1975 their photography projects, which often involve the actual community members represented, investigate stories about labor and resistance. Their lecture will be co-presented with the Department of the History of Art & Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh.
The lecture series is listed at www.cmu.edu/art/lectures. Any changes will be posted on the website. Questions about the series can be directed to 412.268.2409 or laurengo@andrew.cmu.edu.
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