June 22–July 3, 2015
Application deadline: May 15
Tuition: 250 USD
Cannonball
1035 North Miami Avenue
Miami, FL 33136
research.art.dialogue (r.a.d) is an educational platform launched by Cannonball in 2014. It is open to everyone and draws from a long tradition of informal but rigorous pedagogical initiatives. A non-degree-granting program, r.a.d offers courses and seminars by a distinguished faculty of practitioners in the cultural fields and the social sciences. It is driven by an effort to develop a broad knowledge base for participants interested in working outside traditional disciplinary boundaries. Not a skill-based “school” in the traditional sense, it is a forum to engage in significant dialogues around contemporary realities in the cultural sphere and beyond it, and to develop projects that shed light on the dynamics that are organizing present-day urban and global configurations.
r.a.d’s summer semester 2015 is themed “Art and the Anthropocene.” Anthropocene is the geological age we entered with the massive industrialization of the planet over the last two centuries. It won’t be long before human-caused changes to the Earth’s biosphere, including climate instability, sea-level rise, and ice sheet and permafrost meltdowns, make a claim on cultural production, particularly in a city like Miami with such a complex, vulnerable ecosystem. r.a.d’s Summer Semester faculty includes artist and architect Marjetica Potrč, visual studies theorists Nicholas Mirzoeff and Heather Davis, and attorney John Wunderlin, who works at the think-tank Carbon Tracker. They will address the problems of climate change and engage the complexity of visualizing and conceptualizing the Anthropocene.
Courses:
Visual Activism and the Climate Disaster
How can we “see” climate change? How can we help create social change to avoid climate disaster? Led by Nicholas Mirzoeff, this course is a hands-on discussion and action-based project to help devise some answers.
Queer Ecologies
Life and Art in a Generalized State of War: Led by Heather Davis, this course will address contemporary artistic responses to increased anthropogenic change, fueled by extractivist and militarist impulses.
Climate Boundaries, Energy Finance, and Culture
Led by attorney John Wunderlin, this course will provide an introduction to the scientific, political, and economic foundations of the trend toward climate-friendly infrastructure and business practices, followed by an open-ended discussion on how this connects to long-standing themes in cultural criticism and art.
Urban Farming in Miami
Led by Marjetica Potrč, this course will consider what urban farming means in the Anthropocene. This course will work in conjunction with Potrč’s concurrent exhibition at Pérez Art Museum Miami.
research.art.dialogue’s fall semester 2015 will be themed “Post-Planetary Imaginaries.” A consequence of increasing environmental instability and continued resource depletion is a reactivation of our extra-planetary dreams. Drawing from sci-fi, space program history, and other galactic reveries, some are wondering what would happen if we severed human fate from that of the Earth. What are the economic, cultural, political, and epistemological implications of doing this? r.a.d has invited artists Julieta Aranda, Daniel Joseph Martínez, and Bik van der Pol, as well as anthropologist Deborah Battaglia and designer Ed Keller, to lead courses around these issues. Applications for this semester open in May.
research.art.dialogue is funded, in part, by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Florida State Department of Cultural Affairs.
For more information and to apply to research.art.dialogue, please click here.
About Cannonball
Cannonball is a non-profit, 501(c)(3), arts organization dedicated to supporting artists, innovative forms of cultural production, and education to advance critical discourse and understanding of contemporary art practice. Based in downtown Miami, Florida, Cannonball’s artist-centric values are mirrored in its experimental programs, resources, and opportunities that respond to the needs of today’s artists and reflect our efforts to better understand the nuances and textures of South Florida.
