Teddy Cruz, Marjetica Potrč
Joshua Decter
Embassy Room, Davidson Conference Center
USC University Park Campus
3415 South Figueroa Street
Los Angeles, CA 90089
Telephone: 213 743 8540
www.roski.usc.edu/calendar/event
Architecture, Design, Art: Strategies for Survival is the second conversation event of a two-part series, Participation and Friction: Rethinking Art and Architecture as Public Culture, organized by Joshua Decter, Director of the Master of Public Art Studies Program (Art in the Public Sphere) at USC’s Roski School of Fine Arts. This series – sponsored by the Visions and Voices initiative at USC –features conversations between contemporary artists, curators, architects, and writers, and focuses upon how cultural producers navigate the social and political frictions of today’s urban public spheres.
On April 6, Teddy Cruz, Marjetica Potrč, and Krzysztof Wodiczko will engage in a discussion about their contextually-based, socially engaged projects that rethink the interrelationship between top-down and bottom-up modes of art production and architectural design, question normative cultural hierarchies, utilize new processes of collaboration and participation, and facilitate unusual responses to crises within urban and other social territories. The first event of the series took place on February 2, entitled Art and Architecture in the Public Sphere of Cities, and featured Anne Pasternak, Doug Aitken and Peter Zellner.
Teddy Cruz was born in Guatemala City. After earning the Rome Prize in Architecture, he established his practice in San Diego, California. He is internationally recognized for his research on the Tijuana/San Diego border and his work on the relationship between housing, urban policy, and social and cultural programs, in collaboration with community-based organizations such as Casa Familiar. In 2008, he was selected to represent the U.S. in the Venice Biennial of Architecture. He is an Associate Professor in public culture and urbanism in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego.
Marjetica Potrč is an artist and architect based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout Europe and the Americas, and her on-site installations include Dry Toilet (Caracas, 2003). She has taught at well-known institutions in Europe and North America, including MIT, and has published essays on contemporary urban architecture. She has received numerous grants and awards, most notably the Hugo Boss Prize (2000) and the Vera List Center for Arts and Politics Fellowship at The New School in New York (2007).
Krzysztof Wodiczko is an internationally known artist and Professor in the Visual Arts Program at MIT. As part of his directorship of MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies, Wodiczko heads the Interrogative Design Group. Wodiczko has created projections of politically charged images on monuments and public buildings, and has developed a series of public intervention instrumentations. Wodiczko’s work has been exhibited internationally in the Gwangju Biennale, the Venice Architectural Biennial, and the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial, and will be representing Poland in the 2009 Venice Biennial. Wodiczko was awarded the Hiroshima Art Prize for his contribution to world peace.
For more information on this event (location map, etc.), please go to:
www.roski.usc.edu/calendar/event/868008/visions–voices-architecture-design-art-strategies-for-survival/
The Master of Public Art Studies Program (Art in the Public Sphere) at USC’s Roski School of Fine Arts functions as a hub for critically rethinking the role of art in the public sphere and public space. Students in the graduate program focus upon many theoretical and practical problems facing artists, curators, critics, theorists, architects, and other cultural producers, in order to re-imagine the public sphere in terms of the challenges of city-space and the urban condition; evaluate processes of social collaboration, networks of participation, and relational aesthetics; identify strategies of location-driven, site-specific, and situational engagement; debate concepts and realities of community-based practice; interrogate the role of the curator—and curatorial practice—in city-based exhibition projects; and situate public art vis-à-vis broader art histories.
Director of the Program:
Joshua Decter
Faculty:
Rhea Anastas, Edgar Arceneaux, Anne Bray, Donna Conwell, Janet Owen Driggs, Lauri Firstenberg, Rita Gonzalez, Susan Gray, Karen Moss, Carol Stakenas, Christina Ulke
Guest speakers (fall 2007 through spring 2009): Andrea Fraser, Mark Dion, Patricia Phillips, Gregory Sholette, Ute Meta Bauer, Doug Aitken, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Teddy Cruz, Marjetica Potrc, Norman Klein, Anne Pasternak, Rudolf Frieling, Peter Zellner, Steve Dietz, Bulbo, Sam Durant, Michael Krichman, Rick Lowe, Rochelle Steiner, Allan McCollum, Miwon Kwon, Nato Thompson, Hou Hanru, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Grant Kester, Tirdad Zolghadr
For more information about the Master of Public Art Studies Program (Art in the Public Sphere) at the USC Roski School of Fine Arts please visit:
http://roski.usc.edu/pas/
New extended deadline for the 2009 – 2010 academic year: May 1, 2009
http://roski.usc.edu/pas/admission.html
For more information go to: http://roski.usc.edu/calendar/event/868008/visions–voices-architecture-design-art-strategies-for-survival
