Call for applications: Isaac Julien Lab

The University of California, Santa Cruz, is now accepting applications to the MFA program in Digital Arts and New Media.

Students interested in curating, archiving, and the presentation of still and moving image should apply to collaborate with artist Isaac Julien and curator Mark Nash on research and artistic production through the intensive research-based program in the Isaac Julien Lab.

The two-year Lab program aims to create innovative visual and sonic languages for production, exhibition and installation whilst examining the various aspects that concern contemporary artists and curators working in the field of media art and moving image today.

In keeping with a course of study that provides project-based learning, each year a residency opportunity will be offered that includes case studies, workshops, guest speakers, seminar discussions, and site visits. Students will be immersed in exhibition and installation work with contemporary artists and curators across the fields of media art and moving image, examining current modes of research, development, exhibition, production and scenography of moving image artworks. The program emphasizes partnership and collaboration with leading institutions such as Tate, the Royal Academy of Arts, British Film Institute, Goethe Institute London, Iuav University of Venice, and Kunsthochschule Kassel. In 2022, residency in the Isaac Julien Studio in London will be focused towards survey exhibitions in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Recent and upcoming projects include:
–Isaac Julien’s Lessons of the Hour at McEvoy Foundation for the Arts in San Francisco and accompanying program of online conversations
–Isaac Julien’s A Marvellous Entanglement at MAXXI in Rome 
–Mark Nash’s collaborative curatorial project and publication Grief and Grievance at the New Museum
–Isaac Julien’s summer exhibition at the Royal Academy in London which was reviewed in The Art Newspaper.

Core and elective courses support the development of individual thesis projects that are premiered in an annual MFA Exhibition. At the end of the program students can expect to have acquired practical and theoretical skills to better prepare them for a career as practicing artists, researchers or curators in cultural art industries.

This program has been developed in the Arts Division at UC Santa Cruz, which aims to focus on the artist as a cultural entrepreneur, who necessarily engages with the art world to further practices, aesthetic languages, and develop critical knowledge of the processes of cultural art industries today. Students may be offered up to two quarters of teaching assistantships which provide tuition remission, a stipend, and some fee remission. With completion of the MFA, many students consider applying to the PhD in Film and Digital Media. Current prospective PhD students should contact the program.