Review Revista Art San Diego_2013

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2013

RE

VIEW



The Department of Visual Arts is proud to

present this overview of exemplary events

from our 2012-13 academic year. The

collection could not have been possible

without the efforts of our outstanding faculty,

students, and staff. Their efforts enable a

unique pedagogical environment for thefurthering of creative research, critical

discourse, and cultural practice, embodied

in the outstanding works and events of this

landmark year.



3

Sciences

Theatre

& Dance

Physics

Engineering

Humanities

Cognitive

Science

Social

Sciences

Music

Calit2

Cinema

Neuroscience

CHAIR’S STATEMENT - p. 4

INITIATIVES - p. 6 COLLABORATIVE PLATFORMS

FOR RESEARCH & EDUCATION

PRODUCTION- p. 14STUDENT & FACULTY PROJECTS

PUBLIC PROGRAMS - p. 20 LECTURES, SYMPOSIA, & EXHIBITIONS

NEWS - p. 26 AWARDS, SCHOLARSHIPS, & PEOPLE

SUPPORT - p. 30 OPPORTUNITIES FOR GIVING

CONTENTS

Center for

Design &

Geopolitics

p. 8

Arthur C.

Clarke Center

for Human

Imagination

p. 7

Active

Structures +

Materials

p. 6

Experimental

Sculpture

& Painting

Production

Studiop. 11

UC San

Diego Design

Theory &

Research

Platformp. 8

Experimental

Media Lab

p. 13

Center

for Urban

Ecologies

p.9

Discursive &

Curatorial

Productions

p. 10

Performative

Nanorobotics

Lab

p. 12

Experimental

Drawing

Studiop. 12

Unweave

p. 14

Sensitive Boys

p. 17

Salt Exclosure:

Red Hill Marina,

Imperial Valley

p.15

Preuss students visit

the Department of

Visual Arts

p. 19

Graduate student

Kate Clark interviews

Professor Fred Lonidierp. 14

Los Laureles

Wicking Gardens

p. 19

DODO Editions

p. 17

University Art Gallery

Curatorial Fellowship

p. 18

Annual conference &

showcase of graduate

student talent

p. 20

Neighborhood projects

give a local spin to

Living as Form(The Nomadic Version)

p. 22

Graduating artists

make their mark

p. 23

Drones at Home at Calit2

p. 25

NanoMacroMega exhibit

inaugurates SME building

p. 24

Artists and engineers

collaborate in CORPUS

p. 23

Undergraduate Art Show

at the University Art Gallery

p. 25

We’d Love Your

Company brings

back alumna

Martha Rosler

p. 21

The department partners

with MCASD to host

Tania Bruguera

p. 20

Chair’s Statement

p. 4

UC SAN DIEGO

DEPARTMENT

OF VISUAL ARTSScholarships and

Fellowships

p. 30

Space &

Program Support

p. 31

The Visual Arts +

Engineering

Complex

p. 30

Friends of

Visual Arts: Ivan

& Elaine Kamil

p. 31

Mechanical

Engineering

New interdisciplinary

collaborations

p. 16

News

p. 26



Chair’s Statement

CHAIR’S STATEMENTUC San Diego’s Department of Visual Arts has

been an innovative force in the international

art community for nearly half a century. It

is one of the country’s leading centers for

research in contemporary art practice, history

and theory and one of the few institutions in

the country that combines its MFA and Ph.D.

programs in a single scholarly and artistic

community. With artists, curators, critics,

and historians brought into close proximity

and dialogue, diverse domains of practice

are synergized in novel forms of production,

analysis, organization, and display.

The department has a long-standing

commitment to interdisciplinarity

and research-based approaches to

artmaking. Situated within a large metropolitan

region stretching from Los Angeles across theborder to Tijuana, the visual arts program is

deeply tied to the history of artistic innovation

in Southern California and the border culture

of the U.S. and Mexico. It has an ongoing

interest in urban, ecological, and territorial

transformations and their critical relationship

to arts and culture, often in the context of its

engagement with Latin America along a trans-

continental axis to the south and East Asia

along a trans-Pacific axis to the west.

Widely recognized for its unique concentration

of faculty concerned with the production,

criticism, and analysis of contemporary

art, the department is also recognized as a

nexus for innovative research that bridges

artistic practice with forms of intellectual

inquiry and creative production across

the humanities and sciences. Faculty and

students engage with a diverse range of

research methodologies and disciplinary

specializations, however situated their work

might be within a particular historical or

disciplinary domain. They collaborate with

colleagues across the performing and literary

arts, social sciences, cognitive sciences,engineering, and urban studies, as well

as with practitioners in the larger regional

community. Unique combinations of studio,

media, and performative practices emerge

along with innovative forms of scholarship

that combine traditional print-based

forms with multi-modal or practice-based

components. Combinatory forms emerge that

link the studio and the laboratory, on-site work

and in-field work: adaptive and situationally-

responsive projects that accommodate

unconventional forms of knowledge production

and collaborative endeavor, facilitating new

configurations among institutions and publics.

The Structural and Materials Engineering

(SME) building houses an entirely new

complex of facilities and research centers.

Here faculty and students engage in dialogue

and collaboration with researchers working

in nanotechnology, materials science,

and large-scale structural engineering,

exploring new forms of distributed cognition,

materials fabrication, sensing, and computer

visualization. Newly-opened faculty-

driven research initiatives at SME include

the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human

Imagination; the Center for Urban Ecologies;

the Center for Design and Geopolitics; and

an interdisciplinary Design initiative that

aims to facilitate design-related research

and pedagogy across the division of Arts &

Humanities, the division of Social Sciences,

Faculty and students engage with a diverse range of

research methodologies and disciplinary specializations,

however situated their work might be within a particular

historical or disciplinary domain. They collaborate with

colleagues across the performing and literary arts,

social sciences, cognitive sciences, engineering, and

urban studies, as well as with practitioners in the larger

regional community.

and the school of Engineering. New research

and production studios include those devoted

to the exploration of Discourse and Curatorial

Production; Experimental Painting and

Sculpture; Active Structures and Materials;

Experimental Drawing; and Performative

Nanorobotics. The department’s facilities also

include a laboratory for Experimental Mediawith state-of-the-art 4K video, HD editing and

sound production suites, and a Fabrication

Lab equipped with an advanced Robotic

Milling System whose specialized tooling and

software systems allow the full-scale design

and production of complex, 3-dimensional

forms in nearly any material. Another of the

department’s main sites for interdisciplinary

exchange is the California Institute for

Telecommunications and Information

Technology (Calit2), where faculty and

students work with researchers at the forefront

of advanced networking, visualization, and

communications technologies, exploring 4K

cinema, experimental gaming environments,

locative media, embedded computing, and

visual analytics, in ways that further link

engineering, science and technology with

the visual arts.

Three primary galleries are programmed by

the department. The University Art Gallery,

founded in 1966, has had a long-standing

commitment to new forms of artistic practice,

with a distinguished history of exhibitions

featuring some of the most significant figures

in the areas of installation, performance and

studio-based art practice. It has originated

some of the earliest west coast exhibitions of

the most influential Conceptualists of the time.

The Visual Arts Gallery at the SME building

hosts presentations by artists and creative

researchers at the forefront of new work in

media theory, design, materials research,

science studies, and engineering. The

department also programs the gallery@calit2

in collaboration with a curatorial committee

drawn from faculty in the humanities,

engineering, and social sciences. Integrally

connected to the research being generated

at Calit2, the gallery presents events andexhibitions that bring together leading artists

and researchers working with next-generation

sensing, fabrication, networking, and display

technology. In addition to these spaces, two

galleries are maintained for the presentation of

undergraduate and graduate student work.

Together these sites further the Visual Arts

Department’s ongoing commitment to the

development of new critical discourses,

strategies of display, and practices of

curation, from traditional studio-based work

to community-based productions to advanced

technological forms. Deeply intertwined with

its educational mission, these galleries provide

venues for furthering creative research,

pedagogical endeavor, and social awareness.

As we prepare students for careers as artists,

critics, teachers, curators, and scholars,

we also prepare them for a whole range of

affiliated professions from work in independent

and public media, to libraries and archives,

to entrepreneurial activity and institutional

directorship, to design-related professions

in media, materials, and software. Students

are taught disciplinary knowledges and skills

in specific artistic and scholarly pursuits

within visual arts, in addition to transferable

knowledges and skills that prepare them

to be intellectually and creatively agile in

whatever discipline they may pursue. Our

courses prepare students for the hybrid formsof cultural practice that are emerging in an

increasingly networked world—a world where

new creative forms emerge in a changing

ecology of contemporary art production,

scientific research, communication

technology, and social and institutional space.

Courses also prepare students for engagement

with diverse publics—art audiences as well

as broader demographics through techniques

that might be incorporated from fields such as

journalism and ethnography, in sites that may

involve the street or the marketplace as much

as the museum.

What commitments to materiality, history, and

critical awareness will be maintained in these

new scholarly and artistic pursuits? Just as

these practitioners may well go on to become

significant figures in contemporary art and

criticism, they may well go on to invent entirely

new forms of cultural practice and analysis—

forms that are barely visible to us today.

In these ways and others, the Department

of Visual Arts continues its commitment

to probing the necessary interconnections

between art, culture, and political life.

Developing a diverse community of artists,theorists, historians, and cultural practitioners,

the department furthers its dedication to

the development of pioneering scholarly

and artistic works, producing new interfaces

among faculty and students, artists and

scientists, academics and broader publics.

Jordan Crandall

Professor and Chair

1982

2012

5Chair’s Statement



7InitiativesInitiatives

Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination

Exploring a future where technology, science,

and art will converge in ways we can’t foresee,

the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human

Imagination brings together artists and scientific

researchers to, as Arthur C. Clarke has

provocatively suggested, discover the limits of

the possible by venturing past them into the

impossible. Professor Sheldon Brown created

and directs the Center.

During its inaugural year the Clarke Center

hosted a symposium called Visions of the

Future, which looked 33 years ahead through

the incorporation of pioneering research in

cognitive science, neuroscience, visual art, and

design—a time frame that was inspired by the

film 2001: A Space Odyssey , (the screenplay

of which Clarke co-wrote, based on his short

story), which was set in a future 33 years

beyond its 1968 release date. A symposium

called Starship Century was also presented, this

time looking 100 years ahead—“when we can

travel to the stars.” The symposium looked at

ideas ranging from the physics of propulsion

systems to questions of what the “us” is that

we could actually take beyond earth—the

bodies that we inhabit right now, or its sets of

information, or other forms that are difficult to

imagine. Participants included physicist and

mathematician Freeman Dyson, whose work

ranges from quantum electrodynamics to

astronomy and nuclear engineering; physicist

and author Paul Davies; science fiction author

and astrophysicist Greg Benford; author Neal

Stephenson, whose novels range from science

produced breakthroughs in understanding

subtle brain functions. In the year ahead the

Center will expand its research with several

new pioneering projects. The “Imaginarium

Lab” will be developed to integrate various

fiction to cyberpunk; and science fiction

writer Kim Stanley Robinson, best known for

his Mars trilogy.

In June 2013, in partnership with UC San

Diego’s Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind,

the Clarke Center hosted Creativity and the

Arts: A Neuronal Hypothesis, a lecture by

French neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux,

author of books including The Good, The

True, and the Beautiful: A Neuronal Approach

and The Physiology of Truth: Neuroscience

and Human Knowledge . His research has

ways in which cognitive scientists and

neuroscientists analyze user behavior—part

of Professor Brown’s goal of understanding

how viewers respond to art. It will include

researchers in the field of neuroscience who

look at how people’s own neurological imagery

relates to small group interactions, and to the

creative and imaginative states of individuals

within groups. Projects like the Imaginarium

are supported by individual and corporate

partners, including ViaSat Inc., Founding

Partner of the Clarke Center.

Collaborative Platforms for Research and EducationINITIATIVES

The symposium looked at ideas ranging from the physics

of propulsion systems to questions of what the “us” is that

we could actually take beyond earth—the bodies that we

inhabit right now, or its sets of information, or other forms

that are difficult to imagine.

Active Structures + Materials is home to two

groups: the Material Culture Working Group

and the Active Structures Research Group.

The Material Culture Working Group, led

by faculty Norman Bryson and Elizabeth

Newsome, was established to afford

opportunities for new dialogues, exchanges

and collaborations across the variety of

disciplines participating in material culture

research: a growing area of scholarly interest

that has emerged in the past decade across

the humanities, arts, sciences, and social

sciences. It acknowledges that how we

experience the world relies on a complexand dynamic interrelationship with the objects

and environments all around us, through

our thoughts, perception, and abilities to

engage with them as creative agents, and

that this interplay constitutes a vital realm

of activity that requires new analytical and

aesthetic frameworks.

The group meets throughout the academic

year for lectures, readings, and discussions

from researchers working in disciplines

that include philosophy, literature, cinema,

media studies, anthropology, art history,

linguistics, science studies, and cognitive

science. Meetings in fall 2012 involved a

general introductory discussion with readings

that included Bill Brown’s “Thing Theory,”

Eva Domanska’s “The Material Presence of

the Past,” and Stephen Connor’s “ Thinking

Things;” and an exploration of “Presence

and Embodied Experience in Sculpture”

through the work of faculty members Jennifer

Pastor and Anya Gallaccio. For the winter

2013 meeting, titled “The Body as a Sort

of Cinematic Thing,” Professor Lesley Stern

presented an excerpt from her book Dead

and Alive: The body as cinematic thing,

exploring the material status of the body in

cinema. The spring 2013 meeting involved atalk by faculty member Benjamin H. Bratton

regarding the contingencies of politics and

aesthetics with regard to the “anthropocenic

subject,” with readings that included

Gean Moreno’s “Notes on the Inorganic,”

Nick Land’s “Machinic Desire,” and Reza

Negarestani’s“Drafting the Inhuman.”

The Active Structures Research Group, led

by Professor Jordan Crandall, will begin the

coming year with a project at gallery@calit2

called AUTONOMOUS —an exhibition and

conference that will explore ways to think and

act in a world where “intelligence” becomes

embedded into the fabric of everyday life.

Including artworks by Harun Farocki, Casey

Reas, and Rineke Dijkstra, in addition to

lectures by researchers including Katherine

Hayles and Nigel Thrift, the project examines

the novel forms of agency that are able to

communicate and respond to change in ways

that often bypass the sensory and cognitive

capacities of humans.

Active Structures + Materials

Philosophy

Science

Studies

Media

Studies

Literature

Cinema

Cognitive

Science

Linguistics

Art History

Active

Structures +

Materials

Anthropology




An incubator for interdisciplinary and

experimental design, the UC San Diego Design

Theory and Research Platform serves to link

projects and programs from across campus

and across the world. This new program

establishes a core design discourse, bringing

a global design-theoretical conversation on

campus that will serve multiple intellectual

and research interests and provide a hub

for design research across disciplinary

encounters, from critical and speculative art

to biotechnology, from interaction design to

global urbanism.

Directed by faculty member Benjamin H.

Bratton, the Platform serves as a site of

encounter and support for unique projects

that might otherwise not fit within normal

institutional frameworks. It facilitatescollaboration at both graduate student and

faculty levels, allocates space and equipment,

and organizes regular peer-critique of project

development. The Platform draws upon and

supports other initiatives internal to visual arts

(such as the Clarke Center and the Center for

Urban Ecologies) as well as external (such as

the Moxie Center and C alit2).

UC San Diego

Design Theory and

Research Platform

Center for Urban Ecologies

Directed by Professors Teddy Cruz and

Kyong Park, the Center for Urban Ecologies

(CUE) sees urban conflict as a productive

zone of controversy leading to a more critical

debate and dialog, new forms of cross-sector

collaboration and urban intervention.

Located barely thirty minutes from the most

trafficked border in the world, CUE is well

positioned to transform the San Diego –

Tijuana border region into a productive design

and artistic laboratory to re-think the politics

of surveillance, immigration and labor, density

and sprawl, the polarization of informal and

formal systems of housing and urbanization,

and the expanded gap between wealth and

poverty. This critical adjacency between the

sprawling sub-urbanizations of San Diego

and the density of Tijuana’s slums is a provo-

cation to re-think broader global paradigms

of urban resilience. CUE sees the border as

a crossroads between North and South, Eastand West, facilitating new research across

geographic scales, from the specificity of

border neighborhoods to broader global

urban dynamics, primarily targeting Latin

American and Asian cities and regions.

CUE brings together research and works

from the fields of architecture and urbanism,

environmental and social practice, political

theory, visual arts and public policy, and

summons practitioners across diverse sectors,

mediating top down institutional knowledge

and bottom-up socio-economic, cultural and

environmental intelligence.

CUE is the hub of important initiatives such as

the Political Equator Meetings in collaboration

with community-based non-profits, and a long-

term partnership with the UCSD Center on

Global Justice pursuing such projects as the

Civic Innovation Lab in the City of San Diego

to rethink public space and civic engagement;

the BLUM Cross-Border Initiative to promote

regional poverty research and practice; and

the UCSD Community Stations, to foster

corridors of knowledge exchange between the

university and marginalized communities.

The SME building provides CUE with

new computer, media, modeling, and

video capacities, enabling new modes of

visualization and fabrication, including

dynamic mapping and critical cartographies,

the construction of virtual and physical

modeling to explore new forms of material

culture, architectural and urban space.

D:GP has hosted several conferences and symposia

on campus bringing together designers, scientists,

programmers, policymakers, and fiction writers to

consider how emergent platforms could provide for

alien forms of embodiment, biotechnics, governance,

geography, and geophilosophy.

Center for Design

and Geopolitics

The Center for Design and Geopolitics (D:GP),

led by Associate Professor Benjamin H.

Bratton, is a think-tank that uses Speculative

Art and Design to investigate how planetary-

scale computation transforms political,

technological, and ecological systems. D:GP

serves as the locus for a global discourse that

draws on art, architecture, computer science,

biological sciences, and political philosophy.

Its work begins from the supposition that

the geopolitical architectures derived

from industrial heavy-carbon economies

have reached an unsolvable impasse and

require redesign. Toward that its program

is experimental and projective: instead of

bunkering into fragile oppositional positions,

it is interested in accelerating the arrival of

material and conceptual alternatives through

an active appropriation of the tools and

technologies of UC San Diego’s cutting-edge

scientific laboratories.

Since its founding in 2009, D:GP has hosted

several conferences and symposia on campus

bringing together designers, scientists,

programmers, policymakers, and fiction

writers to consider how emergent platforms —

from the Cloud Polis to Nanoskin —could

provide for alien forms of embodiment,

biotechnics, governance, geography, and

geophilosophy. Recent project collaborators

include Nano3 at Calit2 and the Laboratory for

Nanobioelectronics.

CUE is well positioned to

transform the San Diego –

Tijuana border region into

a productive design and

artistic laboratory to re-think

the politics of surveillance,

immigration and labor, density

and sprawl, the polarization of

informal and formal systems

of housing and urbanization,

and the expanded gap between

wealth and poverty.

Center

for Urban

Ecologies

Urbanism

Public

Policy

Civic

EngagementArchitecture

Social &

Environmental

Practice




Experimental Sculpture and

Painting Production Studio

Engaging artists from a variety of backgrounds,

the Experimental Sculpture and Painting

Production Studio connects individuals with

an interest in sculptural inquiry. The Studio

examines large-scale experimental sculpture,

traditional and unconventional structures,

active surfaces, and hybridized methods of

making. Professor Jennifer Pastor leads the

Studio with the help of Professor Rubén Ortiz-

Torres and MFA candidates Hermione Spriggs,

Aitor Lajarin, Dominic Paul Miller, Matt

Savitsky, Jay Noland, and Joshua Miller.

The Studio supports long and short term

production of visual arts faculty, MFA and

Ph.D. art practice students, advanced

undergraduates, guest artists, and

materials research collaborators. Working

in conversation with the Materials Culture

Initiative, the Studio creates a corridor with

projects that utilize the integrated spaces of

the Fabrication Lab, materials studios, and

other visual arts production and present-

ation facilities, exploring new and composite

materials, 3D technologies, and other

advanced tools.

Some projects and events have included Dual,

a parallel drawing show between two and

three-dimensions.This co-exhibition with the

Experimental Drawing Studio featured works

that explore the intersections of drawing and

painting and evolutions between drawing and

sculpture. Hermione Spriggs and Aitor Lajarin

presented their collaborative project Fox&(...)

edition guide for the ( ) prowler— an

installation of projected videos illustrating

the usage and performance of the exhibited

guide, surrounded by a collection of objects

gathered during outdoor performances. The

Studio also hosted visiting artist Harry Dodge,

one of the founders of San Francisco’s The

Bearded Lady, who screened his new film

Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy and discussed

his current body of sculptural work, and artist

Paul Sietsema, who spoke about his sculptural

and drawing practice and presented his new

film At the Hour of Tea, which probed the

relationship between these various mediums

as phenomenological experience.

Discursive and

Curatorial Productions

A new practice of research has emerged from

the Discursive and Curatorial Productions

(DCP) initiative. This space is designed to

experiment and present critical dialogue

on new forms of material intelligence, tech-

nologies, and platforms, while addressing

the shifts in models of curatorial practices

and criticism. Theoretical research produced

from the DCP has practical implications that

address curatorial exchange, the globalization

of art markets, and the shifting modes

of art exhibition.

In the past year the initiative has organized

publications, exhibitions, events, colloquiums,

and symposia that reflect on curatorial and

artistic production. Some highlights include a

workshop with art critic, curator, and historian

Cuauhtémoc Medina titled “Exhibitions Are

Material Forces, Too.” Guest speakers duringthe year included Warren Neidich, Tania

Bruguera, Suhail Malik, and Gareth James.

These visitors led seminars and workshops

under the theme of “Conflict of the Faculties:

Tensions in the Field of Art and Education.”

Inspired in part by Bruguera’s workshop,

Professor Grant Kester presented a lecture

titled “The Device Laid Bare: On Some

Limitations in Current Art Criticism.” The

publication Unweave was launched, acting as

a research notebook capturing the seminars,

exhibitions, and projects produced by DCP.

In addition to hosting an array of speakers,

the DCP will program the Visual Arts Gallery

during the coming year. The fall 2013

exhibition, SUBTERRANEA, offers a selection

of works based on the built and natural

environment’s root systems, foundations,

and infrastructures that lay buried or

concealed underground.

The DCP is led by faculty member Mariana

Wardwell. The advisory board is comprised

of faculty members Norman Bryson, Kuiyi

Shen, Lesley Stern, Grant Kester, Elizabeth

Newsome, and John C. Welchman. Arthistory graduate students head the Curatorial

Committee: Elizabeth Miller, Melinda Guillen,

Sascha Crasnow, and Lara Bullock. The

publication committee is comprised of

graduate students Tim Ridlen, Cara Baldwin,

and Drew Snyder, and University Art Gallery

Curatorial Fellow Michelle Hyun.

This space is designed to

experiment and present

critical dialogue on new forms

of material intelligence,

technologies, and platforms,

while addressing the shifts in

models of curatorial practices

and criticism.

Experimental

Sculpture &

Painting

Production

Studio

Ph.D.

EngineeringFabrication

Lab

MFA

Art

Exhibition

& Practices

Theory,

Cognition, &

Pedagogy of

Aesthetics

Aesthetics of

Materialization

Discursive

& Curatorial

Productions




The Experimental Media Lab is a testing

site for research in media production and

pedagogy. The Lab was led this year by faculty

member Michael Trigilio; during the coming

year, faculty members Amy Alexander and

Brian Cross will join as co-directors.

Highlights from the past year include Solar

Variations, an exhibition from “Project

Planetaria” faculty Tara Knight (theatre &

dance), Adam Burgasser (physics), and

Michael Trigilio. The project was an explor-

ation of the variability of the Sun through

light and sound. Using photodiode sensors,

UV imaging Data, and film, viewers of the

installation were embedded into a solarmovie. During spring 2013, Project Planetaria

faculty hosted a series of workshops for

students that explored astronomical data as

aesthetic material. The workshops resulted

in an exhibition with students from physics

and visual arts collaborating on projects

incorporating video, sound, performance,

electronics, and computing.

During the past year the Lab has also

showcased the media installation work of MFA

students Jamilah Abdul-Sabur, Bill Basquin,

Danny Cannizarro, and Jay Noland. In June,

artists and students from the International

Collaborative Arts Program (ICAP) resided in

the Lab for a week of visualization research,

working with 3D videography, motion-graphics,

and LiDAR processing for visualization facilities

at Calit2. ICAP was invited to collaborate with

Michael Trigilio’s project at Calit2 (SESMI:

Socially Engaged Speculative Media Initiative)

resulting in works from students on campus

and at University of New Mexico collaborating

on experimental new-media works and data-

driven visualizations.

The Lab also housed a summer residency with

MFA Candidate Emily Grenader, and visiting

programmers Fernando Nos (CSE, PUCRS

Brazil) and Danilo Gasques Rodrigues. Their

project, VideoMob, is a new take on the photo

booth, inviting users to record a video portrait

to be instantly combined into a dynamic

crowd. Installed in the Lab and across

campus, the video booths will create virtual

communities by enabling strangers to include

their moving self-portrait among a crowd,

establishing a stronger connection between

strangers and enabling an actual relationship

to form out of a virtual one. The project has

been supported by computer science and

engineering research scientist and lecturer

Dr. Nadir Weibel.

Plans for the coming year include “Sound forVisual Artists” workshops lead by P rofessor

Trigilio; workshops in “synthesis” with

music faculty Tom Erbe; and a workshop on

projection mapping by theatre and dance

Professor Tara Knight.

Experimental

Media LabThe Experimental Drawing Studio explores

the role of drawing as interdisciplinary form,

providing an active environment for creative

research and cross-disciplinary collaboration.

The Studio is led by faculty member Amy

Adler with recent alumnus Josh Tonies

(Managing Director), graduate students Allison

Spence, Nichole Speciale, Emily Grenader,

Matteo Orsini, and undergraduates Max Karnig

and Vanessa Martinez.

In its inaugural year the Studio launched

several programs including “Am I Drawing

Now?,” a series of lectures, conversations,

performances, and exhibitions that explored

the role of drawing in various research

practices, illuminating its material nature and

its cross disciplinary potentials. Highlights

included an opening talk about diagrammingwith Professor Jordan Crandall; exchanges

between students and faculty that included:

Professor Jack Greenstein, MFA candidate

Matteo Orsini, Professor Lesley Stern, MFA

candidate Allison Spence, Associate Professor

Benjamin H. Bratton, and graduating MFA

candidate Josh Tonies; MFA candidate Kate

Clark in conversation with San Diego Park

Ranger Kim Duclo; and visiting speakers

that included Dr. Nadir Weibel from cognitive

science, along with established artists

Hillary Mushkin and Karl Haendel. The

series concluded with a performance of

CyberSpaceLand by Associate Professor

Amy Alexander.

The Studio’s exploration of drawing

transcended two-dimensional form with

“Drawn Into Film,” a screening series that

considers drawing as it exists within cinema.

The first iteration of the series featured a

screening of James Cameron’s Titanic, an

introduction by Professor Babette Mangolte,

and a live drawing performance by MFA

candidate Kate Clark. The series continued

with “The Hand: A Weekend of Film,” two

days of film and animation screenings and

discussions led by Professor Jean-Pierre

Gorin. The Studio also hosted projects that

include Dual, a parallel drawing show betweentwo and three-dimensions, a co-exhibition

with the Experimental Sculpture and Painting

and Production Studio; motionDraw, a project

produced by an interdisciplinary group of UC

San Diego students working with research

scientist, Dr. Nadir Weibel; and an “Artist

Book Workshop” hosted by alumnus Louis

Schmidt. Beginning fall 2013, documentation

of the Experimental Drawing Studio activity

will be released as a series of publications that

highlight the Studio’s research.

Experimental

Drawing Studio

Sustainable infrastructure and conceptual art

intersect at the Performative Nanorobotics

Lab, led by faculty members Ricardo

Dominguez and Brett Stalbaum. This year the

Lab presented the Facial Weaponization Suite,

a two-part workshop organized by visiting

graduate student Zach Blas, where mask-

making was examined as a queer and feminist

resistance practice. The project began with an

open dialogue about the social and political

impact of biometric technologies, the science

of identifying humans by physiological and

behavioral characteristics commonly used in

surveillance practices. As an act of

protest, the participating group created a

collective mask based on participant’s facial

data, producing a mask that could not be

detected by facial recognition techniques.

Participants then collectively performed an

intervention based on readings, discussions,

and the mask-making process. Future

projects at the Lab include a Do it yourself

(DIY) Atomic Force Microscope conceived by

Professor Dominguez.

Performative

Nanorobotics Lab

Experimental

Media Lab

Theatre

& Dance

University of

New Mexico

Physics

In its inaugural year the Studio

launched several programs

including “Am I Drawing

Now?,” a series of lectures,

conversations, performances,

and exhibitions that explored

the role of drawing in various

research practices.

New MediaMFA

Cognitive

Science

Art

History

Film

Experimental

Drawing

Studio

Under-

graduate

Calit2



15ProductionProduction

STUDENT AND FACULTY PROJECTSPRODUCTIONGraduate student Kate Clark interviews Professor Fred Lonidier

Fred Lonidier: I have secrets, you know. We’re

not doing a history. These are visual arts stories.

Because actual history would be problematic,

it would take a historian to pry that out of us.

History is getting to the bottom of it.

So you think of documentation as

storytelling?

Absolutely. The photos are not self-explanatory.

Captioning and identification is important.

Anecdotes are key, where people say, “Oh

yeah, I remember that reception, I remember

so and so said this.”

What did the Department of Visual Arts

Archive Project rise from?

The project started many years ago, during

UC San Diego’s 40th anniversary. The campus

was looking for photos. So, I went to my proof

sheets and started sending them material. This

was very early digital period, and I sent them far

more than they had in mind. It fact they ended

up using one photo of a protest in support of a

daycare center on campus because they were

very limited at that time. They put up a photo

display in the Price Center.

That’s what got me going. I’ve been here

since the winter of ‘69 and the anti-war

movement was alive and well. I was going to

demonstrations and taking pictures so I had

a lot of material. I’ve provided the department

with over 900 photographs. Now, we are

reaching out to all past and present faculty,

graduates, undergraduates, visitors, for

contributions of notable documentation. The

committee’s view is that we want the archive to

be as wide and deep as possible.

What do you think the role of an archive plays

in a young institution like the Department of

Visual Arts?

Departments crank along in real time. The fact

that Allan Kaprow or David Antin were once

here, on a day to day basis that only comes up

in relation to showing their work and writings as

part of the education of the undergraduates and

graduates. We’ve produced quite a number of

people at UC San Diego who’ve made a name for

themselves. Allan Kaprow is a household name.

David Antin, Ellie Antin, Allan Sekula, Carrie Mae

Weems, Martha Rosler, the Harrisons. To the

extent that any of this bears on their education,

then it’s direct. But a lot of interest simply would

stem from people’s curiosity.

How is the work you are doing affected

by the arc of time?

This is the thing that happens with

photographers: if you are a documentarian,

and if you live long enough, then eventually

your early stuff is history, and there is a whole

set of interest that develops around content

that previously was not there. This started to

develop with Pacific Standard Time a few years

ago, and has grown with the Chair’s interest in adepartment history on the website.

My early work dealing with issues of gender

didn’t really take off for me until now. I didn’t

have a gallery until I was 67 years old and that’s

because this early stuff has panache. So I’m in

a show in Berlin right now and the main work

in the gallery was in my MFA show. This can

happen to everybody who produces things in

the public. So the historical arch can be quite

unpredictable and curious.

Art historians Sheldon Nodelman and Susan

Smith also facilitate the department archive

project. For more information on image

submissions please contact Sheena Ghanbari,

[email protected].

Salt Exclosure: Red Hill

Marina, Imperial Valley

Collaborating with engineers from the Jacobs

School of Engineering, visual arts MFA

candidate Dominic Miller built Salt Exclosure:

Red Hill Marina, Imperial Valley , a sculpture

that doubles as a water desalinization system

in the Salton Sea east of San Diego. Miller’s

sculpture uses solar energy to evaporate

water from the sea and gather precipitated

salts. Salt Exclosure: Red Hill Marina, Imperial

Valley, The exhibit was on view in June 2013

at the new SME building on campus as

part of Experimental Sculpture and Painting

Production Studio.

“My projects tend to respond to local issues

at specific sites,” Miller said. “In this case

you have a vibrant agricultural industry within

a desert and simultaneously a significant

riparian habitat which has evolved along the

Salton Sea. As bird populations have relocated

there from places such as the Tijuana Estuary,

this riparian habitat becomes an important

site which is also threatened. My ‘exclosure’

precipitates salt compounds from sea water

in situ. The idea is to produce a stabilizing

presence in the area.”

For his next project, Miller wants to look at

the implications of NAFTA 20 years after the

treaty was ratified by the U.S. and Mexico—

specifically the impact on maquiladora workers.

Unweave

As a product of the Discursive and Curatorial

Productions initiative, Unweave acts as a

series of research notebooks. The first issue

was titled “Engineering and its reversals:

materials, structures, seeds, aesthetics,

cognition,” and launched in tandem with theSME building opening. The inaugural issue

was edited and curated by art history faculty

member Mariana Wardwell and independent

curator Lucía Sanromán. The publication

accompanied the NanoMacroMega exhibition

at the Visual Arts Gallery and included texts

from faculty and graduate students.

The second publication will reflect the ideas

presented in Conflict of the Faculties, a

seminar and workshop series presented by

the Discursive and Curatorial Productions

initiative. This issue will focus on the tensions

surrounding art and education.

The third issue of Unweave is scheduled to be

released in January 2014.




Interdisciplinary and multimedia collaboration

is standard practice for Department of Visual

Arts graduate students.

In a recent project, Matt Savitsky collaborated

with pianist Todd Moellenberg to create Posing

Nothing , a fresh interpretation of music by

avant garde composers Chris Dench, Jonathon

Harvey, George Benjamin, and Harrison

Birtwistle. The work combines musical

performance with dance movement.

Jamilah Sabur’s video Acadome: Learning

Dissonance was a 2012 collaboration with

Liam Kavanagh, a Ph.D. student in psychology

and cognitive science. Sabur described the

video as “a disjointed discussion on military

defense spending and learning.” Drawing

from the work of B.F. Skinner, Leon Festinger,and the defense department’s DARPA (an

agency that funds development of new military

technologies), Sabur explored “whether or not

humans possess a ‘terrorist gene’.”

Nichole Speciale collaborated with clarinetist

Curt Miller on Repeat After Me II at the

San Diego Museum of Art in August 2013.

Exploring the intersection between the illusory

surface and its obscured three-dimensionality

both within and without the context of

feminine art making, the installation consisted

of six 6-foot-tall canvas-turned-speakers in

a circle with a microphone outside the ring.

Viewers spoke into the mic and heard their

words repeated through the speakers. Their

voices became part of a larger murmur of

things previously said, creating a sonic portrait

of museum-goers.

DODO Editions

Named after the flightless extinct bird, DODO

Editions is a contemporary online art review

launched by current MFA candidates, Joshua

Miller, and Julian Rogers. The pair met at the

department’s graduate student admit day and

soon after realized that they shared an idea for

creating an arts review web site in San Diego.

Miller and Rogers launched DODO Editions in

San Diego October 2012. First and foremost

Miller and Rogers are artists, but as Roger’s

states “writing has become a good exercise for

me. I can hone my abilities to look at work.”

The goal of DODO Editions is to bridge the

Tijuana, San Diego, and Los Angeles art

worlds, while creating a sense of accountability

for archiving local exhibitions. DODO Editions

covers contemporary art exhibitions across

various genres. Some reviews capture alumni

exhibitions like Inédito by Yvonne Venegas at

the 206 Arte Contemporáneo in Tijuana and

Save on Everything by Joe Yorty at Helmuth

Projects in San Diego. Miller and Rogers

have also engaged members of the arts

community in addition to alumni and

students in this project.

The current team of writers includes San

Diego Museum of Art curator Amy Galpin,

Ph.D. student Melinda Guillen, Tijuana born

writer Daril Fortis, and Los Angeles based

writer Itza Vilaboy in addition to Rogers.

Miller serves as the editor, Matthew Dunn the

copy editor, Aitor Lajari the translator, and

undergraduate student Lawrence Chit acts as

the web editor. Miller and Rogers have taken

advantage of their networks to create a strong

team of writers and editors and also have an

open call or writers.

The art review site is online at

dodoeditions.com

Sensitive Boys

Sensitive Boys is a collaborative zine that

humorously explores the tensions inherent

in discussion about gender, language, and

emotional expression. Artemisa Clark is

pursuing her MFA in visual arts and Melinda

Guillen is a Ph.D. student in art history, theory,and criticism. Together, they are Sensitive

Boys. The first issue, “Feeling Feelings,” was

published in March 2013 with support from

the department. It featured contributions

from Catherine Czacki (Ph.D., art practice),

Dominic Miller (MFA), Matt Savitsky (MFA),

as well as other writers and artists from Los

Angeles, Seattle, New York City, and Berlin.

Clark and Guillen explain that they feel a sense

of permission or license, “as sensitive boys, we

are able to identify our own complex analytical

positions, articulated from an aggregate

of various modes of cognition, without the

debilitating pressure to cautiously navigate

the field of language, fraught with landmines.

Instead, at worst, a sensitive boy encounters

potholes, and his body remains intact. Simply

put, we can say what we want and keep

walking. We don’t have to worry about being

reduced to mere crazy women, our ideas

drowning in an illogical system of emotional

nonsense. Nope. Not us.”

Sensitive Boys is about materializing a space

of empathy, compassion, and generosityembodied by various configurations of bodies

and objects in a particular space. The duo

aims to address the transformative potential of

just hanging out.

New interdisciplinary collaborations

In a recent project, Matt

Savitsky collaborated with

pianist Todd Moellenberg

to create Posing Nothing, a

fresh interpretation of music

by avant garde composers

Chris Dench, Jonathon Harvey,

George Benjamin, and Harrison

Birtwistle. The work combinesmusical performance with

dance movement.




Los Laureles Wicking Gardens

Constructing a viable form of vegetable

gardening is at the heart of the Los Laureles

Wicking Garden Project. The project brings

together many strands: environmental

and border issues, urban development

and wetlands preservation, toxicity and

sustainability, and the question of community

engagement by artists. Laureles is a

particularly important canyon in the Tijuana-

San Diego area because it links an informal

settlement in precarious terrain on the Mexico

side with an estuary in San Diego. The estuary

is threatened by waste from the canyon

(produced through flooding and toxic trash),

and the people in the canyon are equally

threatened by toxicity (much of it from the

maquiladora production plants) and lack

of infrastructure.

Faculty and graduate students banded

together after Professor Lesley Stern’s seminaron gardens as public domains. Inspired in

part by Professor Teddy Cruz’s public culture

practice, their idea was to conceptualize

this region as a laboratory. In collaboration

with Alter Terra, a Non-governmental

Organization operated by Oscar Romo with

Jennifer Hazard, the group began to conduct

social and ecological interventions in the

neighborhood. This manifested into a series

of public workshops that investigated different

means of water conservation and container

gardening by borrowing a model of wicking

beds developed in Australia. As the project

continued and the contacts in the community

grew, the communication and exchange of

technologies became a focal point in this

process. The team stated that “this oral

modality resituated our voice so as to engage

a community while invariably remaining as

outsiders. The fundamentally pedagogical

relationship allowed for a deeper transmission

of our intentions, but it is likely that our role

will change as the project continues. Many

questions persist as one system reaches a

threshold and encounters broader productive

rhythms. In addition to work on site we will

continue to experiment with other forms

(so far, a preliminary exhibition, writings, and

conference presentations). Ultimately,

a commitment to duration is the function

which persists.”

The Los Laureles Wicking Garden Project

involves Department of Visual Arts

Professors Anya Gallaccio and Lesley Stern;

Communications Professor Elana Zilberg;

graduate students, Kate Clark, Samara Kaplan,

Alex Kershaw, Dominic Miller, Matt Savitsky,

Emily Sevier, and Nichole Speciale. The

project is supported by the UCSD Center for

the Humanities.University Art Gallery Curatorial Fellowship

Michelle Hyun came to UC San Diego in

the summer of 2012 as the first University

Art Gallery Curatorial Fellow. She set out

to program the gallery with events and

installations different from traditional exhibits

of art and sculpture, and to attract new visitors

from groups that are not usually addressed by

the art community. In the process, she is also

exploring new roles for curators.

Her inaugural exhibit was last spring’s We’d

love your company in collaboration with New

York artist Ethan Breckenridge, who installed

platforms, walls, mirrors, and two-dimensional

human figures that seemed to emerge from

the gallery floor. Hyun invited various groupsto invent uses for the space. We’d love your

company included contributions from artists Liz

Magic Laser and Martha Rosler, undergraduate

bioscientists, students from the Preuss School,

and writer Suhail Malik in collaboration with

shadow puppetry performer Van C. Tran.

Hyun, whose previous experiences include

curating installations in New York City and

managing a gallery in San Francisco, is

using her fellowship to develop new cura-

torial practices.

“In my research I’ve been looking at different

types of spatial practices and political

happenings that have taken place at UC San

Diego,” she said. In the sixties, for instance,

the University was a hotbed of political

activism led by figures such as Herbert

Marcuse and Angela Davis. “I want to give

these kinds of alternative ideas visibility again.”

With the campus community as a focus of

her work, Hyun wants to engage a broader

array of interest groups as collaborators andgallery visitors.

“With the fellowship, there’s only so much that

can be done during my two years here,” Hyun

said. But she hopes that her explorations as

curatorial fellow in search of “new publics”

at UC San Diego will lay the groundwork for

successors who continue to experiment and

re-define the role of the curator.

Preuss students visit the Department of Visual Arts

This past year UC San Diego Arts and

Humanities Dean Seth Lerer teamed up with

The Preuss School UCSD administrators

and teachers to encourage meaningful arts

collaborations on campus. Preuss is a charter

middle and high school, designed for highly

motivated low income students, that hasbeen recognized by Newsweek as the top

transformative high school in the nation. In

conjunction with this broader arts immersion

initiative with Preuss, the Department of Visual

Arts gave graduating high school students a

glimpse of the opportunities in the media arts.

This past May, a group of Preuss seniors

received a private tour of the Mandeville Annex

Gallery and viewed an exhibition of films from

undergraduate students participating in the

Adam Douglas Kamil Media Awards. The

students viewed seven films that addressed

the prompt, “So What’s Your Story.” After

watching these autobiographical accounts

the seniors were joined by undergraduate

filmmakers Gail Gutierrez and Young

Yi. Gutierrez submittedDalaga Diaries , a film

that blurs her past and present memories at

the Pacific Ocean. Yi presented Farewell, My

Kim Jong Il, a film that deals with the loss of a

family member.

The seniors asked questions like, “What is it

like to be a visual arts major? What are your

classes like? How did you get the inspiration

for your film?” The visit concluded with a lively

conversation with each of the participating

undergraduate artists. The Preuss students

did not hesitate to take advantage of this

opportunity with undergraduate students.

Another Preuss visit to the programs at

the Department of Visual Arts will take place

in fall 2013.

Los

Laureles

Wicking

Gardens

Studio for

Ethnographic

Design

Elana

Zilberg

UCSD

Center for the

Humanities

Alter Terra

In my research I’ve been

looking at different types of

spatial practices and political

happenings that have taken

place at UC San Diego… In

the sixties, for instance, the

University was a hotbed of

political activism led by figuressuch as Herbert Marcuse and

Angela Davis. I want to give

these kinds of alternative ideas

visibility again.



21Public ProgramsPublic Programs

Lectures, Symposia, & ExhibitionsPUBLIC PROGRAMSNanoMacroMega exhibit inaugurates SME Building

NanoMacroMega was the inaugural exhibit

in the Visual Arts Gallery in the SME building,

where engineers, scientific researchers,

and artists work side by side on projects

that emphasize experimental thinking and

technologies.

Curated by Lucía Sanromán, opened

in September 2012, NanoMacroMega

showcased work by faculty such as Benjamin

H. Bratton, Sheldon Brown, Teddy Cruz,

Ricardo Dominguez, Anya Gallaccio, Rubén

Ortiz-Torres, and Michael Trigilio.

Gallaccio created a sculptural tree and

showed large photographic prints made fromelectronic microscope scans of nano dirt

particles she collected on road trips. Bratton

examined the geopolitical implications of

his wearable Nanoskin tattoos incorporating

bioelectronics by Joseph Wang that detect

materials such as explosives. Ortiz-Torres

presented a performance of “Hi ‘n’ Lo” with

a forklift dancing like a low-rider car.

The $83 million 183,000-square-foot SME

Building is LEED Silver certified, which means

a high standard of “green” design due to

features such as recycled water from rooftop

air conditioning and heating units to exterior

blinds controlled by a solar clock to prevent

sun from hitting glass directly.

Several department research initiatives are

housed in the new building (see Initiatives,

pages 6-13). SME contains cutting-edge

equipment such as a KUKA robotic mill.

Guided by an artist’s computer design, the

mill carves complex forms from a variety

of materials. An ongoing collaboration with

Germany’s famed Bauhaus school of arts

and design, founded in the 1919 by architect

Walter Gropius and later directed by Mies van

der Rohe, is also part of SME’s mission.

Opening ceremonies on September 14,

2012 included remarks by UC San Diego

Chancellor Pradeep Khosla and Dean of Arts

and Humanities Seth Lerer, with a keynoteby science fiction author and UC San Diego

alumnus David Brin.

“For here in this marvelous new SME building,

fiercely pragmatic researchers and dissectors

of objective reality will share floors with

the Department of Visual Arts, in spaces

that are deliberately intermingled so that

engineers will constantly find themselves

engaged in conversations with right-brain

creators,” Brin said. “The joyful blending

of breakthrough technology with artistic

sensibility… extravagant imagination merging

with utilitarian vision… [will lead, it is hoped]

to spaces and tools and devices and projects

and inventions… that people not only find

useful but [inspirational].”

For here in this marvelous new

SME building, fiercely pragmatic

researchers and dissectors of

objective reality will share floors

with the Department of Visual Arts,

in spaces that are deliberately

intermingled so that engineers

will constantly find themselves

engaged in conversations with

right-brain creators.

Neighborhood projects give a local spin

to Living as Form (The Nomadic Version)

Living as Form (The Nomadic Version) brought

together works by 22 artists in a fall 2012

exhibit at the University Art Gallery, with site-

specific satellite projects at San Diego locales.

The exhibit explored new modes of artmaking

in a rapidly changing, sometimes disturbing

world. The exhibit was “nomadic” in the sense

that it was an offshoot of the original 2011

exhibit at New York City’s historical Essex

Street Market, curated by Nato Thompson.

Projects included What’s the use?, a

video panel and forum from There Goes

the Neighborhood!. The event includeddiscussions about contemporary urban

issues and a “dining performance” at Art

Produce Gallery in San Diego’s North Park

neighborhood. Cog•nate Collective produced

events at the Port of Entry in San Ysidro along

the San Diego-Mexico border. Interviews,

debates, storytelling, performances, and

poetry readings were broadcast via low-range

radio and accessible at mobile listening

stations at the border and at the University

Art Gallery. Torolab, a Tijuana collective of

artists, architects, and designers, presented

the Transborder Farmlab Project, exploring

new means of economic, social, and cultural

empowerment in the underprivileged Camino

Verde neighborhood.

UC San Diego Department of Visual Arts

curators shaped Living as Form (The Nomadic

Version) into a distinctly regional version of

the original exhibit: the local projects were

co-curated by University Art Gallery Fellow

Michelle Hyun, Ph.D. candidate Lara Bullock,

and Ph.D. students Sascha Crasnow and

Elizabeth Miller.

“Something historically unique is happening in

cultural production that requires different rules

for art than those of the 20 th century,” curator

Thompson said. “This culturally-savvy method

of civic production has manifested in everyday

urban life and growing civil unrest. Living as

Form (The Nomadic Version) is an opportunity

to cast a wide net and ask: how do we make

sense of this work, and in turn, how do we

make sense of the world we find ourselves in?”

Cog•nate Collective produced events

at the Port of Entry in San Ysidro

along the San Diego-Mexico border.

Interviews, debates, storytelling,

performances, and poetry readings

were broadcast via low-range radio

and accessible at mobile listening

stations at the border and at the

University Art Gallery.




Artists and engineers collaborate in CORPUS

CORPUS, an exhibit of video, photography,

and sound installation, was the second

show in Visual Arts Gallery in the SME

building. Curated by Ph.D. candidate Lara

Bullock, CORPUS opened in February 2013

and brought together work by artists and

engineers, in a building in which artists and

engineers work side by side.

Using the concept of “bodies” as a framework,

Bullock divided the exhibit into three

parts to explore notions of movement, the

phenomenological, and the metaphorical body.

Eleanor Antin, a multimedia artist and

emeritus faculty member, took ancient Greece

as her subject. Actors portrayed classical

Greek figures to explore the idea of performing

selves in society. Bioengineering alumnus

Maurizio Seracini’s subject was Leonardo da

Vinci’s Adoration of the Magi, on which heemployed the techniques of microscopy and

x-ray imaging in order to allow the viewer to

peer through the painting’s many layers, (the

topic is a natural for Seracini who in 1977

founded the Diagnostic Center for Cultural

Heritage in Florence).

Visual arts faculty member Michael Trigilio’s

Speculative Religious Electronics subjected

visitors to minute reverberations as religious

tenets were translated into sound. Researcher

and biology Professor Klaus Ley studies the

roles of adhesion molecules in acute and

chronic inflammation. The molecules take on

new forms via nano-imaging. Together these

works produced a “conceptual psychosomatic

(social, psychological, and behavioral)

oscillation” to explore binaries such as the

virtual and the body.

Filmmaker and Professor Babette Mangolte’s

images capture the dancer’s body as a dyn-

amic and fluid form, while Qiang Zhu uses

physics and computer modeling to analyze theefficiency of fish locomotion.

Drones at Home at Calit2

Drones may seem like an unexpected topic

for an art exhibition, but Drones at Home

explored the “strange allure of drones” and

their growing presence in the United States.

Visual arts Professors Sheldon Brown,

Jordan Crandall, and Ricardo Dominguez

co-curatedDrones at Home, a three part

project hosted by the gallery@calit2. The three

phases translated into a yearlong inquiry that

comprised an exhibition, symposium, and

collaborative research project.

Part one foregrounded the prominence of

San Diego in the dialogue concerning dronesand exhibited the work of Alex Rivera, Trevor

Paglen, and The Periscope Project. The

second iteration presented a series of panels,

screenings and open sessions that explored

the domestication of drones. In the final

phase, performative workshops were led by

Crandall and Dominguez and theorists Arthur

and Marilouse Kroker spoke as part of the

closing reception. The public at large was also

invited to submit materials for inclusion in the

Drones at Home the book.

Annual conference and showcase

of graduate student talent

Each year the department’s Ph.D. and

MFA students spearhead a series of events

that manifests into the Graduate Student

Conference and Open Studios. The events

highlight student achievements, engage the

larger arts community, and give prospective

students a peek into departmental programs.

The 6th Annual Graduate Student Conference,

The Nature of Space, was organized by Ph.D.

students Sascha Crasnow and Elizabeth Miller.

Crasnow and Miller strived to “put together a

group of presentations and conversations thatwould be especially thought-provoking and

interesting.” The conference explored issues

of space within the visual arts. Speakers were

divided into two categories “Spaces of C onflict

/ Transition” and “Spaces of Imagination /

Projection.” Following the faculty moderated

panels, Dr. Mark Linder from Syracuse

University School of Architecture presented

the conference keynote address.

For the latter half of the day, MFA students

opened up their studios and activated the art

spaces in both the Visual Arts Facility and

SME. Open Studios artist and organizer Matt

Savitsky described the intrigue of stepping

into an artist’s work space to CityBeat writer

Alex Zaragoza, “To walk into an artist’s studio

is exciting and enticing because you can

see things in practice and performances in

their natural setting, not in an intimidating art

space. You’re closer to its source.”

In addition to viewing 37 artist studios,

activities included exhibitions and projects

from the department’s new research initiatives,

a social hour hosted by MFA students, asalon-style exhibition of first year students,

and an evening series of screenings and

performances.

The events highlight student

achievements, engage the

larger arts community, and give

prospective students a peek into

departmental programs.

The department partners withMCASD to host Tania Bruguera

Cuban artist Tania Bruguera made a special

visit to the Department of Visual Arts in

February 2013. Bruguera delivered the

Russell Lecture to a packed house at the

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego,

and she was the keynote presenter at the

second Conflict of the Faculties workshop

hosted by the Discursive and C uratorial

Production initiative.

At the workshop, graduate students and art

history faculty participated in a roundtable

discussion led by faculty membersGrant

Kester and Mariana Wardwell, and inde-

pendent curator, Lucía Sanromán. The

discussion addressed the transformation

of Bruguera’s neo-avant-garde and neo-

conceptual action-based practice towardsforms of artistic engagement that intervene

into concrete political situations, aiming

for efficacy, social change, and legislative

transformation.

The workshop resulted in the creation of

a series of critical position papers written

by participating students in relation to

Bruguera’s wider practice. Students were

invited to consider involvement in fieldwork

and production of Bruguera’s Immigrant

Movement International in the San Diego-

Tijuana border region, as part of the exhibition

Policy as Form to be curated by Sanromán

and organized by the Santa Monica Museum

of Art in January 2014.




Undergraduate art show at

the University Art Gallery

The University Art Gallery exhibition We’d love

your company invited the public to submit

proposals for programs to take place in the

gallery. One of the accepted proposals was

the undergraduate art show, UAS @ UAG:

Ambitions of the Student Artist. Organized by

graduating students Jeffrey Robins and Nikki

Sarto, the exhibition presented a diverse array

of works from the undergraduate student

artists at UC San Diego. The exhibition also

included a student targeted panel with faculty

members Amy Adler and Norman Bryson,

graduate students Melinda Barnadas and Tae

Hwang, and alumnus Collin Gabriel. The 2013

Undergraduate Art Show closed We’d love

your company on May 10, 2013.

We’d love your company

brings back alumna Martha Rosler

The premise of We’d love your company

was to extend a public invitation for program

proposals of how to utilize the University Art

Gallery space. The project featured a solo

exhibition by New York-based artist Ethan

Breckenridge and hosted programs ranging

from a 24/7 study space hosted by the UCSD

Public Education Coalition to a musical

performance by Rachel Mason in collaboration

with The Preuss School UCSD. Curator

Michelle Hyun planned the exhibition with

the intent to transform the gallery space and

welcome new audiences to the gallery.

Artist and alumna Martha Rosler also returned

to campus as part of We’d love your company.

Rosler graduated with her MFA in 1974 and

has since received international acclaim

for her artwork and writing. In 2012, Rosler

presented Meta-Monumental Garage Sale, a

solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art,

New York. The exhibition was a large-scale

version of the classic American garage sale

and visitors had the opportunity to purchase

second hand goods arranged by the artist.

This project originated while Rosler was at

UC San Diego in 1973 with the Monumental

Garage Sale she presented at the University

Art Gallery.

Coming full-circle, Rosler took the stage at the

gallery and led a discussion about her past

and present projects focusing on the role of

the visitor. The rich history of this exchange

was enhanced by an introduction by former

department Chair, Professor Emeritus, DavidAntin. He refers to Rosler as being in the

“nucleus of the early graduating MFA’s,” and

“the perfect example of a transmedia artist.

She started doing intelligent and meaningful

shows in graduate school and even before

graduate school.”

After Rosler’s talk UCSD Alumni honored her

visit with a reception.

The rich history of this

exchange was enhanced by

an introduction by former

department Chair, Professor

Emeritus, David Antin. He refers

to Rosler as being in the nucleus

of the early graduating MFA’s,

and the perfect example of a

transmedia artist. She started

doing intelligent and meaningful

shows in graduate school and

even before graduate school.

Graduating artists

make their mark

Following tradition, the graduating class ofMFA candidates presented a group exhibition

of their work at the University Art Gallery in

spring 2013. Art history, theory, and criticism

Ph.D. students Melinda Guillen and Samara

Kaplan curated MFA 2013, an exhibition

of 15 graduating MFA candidates from the

Department of Visual Arts.

Guillen explains that a large portion of

the artwork is video, film, and installation

and this influenced the overall feel of the

exhibition. MFA 2013 focused on the work

and individuality of the artist, “curatorially, we

attempted to create 15 contained, intimate

environments in the gallery via spotlighting

and blocking out natural light.”

Kaplan adds, “What’s really exciting aboutthis group of artists is their interest not only

in the San Diego arts scene but also in its

culture and landscape, opening up our idea

of the arts to include the larger community.”

For example, Misael Diaz and Emily Sevier

produce work that grapples with border issues

in Tijuana; Allison Spence’s practice includes

a creative writing component that allows her

to perform in alternate spaces; and Benjamin

Lotan founded Social Print and engages in

design and consulting for various creative

services. “These artists are making an impact

in the broader culture of our city as well.”



News

Nikki Sarto gets first-hand look

at curation at SDMA

Nikki Sarto wants to be a curator, and

her internship last summer at the San

Diego Museum of Art (SDMA) gave her an

inside look at what it takes to produce an

exhibit. Now in its third year, the internship

is a partnership between SDMA and the

Department of Visual Arts that provides a

paid summer position for an undergraduate

visual arts student. Sarto was selected from a

competitive pool to be the 2013 SDMA intern.

Sarto, an art history, theory, and criticism

major who graduated in June 2013, worked

alongside curator Amy Galpin, assistant

curator Patrick Coleman, and Jim Grebl,manager of library and archives. Galpin was

a natural as Sarto’s mentor. She curated

Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man a solo

exhibition of Professor Rubén Ortiz-Torres and

during Sarto’s internship was developing Noah

Doely: By the Light. Doely is a photographer

who earned his MFA at UC San Diego and

is an assistant professor at the University of

Northern Illinois. “I now have a much better

idea of what it exactly means to be a curator

and how a museum works,” said Sarto.

AWARDS, SCHOLARSHIPS, & PEOPLENEWS

Connecting contemporary art with San

Diego’s early history, graduate students

Kate Clark, Emily Grenader, and Hermione

Spriggs produced and curated FAIR IS FAIR,

an interactive indoor photo booth, for the

September 2012 Art San Diego Contemporary

Art Fair in Balboa Park.

Art San Diego is a non-profit organization that

brings together San Diego artists, universities,

galleries, museums and other constituents of

the art scene. The fair’s theme was [COLLIDE]

and it filled Balboa Park with installations,

performances, multimedia events, exhibits,

lectures, and panel discussions.

Clark, Spriggs, and Grenader found rich

possibilities in connecting the boosterism

and spectacle behind the 1915 Panama-

California Exposition—celebrating Balboa

Park’s opening and the completion of the

Panama Canal—with this new contemporary

art exhibition nearly 100 years later.

FAIR IS FAIR was both serious and humorous.

Visitors to the FAIR IS FAIR booth had

the opportunity, courtesy of green screen

technology and live postcard printing, to

don handmade period costumes and see

themselves against lesser-known historical

backgrounds of Balboa Park and San Diego.

As part of its then-and-now concept there

were images of the Army’s occupation of the

Park during World War II, an early Franciscan

Monk padre alongside today’s baseball mascot

Padre, as well as photos from the nudist

colony of Zoro Gardens in Balboa Park. The

booth also included a live interview series with

historians, activists, and park rangers whose

work has centered on the political, cultural,

and environmental development of BalboaPark and San Diego at large.

The producers stated FAIR IS FAIR “becomes

a transportation device that muddles time,

embraces redundant models, and reveals new

meaning to the event genre, finding in the

journey a new space of honest exchange.”

Daniel Rehn’s LA Game Space: a new

center for video game development

In a converted automotive garage, Daniel

Rehn and Adam Robezzoli are creating LA

Game Space for video game art, design, and

research. They expect to open in late 2013

or early 2014.

“LA Game Space is a nonprofit center for

exploring the potential and expanding the

possibilities of video games through exhibitions,

talks and workshops, artist residencies, and

research labs,” said Rehn, an MFA candidate.

Housed in an early 20th century building,

the 11,000-square-foot (think five or six

tract houses) center brings fresh juice to thedowntown Los Angeles arts district alongside

the Los Angeles River. The neighborhood is a

vibrant mix of project spaces, residential living,

and traditional industrial warehouses and is

often used for television and film shoots.

Laid out with an open floor plan, LA Game

Space will include a main gallery for large

exhibitions, a smaller gallery, a stage and

seating with video recording and streaming

capabilities, workshop tables for classes and

other community activities, and work spaces

for each resident artist.

Artists will apply for residencies with an

emphasis on experimental, non-commercial

work generally not supported by mainstream

institutions and donors. LA Game Space itself

is a fringe venture. It was launched through a

successful Kickstarter campaign that raised

$335, 657, well over its goal of $250,000.

Already, LA Game Space is capturing the

attention not only of gaming pioneers, but of

national media such as Forbes magazine.

Many artists and entrepreneurs dream aboutprojects that will have an impact in the world,

and Rehn and Robezzoli are making it happen.

LA Game Space will include a

main gallery for large exhibitions,

a smaller gallery, a stage and

seating with video recording and

streaming capabilities, workshop

tables for classes and other

community activities, and work

spaces for each resident artist.

Kate Clark, Emily Grenader, and Hermione

Spriggs consider fairs past and present at the

Art San Diego Contemporary Art Fair 2012

Alumnus Camilo Ontiveros presents

at the Hammer Museum and MOLAA

Undergraduate alumnus Camilo Ontiveros has

continued his art practice by exploring social

issues. Ontiveros recently participated in

MADE in L.A. and had a solo exhibition at the

Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA). He

is a Los Angeles based artist and his work

investigates border issues and the “notions

of value.” For MADE in L.A., Ontiveros

attempted to transport a one-meter cube of

soil from Nayarit, Mexico to the exhibition

site—the Hammer Museum. Custom

officials cited the dangers of introducing a

“foreign organism” and he was ultimately

unsuccessful in the importation process. The

exhibition presented photographs and videosdocumenting this process.

In his solo debut at MOLAA, Camilo Ontiveros:

In the Ring presents images of Mexican and

Filipino boxers. The images present a “clash

of two postcolonial societies” and portray

the intersections between the two cultures.

Ontiveros presents videos, projections, and

photographs to document his inquiry on the

relationship between the two countries. His

conceptually driven work forces the viewer to

debate the social narratives at play.

Reinhart Selvik wins Graduate Arts

Award from Jack Kent Cooke Foundation

Reinhart Selvik was sitting in class when he

received a voicemail informing him that he had

won the Graduate Arts Award from the Jack

Kent Cooke Foundation. The award provides as

much as $50,000 per year for up to three years

toward the cost of graduate school. “I honestly

didn’t know how to respond, because this is the

kind of thing that you work hard for, but never

really fully believe will happen,” said Selvik.

“I composed a portfolio with my paintings,

sculptures, and drawings. These works were

formed from elements of the urban landscape

such as concrete, wood, spray paint, steel, and

found objects to construct anthropomorphicfigures that could be seen as a visualization

of the stressed environment. My work was

very autobiographical, but it also maintained a

connection to the larger idea of the metropolis.

Selvik is considering graduate programs at the

Glasgow School of the Arts, UCLA, and Virginia

Commonwealth University. Graduate school

will give him the opportunity to take his art to

the next level. There’s no predicting what might

happen, but he has ideas.

American Academy of Arts and Letters honors

Professor Teddy Cruz

The American Academy of Arts and Letters

has honored Professor Teddy Cruz as an

“Architect whose work is characterized by a

strong personal direction.” Cruz is one of four

winners of the 2013 Architecture Award for

Arts and Letters. He teaches courses in public

culture and urbanism and has co-founded the

department’s Center for Urban Ecology. Cruz’s

research and design is largely focused on the

Tijuana and San Diego border where he aims

to transform border neighborhoods with quality

housing and public infrastructure. “The slums

of Tijuana can teach a lot to the sprawl of San

Diego” stated Cruz at TEDGlobal 2013.

News 27



NewsNews 29

Professor Kuiyi Shen awarded the

2013 Book Prize in Humanities

Art history Professor Kuiyi Shen has been

awarded the 2013 Book Prize in the

Humanities by the International Convention

of Asia Scholars (ICAS). The biennial prize

is awarded for outstanding English-language

works in the field of Asian Studies, and is

the most significant book award in Asian

Studies. This biennium, the prize has been

selected from nearly 250 books submitted by

publishers world-wide.

Professor Shen co-authored Art of Modern

China (University of California Press, 2012)

with Julia Andrews. The ICAS reading

committee commented that “Art of Modern

China is extremely well-written, a superb

work that achieves that most difficult of tasks;

a single volume that will inform newcomers

and specialists alike. It can truly be said that

if you read only one work on the subject, thisshould be it.”

Video maker and cultural producer Brian

Cross (aka B+) brings his talent and

enthusiasm to UC San Diego this fall. Cross

is a media artist and will serve as an assistant

professor in experimental digital cinematics.

He has a BFA in painting and an MFA in

photography from the National College of

Art and Design in Dublin and the California

Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts) respectively.

While at Cal Arts he began work on a project

entitled, It’s Not about a Salary…Rap, Race,

and Resistance in Los Angeles which was

subsequently published by Verso Books in

1993. It was nominated as a Rolling Stone

Music Book of the Year and made the New

Musical Express critics best music book of

the year list.

His art practice pushes beyond the boundaries

of painting and photography. Visual artsProfessor Louis Hock states that “Cross’

The department welcomes Brian Cross

as the newest addition to the faculty

Congratulations to the following

graduates of the MFA and Ph.D. Program

The Department of Visual Arts at UC San

Diego would like to honor the contributions of

outstanding retiring faculty members:

Filmmaker and Professor Jean-Pierre Gorin

joined the visual arts faculty in 1975. Gorin’s

passion for film translated into lively lectures

about film history and criticism, editing, and

scriptwriting.

After completing his MFA in the Department of

Visual Arts, Professor and photographer Fred

Lonidier has been a member of the faculty

for the past 41 years. Lonidier’s photography

captures working class issues and deals with

the possibilities of social change.

Professor Ernest Silva is a prolific painter and

has been with the department since 1979.

Silva is involved in the local arts communityand his installation “The Rain House” lives

permanently the New Children’s Museum in

Downtown San Diego.

Art historian Susan Smith has been a visual

arts faculty member for the past 26 years and

has served as the Provost of John Muir College

for the past eight years. Smith’s research and

teaching interests include secular art of the

middle ages, medieval theology, and art theory.

In 2000, Professor Lesley Stern joined

the faculty. She is author of The Scorsese

Connection and The Smoking Book. She has

published extensively in the areas of film,

performance, cultural history, and feminism.

Stern has recently been awarded the 2013

Community Award for Faculty Graduate

Teaching by the UC San Diego Graduate

Student Association.

MFA:

Josh Aaron

Ela Boyd

Alida Cervantes

Elizabeth Chaney

Misael Diaz

Noah Doely

Adrienne Garbini

Jesse Harding

Hye Yeon Kim

Samuel Kronick

Scott Lyne

Rebecca Monarrez

Lesha Rodriguez

Vanessa Roveto

Vabianna Santos

Jessica Sledge

Ash Smith

Joshua Tonies

David White

Glen D. Wilson

Joe Yorty

Ph.D.:

Leah Cluff

Laura Hoeger

William Huber

Matthew Jarvis

Tatiana Sizonenko

Eun Jung Park

Agitprop has new home in Barrio Logan

MFA alumnus David White made his mark

in the San Diego arts community when he

launched Agitprop, a reimagined gallery that

focuses on long term engagement projects.

White founded Agitprop in 2007 and for

the last six years he has collaborated with

a number of individuals with the aims of

blurring the lines between the artist, studio,

gallery, and neighborhood. A couple major

initiatives from Agitprop included co-curating

the Summer Salon Series at the San Diego

Museum of Art as well as hosting and

planning events as the artist collaborative

There Goes the Neighborhood .

White has recently relocated from North

Park to a space in Architect Hector Perez’s

new building, La Esquina, in Barrio Logan.

“In many ways this decision was predicated

on conversations and the potential for

future collaborations with Hector (and many

others) in hopes of establishing a new, longterm, space of artistic experimentation and

interdisciplinary investigations.” White states

that “you can expect reinvigorated projects as

we settle in a new home.”

RetirementsAlumna Doris Bittar plants a space

for art and flowers

Inspired by San Diego’s cultural diversity,

MFA alumna Doris Bittar has opened Protea

Gallery in North Park. Bittar is committed

to giving voice to various and distinct

communities and this is reflected in the

mission of the gallery. Through her involvement

in recent international exhibitions and

biennials, Bittar exhibits the work of artists

who are part of burgeoning art scenes in cities

such as Cairo, Madrid, Dubai, Doha, Beirut,

Amman, Lahore, Berlin, Paris, and London.

On December 7, 2012 the gallery presented

its first exhibition Protean, which showcased

regional and international artists.

The name Protea is a type of flower that is

native to South Africa, but also thrives in the

San Diego climate. Protea flowers are sold at

the gallery on a weekly basis to support gallery

programs. In addition to now being a galleryowner and director, Bittar is also an established

artist and writer who teaches visual arts at

California State University, San Marcos.

Michael Trigilio wins the

Distinguished Teaching Award

In May 2013, the UC San Diego Academic

Senate recognized visual arts faculty member

Michael Trigilio with the 2013 Distinguished

Teaching Award. D ean of Arts and

Humanities, Seth Lerer describes Trigilio as “a

brilliant teacher, an inspired program leader,

and a unique creative artist.”

Trigilio states that teaching is a natural

extension of his art practice, and his students

agree. “He is one of the most open-minded

and encouraging professors I’ve had at UC

San Diego,” said undergraduate student artist

Angela Colgan. Trigilio is one of 10 campus

faculty members selected for this honor.

acclaimed 2000-2009 series—Keepintime,

Brasilintime and Timeless— both documents

musicians and creates an innovative space in

which music cultures are able to collaborate

and reveal their interconnected histories. One

of the most interesting characteristics of these

videos is the way that the subjects, through

their collaboration with Cross, generate new

musical territory that not only informs the

video’s viewers, they also reveal latent ideas

and histories to the participating musicians

themselves.”

Hock also notes that Cross has a strong

potential to contribute to diversity on campus.

“His decades of impressive research work with

African American musical communities and

their links to international musical traditions

offer profound possibilities for promoting

diverse ideas in our University community.”

To view a complete list of accomplishments

from the Ph.D. student body please visit:visarts.ucsd.edu/phd-achievements



31Support

Scholarships and Fellowships

The stellar quality of our academic community

is key to the success of the Department of

Visual Arts. Our program is one of the few

that combines its MFA and Ph.D. programs

in a single scholarly and artistic community

-- a community where exchange and

dialogue between art practitioners, historians,

and critics is openly encouraged. But we

can’t maintain that community without the

resources to recruit the best and brightest

students. Your gifts are needed to help

promising graduate students study and

pioneer new creative territory. By offering

competitive fellowships, scholarships, and

awards, the Department of Visual Arts will

be able to encourage and enable talented

scholars and artists to excel. Your gifts willprovide the opportunity to establish a lasting

legacy at UC San Diego.

ViaSat Inc. as Clarke Center Founding Partner

Engaging interested individuals and

organizations with a breadth of experience and

interactions with society, industry, education

and government will be crucial to the success

of the Center. We are pleased to announce

ViaSat Inc. as a Founding Partner of the Arthur

C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination. Their

partnership will support the Clarke Center’soperations and Imagination research. A portion

will also be used to establish the Arthur C.

Clarke Center Endowment for the Clarke

Center’s sustainability. During the coming year

ViaSat leadership, employees, and UC San

Diego affiliates will work together in support of

the Center’s research and program agenda.

The Visual Arts + Engineering Complex

encompasses most of our facilities on the 1st

and 2nd floor of the SME building. It includes

a Gallery, Fabrication Lab, 4 Research/

Production Studios, 1 Residency Studio, and 6

Graduate Studios. This is a complete complex

for research, production, and presentation,

bringing together faculty and student work, as

well as residencies, in a complete environment

for new generation thinking about material art

practices, including experimental drawing,

painting, and sculpture, and advanced

structures and materials. The key element of

this complex is a Fabrication Lab equipped

with an advanced Robotic Milling System

whose specialized tooling and software

systems allow the full-scale design andproduction of complex, 3-dimensional forms.

Through this endeavor we aim to take a

leading role in the revolution that is occurring

in approach to materials. This revolution is

led in part by technologies of rapid prototyping

and 3d printing, as well as those of embedded

computing -- leading to an understanding

that computational processes do not stand

outside of materials, but directly intervene in

them, to the extent that we can now speak

of the “computing of materials.” It is also led

by debates in the visual arts, humanities,

and social sciences around new theories and

philosophies of materiality: frameworks that

consider material agency as the effect of ad

hoc configurations of human and nonhuman

forces, in ways that challenge conventional

ontological categories. Sponsorship

includes Visual Arts and Engineering

Collaboration Production Fund (Provides seed

money for collaborative research, residencies,

exhibitions, outreach events, and other

means of forging new collaborations between

engineering and the visual arts); FabricationLab (Fund for outfitting Lab to advance

innovations in artistic sculpture by faculty and

students using advanced robotic equipment,

laser cutters, and 3D printers); 6 Graduate

Fellowships; and a Residency Fellowship.

Drs. Ivan and Elaine Kamil have established

the Adam Douglas Kamil Media Awards in

memory of their son, who was a visual arts

major at UC San Diego when he passed away

in December 2009. The prize is intended

to help undergraduates polish their skills in

media production and help them realize their

creative potential in this field.

“We have established the Adam Douglas Kamil

Student Media Award in our son’s memory,especially as a tribute to his creativity and to

his belief in the power of the media to connect

people,” explained Elaine Kamil.

The Kamil family first became affiliated

with UC San Diego when Adam was an

undergraduate, where he found a welcoming

community and thrived under the guidance

of stellar faculty. The Kamils believe that the

university is a top notch educational and

research institution that works to foster its

students’ creativity in the arts and in the

sciences. The balance is the key.

“We hope that through this award, Adam’s

creative spirit will inspire others to develop

their talents and to grow as sympathetic and

sensitive individuals,” she said. “We believe

that memorial prizes are a tangible way to

keep the spirits of our loved ones alive.”

The Kamils direct their charitable donations

to causes and institutions that they believe

in, particularly to those environmental and

educational institutions that give priority to

preserving the planet and to helping youngpeople develop to their full potential.

“We would encourage others to donate to

UC San Diego because of the university’s

strength and commitment to excellence in

education and research, and to the university’s

commitment to growing the student body into

enlightened, empathic citizens,” added Elaine.

“Truly, the donors benefit at least as much as

the recipients.”

On behalf of UC San Diego, we would like to

thank the Kamils for creating this opportunity

for visual arts students.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR GIVINGSUPPORTThe Visual Arts + Engineering Complex

Friends of Visual Arts: Ivan and Elaine Kamil

Space and Program Support

Our location within a major research university

provides an intellectual context quite different

from that found at private art schools. Faculty

and students engage with a diverse range

of research methodologies and disciplinary

specializations, regularly collaborating with

colleagues across the performing and literary

arts, social sciences, cognitive sciences,

engineering, and urban studies, as well as with

practitioners in the larger regional community.

Students explore new disciplinary methods

and often complement individual research with

collaborative and public outreach projects.

They are encouraged to push the boundaries

of their chosen medium and to reach across

media-specific boundaries into new forms of

scholarly and artistic pursuit.

While our program is known for our unique

concentration of faculty concerned with

the production, criticism, and analysis of

contemporary art, we are also understood as

a nexus for innovative research that bridges

artistic practice with forms of intellectual

inquiry and creative production in the

sciences and humanities. We encourage

unique combinations of studio, media, and

performative practices along with unique

forms of scholarship that combine traditional

print-based forms with multi-modal or

practice-based components. We encourage

combinatory forms that link the studio, the

library, and the laboratory, on-site work and

in-field work.

At the SME building, we now maintain

an entirely new complex of facilities and

research centers. The organizing influence

of this complex is the Bauhaus, the most

influential modernist art school of the 20th

century, one whose approach to teaching, and

understanding art’s relationship to society

and technology, had a major impact in

Europe and the United States. The Bauhaus

was shaped by 19th and early 20th century

trends which had sought a reconciliation ofthe fine arts and the applied arts -- to reunite

creativity and manufacturing, aesthetics and

functionality. Following in the path of this

school, one of our main objectives is to bring

together visual arts, design, and engineering

-- engaging in dialogue and collaboration

with researchers working in nanotechnology,

materials science, computer visualization,

sensing, and structural engineering, exploring

the interplay between design and fabrication

methods, material forms, applied sciences,

and cultural practices.

For more information regarding opportunities for giving,

please contact

Michele Palma,

Director of Development,

at (858) 534-9043 or [email protected].

Support



9500 Gilman DriveLa Jolla, CA 92093-0327

(858) 534-2860

visarts.ucsd.edu

Page 1

· Photo by Monica Nouwens, 2013

Page 5 (clockwise)

· Professor and Chair Jordan Crandall, photo by

Monica Nouwens, 2013

· Left to right: Phel Steinmetz, Sheldon Nodelman,and David Antin, photo by Fred Lonidier, 1982

· Photo by Fred Lonidier, 2012



Page 6 (left to right)

· Jennifer Pastor, Untitled Photograph, 1996

· Anya Gallaccio, because nothing has changed ,

2000, cast bronze, 250 live apples, and twine

Page 7 (top to bottom)

· Eye tracking of viewers, SME Opening 2012

· Erik Viirre, Clarke Center Neuroscientist, DianaDougan, Clarke Center Founders’ Orbit Member,

SME Opening 2012

Page 8

· Film still courtesy of The Center for Design

and Geopolitics

Page 9 (left to right)

· Community Stations workshops, 2013

· Community Stations workshops, 2013


· Catherine Czaki, Melinda and Adrienne , fabric and

rice, 18” x 10” x 2” & 9 3/4” x 14 1/2” x 2,” 2013· Discursive and Curatorial Productions Studio,


Page 11 (clockwise starting from top-left)

· Experimental Sculpture and Painting Production

Studio, photo taken by Monica Nouwens, 2013

· Hermione Spriggs and Aitor Lajarin, ‘Fox &(...)

Guide for the ( ) Prowler’

installation view, Experimental Sculpture and

Painting Production studio, Open Studios 2013

· Catherine Czaki, Installation shot (left to right):

Catachrestic form, Wood, metal. 9 1/2” x 1 3/4” x 1

3/4”. 2013. Hierarchical objects II, Bamboo, wood,

polyester, thread, metal hardware, 42 3/4” x 31”

x 2 1/2”. 2013. Hierarchical objects I, Bamboo,wood, silk, thread, metal hardware, 54” x 31” x 2

½,” 2012. Suicide break, Papier-mâché-fabric,

acid free paper, PVA glue, wood, metal hardware,

suicide brake, 6 1/2” x 19 1/4” x 48 ¾,” 2013.


· Live Drawing Event with Kate Clark and

Matthew Savitsky

· Ghost Plaques , conversation with Kate Clark

and Park Ranger Kim Duclo


· Video installation by Danny Cannizarro and Jay

Noland, Behind the Velvet Curtain Series

· Emily Grenader, Fernando Nos, and Danilo

Gasques Rodrigues, Videomob

Page 14




· Dominic Miller, Salt Exclosure installation view

· Dominic Miller, Salt Exclosure installation view

· Unweave publication cover


· Matt Savitsky and Todd Moellenberg, Posing

Nothing , video still

· Jamilah Sabur and Liam Kavanagh, Acadome:

learning Dissonance , video still

· Nichole Speciale, Nasa Excel Navy , 2013


· Sensitive Toys photo by Artemisa Clark, 2013

· Joe Yorty, MEADOWS DEL MAR , carpet remnants,

vinyl contact paper on aluminum, 75”x90,”2013

· Joe Yorty, INSTANT ASSHOLE , found shelf,

found objects, borrowed objects, stolen objects,

lenticular image, found lamps, wiring, fiber optic

flower lamp, found photographs torn Howard Miller

George Nelson bubble lamp, light bulbs, hanksite,

dimension vary, 2013

· Sensitive Boys publication cover


· Colonia San Bernardo, Tijuana, photo by

Matt Savitsky

· Wicking Gardens building workshop, photo by

Matt Savitsky


· Matt Savitsky and Dominic Milericking exhibition

installation view

· Graduated Preuss students with Gail Gutierrez

· Graduated Preuss students with Gail Gutierrez


· Jennifer Pastor, The Perfect Ride, 2003,

polyurethane, steel edition of 3, 46 1/2 x 16 x 10 in

· Anya Gallaccio, Revons d’ôr , 2006, photo by


Page 21

· Photo by John Hanacek, 2012





· Michael Trigilio, Speculative Religious Electronics ,

2011, photo by Oona Tikkaoja, 2013· Photo by Erik Jepsen, 2013

· Photo by Erik Jepsen, 2013


· Photo by Andrew Oh, courtesy of UCSD


· Photo by Andrew Oh, courtesy of UCSD


Page 25 (clockwise)

· MFA 2013 , photo by John Hanacek

· Jesse Harding, Moiré Pattern Generator, mixed

media sculpture (motor, plexiglas, wood), 2012

· Sam Kronick, Study for Nodes, Courtesy of The

Slow Internet Foundation, mixed media sculpture

(used WIFI routers, carpet, plywood), April 2013




· Teddy Cruz, photo by Monica Nouwens, 2013

· Reinhart Selvik, solo exhibition Thirsty,

photo by Monica Nouwens, 2013

· Reinhart Selvik, solo exhibition Thirsty,

photo by Monica Nouwens, 2013


· Michael Trigilio, photo by Monica Nouwens, 2013




· New faculty member, Brian Cross,

photo by Theo Jameson


Page 30

· Ernest Silva’s studio, photo by Monica

Nouwens, 2013



· Visual Arts Gallery, SME, photo by Monica

Nouwens, 2013

· Ivan and Elaine Kamil

IMAGE CREDITS

Documents

Review Revista Art San Diego_2013