Link to main page here // Excerpt regarding December 1st speaker below
The Series' Introductory Statement:
In a world where art is judged by market value, and where MFA programs promote gallery representation more than vocational calling, this series of lectures by visual artists will investigate social justice as a driving motivation. Exploring the social, philosophical and spiritual traditions that offer resources for artists to imagine justice and new visions of human flourishing, these lectures draw on the creative tension of their setting in a historic theological seminary, suggesting a new commonality between art and religion in the shared pursuit of social justice.
December 1st Speaker: Paul Chan
Internationally acclaimed artist Paul Chan lives and works in New York. His work has been exhibited widely in many international shows including: Making Worlds, 53rd Venice Biennale, 2009; Medium Religion, ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2008; Traces du sacrê, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2008; and Paul Chan: The 7 Lights, Serpentine Gallery, London, and New Museum, New York, 2007–2008; Paul Chan—Lights and Drawings, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
In November 2007, Chan collaborated with the Classical Theatre of Harlem and Creative Time to stage five free site-specific performances of Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot in two New Orleans neighborhoods that had been destroyed by the flooding caused by the levee breaks during Hurricane Katrina. The performances were part of a larger project, which also included a fund to help local rebuilding and reorganization efforts, plus a series of dinners, lectures, classes, and events that unfolded throughout the city during the fall of 2007. Paul will discuss the organizing and aesthetic ideas around the project and show clips from the performance in the Lower Ninth Ward. He will also talk about the installation of the Godot archive at MoMA (now on exhibit until September 2011).
The Indianapolis International Film Festival is currently running at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and I was able to attend a showing last night. I fell in love with the half-hour documentary "The Creation of Torrit Smoke." North Carolina filmmaker John Francis follows painter Blakely Dadson through a 4-month process of creating a painting. It is fascinating from a purely artistic, compositional standpoint, but the parts I found truly inspiring were those where Dadson talked about the creative process and the spirituality of it. He had some interesting things to say about the perils of perfectionism, the nature of art as a calling, and the way in which painting is often more like discovering something old than creating something new.
