VISUAL AND CRITICAL STUDIES

MacLean 705 is a project space devoted to short-term exhibitions and events that explore the space of art and human relations.  The projects are organized by Joseph Grigely and administered by the Department of Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  The space is open to the public when the door of MacLean 705 is open, and by appointment.  Please contact jgrigely@saic.edu for further information.

from 1 November

Nico Dockx

Erased Rirkrit Tiravanija Demonstration Drawing

Nico Dockx (b.1974) lives and works in Antwerp, where he teaches at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. He works out of a fundamental preoccupation with archives and structural processes such as data, memories, information, distribution and management. Often outcomes of collaboration with other artists, his installations, publications, sounds, texts, films and data-works investigate the relationship between perception and remembrance, allowing multiple interpretations to emerge.  Recent collaborators have included Yona Friedman, Anri Sala, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Olafur Eliasson.  His exhibition-projects have taken place in a wide variety of venues, including the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Witte de With, Rotterdam; DAAD, Berlin; CCA-Kitakyushu; and the Venice Biennale.

Lecture:

Crypticcrystalcloud

Wednesday November 2,  4:15pm
MacLean 707
Organized by Visual & Critical Studies

In its ideal form, Crypticcrystalcloud is a series of audio-visual installation works and book projects 'in progress' - reflecting upon new ways of organizing data and parallel universes. It moves through an interactive, intuitive application of interior complexity towards an evolutive architecture of time in which information transforms into meaning. Dust becomes light. Shuffled relationships create a complementary, white room where a growing archive of papers starts dancing with red, green and blue. You can sleep on a dense carpet of memories, walk through a violent, graphic rain-curtain. Sea-sounds of steel-waves. Like a silent person you take with you on travels, talking to you when feeling alone. Ongoing life inside-outside us.

from November 10

Åbäke

American Psycho

American Psycho consists of a series of business cards which are derived from a scene in the novel American Psycho, where they go on and on about . . . their business cards.
Bone vs. eggshell?
Silian Rail vs. Romalian?
Letterpress vs. raised type?
Åbäke's strategy is to take a conversation about business cards and turn it into a discussion about the rhetoric of visual information design by placing the discussion back at the very point where it started: on a business card. 

Åbäke is a group of four UK-based designers whose operating principal is collaboration. They have worked with and for a wide range of clients including singers, bands, artists, architects, museums, furniture designers, fashion designers, film production companies, and magazines.   They have also worked with refrigerators, plates, T-shirts, pens, and other objects of direct human interaction.  They co-edit and design the magazine, Sexymachinery, and co-direct a clothing and record label called Kitsune. The partners of Åbäke include Patrick Lacey, Benjamin Reichen, Kajsa Ståhl and Maki Suzuki.  They have been working together since the turn of the millennium.

Lecture:

Seriously Forks XII, a talk about talks.

Thursday November 10, 4:15-5:45 pm
MacLean 707

Note to self: Never fall into entertainment and be aware of digressions. Avoid starting sentences by "so...". Keep hydrated; Water is good but do not manipulate the bottle during the talk. Thank the hosts, look at the audience, focus on the ones who smile but don't forget the others. Never assume they knows. Never assume they don't. Answer questions clearly. Don't worry if some people leave, it might be for another reason than the quality of the talk. Dress well. Disguise being nervous by cracking a few jokes. Find new jokes. Find contextually sound jokes. Improvise new things to say on a few slides, check reactions. Pace yourself. Enjoy.