This year, we’ve been exploring the creative territory that lies at the intersection of art, academia, and technology. In New York, FAI team member Freya Schlemmer took advantage of two opportunities to learn about potential futures for art schools and the roles technology can play in documenting contemporary art practices.
In early March, Freya participated in Situation: Art School at the Pratt Institute. A central focus was imagining utopian scenarios, such as free, or trade-based art schools, and how viable these models might be. This symposium was an assessment of sorts, a questioning of the importance of art school, the skills to be taught, and how to teach them. A shared sentiment—”Down with the capitalist art market”—stimulated talk about aspirations for the art world to be engaged in conversation or collaboration, rather than competition.
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- Camel Collective (Carla Herrera-Prats & Anthony Graves), Situation: Art School, Pratt
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- Reception at Steuben Hall, Situation: Art School, Pratt
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- Situation: Art School, Pratt Institute
In February, Freya dropped in on the 2015 College Art Association (CAA) Annual Conference. Her goal: To find out how FAI NOW measures up to the latest digital practices in the field. She confirmed that our new interactive PDF is a promising academic resource, offering relevant, timely content in a tech-savvy format.
CAA Highlights:
- “From Creation to Classification to Consideration: How Technology is Changing the Role of Artist Archives” was the chance to meet Nicole Root, archivist for Lynda Benglis, a recent guest on Fresh Talk.
- In “Doing Digital Art History: Reflections on the Field,” art historians opined on the use of global positioning systems and other technology to visualize and read historical data.
- Ideas introduced in “Did You Read That? Art Editing on the Web” reinforced our commitment to online publishing.
