Goddard College’s MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts Program presents
Making, Meaning, and Context: A Radical Reconsideration of Art’s Work
October 14-16, 2011
a Festival/Forum
at Goddard College in Plainfield, VT
Making, Meaning, and Context: A Radical Reconsideration of Art’s Work locates interdisciplinary art practice as a way to reexamine the function of art and artists. The emergence and growth of art in response to social and environmental urgency is shifting the work of art and artists; practitioners are challenged to find ways for art to contribute to communities and cultures in a local and global context.
We invite participation in this forum and festival of unexpected intersections: realized through inquiry-based discourse, performative interventions, and generative community dialogue that is intended to provoke and mobilize diversity of thought and practice.
We ask the following questions:
At this time in history, what does it mean to pursue an “art practice” or identify as an “artist?”
How has “art’s work” (creation, production, or manufacture) evolved aesthetically and situationally in support of or in resistance to a culture of commodification and consumption?
How have the roles of art, artist, and audience been resituated?
What is the potential for art to create civic sites for public discourse and expression?
What are the ways in which art might be complicit in upholding the narratives of modernism, capitalism, and other contested narratives?
What is the potential for interdisciplinary practice to contribute research and knowledge production that will support daily lives, diverse ecosystems, and the expansive realm of human imagination?