Aliza Shvarts

Despite rumors to the contrary, New York City remains the center of the contemporary art world, the place where a staggering quantity of art is produced, exhibited, purchased, interpreted, and evaluated. One way to make sense of the city¿s complexity and energy is to trace the dynamic pathways through which art travels: the connections between artists, dealers, institutions, and critical voices. During two intensely busy weeks in January, this study trip will investigate the full range of contemporary art production in the city, visiting artists' studios, non-profit spaces and publications, residencies, commercial galleries, and major museums. Team-taught by artist / theorist Aliza Shvarts and critic / art historian Daniel Quiles, both of whom have lived and worked in New York, the class will benefit from numerous ¿behind-the-scenes¿ opportunities with artists, critics, curators, and dealers.

This seminar consists of weekly studio visits, discussions, and small group critiques. Students are expected to arrive with completed and semi-completed works and be prepared to make and re-make new works throughout the summer sessions. A wide variety of readings chosen by faculty will guide discussions that concentrate on problems concerning methods of artmaking, distribution, and interpretation. Readings will include examples drawn from the emerging category of conceptual writing as well as crucial art historical texts, literature, and poetry.

Over the course of each six-week summer residency period, all students in the Low- Res MFA program engage with a series of world renowned artists and scholars to expand our collective conceptual frameworks and discourses. Invited speakers participate in our Visiting Artist & Scholar Lecture Series. They deliver a public lecture open to the entire SAIC and Chicago community and the general public, and then participate in a Colloquium the next day exclusively for Low-Res MFA students. Each Colloquium takes place with the artist present, and is a space where the artist¿s work and concepts (direct or adjacent) are discussed, questions are raised, and topics are debated. Colloquium asks for consensus, but rather a dynamic and in depth discursive exploration of ideas. This form allows for a multiplicity of voices to build on concepts through questioning, contributing, challenging, and listening to each other. The colloquium is considered a Gift anchored with the presence of the visiting artist. This Gift is generated by enacting full attention to the concepts present in the artist or scholar¿s work. In the spirit of Lewis Hyde, the Gift is an exchange which generates or propagates further attention and exchange in culture. Thus, the Colloquium is a Gift meant to propagate further exchange in the world, as artists and citizens.

What are the most urgent issues in contemporary art now? This online course addresses the central themes and ideas shaping the production and distribution of art. Students will develop and manage their own blogs and participate in continuing online discussions. The final requirement will be a finished paper.

This course will explore performance and theories of performativity, with a focus on histories of 20th and 21st century performance art, speech acts, and theories of gender performativity and embodiment. Taking up the core proposition of the ¿performative turn¿ in art and philosophy, we will examine not only what artworks, texts, and embodied practices mean, but what they do. Coursework will combine new and canonical works in queer theory, feminism, Black studies, Indigenous studies, and disability studies, and performance studies, as well as assignments that create opportunities to put theory into practice.

Students in their final residency enroll in Thesis Studio: Public Presentation, a two-part course that guides students through their thesis presentation that will be given in the SAIC Galleries during the MFA Thesis Exhibition. The first portion functions as a seminar, during which students learn about historical modes and forms of the artist¿s talk and prepare for their own public presentations. These presentations consist of two parts: an artist talk to be delivered live in relation to the Thesis Exhibition, and a creative video work that synthesizes ideas in each artist¿s practice in a new way. The second portion of the course consists of presenting the talks and videos to the entire graduating cohort and SAIC faculty.

The Graduate Projects course allows students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work and research from their home studio or mobile platforms. The continued development of ideas and approaches initiated during the summer Graduate Studio Seminar will be supported through in-person and online conversation with SAIC Program Mentors. These liaisons are intended to support the off-campus development of work while also providing personal connections to SAIC's vast global network of distinguished alumni. Open to Low Residency MFA students only.

The Graduate Projects course allows students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work and research from their home studio or mobile platforms. The continued development of ideas and approaches initiated during the summer Graduate Studio Seminar will be supported through in-person and online conversation with SAIC Program Mentors. These liaisons are intended to support the off-campus development of work while also providing personal connections to SAIC's vast global network of distinguished alumni. Open to Low Residency MFA students only.