Eliza Fernand

This studio course focuses on themes, practices, contexts, and questions undertaken by contemporary artists and designers. Research Studio I is a course that asks students to begin to develop and connect their own work and ideas with a diverse range of artists, designers, and communities. This course engages with cultural institutions including: museums, galleries, libraries and archives as resources of critical engagement.

Students will undertake various types of research activities: a) collecting and classification, b) mapping and diagramming, c) systems of measurement, d) social interaction, e) information search systems, f) recording and representation, and g) drawing and other notational systems.


Assignments in this course are faculty directed, open-media, interdisciplinary and idea based. The projects are designed to help students recognize their work habits, biases, strengths, and weaknesses. Students will experience a wide range of research methods and making strategies. Critique as an evaluative process used in art and design schools, is a focus in this course. Various methods and models of critique are used in order to give students the tools to discuss their own work and the work of others.

In this course students will research ghostly traditions from their own lineages and delve into the histories of their immediate surroundings by finding local ghosts and public monuments in Chicago. We will consider ghosts as possibilities beyond the paranormal by exploring eco grief and nostalgia, and questioning monuments in a search for transparency around public art. Through studying various hauntologies, students will generate their own research topics that will be the basis for study projects and a proposed monument. We will develop a routine of field trips and individual research and study works by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Michael Rakowitz, Heidi Lau, Tania Bruguera, Killjoy's Kastle, Félix González-Torres, and Monument Lab.