Category Archives : Recommended Reading


Berkeley at the Global Climate Conference

More than 30 UC Berkeley researchers, faculty members and graduate students are currently representing the university at the United Nation’s annual Climate Change Conference, including Associate Vice Chancellor of Art and Design Shannon Jackson who reported on her experiences at the summit and the connection to art practice here. Read more about the conference from Berkeley News […]


ARC | A+D Working Group: The Arts and Economics

ARC | A+D Working Group: The Arts and Economics September 16, 11am to 1pm (recurring Wednesdays throughout the semester) Conceived as a forum to advance graduate study and to explore some of the institutional goals of UC Berkeley’s Arts + Design Initiative, this bi-weekly working group will focus on productive and fraught intersections between the […]


Questioning Aesthetics: Mapping the Conversation

Mapping the Conversation The Questioning Aesthetics Symposium takes up the term aesthetics as both the subject and object of critique, and as a way to explore and expand new forms of aesthetics research in many disciplines. In relation to the evolving conversations around participation, computing and the contemporary, scholars and artists from around the US will come […]


ARC Reads: Rick Lowe Residency

The Arts Research Center is delighted to be hosting a 10-day residency with acclaimed artist and community organizer Rick Lowe. Lowe’s Project Row Houses, founded two decades ago, has created a blueprint for using urban renewal practices within an artistic context to enrich lives. During his time on campus, Lowe will present the 2014 Regents Lecture […]


ARC Reads: Cheryl Haines & @Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz

As part of the Art, Activism and Technology lecture series, Cheryl Haines, Executive Director of FOR-SITE Foundation and Curator of “@Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz” will present “Creative Interventions and Social Activation.” Below are selected reviews of the exhibition and readings in preparation for her talk.    Kenneth Baker, “Ai Weiwei Installation on Alcatraz: No Breakout,” San Francisco Chronicle, […]


The Silent E: 29 Effeminate Gestures 24 years later

Joe Goode’s 29 Effeminate Gestures was first performed in 1987, by Joe Goode himself; it was literally a self-proclamation. It began with a muttered statement, repeated more and more emphatically, mounting to a ringing, stamping, shouted-out rhythm: “Heee’s a-good-guy! Heeeee’s a-good-guy! He’s a good good GOOD GOOD GOOD GOOD GUY!” He looked like a good guy: he was Joe Goode, he was tall and good-looking, he was wearing clean mechanic’s coveralls, he had sincere brown eyes, you would trust him to fix your car. However, he was also purposefully wielding a power chainsaw, and the intensity of its ragged whine brought adjectives other than good to mind. There was something excessive about him, a dangerous exaggeration of possibility. He wasn’t a good guy; he was a Goode. It was as if that extra, silent “e” made all the difference.


Arts Research Center 2012-2014 Bi-Annual Report

ARC 2012-2014 Bi-Annual Report_FINAL_low res Read ARC Director Shannon Jackson’s summary of the 2012-14 academic years, highlighting ARC’s many accomplishments (Reimagining the Urban: Bay Area Connections Across the Arts and Public Space, Impact in the Arts Think Tank, Living Time: Art and Life After ‘Art-Into-Life’, Bruce Beasley: The Rondo Series in Context, Nordic Time Zones: Time-based art […]


Valuing Labor in the Arts – A Special Issue of Art Practical

When is it okay to work for free? Is it acceptable as long as you’re working with—or for—another artist? What is an artistic service? These are just a few of the hundreds of questions circulating for artists working in the 21st-century economy, and the central theme of the special two-part issue of Art Practical curated by the Arts Research Center in […]