Minding Time: Celebration of ‘Time Zones’ in Print, Exhibition, & Online

Join a time-based (and time-sensitive) tour of “Mind over Matter” with curator Constance Lewallen. Converse with Shannon Jackson and Julia Bryan-Wilson about their special issue of Representations, “Time Zones: Durational Art and Its Contexts.” including work by Berkeley faculty such as Jeffrey Skoller, Suzanne Guerlac, Allan de Souza, Winnie Wong, SanSan Kwan, and more. Engage with our new on-line anthology of keywords in contemporary art and performance, In Terms of Performance, co-produced with Paula Marincola and the Pew Center for Art & Heritage, with contributions from a range of Bay Area artists, critics, and curators such as Rudolf Frieling, Paul Dresher, Judith Butler, and Claudia La Rocca. Launch the holiday season with a celebration of the Arts Research Center as a think tank for the arts, at Berkeley and beyond.

Preview “Time Zones: Durational Art and Its Contexts” here
Preview  “In Terms of Performance” Website here

 3pm: Exhibition Tour and Gallery Talk with Mind over Matter Curator Constance Lewallen

Constance Lewallen introduces her exhibition Mind over Matter, which features work from BAMPFA’s important holdings of first-generation Conceptual art. The exhibition includes work by Paul Kos, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Jenny Holzer, Abramovic/Ulay, Jim Melchert, Bruce Nauman, Tom Marioni, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Ant Farm, James Lee Byars, and many others. Lewallen will help us consider the significance of this exhibition in relation to our understanding of one or more keywords in time-based art experiment, for instance, Ephemeral/Ephemerality, Curating, Collecting, Documentation,, Installation and other terms.

4pm-5pm: Celebrating Time Zones: Durational Art and Its Contexts
Shannon Jackson and Julia Bryan-Wilson in conversation, with Berkeley faculty contributors
In this special issue of Representations, co-editors Jackson and Bryan-Wilson consider how “time-based art” has become a central if contested practice in a number of visual art, choreographic, theatrical, and cinematic contexts. From 2011 to 2014, the Arts Research Center convened a variety of important symposia on cross-disciplinary exchange and cross-disciplinary misrecognition in time-based art forms.  With Curating People (2011) and Making Time (2012), we convened artists, curators, and scholars from the disciplines of visual, cinematic, sound, and performing arts to consolidate and refine our collective thinking about cross-media arts experimentation, about what it means to conceive it, to produce it, and to respond as receivers and critics.  As our project continued, we placed these questions in relation to specific regional conversations, in Latin America– Spiraling Time (2013), in China and Taiwan–Temporal Shifts (2013), and in transnational art movements for social transformation–Living Time (2014). This issue of Representations, published in late November, includes essays from many of ARC’s distinguished visiting scholars as well as meditations from ten Berkeley faculty, each offering a different disciplinary perspective on the stakes of examining time-based art.

5pm-5:30pm: West Coast Preview of In Terms of Performance Website
In Terms of Performance is designed to provoke discovery and engagement across artistic disciplines. Co-edited by Shannon Jackson and Paula Marincola of the Pew Center for Art & Heritage, this site gathers reflections and interviews from ground-breaking artists, curators, presenters, and scholars whose work reflects on relations amongst visual art, theatrical, choreographic, and performance art practices. To seed the conversation, we created a list of keywords: common yet contested terms in a contemporary context where museums, theaters, and art centers try to make sense of how time-based art cross-pollinates and changes the nature of curating, collecting, producing, authoring, documenting, and commissioning. Our goal was not to produce singular definitions, nor to commission encyclopedic entries, but to share perspectives from distinct locations. Jointly housed at the Arts Research Center and Pew Center for Art & Heritage, we offer this free and accessible site to the public for future projects in education, research, and community engagement.