Modules – ArtoftheMOOC.org

Aesthetics, Art History and Cultural Insitutions

Black Magic at the White House

a 2009 video piece by Jeannette Ehlers in which she, rendered nearly invisible via video manipulation, performs a vodoun dance in Marienborg which has a strong connection to the Danish slave trade. Ehlers wishes to shed light on the colonial amnesia in Denmark. The artist’s own ethnic background, with a Danish mother and a Father from Trinidad, West Indies, adds extra …

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REALtimeFOOD: the world’s slowest restaurant

One thing that caught my attention in this week’s lecture was the case on Rirkrit Tiravanjia’s exhibition entitled Untitled (Free), in which the artist sat in a gallery with a kitchen and made pad thai for the attendees. This discussion on the social nature of artwork led me to do further research on how people …

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Repatriation of Blackfoot Sacred Items at Glenbow Museum

Living mostly in the province of Alberta, the Blackfoot people are part of the four First Nations of Canada. The Glenbow museum, located in Calgary, like many ethnographic museums, holds many sacred objects, including medicine bundles from the Blackfoot people, holy items used in worship. Glenbow began receiving large-scale protest from First Nation people for …

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a non-profit organization, founded in 2003, dedicated to increasing Chicago’s cultural capital by cultivating contemporary art practice and discourse. Through a range of exhibition and public programs, including symposiums, lectures, performances and publications, Threewalls creates a locus of exchange between local, national and international contemporary art communities. Threewalls publishes Phonebook, a directory of independent art spaces, programs, …

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Embodied Knowledges

Racial Complexity and Embodiment

Kareem Mortimer’s video installation in the Bahamian National Art Gallery’s exhibition ‘Antillean: An Ecology’ (2014-2015) addressed racial complexities from a Bahamian perspective. White subjects painted their bodies black and black subjects painted their bodies white while the audio gave account of personal experiences. The video was shown from wall to ceiling in an intimate black …

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