Candidates for the 2018 ICP-Bard MFA are pleased to present Collective Opposition: Artists Creating Community. This evening symposium is composed of an artist talk and panel discussion as well as a print exchange. Featured participants include keynote speaker A.L. Steiner and panelists Brian Ulrich, Quito Ziegler, Raven Chacon, and Shannon Stratton.
This symposium explores how collectives, each with their own aims, can create communities for artists to work together. The discussion will examine ways that artist collectives promote continued critical thinking amongst artists, provide support systems, and organize themselves in opposition to or as separate from large established institutions. This event is intended to foster an open dialogue between students, artists, and the general public.
In the spirit of community, the evening will culminate in the inaugural See/Saw print exchange. Intended to engage the audience and encourage conversation among artists, all attendees are invited to bring an original print or zine and leave the event with someone else’s work. All pieces must measure 11 x 14 inches or less.
Bios
A.L. Steiner uses constructions of photography, video, installation, collage, collaboration, performance, writing, and curatorial work as seductive tropes channeled through the sensibility of a skeptical queer ecofeminist androgyne. Steiner is co-curator of Ridykeulous, co-founder of Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.), a collective member of Chicks on Speed, and collaborates with numerous writers, performers, designers, activists, and artists. She is MFA faculty in Visual Arts at Bard College, Yale University, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Steiner is based in Los Angeles and New York, and is featured in permanent collections such as the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Marieluise Hessel Collection of Contemporary Art, Los
Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Hammer Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. She is represented by Deborah Schamoni Gallerie in Munich and Koenig & Clinton in New York, and is the recipient of the 2015 Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award, the 2015–2016 Berlin Prize, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts 2017 Grants to Artists award.
Brian Ulrich photographs portraying contemporary consumer culture are held by major museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago; Baltimore Museum of Art; the Cleveland Museum of Art; George Eastman Museum; the J. Paul Getty Museum; Milwaukee Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Ulrich has had solo exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Eastman Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and the North Carolina Museum of Art, as well as numerous group exhibitions such as at the Walker Art Center, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the San Diego Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
In 2009, Ulrich was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. His first major monograph, Is This Place Great or What (2011), was included in The Photobook:
A History Volume 3 (2014). The Anderson Gallery published the catalog Closeout: Retail, Relics, and Ephemera (2013). His work has been featured in the New York Times Magazine; Time Magazine; on National Public Radio programs; Orion Magazine; Vice Magazine; Mother Jones magazine; the Chicago Tribune; Artforum; Harper’s Bazaar; Politico; Vice; Leica World; Yvi Magazine, and Adbusters.
He is currently an associate professor and the Graduate Director of Photography at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Quito Ziegler is an artist and curator who is kind of obsessed with the future. They are a founding member of the WRRQ Collective, an intergenerational community of queer/trans artists and activists who make art and food together for visual resistance and collective healing. Ziegler has worked at the intersection of art and community organizing for two decades, and recently co-curated the gender section of the exhibition Perpetual Revolution: The Image and Social Change at the International Center of Photography. They are also a cultural producer with several film projects in the works.
Raven Chacon is a composer of chamber music, a performer of experimental noise music, an installation artist, and a member of the American Indian arts collective Postcommodity. Chacon has presented his work in different contexts at Vancouver Art Gallery, ABC No Rio, REDCAT, La Biennale di Venezia—Biennale Musica, Musée d'art Contemporain de
Montréal, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, 18th Biennale of Sydney, and the Kennedy Center among other traditional and non- traditional venues. His work with Postcommodity was recently featured in the Whitney Biennial and documenta 14.
He lives and works in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Shannon R. Stratton has worked in the visual arts as an artist, writer, curator, professor, publisher, and arts administrator with an emphasis on artist-run initiatives and concepts in contemporary craft.
After completing her MFA in 2003 she co-founded the artist-run organization Threewalls (Chicago), where she was artistic and then executive director for 12 years. At Threewalls, she organized exhibitions with over 100 artists; created the Propeller Fund award in collaboration with Gallery 400 for artist’s self-organizing; conceived and published four volumes of Phonebook, a national guide to grass-roots and artist-run organizations across the US; and co-organized the first Hand-in-Glove conference, which would lead to the founding of Common Field, a national organization in support of artist-focused organizations.
In 2015 she left Threewalls to assume the role of chief curator at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York and pursue her interest in the future of craft. She continues to organize exhibitions independently, with a particular research interest in expanded concepts of the self-taught, DIY, and grass-roots cultural production.
