Winter Session in San Juan, Puerto Rico
January 2–16, 2013
Application deadline: October 19, 2012
Notification: October 26, 2012
www.betalocal.org
www.betalocal.org/sessions
Land, place and visuality is a two-week seminar taught by artist Beatriz Santiago Muñoz with geographer Javier Arbona (co-founder of De-Milit), artist Lourdes Correa-Carlo, activist Laurie Jo Reynolds, artist Jeanine Oleson, movement researcher Noemí Segarra, and artist Chemi Rosado Seijo. The seminar will explore the relationship between place and land, as well as what transpires among and between these and their visual representations. How is an image of a place related to what we know or what we think we know about it? Can we say there are any visual representations of landscape developed outside of western image-making practices? In what ways does working with and in a place transform our visual image of it? Do workers see a factory differently than someone viewing out of their car window? Do children? Do homeless people or travelers? How are historical processes made visible through visual representations of land and place? This practice-based seminar is structured as a collective exploration of specific places—from the coastal landscape of Puerto Rico most frequently pictured through the lens of tourism to post-military landscape—and as a practical investigation of these questions. We will visit these sites with artists and geographers whose work centers on these issues, as well as with the people who live and work in and through these places.
The seminar is anchored in the specific geography, local knowledge, emerging art practices, and social and political conditions of Puerto Rico. The island’s exuberant tropical ecology coexists with environmental devastation, institutional mimesis and decay, militarized and post-military spaces, as well as a growing movement to understand and transform these conditions. More details about the seminar and about tuition and housing here.
Beta-Local is a non-profit space in San Juan, Puerto Rico founded in 2009 by curator Michy Marxuach and artists Tony Cruz and Beatriz Santiago Muñoz. Its mission is to promote and support art and aesthetic inquiry through education, exhibition, and production programs.
Contact: [email protected]
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