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The MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research Program
www.pnca.edu/programs/mfa/c/criticaltheory
Application deadline: Thursday, March 15, 2012
Theme: The Visible, the Invisible, and the Indivisible
Cash prize: 2,000 USD
Winner announced by Sunday, April 15, 2012
The Hannah Arendt Prize in Critical Theory and Creative Research is an annual prize competition for anyone interested in the juncture of art and creative research and in the principles at the heart of the arts and humanities, including sense-based intelligence; the reality of singular, nonrepeatable phenomena; ethical vision; and consilience between inner and outer, nature and reason, thought and experience, subject and object, self and world.
Application for the prize is open to the general public. Download the PDF application below and email the completed application and the essay (in a .doc or .pdf format) to [email protected]
Explication of theme: Whether rice infused with human DNA, new forms of warfare, fully playable nanoguitars, bots traversing blood streams, or transistors the size of viruses, the major developments of the 21st century are largely invisible and, as such, resistant to critique and intervention—what we call politics as a system of challenge, contestation, and negotiation. How do we force invisible processes into visibility, and what do we do with them once they appear at this threshold? Conversely, what are the means by which the visible might be made to disappear? Are these the right questions?
Along with Anne Marie Oliver, founding Co-Chair, MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research, Pacific Northwest College of Art, and Barry Sanders, founding Co-Chair, MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research, Pacific Northwest College of Art, the judges for 2012 include:
Keith Gessen, Founding Editor, n+1
Lewis Hyde, Richard L. Thomas Professor of Creative Writing, Kenyon College
Atta Kim, Photographer
Geoffrey Mann, Designer and Lecturer in Product Design and Digital Consultant, Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland
W.J.T. Mitchell, Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor of English and Art History, The University of Chicago, and Editor, Critical Inquiry
Sina Najafi, Editor-in-Chief, Cabinet: A Quarterly of Art and Culture
Jacques Rancière, Professor of Philosophy, The University of Paris, St. Denis (Emeritus), and Professor of Philosophy, Europäische Universität für Interdisziplinäre Studien/EGS
About the MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research
The MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research (CT+CR), the first of its kind in the U.S., is an accelerated, 45-credit, seminar-based program (one year + summer intensive) that prepares students for opportunities at the intersection of art, theory, and research. Located in the metropolitan heart of the Pacific Northwest, a center of creative risk-taking and social experimentation, the program combines the study of critical theory as a mode of socio-political critique and creative research as a process-driven form of inquiry, pushing both theory and research in new directions within the context of a 21st-century art school. The program is devoted to people and ideas and to a rethinking of the present and future of cultural production; of arts-based research and research-based arts; of curatorial practice, documentary, and the Archive; and of social and political reconfiguration in relation to major sites of contemporary contestation. See additional information at www.pnca.edu/programs/mfa/c/criticaltheory. Founding Co-chairs: Anne Marie Oliver and Barry Sanders.
About PNCA
Founded in 1909 and located in an award-winning campus in the heart of Portland, Oregon, PNCA is one of a handful of West Coast institutions accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design offering BFA and MFA degrees. PNCA offers five Master’s programs—the joint Master of Fine Arts in Applied Craft and Design with Oregon College of Art and Craft, the Master of Fine Arts in Collaborative Design, the Master of Fine Arts in Visual Studies, the Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Visual Studies, and the Master of Arts in Critical Theory and Creative Research. These graduate programs are part of a growing series of innovative programs of the Ford Institute for Visual Education (FIVE). FIVE’s purpose is to establish within PNCA innovative advanced programs, exhibitions, symposia, outreach activities, and artist residencies. Through FIVE, PNCA works to establish collaborative relationships between students, international artists, and the region’s art, design and business communities and to extend the institution’s intellectual resource platform. Additional information is available at www.pnca.edu.
