Faculty Forum

New performances, projects, research and scholarship from RISD faculty in conjunction with the Biennial Faculty Exhibition on selected dates at the Museum.
Uncreative Practices: A Cross-Divisional RISD Symposium with Kenneth Goldsmith
A couple of years ago Mairéad Byrne and Clement Valla had a Snap! moment when they simultaneously pulled the same assigned text out of their bags for courses they were teaching in different divisions. The courses were Nonpoetry Workshop (Graduate Studies) and Uncreative Design (Graphic Design), respectively. The book was Kenneth Goldsmith's Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age (Columbia University Press 2011). Conversations have since built across RISD around Kenneth Goldsmith's ideas of uncreativity, and especially the relevance of process and systems-based generative methodologies—as opposed to notions of inspired and intuitive genius—to current practices in art and design. Accordingly, faculty and students from every RISD division will participate in this discussion with Kenneth Goldsmith, who himself graduated from RISD (BFA Sculpture '84), demonstrating how his ideas might be important for the whole school to consider in the light of the "post-media condition" we are often theorized as occupying at the moment.
Organized by Mairéad Byrne, Shona Kitchen, Lisa Z. Morgan, and Clement Valla.
Supported by the RISD 2050 Fund, RISD Department of Digital + Media, and RISD Department of Graphic Design.
Artist Biography:
Mairéad Byrne emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1994. In Ireland she worked as a freelance journalist and arts administrator, also writing two plays produced at the Project Arts Centre and three collaborative books with Irish artists. Her books since then include Nelson & The Huruburu Bird (Wild Honey Press 2003), Talk Poetry (Miami University Press 2007), SOS Poetry (/ubu Editions 2007), The Best of (What's Left of) Heaven (Publishing Genius 2010), You Have to Laugh: New + Selected Poems (Barrow Street 2013), also Jennifer's Family (Schilt 2012), in collaboration with photographer Louisa Marie Summer. She earned a PhD in Theory and Cultural Studies (Purdue University 2001) and works as Professor of Poetry + Poetics at Rhode Island School of Design.
Shona Kitchen is an artist/designer/researcher who taps into and explores the social, psychological, environmental consequences of our technological landscape. Since graduating in Architecture at the Royal College of Art, London in 1997, she has divided her time between creative practice, research and teaching. She is currently Department Head, Assistant Professor in Digital + Media, Rhode Island School of Design. Her approach is heavily collaborative, typically site-specific, and research which fits both inside and outside traditional academic spheres. Her work has manifested itself through a wide range of forms such as visual narrative and interactive public art/design. 1997-2004 she ran her own London based design firm, KRD, clients included the likes of COMME des GARÇONS. She has worked within academic institutions such as Stanford's Institute for Creativity and the Arts, research fellow and faculty at The Royal College of Art, as well as professional clients such as Sony, Samsung, IBM, and The City of San Jose Public Art Program. Recent projects include Dreaming FIDS (Flight Information Display System), a public artwork installed in the departure lounge at San Jose International Airport in California. The artwork combines forms and technologies derived from familiar airport information and security systems with an aquatic ecosystem. A self-contained, self-perpetuating dynamic system of surveillance and display, record and playback. As the fish swim around their tank, underwater cameras monitor them and identify "suspicious fish". This project won an American for the Arts award. More information here.
Lisa Z. Morgan is a British artist, designer and writer now based in Providence, R.I. She is the Co-Founder of STRUMPET & PINK and the Co-Founder of The Lavender Hinge. She is also a contributor to SHOWstudio, The Laboratory Arts Collective and Eavves. The subject and object of desire has been a palpable constant within her artistic expression both as a motivation and in its embodiment or articulation. Through her creativity and research Morgan examines how the value of provenance, of rarity and storytelling, puts into question or provokes our understanding and relationship towards desire and the desire impulse. Her focus has been how we may access, stimulate and touch the internal points of registration or the emotional dynamics of bodily perception.
In essence she attempts to define and make manifest the feeling of feeling. Her work inhabits a space where art, semiotics, design and fashion intersect. As an artist she has exhibited and performed Internationally. STRUMPET & PINK also gained International recognition having first been sold in Browns, London, followed by key boutiques in Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Rome, Singapore, Milan, Hong Kong, Madrid and various other cities around the world. STRUMPET & PINK has been featured in six books along with magazines and newspapers such as W, Elle, Vogue, LOVE, Tatler, Interview, The New York Times, The LA Times, The Financial Times, The Guardian, Wallpaper, The Telegraph, AnOther, Purple Magazine, S Magazine, The Huffington Post to name a few. STRUMPET & PINK is included in several private collections as well as the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. In 2011 Morgan was commissioned to curate and author the book Design Behind Desire, which has become a compendium for desirable objects and has been exhibited at the Triennale Design Museum in Milan as an object of desire within itself. In 2014 The Lavender Hinge opened The Lavender Hinge Showroom @ The Belesario in Buffalo, NY, which is both a site-specific installation and a representation of a gallery.Morgan has a Master of Arts from the Royal College of Art, London and initiated, although yet to complete, a PhD, also at the Royal College of Art. Her research focus was the development of a Philosophy of the Sensuous through the investigation of The Color Pink, hence The Pink Investigator has become her pseudonym. More information here, here and here.
For additional program dates and more information on the RISD Faculty Biennial, click here.