UPDATE: The article on Viking Art is now available here: https://smarthistory.org/viking-art/
Congratulations to PhD candidate Andrea Snow, who was recently awarded funding from the Samual H. Kress Foundation to write an article on Viking Art for Smarthistory. Andrea’s work will be the first to cover medieval Scandinavian art and culture for the site.
Congratulations again to Ph.D. candidate Jennifer Wu, who has received a three-month residential scholar award at the Yale Center for British Art (in addition to the Paul Mellon Centre Junior Fellowship already awarded). she will also be using the museums and library collections at Yale University for her research.
I’d like to share with you, what makes my heart grow, during what I call the “lifting of the veil.” Celebrate this day, and everyday quite frankly, by giving where you can, and receiving where you need. Infinite abundance is all around us, and we are here to figure out how to share and receive it all, together. What will you seed, during our biggest opportunity yet, to come together? …and what will you let go of, that no longer serves you, that no longer serves us?
If your call is to seed more pause during this global shabbat, to understand the depth of sadness, of pain, of mortality, of ah-ha moments, of silence; then allow yourself to listen, just listen, and discern for yourself how to simply BE. Wherever we are is exactly where we are to BE.
First, is a new sound commission, titled Coancoan, named after the Cofán “trickster” spirit of legends, or what I call the “cosmic joke.” I recorded this during the first half of March, in the Ecuadorean Amazon. I am grateful to have made it home before flights were halted, with only 10 minutes to spare. I had little idea about what was happening while I was off the grid, but believe my spirit tends to place me into such experiences to share what is possible. This piece manifested during such a powerful time. The earth is quieter than it has ever been, during any of our lives, even on an infrasonic level – an opportunity to listen, to really listen. Both a 10 minute binaural excerpt of the 24-hour sound piece, and an impromptu conversation with Gordon Hempton are accessible on the project page, where we speak about listening, giving, taking, vulnerability and fear.
Second, a small team and myself continue to work on ode to Heisenberg + De Maria. I am thankful for the continued support in building this project (see credits half way down the project page). I don’t know how this piece will manifest, but my heart continues to create what I believe in. The spark of its creation was driven by the potential impact of understanding and the embodiment of non-linear time/networks – systems akin to fungi.
Third, is a commission, titled Plant Waves, which was created for the medicinal garden, at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I hope this finds you tending your internal gardens.
Last, I share with you a few favorite personal resources to help artists, the Cofán, Quiet Parks International and the estimated 16.7 million undocumented workers AND those living in mixed immigration homes, who will not have access to the CARES Act stimulus check, in the United States. If you can give or need to receive, click on logos below OR do a simple search within your community.
Let us write our new normal, together, so we can play on! …and to close out, written by a friend, a love letter from your fear, so as to “stop posing as divine creatures; decide to become them again instead…in a fluid and polycentric world.”
Envisioning our health, our new creations to steer us together and a deep connection to all potential that is within you,
Alyssa Miserendino
Alyssa Miserendino
Carrboro, NC 27510
Congratulations to this year’s departmental recipients of Chancellor’s Awards: Carolyn Bucknall received the Undergraduate Prize in Art History and Caroline Allen the Alexander Julian Prize. You can read their personal statements here: https://chancellorsawards.unc.edu/2020-recipients/
Taylor Hunkins has written an extensive article on Slum-TV in Nairobi, which can be accessed here: https://africanah.org/slum-tv-in-nairobi/. Great work Taylor!
Congratulations to Brantly Moore, who has been awarded the UNC Graduate School’s Werner P. Friederich Off-Campus Dissertation Research Fellowship (for study in the humanities with travel to Switzerland, if possible) and Summer Research Fellowship.
Read about Williams’ VERA Collaborative project to help inform decision-makers about the historical implications of digital reproduction methods, particularly the effect on portraying people of color, here: https://magazine.college.unc.edu/news-article/preserving-visual-history/
Let’s examine the Petit Trianon, a small retreat in the gardens of the palace at Versailles created by Louis XV as a portrait. What does this home tell us about this powerful king? Kevin Justus, PhD (UNC-CH 2002), is an independent art historian, writer, and musician. He specializes in and publishes on the patronage of Louis XV and Versailles. Although based in Tucson, he works yearly at the Research Center at Versailles creating a monumental photographic database to assist in scholarly research. He is a Chateaubriand scholar and French Ambassadorial Laureate.
Congratulations to PhD candidate Jennifer Wu, who has just received a three-month Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art Junior Fellowship for Spring 2020.
Opening Reception: Friday, March 13th
From 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Paradise of Pleasure
Photographs by Mike Keaveney
Artist Statement
“That nothing last forever is perhaps our favorite thing to forget. And forgetting is the ruin of memory, its collapse, decay, shattering and eventual fading away into nothingness.” Rebecca Solnit, Storming the Gates of Paradise (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007) 254.
At the core of photography is a resistance to forgetting, decay and fading away. Each recorded image rips a moment from time in an attempt at preservation. However, with every exposure to light, air and time, images degrade, technologies become obsolete and context is lost. Leaving behind futile attempts at permanence, abandoned archives and outdated recording devices.
These forgotten archives and obsolete technologies become the raw materials for my practice. Through re-use, assemblage, erasure and digital manipulation I bring attention to photography’s ephemerality, our inherent need to record and preserve. In Halos of Happiness I collected and assembled found 4×6 landscape photographs. Using bleach as an erasure tool and varnish as a resistor, I manipulated them into representations of the state of the materials and the landscapes they represent. Fading archives, chemistry, and technology; baring traces of the past but deteriorating from every direction.
Photography mimics the entropic nature of the world it attempts to preserve, a site of transient moments and landscapes. Within the United States it is difficult to understand the landscape, no matter how many representations are made of it. It appears to have hidden its own history, traces dissolved and architecture demolished. Devoid of the romantic ruins of the past, what remains is a utopic fantasy of progression. Paired with photography’s ties to representation I create futile attempts at understanding a landscape vibrating in a constant state of creation and deterioration.
Exhibition runs March 1st-31st, 2020
