Session 4: Interactive Art and Collective Change
Session 4: Interactive Art and Collective Change
Susan Stainman
Social Practice + Narrative
Susan Stainman, Poised for Intimacy, 2019. Fabric, Wood, Foam. 30” x 34” x 34” when closed, 30” x variable when open.
Monday, March 22, 2021, 9 am EST
Webinar Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84592197420
Webinar ID: 845 9219 7420
Suzanne Lacy, Crystal Quilt, 1985-1987
In this talk, Susan Stainman will discuss her artistic practice of interactive sculpture within a framework of interpersonal connection and social change. Her fabric-based participatory sculptures create movement from the individual to the collective, exploring how we create connections and community. Drawing a line from artists who have paved the way such as Suzanne Lacy, Lygia Clark and Adrian Piper to her own work, Stainman will explore the ways artists have used their practice to inhabit a new world, Stainman will explore the ways artists have used their practice to inhabit a new world.
Suggested Readings:
Claire Bishop. “The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents.” Artificial Hells. Verso Books. 2012. p. 11-40.
Previous version published in Artforum, Feb. 2006 http://cam.usf.edu/cam/exhibitions/2008_8_torolab/readings/the_social_turn_cbishop.pdf
Suzanne Lacy. “Cultural Pilgrimages and Metaphoric Journeys.” Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art. Bay Press.1995. p. 19-47.
Additional resources:
Claire Bishop ed. Participation: Whitchapel: Documents of Contemporary Art. MIT Press. 2006.
Grant Kester. Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004.
Liam Gillick. "For a Functional Utopia"
Nato Thompson, ed. Living As Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991 to 2011. New York: Creative Time, 2012.
(and many more)
Susan Stainman is a visual artist, focusing in sculpture, installation, and performance. She is a graduate of Brown University with a degree in American Studies and the Slade School of Fine Art in London for Sculpture. Her current practice merges her decade-long Buddhist meditation practice and works as a mindfulness teacher with her sculptural background. She has had solo exhibitions at AIR, Point of Contact, Lock Haven University and Black and Graze in New York City. Her group exhibition history ranges from Smack Mellon in Brooklyn to SUNY Potsdam and Studio 44 in Stockholm, Sweden. She received a fellowship from A.I.R. Gallery in 2013 and has been a New York Artist with the gallery since 2014. She has attended residencies at Atlantic Center for the Arts, Jentel Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, CAC at Woodside, and Vermont Studio Center. Her work is held in universities and private collections nationally and internationally. Stainman lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.