Call for Proposals: Unfiguring, March 21-23, 2024

The Mahindra Humanities Center Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference, Unfiguring: Experiments in the practice of science and art, is currently accepting proposals through February 1st. Unfiguring is organized by CMP students Beatrice Steinert, Noah Toyonaga, Soumya Ghosh, with Daniel Faccini. The conference will be held from March 21-23, 2024. 

In contemporary science, the scientific paper is a dominating force. Composed of a succession of “figures” scaled to the page, the paper is a scientific genre that imposes a linear, impersonal, and two-dimensional logic to how scientists conceptualize and communicate their research. Artists, on the other hand, have a vast range of tools at their disposal to observe, document, and craft stories about the natural world. 

Building on the entwined histories of science and art, Unfiguring will be an experimental space for those curious about the expansive realm of possibilities where the boundaries between the arts and sciences blur. What would it look like for scientific research to take its form as a performance, sculpture, film, immersive projection experience, or literary manuscript? How can scientific communities recognize and attribute credit for such works? Through exchange of ideas, practices, and experiences, this conference will allow scientists to envision how they could approach their work more expansively and all participants to gain a broader sense of possible futures for science. We will approach this step towards a deeper integration of the sciences and arts playfully and with humility.

We welcome submission of work from any STEM field as well as from all disciplines that engage the sciences in form or content. Proposed projects can be at any stage of the research process: ideating, making, gathering, analyzing, and interpreting observations, among others. We encourage experimentation in media and format. Selected work will be grouped into multidisciplinary research reviews led by a panel of invited artists and scientists. For more information and to submit a proposal, visit www.unfiguring.org

Applications open for CMP Capstone Fellowships

several people doing contact improv in a large room with wooden floor

We are happy to report that we can once again support students’ media practice with CMP Capstone Fellowships. CMP students are eligible to apply for up to $5,000 in funding, with priority given for capstone projects at later stages of development and most in need of funding. Students can generally receive funding for their capstone project only once during their time in CMP.

Applications are available here and are due on October 16, 2023. The committee will meet to review applications in late October, with decisions announced in November.

This fellowship support is generously funded by the Division of Arts & Humanities.

image: Medicine & Movement workshop, part of Shireen Hamza‘s 2023 capstone project Scores for Humoral Medicine

REMEDIATIONS show and critique

In April, REMEDIATIONS opened in the Smith Center’s Arts Wing. REMEDIATIONS was an experimental exhibition of works by five PhD students in the Critical Media Practice secondary field whose researches in anthropology, history of science, visual studies, and architecture engage with a range of subject matters including accessibility, absence, embodiment, and opacity.

The show was curated by Film and Visual Studies student Mahan Moalemi and featured pieces by CMP students  Shireen HamzaElitza KoevaChrystel OloukoïPauline Shongov, and Emilio Vavarella.

Cultural theorist and poet Fred Moten joined CMP students for a critique and discussion of the works on April 14.

CMP applications due April 3

Applications to the Critical Media Practice secondary field for Harvard PhD students are due April 3. The application and details can be found here.

Students interested in learning more about CMP are welcome to stop by the CMP Office Hour on February 6, 3:00 – 4:00 pm in Sever 415. CMP Director of Graduate Study Joana Pimenta and Administrative Director Julie Mallozzi will be on hand to answer questions about CMP and the application process.

Current CMP students are also welcome to stop by with any ideas or questions – or just to say hi and grab some refreshments!

A Theory of Assembly

CMP alum Kyle Parry (Film and Visual Studies, 2015) has released his first book, A Theory of Assembly: From Museums to Memes, through University of Minnesota Press. In the book, Parry argues that assembly is one of the most powerful and pervasive cultural forms in the digital era.

According to Judith Butler of University of California, Berkeley, “Kyle Parry’s remarkable book offers an eclectic theory of assembly, shifting the focus from political theory to aesthetic and media practices. This is a wide-ranging and original work that keeps shifting angles to produce the sense of vibrant, if problematic, new constellations of the various assemblies that pervade contemporary life. Mindful of both the progressive and reactionary forms that assemblies can take, Parry probes the intensified circulation of digital assemblies in all their ambivalence.”

Kyle is currently associate professor history of art and visual culture at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Kyle Parry holding his book A Theory of Assembly

Emilio Vavarella named Harvard Horizons Scholar

CMP student Emilio Vavarella (Art, Film, and Visual Studies) was named one of nine Harvard Horizons Scholars by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. This program recognizes extraordinary PhD research and offers opportunities for long-lasting community, mentorship, and professional and artistic growth. The scholars will present brief talks at the 2023 Harvard Horizons Symposium at Sanders Theatre on April 11 at 5pm.

The GSAS recently interviewed Emilio about his CMP capstone project The Other Shapes of Me, which is the result of Emilio’s research into “the origin and current applications of binary technology: from weaving to programming, algorithms, software, automation processes, up to the complete computerization of a human being.”

The Other Shapes of Me includes several components, the central of which is an installation of a modified 19th century Jacquard loom – one of the first modern computational machines – on which Emilio’s mother wove a textile based on Emilio’s complete genetic code. The film Genesis, documenting this year-long performance, is both part of the installation and a standalone piece. Medium-scale tapestries comprise Sections (The Other Shapes of Me) and small-scale tapestries comprise Samples (The Other Shapes of Me), all of which explore the technical limits and possibilities of contemporary digital looms. An artist book published by Mousse, rs548049170_1_69869_TT, includes documentation of the work and contributions from 15 thinkers and practitioners in art, philosophy, bioengineering, media theory, and the history of science and technology.

Emilio’s dissertation,“Techniques and Technologies of Thought: A Short History of Media Models,” is an interdisciplinary study of the relationship between technology and thought.

Jessica Bardsley’s “Life Without Dreams” to screen at Sundance

Jessica Bardsley’s short film, Life Without Dreams, is set in the outer space of consciousness, where the surfaces of far-out planetary bodies form the terrain for an exploration of 24/7 capitalism, insomnia, and the disappearance of darkness due to light pollution. The film will be screened in person and online at the Sundance Film Festival. Dates to be announced. Congratulations, Jessica!

Nnenna Onuoha’s AFTERLIVES

CMP student Nnenna Onuoha ( PhD candidate in Anthropology) will present four of her recent video works in the exhibition AFTERLIVES at Berlin’s Galerie im Turm December 15, 2022 through February 19, 2023.

The videos will be presented one after another in an individual display. “Centering Afrodiasporic voices in processes such as collective re-membering, archiving of Black experience and (self-) care, Onuoha approaches histories of colonialism across West Africa, Europe and the United States. By carefully and repeatedly applying these methods, the artist generates histories of the past that can be shared collectively and thus may work as a means to repair.” – exhibition program

Nnenna Onuoha and Melody Howse will hold a talk in the gallery on January 25 to consider how the visual language of “Black Visual Intonation,” theorized by Arthur Jafa in 1992, has impacted their work as Afrodiasporic filmmakers.

Apply for CMP: Next Deadline Nov. 28

The Graduate School in Arts and Sciences offers a secondary field in Critical Media Practice (CMP) for Harvard PhD students who wish to integrate media creation into their academic work. CMP reflects changing patterns of knowledge dissemination, especially innovative research conducted or presented using media practices in which written language may only play a part. Students interested in creating original interpretive projects in still or moving images, sound, installation, internet applications, or other media in conjunction with their written scholarship may apply to pursue the CMP secondary field, which will connect them with courses, workshops, and advising on production of media in different formats. Critical Media Practice is overseen by the Film Study Center.

The deadline to apply for the Critical Media Practice secondary field has been extended to Monday, November 28, 2022.

More information about CMP can be found on the website: https://cmp.gsas.harvard.edu/
Application can be downloaded at: https://cmp.gsas.harvard.edu/for-students/#apply

CMP Capstone Installation Christian Struck

Image: Christian Struck’s CMP Capstone, “Echoes of the Mundane X Materiality of Text”