News from the Humanities Division

Judy Hoffman, lecturer in the Committee on Cinema and Media Studies and the Department of Visual Arts, will participate in a panel discussion on “Filming the Revolution” at Facets Cinémathèque Saturday, August 23, at 10 a.m.

The year 1968 was a pivotal year in history. The Chicago Democratic Convention became a battleground which reverberates into social and political attitudes today. From a perspective 40 years later, what was it like to document this revolution? How does a filmmaker keep perspective in the midst of profound events? What is documentary truth in the face of social and political injustice? A stellar panel of filmmakers and participants in 1968 and the social and political revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s will reconnect us with issues as, if not more essential today than they were in 1968.

Moderated by New City film critic Ray Pride, the panel includes Chicago Film Group founder and producer (of American Revolution II and Murder of Fred Hampton) Bill Cottle, filmmaker/professor of film Jill Godmilow (Far From Poland, Waiting for the Moon), filmmaker/cinematographer Hoffman (Labor Stories), filmmaker/Heartland Journal publisher Mike James, cinematographer and social activist Peter Kuttner, and Kartemquin Films co-founder and Hoop Dreams producer Gordon Quinn.

Hoffman has worked in film and video for over 25 years and was active in the Alternative Television Movement of the early 1970’s, experimenting in the use of small format video equipment. Her extraordinary credits include working with Ken Burns (Frank Lloyd Wright), Alfred Maysles (Salesman), Kartemquin Films (Hoop Dreams), as well as the late French ethnographer and filmmaker Jean Rouch. She was awarded the 2004 Nelson Algren Committee Award for community activists making a significant contribution to Chicago life.

Seven first-year MFA students at the University of Chicago worked with Smart Museum of Art curator Stephanie Smith to create a wall of works on paper from the permanent collection— along with intervening pieces of their own—as part of the reinstallation of the contemporary galleries. The project, titled On Paper, was begun by establishing a set of criteria and themes gleaned from a critical discussion of recently acquired work by Michael Rakowitz, which is also part of the exhibit.

The project is organized around the following themes:

Paper: As medium, material and subject
Circulation: Alternate modes of exchange and movement
Politics: Contemporary culture and events as subject
Recontextualization: Items that have attained the status of art through change in context.

With these notions in mind, each of the student curators culled through the Smart Museum’s database and selected artworks that spoke to the group’s concepts and their own aesthetic sensibilities. Through a process of debate and discussion, the group arrived at the works now on display.

The students are also practicing artists and as such chose or created pieces in response to the themes and works selected. This allowed them to interact with the history of art in a deeper way, literally situating themselves in the conversations.  The students’ works appear alongside such renowned artists as Pablo Picasso, Hans Haacke, and Kara Walker. On Paper is on view through mid-August, 2008 at the Smart Museum of Art, 5550 S. Greenwood Ave. The Museum is open Tuesday through Friday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

A Flickr gallery of the installation process is available here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/artoridiocy/sets/72157605945621725/

The MFA students contributed the following works:

MATT METZGER
Work on Paper, 2008 (Acrylic and oil on wood)’

VANESSA RUIZ
Pussy Heart, 2005 (inkjet print on paper); Aluminum Heart, 2004 (aluminum foil); I miss you, come back, 2008 (pencil on paper); Love Letters to Renee, 2004–2008 (assorted correspondence in Ziplock bag)

KIMMY NOONEN AND MICHAL STAWARZ
Exchange:606**, 2008 (Intermedia (photo)

MARILYN VOLKMAN
Whoever digs a hole for his brother falls therein, 2008 (ink on paper on wooden structure)

ERIK WENZEL
Still We Live & Die at the Same Time and Never Notice the Difference, 2008 (decollaged cardboard drinking coaster); AMBROSE / AMBROSIA, 2008 (decollaged cardboard drinking coaster)

DANIELLE PAZ
Media Mourning, 2008 (Red box, medium grey photo paper, projector, laptop, black gaffers tape, surge protector)

Hip-hop pioneer Grandmaster Flash is in town tonight, but not to lay down beats. Rather, the artist formerly known as Joseph Saddler will be at the University of Chicago’s International House to sign and promote his new autobiography, The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash: My Life, My Beats. During the appearance, Flash will also discuss his life and the memoir with WGCI’s DJ Timbuk2.

In the memoir, co-written with music-bio veteran David Ritz (Marvin Gaye, B.B. King, Ray Charles, etc.), Flash details his formative childhood in the South Bronx; the rise of his legendary group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five who, along with artists like the Sugar Hill Gang and Melle Mel, put hip-hop on the map; and how, in true VH1 fashion, it all came tumbling down. The memoir is full of interesting insights including the fact that Flash apparently hated one of the band’s biggest hits. It’s a rare chance to see one of music’s true living pioneers in person. And to ask him what he thinks about Lil Wayne.

Grandmaster Flash’s appearance at the University is the latest in a series of events dedicated to exploring all sides of hip-hip. . Center for the study of Race, Politics and Culture Artist-in-Residence Bakari Kitwana taught a class on “The Politics of the Hip-Hip Generation” during the spring quarter. DJ Kool Herc, credited with helping to birth the movement, spoke at the Experimental Station in early June. South Asian hip-hoppers performed in March as part of HipHopistan, a mixture of discussions and concerts believed to comprise an event that is the first of its kind. And the theme of the hip-hop generation’s involvement in politics has been frequently addressed on campus: Artists, academics, and analysts gathered at the University April 5 for a conference on “The Hip-Hop Generation: Race, Gender & the Vote,” while feminism and hip-hop were debated during panel discussions in 2005.

Grandmaster Flash appears tonight at The International House at the University of Chicago, 1414 E. 59th, 6 p.m., Free, Call 773-753-2270 for more details.

Professor Marta Ptaszynska’s piece premieres at restored Rockefeller organ unveiling

University organist Thomas Weisflog was joined by four university choruses under James Kallembach for a program including the premieres of works for chorus and organ commissioned for the occasion from Marta Ptaszynska, the Helen B.& Frank L. Sulzberger Professor in Composition, and William Bolcom.

Ptaszynska’s “Hymn of the Universe” was the standout—a setting of a text by Pierre de Chardin that deploys choral voices in cloudy aleatoric dissonances reminiscent of Gyorgy Ligeti. The effect was that of a mystic, cosmic celebration.

Read the full story here.

Student filmmakers will present their projects at DOC*U!mentary Film Festival. The group, guided by Judy Hoffman, Lecturer in Committee on Cinema & Media Studies and Department of Visual Arts, will be on hand for the free screenings of six short films. The Festival takes place at 6 p.m., Wednesday, June 4, at the Film Studies Center (Cobb 306).

The Films:

THE ACCELERATOR BUILDING
Filmmakers: Mahaut Champetier De Ribes, Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman, Dana Rovang
In the middle of the University of Chicago campus, there is a small, gray building in the shadow of one of the school’s largest dorms. Unnoticed and unheard of by most students, it sits in obscurity. Inside its walls runs a world of tiny and colossal scientific machines.

THE GAME
Filmmakers: Shantai Green, Sarra Jahedi, Helen Kendall
Chess devotees meet in Hyde park to play for hours on end. Meanwhile, the players reflect on the game and how strategies employed can be used in everyday life.

PERFUME AND FORMALDEHYDE
Filmmakers: Betsy Cass, Danielle Dai, Courtney Saladino
The Walter Sojka Funeral Home, in business for over fifty years, has been a staple in the West Town community. The film explores the shifting dynamic within the home as Walter passes the business onto his assistant Edwin Cruz.

PAINTINGS BELOW ZERO
Filmmakers: Danielle Dai, Margaret DeCelles, Gene Fojtik
This past February, the City of Chicago presented Gordon Halloran’s Paintings Below Zero, an art installation in Millennium Park. It drew tens of thousands of visitors in the midst one of Chicago’s harshest winters. This film touches on the nature of public art and documents the piece that motivated so many to brave the elements for what might be one of Chicago’s most successful exhibits ever.

TWELFTH STREET/ROOSEVELT ROAD
Filmmakers: Nick Collias, Felipe Diaz-Arango, Lizzie Himmel
Is it a barn? Ruins from an ancient civilization? No, it’s Chicago’s most chthonian train station! Thankfully, this feature will not be presented in Smell-O-Vision.

THE AFTERMATH OF AMADOU
Filmmakers: Gene Fojtik, Rebecca Roven, Chris Salata, Daniel Collins
In The Aftermath of Amadou, the tragic death of University of Chicago graduate student Amadou Cisse serves as a catalyst for the examination of the often tenuous relationship between the University and
the neighboring community of Woodlawn. The film investigates issues of social responsibility while
attempting to answer the question, “who are our neighbors?”

Reception to follow

Illustrator and graphic novelist Ivan Brunetti will discuss the art of comic strip and his work on Thursday, May 29, at 5:30 p.m. The talk will take place in Rosenwald 405, 1115 E. 58th St.

Born in Italy, Brunetti currently works as a web designer and in the past has taught classes on editorial illustration and comics at Columbia College Chicago and the University of Chicago. In 2005, he curated The Cartoonist’s Eye, an exhibit of 75 artists’ work, for the A+D Gallery of Columbia College Chicago; the exhibit was a preview for An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories (Yale University Press, 2006), which he edited. A second volume of this Anthology is scheduled for Fall 2008, God willing.

He has contributed sporadic comic strips for The Chicago Reader (and a handful of other alternative weekly newspapers) and has drawn comics and illustrations for The New Yorker, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Spin, Mother Jones, Fast Company, The Baffler, The Comics Journal, In These Times, and (inexplicably) Scooby-Doo. His comics have been featured in McSweeney’s Number 13 as well as Houghton-Mifflin’s Best American Comics 2006 and 2007.

To date, Fantagraphics Books has published four issues of his comic book series, Schizo, and two collections of his morally inexcusable gag cartoons, HAW! and its miniature companion, HEE! Moreover, in 2007 Fantagraphics published Misery Loves Comedy, which collected the first three issues of Schizo as well as a host of early and obscure work.

In 2007 Buenaventura Press published Brunetti’s Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice booklet, included as a supplement to the magazine Comic Art, Number 9.

Contact Julia Klein at the Committee on Creative Writing for more information.

From childhood memories of a public television figure to a trash vortex the size of Texas, from an obsession with domestic meditative interiors to instructions on how to end civilization as we know it, from casting Mom in a favorite film to a dive-bar bathroom full of stolen graffiti. The works in The University of Chicago Department of Visual Arts Graduate MFA Exhibitions are as diverse and intriguing as the artists who created them.

Three exhibitions will showcase nine MFA candidates. All exhibitions will take place at The DOVA Temporary, a newly renovated gallery space located at 5228 S. Harper St. in Hyde Park. All exhibitions are free and open to the public. Each exhibition will remain open to the public Monday-Thursday 1 to 5 p.m., and Friday and Saturday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. A complete listing of the exhibition schedules and information will be available at the Department of Visual Arts’ Web site.

Thursday, May 15, 6 to 9 p.m.: “Cryptomnesia” featuring Jeremy Pelt, Val Snobeck, and Brett Tracy. Exhibition closes May 25.

Thursday, May 29, 6 to 9 p.m.: “One brick country in the Sea” featuring Jennifer Krantz, J. Thomas Pallas, Casey Smallwood

For more cultural events at the University of Chicago – including exhibitions, performances, lectures and presentations, please visit the Humanities Division calendar.

About the Artists:

May 15th to 25th
“Cryptomnesia”

Jeremy Pelt creates and arranges objects to evoke memories, fantasies, spirits and treasured souvenirs.

Utilizing platforms including the Internet, the collective unconscious, and the garbage vortex in the Pacific Ocean’s center, Val Snobeck explores the boundaries of reversion and awareness.

By appropriating current events, modern spaces, and digital imagery, Brett Tracy peers through the cracks of industrial civilization, revealing a Post-Collapse aesthetic characterized by activation of the contemporary ruin, romanticization of life after oil, and the reintroduction of a more free, more humane existence.

May 29th to June 8th
“One brick country in the Sea”

Jennifer Krantz’s work pushes the immediacy of visual engagement initiating domestic materials through her psychological and physical processes of repetition and order.

J. Thomas Pallas
“The mix, mash-up, radical collage of existence is the truth of history, the specificity of which is bloody and brutal…but in Truth, America, we are muddled and confused and cannot properly point to anywhere as first or original, we can only excavate our influences and legacies, embrace and learn from them All, the horrid and humble, the detestable and delightful, the shameful and the stunning. These cursory dualities themselves are not broad enough to hold us all. We are complex and multiple, poly-cultural, we live in the actuality of the miscegenated moment, the mixing of kinds, America is a crossroads under lamp lights, and we can move toward reconciliation and equity, in this moment, we can walk toward and learn from the truth and promise and dare I say hope of our tangled roots.” – Kevin Coval, Chicago poet and artist

Casey Smallwood examines the process of “becoming like” someone or something else as a mode of developing identity by filtering cinematic narratives through her mother.

The first of the MFA shows took place May 1st to 11th. Titled “…and somewhere in between,” the exhibit featured the work of Manol Gueorguiev, Clay Smith and Joseph Miller.

Manol Gueorguiev’s work operates in the empty space that envelops significant events and experiences. Relying on strong figure ground juxtapositions, he creates work that is spatial and motivated by the literal surroundings. Gueorguiev’s work is anti-narrative, anti-expressive, anti-humanist, anti-subjective – it is objective, constructive, literal rather than metaphorical.

By directly interacting with audiences and communities, Joseph Miller facilitates new forms of collaborations to deal with issues of authorship, appropriation and attitude. In conjunction with Miller’s thesis exhibit, The Empty Bubble Residency and Friends hosted an opening Saturday, May 3rd from 1 to 5 p.m. at The Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western Ave.

When viewed as a constellation of an art practice, Clay Smith’s works – whether video, sculpture, or installation – come into focus around the issues of southern ambivalence and personal histories questioning whether a pure southern identity can even be attained.

Gift to support new library building

A $25 million gift from alumni Joe and Rika Mansueto will support construction of a new library at the University of Chicago. Joe Mansueto is Chairman and CEO of Morningstar, Inc.

Renowned Chicago-based architect Helmut Jahn designed the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library, which will be a partially underground facility topped with a glass dome and have the capacity to house 3.5 million volumes of print material — making the University of Chicago the country’s sole top academic research library to keep its entire collection on campus.

“This library combines three of our passions: great design, the free exchange of information and the University of Chicago. That’s why Rika and I couldn’t be more thrilled to be a part of this project,” said Joe Mansueto.

University of Chicago President Robert J. Zimmer said, “These scholarly materials are at the very core of intellectual life and intellectual activity at the University of Chicago. This effort to keep the materials at the University and in the heart of our campus is a reaffirmation of their immense value.”

Read more here.

Berlin gift supports scholar studying the novel
By Josh Schonwald

The Division of the Humanities has received a $2 million gift to create its first distinguished professorship devoted to the study of one of the world’s most important and enduring genres: the novel.

The gift from Randy and Melvin Berlin will allow the Department of English Language & Literature to hire a prominent scholar working on the development of the novel in any period, or across periods. “It will enable us to hire a scholar whose concern with literary form will show students how and why the novel as a genre has retained its remarkable vitality,” said Bill Brown, the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor and Chair of English Language & Literature. The professorship is titled the Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin Professor of the Development of the Novel in English Language & Literature.

Full story here.

By William Harms and Josh Schonwald
Four University faculty members have received 2008 Guggenheim fellowships. They are among only 190 Guggenheim recipients chosen from 2,600 applicants in the United States and Canada.

Guggenheim fellows are appointed on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment. The new fellows include writers, painters, sculptors, photographers, filmmakers, choreographers, physical and biological scientists, social scientists, and scholars in the humanities. Many hold appointments in colleges and universities, with 89 institutions being represented by one or more fellows.

The four Chicago scholars who have received fellowships for research are Victor Friedman, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and the College; Rachel Fulton, Associate Professor in History and the College; David Galenson, Professor in Economics and the College; and Donald Harper, Professor and Chairman of East Asian Languages & Civilizations.

Read more here.