Jean Fischer: Tricksters, Troubadours, and Bartleby - On Art from a State of Emergency

Event Type: 
Lecture
Thursday, November 5, 2009 6:00pm
In this lecture, Jean Fisher discusses artists whose work emerges from a history of colonial violence and cultural dispossession. Framed within the idea of the hermeneutic play of the "trickster" and the "troubadour" (encountering, trespassing, vectoring, and opportunism), she asks, Can art be a means of reclaiming agency? How might one characterize these practices, and do they differ from social activism? Can these practices resonate in the political, collective sphere?

Jean Fisher studied Zoology and Fine Art practice, later writing on contemporary art with particular interest in the (post)colonial. During the 1980s, she was a regular contributor to Artforum International and taught at the School of Visual Arts, State University of New York at Old Westbury, and the Whitney Student–Independent Study Program. A selection of her essays, Vampire in the Text, was published in 2003. She currently teaches the Curating Contemporary Art course at the Royal College of Art, London, and is professor of fine art and transcultural studies at Middlesex University.

Free Admission

Contact Email: 
events@saic.edu
Event Location
Venue: 
Art Institute of Chicago: Price Auditorium
Address: 

111 S. Michigan Ave.
Chicago, IL 60602
Google Map
Neighborhood: 
Loop

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