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Speaker Series

The Guest Lecture series is supported by the Brutten Family Foundation

Sign up for our Newsletter to keep up-to-date with our events and watch the past Remote Guest Lectures on our YouTube Channel!


Winter 2024

Madam Entropy: How to See the Worldvideo still from Eating Light

Meredith Tromble Performance and Talk

January 29, 2024
7:00 - 8:20 p.m.
Peterson Hall, UC San Diego

Madame Entropy is a persona who began participating, unannounced, in public lectures about contemporary art in 2011. Appearing intermittently over the past decade, she is intent on transmitting knowledge about art that doesn’t fit into words. Madame Entropy takes “lecture” into unfamiliar territory, using an interplay of image, text, speech, and gesture to unsettle the experiences of “learning” and “knowing.”


NATURE AS A SUBJECT: Researching The Territory In-between Bordersposter thumbnail

doc. dr. Boštjan Bugarič, u.d.i.s.

February 8, 2024
1:30 - 3:00 p.m.
Structural & Materials Engineering Building, SME 149, UC San Diego

Doc. dr. Boštjan Bugarič is an architect, researcher, curator, critic and editor. Since 2014 he has been an editor at the open source community Architectuul in Berlin. He is a professor at the Visual art and Design department at the Faculty of Pedagogy in Koper.


Elliott Hundleyphoto of Elliott Hundley

Russell Lecture with MCASD

February 9, 2024
6:30 - 8:00 p.m.
MCASD, La Jolla

Known for his dense multimedia compositions that reference both art history and mythology, Hundley’s work weaves together scenes from the past with familiar imagery taken from the contemporary world. Working in a variety of media Hundley fuses painting, drawing, sculpture, collage, photography, and performance into rich, multifaceted tableaux. Through a process ranging from gradual accumulation to spontaneous mark making, he builds up the surface of his works using quotidian found materials.


Carmen Cuenca & Andrea Torreblancaside by side photos of the speakers

Guest Lecture

February 20, 2024
6:30 - 8:00 p.m.
Structural & Materials Engineering Building, SME 149, UC San Diego

Carmen Cuenca is Executive Director of INSITE Proyectos de Arte AC, the non-profit established to facilitate the development of INSITE in Mexico. Andrea Torreblanca is currently the Director of Curatorial Projects at INSITE and the founder and editor-in-chief of the INSITE Journal. Conceived as a binational initiative, INSITE was initially based in the Tijuana/San Diego border region at a moment of vigorous discussions about site-specificity, globalization, multiculturalism, and geopolitics.


Pablo José Ramírezphoto of gallery installation

Guest Lecture

February 26, 2024
6:30 - 8:00 p.m.
Structural & Materials Engineering Building, SME 149, UC San Diego

In this talk, Ramírez will set forth an introduction to brown artistic practices that put neo-colonial and liberal reason in crisis. Furthermore, he seeks to think about the paradoxical relationship between contemporary art and indigeneity as a creative entanglement that reshapes the repertoires of art history and museum collections. Pablo José Ramírez is an author and curator at the Hammer Museum.

Co-sponsored by Latin American Studies


Making as Critical Interrogationthumbnail

Simon Penny, UC Irvine

February 26, 2024
7:00 - 8:20 p.m.
Peterson Hall 108, UC San Diego

In this talk, Simon Penny will introduce some of his earlier work and speak about Orthogonal, an ongoing syncretic design project in critical making that seeks to deploy some of the unique qualities of traditional Micronesian ocean voyaging sailcraft design to create a new synthesis that is a viable solution for pressing economic, social and environmental needs of island and coastal communities.


Contained Visions: John Thomson (1837-1921), Photography, and the Chinese Export Imagethomson peepshow

Roberta Wue Guest Lecture

March 5, 2024
6:30 - 8:00 p.m.
Structural & Materials Engineering Building, SME 149, UC San Diego

This talk will address photographer John Thomson's (1837-1921) reproductions and imitations of the fanciful and fictive export image, and his engagement with the imagined Chinese artist. Roberta Wue is associate professor of Art History and director of the PhD Program in Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine.

Co-sponsored by 21st Century China Center


Annual Series

Longenecker-Roth Artist in Residence Lecture

The Longenecker-Roth Artist in Residence Endowment was established in 2016 to extend Martha Longenecker's legacy as an artist and educator. In the spirit of her historic impact on the visual arts in both local and global communities, this endowment brings to the Visual Arts Department of UC San Diego artists of national and international stature who will inspire our students to broaden the scope, appeal, and range of art as well as incite exchange with the faculty, the campus community and local artists and audiences.

2023 Ceres Madoo

2022 Cannupa Hanska Luger

2021 Beatriz Cortez

2019 Diedrick Brackens

2018 Anna Sew Hoy

LR-AiR_LOGO_RGB-72dpi.jpg

Russell Lecture

The Russell Foundation was established in the will of Betty Russell, one of MCASD's founding docents and a long-time supporter of UC San Diego. She specified that funds from the foundation should help "foster the appreciation and study of the modern visual arts and creativity of young artists" through support for the Museum and the University. Past Russell Lecture speakers have included June Edmonds (2021), Njideka Akunyili Crosby (2020), Rodney McMillian (2019), Zackary Drucker (2018), Miguel Calderón (2017), Andrea Bowers (2016), Judith Barry (2015), Tacita Dean (2014), Byron Kim (2013), Tania Bruguera (2012), and Isaac Julien (2011).

Presented with support from the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

2024 Elliott Hundley

2023 Shizu Saldamando

2021 June Edmonds

2020 Njideka Akunyili Crosby

2019 Rodney McMillian

2018 Zackary Drucker

MCASD_HorizontalLogo_Black_750x118.jpg

 

Adam D. Kamil Guest Lecture

Adam Douglas Kamil was a UC San Diego, Visual Arts Media major with a passion for the power of media to connect people. To honor the memory of their son, who passed away in December 2009, the Kamil family has established the Adam D. Kamil Media Awards and Lecture Series. The Adam D. Kamil Guest Lecture was established to inspire undergraduate students and to provide insight into the career of an established artist working in media production.

2023 Ian Cooper in conversation with Lauren Mackler

2022 Alex Rivera

2021 Garret Bradley

2019 Michael Shawver

2018 Bradford Young

Past

2023 Fall

The Contemporary Art Novel: Narrating Creativity after/against Creative Capitalism side by side images of the speaker and his book cover

Carlos Garrido Castellano, PhD: Remote Guest Lecture

December 8, 2023
11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. PST
YouTube LiveStream

This talk examines contemporary literature concerned with creative practices and economies at a planetary level. Its main argument is that literature and artistic creativity are advancing modes of creative care and solidarity that go beyond creative capitalism. The term “contemporary art novel” attempts to capture a significant transformation within literary narratives on art’s social role at a time when processes of neoliberalization have blurred the distance between art and life. 


noé olivasPhoto of "A prayer for change" sculpture, 2022

Guest Lecture

November 28, 2023
6:30 - 8:00 p.m. PST
Structural & Materials Engineering Building, SME 149, UC San Diego

noé olivas lives and works in Los Angeles, California, occupied Tongva land. He received his MFA from the University of Southern California in 2019, and his BFA from the University of San Diego, California in 2013. Alongside with Patrisse Cullors and alexandre ali reza dorriz, olivas is co-founder of the Crenshaw Dairy Mart, an artist collective in Inglewood, California.


Ceres Madoo2023-lrair_ceresmadoo_220x266.jpg

Lecture: Longenecker-Roth Artist in Residence

November 2, 2023
6:30 - 8:00 p.m. PDT
Center Hall, Room 119, UC San Diego

Ceres Madoo is a Los Angeles based mixed media artist, who describes herself as a mix of a mix. West Indian, American, Black, Indian, Jewish and Mormon, like her art work, Ceres’ personal identity defies categorization. With a BA from UC San Diego ('89) and an MFA from Rutgers University, her conceptual, fluxus, critical educational roots happily collide with her inherent interests in non-western art, folk and craft methodologies.


2023 Spring

Ian Cooper in conversation with Lauren Macklerphoto of Ian Cooper

Adam D. Kamil Guest Lecture

May 18, 2023
6:30 - 8:00 p.m.
Catalyst, Sixth College Area, UC San Diego

Ian Cooper is Jordan Peele’s producing partner and the Creative Director of Monkeypaw. With a primary focus on the feature slate, Ian oversees the visual and conceptual underpinnings of all Monkeypaw projects from the early development stages through execution and release. His scope of oversight extends to all Monkeypaw ancillary projects, including books, events, and exhibitions.


Ligia Lewisphoto of the artist

Guest Lecture

May 9, 2023
6:30 - 8:00 p.m. PDT
SME 149, Structural & Materials Engineering Building, UC San Diego

Ligia Lewis works as a choreographer conceiving and directing experimental performance. Lewis’s works, often marked by physical intensity and humor, seek to animate subjects through a process that disrupts normative conceptions of the body while negotiating the ghostly traces of history, memory, and the unknown.

Co-sponsored by the Black Studies Project.


TourmalinePortrait: June Canedo for ARTnews; Styling: Tess Herbert

Guest Lecture

April 6, 2023
6:30 - 8:00 p.m. PDT
SME 149, Structural & Materials Engineering Building, UC San Diego

Tourmaline is an activist, filmmaker, and writer. Her work highlights the capacity of Black queer and trans people and communities to make and transform worlds. Tending to the histories and haunts of disabled, poor, Black, queer, and trans life that echo and vibrate beneath neighborhoods and cultural landmarks, Tourmaline’s films undulate between narrative and non-narrative and illuminate the mundane acts that form the fabric of historical events and mutually supportive communities.

Co-sponsored by the Black Studies Project.


2023 Winter

Tosh Bascophoto of the artist looking into the camera

Remote Guest Lecture

March 6, 2023
12:00 - 1:30 p.m. PST
YouTube Stream: https://www.youtube.com/live/u2w-bgedgKw

Tosh Basco was born in California and rose to prominence in the drag scene in San Francisco in the 2010s. Well known for her movement-based performances under the name boychild, Basco’s photography and drawing accompany the performance practice. Viewed as a whole, Basco’s work attempts to enfold language, becoming, and representation together in spaces where they are presumed to exist as discrete entities. She is co-founder of the collaborative entity Moved by the Motion with Wu Tsang.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Theatre & Dance.


Joey Terrillphoto of the artist

Guest Lecture

February 21, 2023
6:30 - 8:00 p.m. PST
SME 149, Structural & Materials Engineering Building, UC San Diego

Joey Terrill is a formative figure in the Los Angeles Chicano art movement and AIDS cultural activism. Painting and making art since the 1970s, Terrill has always explored the intersection of Chicano and gay male identity (where they overlap and where they clash) as a strategy for much of his art production.


Shizu Saldamandophoto of the artist in her studio

Russell Lecture with MCASD

February 9, 2023

6:30 - 8:00 p.m. PST
Price Center Theatre, UC San Diego

Primarily concerned with portraiture, craft and drawing, Saldamando experiments with a broad range of surfaces and materials from wood panels to bed sheets. Her practice employs tattooing, video, painting and drawing on canvas, wood, paper, and cloth, and functions as celebration, and homage to peers and loved ones.


micha cárdenasOceanic, Queering the Ocean by micha cárdenas, Cynthia Ling Lee, Gerald Casel, Susana Ruiz and Huy Truong

Remote Guest Lecture

January 31, 2023

4:00 - 5:30 p.m. PST

YouTube Stream: https://www.youtube.com/live/WbzRbgGMGac

micha cárdenas, PhD, is Associate Chair and Associate Professor of Professor of Performance, Play and Design, and Associate Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she directs the Critical Realities Studio. Her book Poetic Operations, Duke University Press (2022), proposes algorithmic analysis to develop a trans of color poetics.


Jennifer Gonzálezphoto of Jennifer Gonzalez looking into camera

Remote Guest Lecture

January 17, 2023
4:00 - 5:30 p.m. PST

Jennifer González is History of Art and Visual Culture professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a faculty member of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, New York. She writes about contemporary installation, digital and activist art.


2022 Fall

Rayyane Tabetphoto of the artist leaning against a wall

Guest Lecture

November 1, 2022
6:30 - 8:00 p.m. PDT
SME 149, Structural & Materials Engineering, UC San Diego

Drawing from experience and self-directed research, Rayyane Tabet explores stories that offer an alternative understanding of major socio-political events through individual narratives. Informed by his training in architecture and sculpture, his work investigates paradoxes in the built environment and its history by way of installations, interventions and performances that reconstitute the perception of physical and temporal distance.


Cannupa Hanska Lugerphoto of Cannupa Hanska Luger in art studio

Longenecker-Roth Artist in Residence Guest Lecture

October 6, 2022
6:30 - 8:00 p.m. PDT
SME 149, Structural & Materials Engineering, UC San Diego

Cannupa Hanska Luger is a multidisciplinary artist and an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota and European descent). Through monumental installations and social collaboration, Luger activates speculative fiction and communicates stories about 21st Century Indigeneity, combining critical cultural analysis with dedication and respect for the diverse materials, environments, and communities he engages.

2022 Spring

Alex Riveraphoto of Alex Rivera looking through camera

Adam D. Kamil Guest Lecture

May 11, 2022
6:00 - 7:30 p.m. PDT
Price Center Theater, UC San Diego

Campus ID required for UCSD students, faculty, and staff. Registration is required for non-UCSD affiliated attendees.

Alex Rivera is an award-winning filmmaker whose work explores themes of globalization, migration, and technology. Alex Rivera is a 2021 MacArthur Fellow, Sundance Fellow, Creative Capital Grantee and was The Rothschild Lecturer at Harvard University. He studied at Hampshire College and lives in Los Angeles. To honor the memory of their son, the Kamil family established the Adam D. Kamil Media Awards and Lecture Series.


thumbnail link to eventHyphen-Labs

Remote Guest Lecture

April 15, 2022
1:00 - 2:30 p.m. PDT
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/_pRCJ7-sL3c

Hyphen-Labs is an international collective working at the intersection of technology, art, science, and the future. Through their global vision and multi-disciplinary backgrounds they are driven to create engaging ways to explore planetary-centered design. In the process they challenge conventions and stimulate conversations, placing collective needs and experiences at the center of evolving narratives.


thumbnail image link to eventCarolina Caycedo

Remote Guest Lecture

April 8, 2022
1:00 - 2:30 p.m. PDT
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/7kD3Dgcdpp0

Carolina Caycedo (1978) is a Colombian, London-born, multidisciplinary artist known for her performances, videos, artist’s books, sculptures, and installations that examine environmental and social issues. Her work contributes to the construction of environmental historical memory as a fundamental element for non-repetition of violence against human and nonhuman entities. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

2022 Winter

Amy Franceschinithumbnail link to event page

Remote Guest Lecture

March 11, 2022
1:00 - 2:30 p.m. PST
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/iDKcTHsu5WY

Amy Franceschini is an artist and designer whose work facilitates encounter, exchange and tactile forms of inquiry by calling into question the "certainties" of a given time or place where a work is situated. An overarching theme in her work is a perceived conflict between "humans" and "nature". Using this as a starting point, she creates relational objects that invoke action and inquiry; not only to imagine, but also to participate in and initiate change in the places we live.


Jacolby Satterwhitethumbnail link to event page

Remote Guest Lecture

March 4, 2022
1:00 - 2:30 p.m. PST
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/1ZfK79xlzXg

Jacolby Satterwhite addresses crucial themes of labor, consumption, carnality and fantasy through immersive installation, virtual reality and digital media. He uses a range of software to produce intricately detailed animations and live action film of real and imagined worlds populated by the avatars of artists and friends. These animations serve as the stage on which the artist synthesizes the multiple disciplines that encompass his practice, namely illustration, performance, painting, sculpture, photography and writing.


The Ethics of Engagement: A Conversation with Aruna D’Souza and Zoe Charlton20220211_chung-charlton-dsouza_220x254.jpg

Presented by Black Studies Project Artist in Residence Andrea Chung

February 11, 2022
1:00 - 2:30 p.m. PST
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/zLP8iPvIS6Q

Contemporary artist and educator Zoë Charlton and art historian and critic Aruna D’Souza will be in conversation discussing the social themes throughout Zoë’s artistic practice and her current projects as well as both speakers’ experiences engaging the ethics of institutions within specific communities and audiences.


Christina Fernandezthumbnail link to event page

Remote Guest Lecture

February 4, 2022
1:00 - 2:30 p.m. PST
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/342Z00oJnqg

Christina Fernandez is a Los Angeles-based photographer. Fernandez explores her personal connection to Los Angeles in her body of works. The city and its environs are featured as an important backdrop for her works that address labor, gender, migration, and her Mexican – American identity. Working in documentary format, her urban and landscape photography conveys social and political commentaries regarding her immediate environment.


Sadie Barnettethumbnail link to event page

Remote Guest Lecture

January 14, 2022
1:00 - 2:30 p.m. PST
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/RaXyQflDlnE

Sadie Barnette’s multimedia practice illuminates her own family history as it mirrors a collective history of repression and resistance in the United States. Barnette’s adept materialization of the archive rises above a static reverence for the past; by inserting herself into the retelling, she offers a history that is alive. Her drawings, photographs, and installations collapse time and expand possibilities. Political and social structures are a jumping off point for the work, but they are not the final destination.


2021 Fall

Victoria Fuvideo still with hands, parakeet and colorful background

Remote Guest Lecture

November 12, 2021
1:00 - 2:30 p.m. PST

Victoria Fu is a visual artist based in San Diego making moving image installations. Using multiple formats, media and viewing configurations, her work layers analog and digital textures including found and original footage as gestures towards the folding of virtual into actual space. The artwork considers the screen as an object and a space, questioning the status of the moving image in the contemporary digital realm, the cinematic spectator and the haptic screen.


Mariah Garnettfilm still of the artist in their film "Other & Father"

Remote Guest Lecture

October 29, 2021
1:00 - 2:30 p.m. PDT

Mariah Garnett (b. 1980, Portland, ME; lives and works in Los Angeles) mixes documentary, narrative and experimental filmmaking practices to make work that accesses existing people and communities beyond her immediate experience. Using source material that ranges from found text to iconic gay porn stars, Garnett often inserts herself into the films, creating cinematic allegories that codify and locate identity.


June Edmondsphoto of the artist painting with bright colors

Russell Lecture with the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

October 27, 2021
6:00 - 8:00 p.m. PDT
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/4YCfScWHhGM

June Edmonds uses abstract painting to explore how color, repetition, movement, and balance can serve as conduits to spiritual contemplation and interpersonal connection to her African-American roots. The Russell Foundation was established in the will of Betty Russell, one of MCASD's founding docents and a long-time supporter of UC San Diego. She specified that funds from the foundation should help "foster the appreciation and study of the modern visual arts and creativity of young artists" through support for the Museum and the University.


Every Ocean Hughesheadshot photo of the artist

Remote Guest Lecture

October 15, 2021
1:00 - 2:30 p.m. PDT

Every Ocean Hughes (EOH), f.k.a. Emily Roysdon (born 1977), is an transdisciplinary artist and writer. EOH’s recent projects take the form of performance, photographic installations, print making, text, video, and curating. EOH was editor and co-founder of the queer feminist journal and artist collective, LTTR.


2021 Spring

Patrick Martinezphoto of the artist leaning against a colorfully painted wall

Remote Guest Lecture

May 28, 2021
12:00 p.m. PDT
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/DTTScmmgnTU

Patrick Martinez maintains a diverse practice that includes mixed media landscape paintings, neon sign pieces, cake paintings, and his Pee Chee series of appropriative works. These various formats evoke place and socio-economic position, memorialize leaders and activists, and document the threats posed to black and brown youth by law enforcement.


Garrett Bradleyblack and white photo of the artist wresting her head on her hands with eyes almost closed

Adam D. Kamil Guest Lecture

May 14, 2021
5:00 p.m. PDT
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/VngfZNEcrNI

Garrett Bradley was born and raised in New York City. She works across narrative, documentary, and experimental modes of filmmaking to address themes such as race, class, familial relationships, social justice, Southern culture, and the history of film in the United States.


Jillian Hernandezphoto of Dr. Jillian Hernandez looking at the camera and leaning against a wall covered with Lotto tickets

Remote Guest Lecture

April 30, 2021
12:00 p.m. PDT
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/FQR2uvJeUTk

Jillian Hernandez is a scholar, curator, and community arts educator. Her areas of expertise include contemporary art and visual culture, girlhood, and Black and Latinx gender and sexual politics. Her work is inspired by Women on the Rise!, a project she founded in Miami, Florida in 2004 that engaged thousands of Black and Latina girls in critical dialogues about identity through feminist art.


Troy Chewphoto of the artist looking at the camera

Remote Guest Lecture

April 9, 2021
12:00 p.m. PDT
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/rTFNRjHwlsg

Troy Lamarr Chew II (b. 1992 in Los Angeles, CA, lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) explores the legacy of the African Diaspora and its reverberations throughout American culture. His work looks methodically at systems of coded communication and how this is translated and mistranslated both within the Diaspora and the mainstream.


2021 Winter

Postcommoditydetail photo of plush pink cushion on decorated pink structure

Remote Guest Lecture

March 12, 2021
12:00 p.m. PST
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/HWWPegxXM-c

Postcommodity’s art functions as a shared Indigenous lens and voice to engage the assaultive manifestations of the global market and its supporting institutions, public perceptions, beliefs, and individual actions that comprise the ever-expanding, multinational, multiracial and multiethnic colonizing force that is defining the 21st Century through ever increasing velocities and complex forms of violence.


Ellen Lupton & Josh HalsteadImage of book cover for Extra Bold against a pink background

Saturday Morning Pop-up Book Talk

Saturday, March 6, 2021

10:30 - 11:30 a.m. PST

YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/OjlvfM1epxA

Please join the Speculative Design Majors for a Saturday Morning Pop-up Book Talk with Ellen Lupton and Josh Halstead, members of the design and author team that produced Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers.


Chris E. Vargasphoto of the artist smiling in front of sign for Museum of Trans History & Art

Remote Guest Lecture

March 5, 2021
12:00 p.m. PST
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/2O9EkRtLwbM

Chris E. Vargas is a video maker and interdisciplinary artist currently based in Bellingham, WA. His work deploys humor and performance in conjunction with mainstream idioms to explore the complex ways that queer and trans people negotiate spaces for themselves within historical and institutional memory and popular culture.

Watch a selection of Chris Vargas's films at the following link. This program will only be available leading up to his talk on March 5th! https://youtu.be/TRaATeWs0c4


Nicole Fleetwoodthumbnail photo of Nicole Fleetwood smiling

Remote Guest Lecture

February 12, 2021
12:00 p.m. PST
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/jnCcr69k0AU

Dr. Nicole R. Fleetwood is a writer, curator, and professor of American Studies and Art History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She is the author of Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration (2020) and the curator of the exhibition of the same name, currently on view at MoMA PS1 through April 4, 2021.


 Beatriz Cortezphoto of the artist in a large gallery with sculptures

Longenecker-Roth Artist In Residence Guest Lecture

January 22, 2021
12:00 p.m. PST
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/s87qUIWtKr8

Beatriz Cortez is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. Her work explores simultaneity, life in different temporalities and versions of modernity, memory and loss in the aftermath of war and the experience of migration, and in relation to imagining possible futures.


Dewey CrumplerPhoto of artist in red framed glasses

Remote Guest Lecture

January 15, 2021
12:00 p.m. PST
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/vKf2rl8pq_4

Dewey Crumpler is an Associate Professor of painting at San Francisco Art Institute. His current work examines issues of globalization/ cultural co-modification through the integration of digital imagery, video and traditional painting techniques.


2020 Fall

Saidiya HartmanPhoto of Saidiya Harman

In Conversation Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments

December 4, 2020
12:00 p.m. PST

Acclaimed scholar and 2019 MacArthur fellow Professor Saidiya Hartman (Department of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University) will discuss with Assistant Professor Alena J. Williams (Department of Visual Arts, UC San Diego) themes of visuality and representation in Hartman's recent book, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (2019), which reinvents narratives of early twentieth-century Black female subjectivity in the wake of the Great Migration in the United States. Q & A with audience to follow.


UC SAN DIEGO SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS AND SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY PRESENTPhoto of Judit Hersko behind a desk

Pages from the Book of the Unknown Explorer

A Performance Lecture by Installation Artist Judit Hersko

November 12, 2020
7:00 p.m. PST

Judit Hersko is an installation artist who works in the intersection of art and science. She collaborates with scientists on visualizing climate change science through art and narrative. Her work is rooted in extensive research as well as in a playful exploration of materials and phenomena of light, shadow, and transparency. Her current practice involves story telling through performances that incorporate the objects she makes.


Njideka Akunyili CrosbyPhoto of the artist in her studio.

Russell Lecture with MCASD

November 4, 2020
5:00 p.m. PST

MCASD and the University of California, San Diego are proud to bring internationally acclaimed artists to San Diego through the annual Russell Lecture program. This year's lecture features renowned Nigerian-born, LA-based artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby, who is known for her mixed media paintings that include photo transfers and textiles of her home country. Crosby’s tender, domestic scenes are painted at almost human-scale. Drawing from her experience as a Nigerian woman living in the United States, Crosby places black and brown people at the center of her work to show the syncretism of both cultures.

Salome AsegaPhoto of Salome Asega in a field

Remote Guest Lecture

October 30, 2020
12:00 p.m. PDT
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/_qx8wRTu540

Salome Asega is an artist and researcher whose practice celebrates dissensus and multivocality. She is currently a Technology Fellow in the Ford Foundation's Creativity and Free Expression program area. Salome is also the co-host of speculative talk show Hyperorpia: 20/30 Vision on bel-air radio, and a director of POWRPLNT, a digital art collaboratory in Bushwick.


Wu TsangPhoto of Wu Tsang by Paul Mpagi Sepuya

Remote Guest Lecture

October 23, 2020
12:00 p.m. PDT

Wu Tsang is a filmmaker and performance artist who combines documentary and narrative techniques with fantastical detours into the imaginary in works that explore hidden histories, marginalized narratives, and the act of performing itself. Tsang re-imagines racialized, gendered representations beyond the visible frame to encompass the multiple and shifting perspectives through which we experience the social realm.


Celebrating Lesley Stern's New Book: Diary of a DetourThumbnail image of book cover

October 9, 2020
1:00 p.m. PDT
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/8cCMLw4EZDc

Lesley Stern (Professor Emerita, Visual Arts UCSD) will read from her book followed by a discussion with poet Eileen Myles, film critic Girish Shambu, Ben Doller (Writing Program, Literature Department UCSD) and Lisa Cartwright (Visual Arts and Science Studies UCSD). With a special introduction by Donna Haraway (Distinguished Professor Emerita, UC Santa Cruz).

Diary of a Detour is a memoir of living with a chronic form of cancer, but it detours frequently into other genres and cross-disciplinary landscapes. With illustrations by Amy Adler (Visual Arts UCSD).


2020 Spring

Keith MayersonPainting by Keith Mayerson of the artist in front of another painting, link to event page

Remote Guest Lecture

June 3, 2020, 6 p.m.
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/fmlA0nqwwpQ

Keith Mayerson's exhibitions are often installations of images that create larger narratives. The works stand on their own for form and content, but like a prose poem of images on walls, experienced in context the images as a series, the viewer creates the ultimate meaning for the installations.


 

Steffanie LingScreen grab image of Steffanie Ling via Zoom

Remote Guest Lecture

May 27, 2020, 6 p.m.
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/pzGcHB4d-zA

Steffanie Ling works between Vancouver (unceded territories) and Toronto (Tkaronto) where she is currently Artistic Director of Images Festival. Her books are NASCAR (Blank Cheque, 2016) and CUTS OF THIN MEAT (Spare Room, 2015). 


 

Jennifer BolandePhoto of billboard artworks alongside road.

Remote Guest Lecture

May 20, 2020, 6 p.m.
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/0snRMi8Tn3E

Jennifer Bolande emerged as an artist in the late 1970s, working in dance, choreography and drawing. In the early 1980s, she advanced the ideas and strategies proposed by the Pictures Generation Movement, taking her place among those artists who have helped to redefine photography.


 

Daniela Lieja QuintanarPhoto of Daniela Lieja Quintanar, link to event page

Remote Guest Lecture

April 29, 2020, 6 p.m.
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/cCIdvtu5r1U

Daniela Lieja Quintanar is LACE curator since 2016. She works between Los Angeles and Mexico, emphasizing contemporary art and curatorial practices that explore the politics and social issues of everyday life.  She is part of the curatorial team of MexiCali Biennial 2018-19, and was recently awarded the Warhol Foundation Curatorial Research Fellowship.


 

Todd GrayPhoto of Todd Gray, link to event page

Remote Guest Lecture

April 22, 2020, 6 p.m.
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/BRsEt3I56jY

Los Angeles based artist Todd Gray re-frames and re-contextualizes images from his personal archive that spans over forty years of his career as a photographer, sculptor and performance artist. Gray describes himself as an artist and activist who primarily focuses on issues of race, class, gender and colonialism.


 

Brett SchultzPhoto of Brett Schultz, link to event page

Remote Guest Lecture

April 8, 2020, 6 p.m.
YouTube Stream: https://youtu.be/gGo7rQXapTw

Brett W. Schultz is Co-Founder and Co-Director of the gallery Yautepec in Mexico City as well as Creative Director of Material Art Fair, also in Mexico City. His projects have appeared across a wide variety of international publications, including Artforum, Frieze, Art Review, BOMB, Art+Auction, L’Officiel Art, Flash Art, The Paris Review and the New York Times, among others. He lives and works in Mexico City.


2020 Winter

 

Laura NixPhoto of Laura Nix

Alumni Guest Lecture

March 2, 2020, 6 p.m.
VAF 306 Performance Space, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

Laura Nix is a director, writer, and producer working in non-fiction and fiction. She is known for her films Inventing Tomorrow (2018 Sundance Premiere), The Yes Men Are Revolting (2014), The Light In Her Eyes (2011), Whether You Like It Or Not: The Story of Hedwig (2003), and The Politics Of Fur (2002).

Presented by ACE, co-sponsored by Dept. of Visual Arts.


 

Dr. Kathleen Ryordrawing of flowers

Guest Lecture on Asian Art

March 2, 2020, 4 p.m.
VAF 366, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

Dr. Kathleen Ryor, Tanaka Memorial Professor of International Understanding and Art History of Carleton College, will give a lecture on “Botanical Illustrations or Garden Records? The Metamorphosis of the Flower Painting Genre in Late Ming China.”


 

Daniel GuzmanTwo drawings by Daniel Guzmán.

Guest Lecture

February 24, 2020, 6 p.m.
VAF 306 Performance Space, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

Daniel Guzmán’s drawings, paintings, and installations are informed by a slew of sources, including comic books, punk rock, heavy metal, Roberto Bolaño’s writing, Gabriel Orozco’s art, and Mexican mural painting.


 

Milijohn RupertoJanus, 2013, film still.

Guest Lecture

February 12, 2020, 6 p.m.
VAF 306 Performance Space, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

Based in Los Angeles, Miljohn Ruperto is a cross-disciplinary artist working across photography, cinema, performance, and digital animation. His work refers to historical and anecdotal occurrences, and speculates on the nature of assumed facts and the construction of truth.


 

Nao BustamantePhoto of the Nao Bustamante smiling with decorative lights

Guest Lecture

February 3, 2020, 6 p.m.
VAF 306 Performance Space, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

Bustamante’s precarious work encompasses performance art, video installation, visual art, filmmaking, and writing. Currently she holds the position of Associate Professor and Vice Dean of Art at the USC Roski School of Art and Design.

Co-sponsored by the Ethnic Studies Department


 

Lisa Jacksondigital image of a ruined city

Biidabaan: First Light | Embodiment, Language and Reconciling Place in VR

January 30, 2020, 12:30-2:30 p.m.
SSB 107, Social Sciences Bldg., UC San Diego

Toronto-based Lisa Jackson is one of Canada’s premiere artists, an award-winning filmmaker whose work has shown at top festivals including SXSW, Berlinale, Hotdocs, Tribeca and Sundance, aired widely on television, and exhibited in galleries. Her work ranges from documentary to fiction, animation to 3D IMAX. See more at lisajackson.ca

Sponsored by Ethnic Studies, Visual Arts, Literature, Communications, GSA, Intertribal Resource Center, VC-EDI


 

Susan Daitch & Erkki HuhtamoBoard game: Règle du Jeu de l’Affaire Dreyfus et de la Vérité [“The Rules of the Game of the Dreyfus Affair and the Truth”]

Speculative Media Histories / Writing Early Film History Otherwise

January 16, 2020, 12:30-1:50 p.m.
Price Center Theater, UC San Diego

Susan Daitch presents a talk and reading from Paper Conspiracies, a novel about a film restorer who finds herself caught up in political intrigue around the Georges Mlis serial re-enactment of the Dreyfus Affair. Erkki Huhtamo presents a talk and presentation on The Charles Urban Spirograph and the Dream of Interactive Cinema. The spirograph, not to be  confused with the drawing toy, is an early 20th century home motion picture viewing device that never made it to the market.


 

American ArtistPhoto of American Artist with old video equipment

Guest Lecture

January 13, 2020, 6 p.m.
VAF 306 Performance Space, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

AMERICAN ARTIST is an interdisciplinary artist whose work considers the visibility and labor of blackness in the context of networked virtual life. Their practice makes use of video, installation, new media, and writing to reveal historical dynamics embedded within contemporary culture and technology.


 

 

2019 Fall

 

Nancy Lupo20191204_nancylupo_220x249.jpg

Guest Lecture

December 4, 2019
, 6 p.m.

VAF 306 Performance Space, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

Intricate networks of materials, objects, and spaces characterize Nancy Lupo’s complex installations. Her work addresses the ways in which we move through spaces, as if following latent scripts that punctuate and dictate the rituals and rhythms that shape our daily lives. In many cases, Lupo has installed works outside of the gallery or museum, in city parks, at the beach, on the telephone, and in other semi-private and public spaces.


Alehna Katsof20191115_alehnakatsof_220x267.jpg

Guest Lecture

November 15, 2019
, 5 p.m.

VAF 306 Performance Space, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

Alhena Katsof is a curator and writer focused on performance studies and exhibition histories. Katsof's ongoing series of lectures about Hannah Höch's garden have been presented at the Center for Experimental Lectures, Rongwrong, and Bridget Donahue Gallery. Katsof is a doctoral student at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and part-time Faculty at Eugene Lang — The New School. 


 

UAG 2020: The Future of the University Art GalleryUniversity Art Gallery Panel Discussion Poster Image

Panel Discussion

November 14, 2019, 2-5 p.m.
University Art Gallery, UC San Diego

The UC San Diego Arts and Community Engagement (ACE) program invites you to a special panel discussion and reception at the University Art Gallery, discussing the impact of campus art galleries at the local, regional and national level, as well as what the future holds for UC San Diego.


 

Matthew Brower "Digital Animalities"20191114_matthewbrower_220x124.jpg

Guest Lecture

November 14, 2019, 12:30 - 1:50 p.m.
SME 149, Structural & Materials Engineering Bldg., UC San Diego

How are ubiquitous media forms changing the meanings and possibilities of human-animal relations?  Matthew Brower, director of museum studies at the University of Toronto, examines the intersections between the rise of risk culture, digital technologies, and animal bodies in a lecture about his SSHRC funded collaborative project “Digital Animalities.”  https://digitalanimalities.org/


 

Las Hermanas Iglesias20191113_lh-iglesias_220x244.jpg

Performative Lecture for Sixth College's "Women in the Arts"

November 13, 2019, 5 p.m.
VAF 306 Performance Space, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

The project-based collaboration of artists and sisters Lisa and Janelle Iglesias. As the children of Norwegian and Dominican immigrants who grew up in Queens, New York City, their project-based, trans-disciplinary work explores issues of hybridity, social participation and transnational identities. While both artists maintain individual practices rooted in Drawing and Sculpture they have collaborated on multi-disciplinary and genre-blurring projects for over a decade.


 

Rodney McMillian20191105_RodneyMcMillian_220x253.jpg

Russell Lecture with MCASD

November 5, 2019, 7 p.m.
Price Center Theater, UC San Diego

Rodney McMillian is a contemporary American artist with a wide-ranging conceptual practice. His painting, sculpture, video, and performance address the African-American experience while examining race, gender, and class in a broader political context. Often appropriating discarded, post-consumer materials into his work, McMillian modifies familiar objects into new, disconcerting forms.
Text from Artnet.


 

Malik Gaines & Alexandro Segade20191104_mybarbarian_220.jpg

Guest Lecture

November 4, 2019
, 6 p.m.

VAF 306 Performance Space, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade are artists based in New York. With longtime collaborator Jade Gordon, they form the collective My Barbarian, which has shown performances, videos, and installations in museums, galleries, theaters, festivals, music venues and public spaces since 2000 (including MoMA, Studio Museum in Harlem, New Museum, Hammer Museum, LACMA, MOCA, and internationally).


 

Blinkers20191101_blinkers-drawing_220x275.jpg

Guest Lecture

November 1, 2019, 7 p.m.
VAF 306 Performance Space, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

Blinkers is a non-profit project space based in Winnipeg on Treaty 1 territory. Founded in 2017 as a collaborative project run by emerging artists Kristina Banera, Hannah Doucet, John Patterson and Rachael Thorleifson, Blinkers collaborates with artists in the form of exhibitions, performances, talks, publications, and workshops to create an engaged community of artists and participants in, and expanding from, Winnipeg, Canada.


 

Diedrick Brackens

diedrick brackensLongenecker Roth Artist in Residence

October 30, 2019, 5 p.m.
VAF 306 Performance Space, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

Thoughtfully employing the language of weaving and textile making, Diedrick Brackens explores the intersections of identity and sociopolitical issues in the United States. Brackens uses calculated woven algorithms that stem from the cultural histories of African, American, and European textiles to generate his intricate tapestries, seeking to highlight the complexities of African-American identity while also focusing on the loom and its significance to cultural production.
Text from Hammer Museum.

 

2019 Spring

Siona Wilsonswilson.png

History Lessons: Jo Spence’s Subjective Documentary

May 29th, 2019
Lecture: 12 p.m.
VAF 366, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

Professor Wilson will lecture on the work British photographer, Jo Spence (1934-1992), and her reconsideration of 1980s documentary practices. Spence develops a form of “subjective documentary” during the artist's personal health crisis, which charts her interactions with both mainstream health professionals and alternative medical practitioners.


 

Katherine Reischl20190523_katherinereischl_240w.jpg

Photographic Literacy: Cameras in the Hands of Russian Authors

May 23rd, 2019
Lecture: 11 a.m.
VAF 366, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

In this study of the Russian and Soviet author-photographer, which includes authors as varied as Leonid Andreev and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Reischl argues for the central place that photography has played in the formation of the Russian literary imagination over roughly seventy years.


 

Elizabeth Guffey20190522_elizabethguffey_480w.jpg

The Right To Live in the World: Design and Disability

May 22nd, 2019
Lecture: 4 p.m.
CSE 1202, Computer Science & Engineering Bldg., UC San Diego

When access for disabled people began being seen as a “Civil Right,” it amounted to more than protests; it meant a major re-organization of our designed world—one that has been ongoing and continues to this day. In this kind of world building, Design asserts a profound, if little recognized— ability to assert what has been called disabled people’s “right to live in the world.”


 

Michael Shawvershawver.jpg

2nd Annual Adam D. Kamil Guest Lecture

April 25th, 2019
Lecture: 7 p.m.
Calit2 Auditorium, Atkinson Hall, UC San Diego

Michael Shawver developed an early working relationship with director Ryan Coogler during their time together at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. Working with Coogler, Shawver has edited the feature films Fruitvale Station, Creed, and Black Panther.


 

Rafa EsparzaRafa.jpg

Graduate Lecture Series

April 24th, 2019
Lecture: 7 p.m.
SME 149, Structural & Materials Engineering Bldg., UC San Diego

The artist’s work considers the many forms of evolution within local and indigenous cultural production that have taken place alongside and adjacent to the narratives of Western art, including histories of sculptural installation and performance.


 

Ingeborg Reichle20190409_ingeborgreichle.jpg

Guest Lecture

April 9th, 2019
Lecture: 5 p.m.
SME 149, Structural & Materials Engineering Bldg., UC San Diego

Ingeborg Reichle is the Founding Chair of the Department of Cross-Disciplinary Strategies and full professor of Media Theory at the Department of Media Theory, University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Her primary area of research and teaching is the encounter of the arts with cutting edge technologies like biotechnology and synthetic biology.


 

Lauren MacklerLmackler_portrait_600x750.jpg

Graduate Lecture Series

April 5th, 2019
Lecture: 6 p.m.
SME 149, Structural & Materials Engineering Bldg., UC San Diego

Lauren Mackler is a curator and writer based in Los Angeles. In 2010, she founded Public Fiction, a forum for staging exhibitions, performances, and programs by contemporary artists and writers as well as a journal with a parallel mission in print. She is currently the managing editor of Sublevel, and a contributor to Artforum and various other publications. She is currently co-curating the next Los Angeles biennial, Made in LA 2020, at the Hammer Museum.


 

2019 Winter

Brittany Ransom20190308_brittanyransom_500x333.jpg

Graduate Lecture Series

March 8th, 2019
Lecture: 5 p.m.
SME 149, Structural & Materials Engineering Bldg., UC San Diego

Ransom is currently serving as the Program Head of Sculpture/4D and is an Assistant Professor of Sculpture + New Genres at California State University Long Beach. As a member of the faculty of the College of The Arts, she works within the sculpture area and specializes in 3D computerized production / digital fabrication and physical computing / kinetics.


 

Whitney Hubbswoman no.10

Graduate Lecture Series

February 20th, 2019
Lecture: 7 p.m.
Performance Space, 306 Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

With a 20-year history of picture making, Whitney Hubbs explores both straightforward and uncertain modes of image production. Educated as a traditional documentary photographer and as a conceptual artist examining the role of photographs, Hubbs brings a rigorous approach to her work. Her subject matter has included staged poems to the landscape, the figure in the landscape, self-portraits, and literal and abstract examinations of the female body.


 

Hisham Mayethisham mayet

PARIS to CALCUTTA & The Photographs Of Charles Duvelle

February 4th, 2019
Lecture: 6 p.m.
SME 149, Structural & Materials Engineering Bldg., UC San Diego

Hisham Mayet is a film maker, photographer, musical researcher and sound adventurer based in Portland Oregon. He was born on the Barbary Coast of North Africa. Hisham is co-founder and co-owner of the Sublime Frequencies label, where he has realized various documentary films and music recordings.

Presented with support from the Ethnic Studies Department.


 

Angel Nevarez and Valerie Teverenevarez tevere

We need a theory to continue.

January 28th, 2019
Lecture:
6 p.m.
SME 149, Structural & Materials Engineering Bldg., UC San Diego

Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere are multidisciplinary artists whose projects and research investigate contemporary music and sound, the electromagnetic spectrum, dissent, and public fora. Their interests lie in the spatial simultaneity of performance and enunciation, reflecting upon political agency through lyrics, audio, and transmission.


 

2018 Fall

Mark Derymark dery

“The Screams We Make In Other People’s Dreams”: Edward Gorey, the Gay Gothic, and the Camp Macabre.

November 28th, 2018
Lecture: 7pm
SME 149, Structural & Materials Engineering Bldg., UC San Diego

Mark Dery is a cultural critic, essayist, and book author who has taught at NYU and Yale. He coined the term “Afrofuturism,” popularized the concept of “culture jamming,” and has published widely, in the academic as well as the popular press, on American mythologies and pathologies.

Presented with support from the Literature Department, UC San Diego.


 

Zackary Druckerzackary drucker

Russell Lecture with MCASD

November 14th, 2018
Lecture: 7 p.m.
Price Center Theatre, UC San Diego

Zackary Drucker is an independent artist, cultural producer, and trans woman who breaks down the way we think about gender, sexuality, and seeing. She has performed and exhibited her work internationally in museums, galleries, and film festivals. Drucker is an Emmy-nominated Producer for the docu-series This Is Me, as well as a Producer on Golden Globe and Emmy-winning Transparent.

For many years, UC San Diego and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego have partnered to bring contemporary artists to San Diego through the annual Russell Lecture program. The Russell Foundation was established in the will of Betty Russell, one of MCASD’s founding docents and a long-time supporter of UC San Diego. Also, presented with support from University Centers.

UC San Diego ID is required for free entry.


 

Candice Hopkinscandice hopkins

Graduate Lecture Series

November 8th, 2018
Lecture: 7 p.m.
SME 149, Structural & Materials Engineering Bldg., UC San Diego

Candice Hopkins is a curator and writer originally from Whitehorse, Yukon and based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is co-curator of the forthcoming SITE Santa Fe biennial, Casa Tomada, opening in August, 2018, as well as co-curator of the Canadian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale opening May, 2019, which will feature the media work of Isuma Productions, a collective based in Igloolik and Montreal, Canada. She was a curator for documenta 14 in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany.

Presented with support from the Ethnic Studies Department.


 

Carrie Mae Weems

carrie mae weemsDistinguished Alumna, MFA '84

November 7th, 2018
Reception: 6 p.m., Lecture: 7 p.m.
Price Center Theatre, UC San Diego

Carrie Mae Weems is a celebrated artist known for exploring issues of race, gender, class and how the present can be understood through history and identity. Named a MacArthur Fellow in 2013, Weems continues to engage local communities through art and activism.

Presented with support from University Centers.


 

Adam Khalil

adam khalilGraduate Lecture Series

October 29th, 2018
Screening: 5:30 p.m., Lecture: 7 p.m.
SME 149, Structural & Materials Engineering Bldg., UC San Diego

Khalil’s work subverts traditional forms of ethnography through humor, transgression, and innovative documentary practice. Khalil’s films and installations have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Sundance, Walker Arts Center, e-flux, Microscope Gallery (New York), Spektrum (Berlin), Trailer Gallery (Sweden), and Carnival of eCreativity (Bombay).

Presented with support from the Ethnic Studies Department.


 

Anna Sew Hoyanna sew hoy

Longenecker Artist in Residence

October 24th, 2018
Lecture: 7 p.m., followed by reception
SME 149, Structural & Materials Engineering Bldg., UC San Diego

Artist Anna Sew Hoy has been selected as the inaugural Martha Longenecker Roth Distinguished Artist in Residence. A renowned artist, Sew Hoy will both practice her craft as well as mentor and instruct UC San Diego students during a critical stage of their artistic development.