Art, Social Space and Public Discourse

Date
Sun November 20th 2016, 12:00 - 6:00pm
Location
COULTER ART GALLERY
Event Sponsor
School of Humanities and Sciences, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Stanford Arts, Department of Art & Art History, Iranian Studies Program, Institute for Diversity in the Arts (IDA), Stanford Global Studies Division
Art, Social Space and Public Discourse

This inaugural exhibition presents a modular gallery and programmatic framework that parallels the overall reach of the three-year initiative. With multiple configurations and in collaboration with the Stanford Art & Art History Department, this exhibition allows various functions and possibilities for students, faculty, and the welcomed artists and presenters of Art, Social Space and Public Discourse. The default arrangement allows a contemplative space for viewing key videos from Tehran as well as footage from the Darvaze Ghar coffeehouse and the conference itself. Additionally, twice a week the Fall Quarter Course (Public Space in Iran: Murals, Graffiti, Performance) reconfigures the gallery to have studio time, seminars, and public talks. Other campus groups, Art Practice & Art History students and faculty utilize and further modify the spaces for independent critiques, presentations, and other activities in the spirit of the central coffee house.

Visitors are encouraged to peruse through the project archives, available materials, and watch various media screened throughout the quarter. Gallery walls also serve notable functions throughout the exhibition duration. Students will create artwork on floating panels with resident course artist GhalamDAR while its opposite wall in dialogue projects continuous footage of actual audiences watching via the Iran coffee house. Conceptually the projection of viewers from Iran observes a shifting gallery of students investigating their own commitment to public art, performance, and translation. The gallery hopes to collapse time, space, context and camaraderie.

Auxillary events both in association with the conference and ongoing quarter activities will generate new spatial arrangements that provide the Stanford community with a volume of experiences and student generated projects that ask questions ultimately asked by the larger three-year initiative. Who are the publics in question? How can public space situate throughout this extended duration? This gallery in tandem with the course and conference initiate this conversation.

Major support for this project is generously provided by the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies. Additonal support provided by Bita Daryabari Endowment for Persian Letters, and Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.

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