culturalboundaries

Coming in March
Black Studies in Art & Design Education Conference at the The New School

March 26th-27th 2011. Two Day Conference on interdisciplinary conference on Black Studies in Art and Design Education, featuring speakers from art, fashion. architecture, urban planning, art and design history and theory. Organised by Coco Fusco and Yvonne Watkins, Parsons The New School for Design, New York. Presenters include: Craig Wilkins, University of Michigan; Mabel Wilson, Columbia University; Noel Mayo, Ohio State; Carol Tulloch, Chelsea College of Art and Design; Jennifer Gonzales, North Carolina State University; Michele Y. Washington, School of Visual Arts; Kim Piner, School of the Arts Institute of Chicago; Noliwe Rooks, Princeton University; Clyde Johnson MICA are amongst the list of designers, cultural and design critics, and educators presenters.

The conference is intended to be a forum for reflection on the troubling gap between the notable significance of Black creativity in global culture and its lack of presence in art and design education. The goal of the conference is to elaborate and assess strategies of reform that would diversify curricular offerings and thus improve education for all art and design students while simultaneously generating a more supportive environment for Black students and faculty.

Scholars and practitioners in Fine Arts, Industrial Design, Fashion Design, Architecture, Urban Planning and Art and Design History and Theory will engage in an interdisciplinary discussion about the challenges involved in rethinking  curriculum, engaging with historically disenfranchised communities, and recruiting and retaining Black students and faculty. The conference will also feature two keynote speeches by prominent members of the fields under  figures whose efforts have been central to diversifying the many fields that comprise art and design studies. Panels will address the following topics: rethinking art and design theory and history courses in light of the global influence of cultures of the African diaspora; curricular reform in practical courses of art and design; strategies of engagement with black communities; Black student experiences in art and design schools; and the specific challenges of recruiting and retaining Black students and faculty in school of art and design.

photo credit: http://www.blackstudies.ucsb.edu

FOODAM is a meeting point between the world of Art, Food and Design.
It lives in the whole city who becomes a place of exploration, exposure and debate on the future and innovation of food, its imaginary and its apparatus.

Send us your idea about the future of food. It could be a product or a prototype, a book or a infographic, a website or a process, a taste or a scenario, a restaurant or a recipie. Food talks about our life. Its future will change our world.

James Baldwin Global Imagination:

February 17 to 20, Thursday to Sunday
Contact baldwinconference@gmail.com for information

Check out their website for Conference schedule, location and other details: http://www.csgsnyu.org

Staged in the context of global economic insecurity, a planet gripped by the ravages of war and climate change, ever-increasing gaps in wealth, as well as rampant fundamentalism (East and West), “James Baldwin’s Global Imagination” is intended as an examination of globality not simply as a matter of demography but as an urgent call to re-consider the contemporary utility of Baldwin’s expansive injunction to William Faulkner (and, in fact, to us all), “[t]hat any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.” These proceedings are thus proposed as an opportunity to take seriously Baldwin’s consistent and insistent proposal that categories of difference represent an early misnaming, a dangerous and cowardly misrecognition of the moral imagination required to confront not only our mortality but also the brutal legacies of our collective histories.

Confirmed plenary speakers, respondents, and musicians:
M. Jacqui Alexander, University of Toronto
Awam Amkpa, New York University
Eshter Armah, journalist, playwright
Rich Blint, New York University
Marcellus Blount, Columbia University
Nicholas Boggs, Columbia University
Herb Boyd, Baldwin Biographer
Jennifer Brody, Duke University

My maternal grandmother, Mabel H. Jones

I can’t wait to get my copy of America I Am Pass it Down Cookbook, featuring my Stolen Authority essay and my Grandmother’s  yummy Apple Dumpling’s recipe that brings back childhood memories of being 6 years-old, kneeling in the kitchen chair anxiously watching her bake.  The smells in the kitchen, the unforgettable flavors—these powerful memories of food, family, and tradition are intertwined and have traveled down from generations past to help make us the people we are today. Now, Tavis Smiley’s America I AM exhibit has joined forces with Chef Jeff Henderson and Ramin Ganeshram to create the America I AM Pass It Down Cookbook.

Design by M. Y. Washington

Below is an excerpt from my essay:

Stolen Authority: African American Images in Food Advertising

In 1991 I co-curated an exhibition, featuring African American designers  titled Visual Perceptions: 21 African American Designers challenge Modern Stereotypes designers challenged modern stereotypes, and each graphic designer was charged with the task to create a one-of-kind poster addressing how blacks have been continuously portrayed in the media. I decided to tackle the image of Aunt Jemima, creating a poster, titled, “Ain’t Ja Mama on the Pancake Box.” As I researched my piece, I began to think deeply about the image of the, heavy-set, wide bosomed black woman, hair tied up and grinning from ear to ear. She was a soothing, even comforting figure in American food advertising. Pancakes, after all are homey, cozy, sweet and delicate.

The truth is, of course, that Aunt Jemima is just one of the all-too- poor mammy, pickannies, and blackface, characters who were a standard portrayal of Africa Americans—one that was used to peddle everything from tires to clothing to food.

Toni Tipton- Martin, a food historian, has extensively researched the origins of such symbols, and compared them to the lack of inclusion of blacks cooks in the culinary arts. It’s a bitter irony that their success has always been dependent on the real-world authority invested in these figures. They are experts in their ”fields” and that’s what makes their products good. It is an irony that is played out over and over in the pages of the old magazines.

Formei-me em Design Gráfico na PUC-PR em 2007. Por causa  de professores inspiradores, fui contaminado com o desejo do estudo. Nunca fui aluno dedicado em nada até encontrá-los. Eles me ensinaram que a Universidade tem uma arma que é deixada de lado: a provocação.

Me interessei mais pela área acadêmica do design, da pesquisa, da teoria, e sempre encontrei resistência a essa atitude, tanto por parte de colegas quanto de professores. Muitos não entendem ou não querem entender a importância do estudo teórico, da discussão, da multidisciplinaridade – esse chavão que, apesar de muita gente falar para se achar “legal”, é pouquíssimo posto em prática.

http://filosofiadodesign.wordpress.com/