culturalboundaries

Today, street style blogs are some of the most popular sites on the Internet. But what is street style? And what is the relationship between style, streets, and pop culture? How have the Internet, digital cameras and other technologies impacted how we understand the way we dress?  Why do so many people care about the way other people dress?

The Urban Catwalk: Fashion and Street Culture, a two-day symposium at Yale University, aims to investigate the relationships between street style and identity.

Whether high end or mass market, fashion is a daily performance of identity. Street fashion tells a personal narrative about one’s dreams, fantasies, fears and struggles. From Marie Antoinette to Lady Gaga, and from Napoleon Bonaparte to Prince, fashion is used as an instrument of rebellion and commentary on social norms.

Come hear 20 minute presentations from a range of disciplines, including a special guest panel with celebrity stylist and founding fashion director of Vibe Michaela angela Davis, Guy Trebay of the New York Times, Chioma Nnadi of Vogue, and Jimmy Webb of New York City’s Trash and Vaudeville. Our conference blends the intellectual with an ear to the ground. We close the conference out with a street style fashion show, where real-people models will showcase what street style means to them.

Fellow SVA Alumni Emily Lutzker has launched OPENINVO an innovative  online community for businesses that bridges people from the arts and creative fields with corporations.

If you have a brilliant idea for a new product or service, then join as an Idea Provider. We then present your ideas to corporations looking to innovate. The system protects your intellectual property along the way and we make it our job to get you the best compensation for your ideas. OpenInvo is an R&D resource for open innovation where individuals submit ideas for new products and services and companies gain access to those ideas for innovative new solutions

For more information link to: OpenInvo: unexpected innovation. unexpected opportunity. openinvo.com

The tireless curator and fashion scholar Marketa Uhlirova brings her “Fashion in Film Festival” to New York City. For this exciting edition of the festival, “Birds of Paradise,” she partnered with the Museum of the Moving Image’s Chief Curator David Schwartz, Ron Gregg at Yale University, and Eugenia Paulicelli at the Graduate Center, CUNY.

The festival, which is hailed as “a major extravaganza in costume spectacle, dance and diabolical glamour,” takes place from April 15 to May 2nd at the Museum of the Moving Image, while a seminar on the topic is scheduled for April 19th at the CUNY Graduate Center.

For a full program of the festival, please visit the Fashion in Film Festival site.

Architect Craig L. Wilkins, design scholar Carol Tulloch, and art historian Kymberly Pinder at the Parsons conference (photos by Jonathan Grassi, courtesy of Parsons

Last weekend March 26 Parsons School of Design presented Black Studies in Art and Design Education addressed arguably the the disproportionate number of students and faculty of color in Design Schools not just in the United States but across the globe in countries likes England, Canada and South Africa. This major event was organized by Coco Fusco and Yvonne Watson professors at Parsons School of Design. I was not only in attendance, but I also spoke on a panel addressing the troubling gap that persist within the classrooms of design and art schools. Bill Gaskin, of Parsons moderated my panel Curricular Reform in the Foundation and Advanced Studio Courses presenters included Janice Cheddie, from UK, Van Dyke Lewis from Canada,  Mabel O. Wilson of Columbia University and myself. It was such an exhilarating experience for me to interface with some of the best black scholars in design, architecture, art history and fashion, it is not often that such opportunities happen in one setting.  I must commend Coco Fusco and Yvonne Watsons for taking a strident position and challenging the needs for an overhaul in the academe of design and art schools which is seriously long overdue for revision. Many of the big design and art schools had major showing of faculty and administrators from Pratt Institute, Yale University and MICA.

As reported  in the Chronicle of Higher Education by By W. Ian Bourland

Why are there so few black artists and designers?  The conference, Black Studies in Art and Design Education: Past Gains, Present Resistance, Future Challenges, held last weekend at Parsons The New School for design, investigated both the causes and possible solutions for what is arguably a disproportionate paucity of students and instructors of color in the fields of art, architecture, and design.

Although many of the themes discussed by panels composed of veteran educators and practitioners were not new, Black Studies was notable for its emphasis on concrete and pragmatic solutions for educators.  The timing, moreover, could not be better: On the one hand, humanities and arts budgets within higher education have been roiled by recent economic challenges; on the other, the wider marketplace has capitalized on work by black and other minority practitioners during the past five years. The Phillips de Pury’s 2010 “Africa Auction” was highly lucrative for the auction house, and artists such as Glenn Ligon, Kara Walker, Yinka Shonibare, and Julie Mehretu have been the subject of marquee exhibitions in major global institutions, including the Whitney and Smithsonian museums.

For more checkout chronicle.com

Van Dyke Lewis standing, Mabel Wilson, (seated) and Michele Y.Washington.

Ferran Adriá gastronimic bubbles has burst,  and El Bulli his world class restaurant is turning into a research foundation that will reach out to the masses via daily internet postings. Stay tune for more fab food creations from the world’s number 1 chef.

excerpt from Guaradian

The world’s greatest chef has had enough. “I don’t care now whether I have three stars, or however many. Or whether I am No 1 or No 28,” explains Ferran Adrià, the former plate-washer who has revolutionised high cuisine over the past 20 years.

“You can’t stay at number one forever. Imagine if Barcelona won the Champions League for 15 seasons,” he adds. “The system couldn’t handle it.”

Adrià’s words may sound world-weary, but in fact they are the opposite. Having reached the top, and stayed there for so long, he is closing his world-famous El Bulli restaurant and turning its location, in a charming Mediterranean cove, into a research foundation that will reach out to the masses by publishing daily on the internet. For more read the Guardian

This coming Saturday March 26th, I’m participating in the Black Studies Design Education Symposium at Parsons School of Design, my presentation is titled “Missing in the Narrative,” made me think long and hard about Georg Olden the first on-air art director for CBS TV. Above Olden Vice President Creative of McCann Erikson advertising is featured on 1960s TV show I’ve Got a Secret if you listen closely he’s referred to as MadMen, a term used in advertising. For more on Georg Olden check out AIGA Gold Medalist: http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/medalist%2Dgeorgolden.
Also former editor Julie Lasky of Print Magazine wrote an extraordinary article, The Search for Georg Olden in March 1994 issue documenting his tumultuous career as an art director in TV and advertising. I’m happy to say I worked with Lasky providing some of the research especially since I had developed a lecture series on “Black Designers of the 20th Century” which included Olden.

Dr. Craig L. Wilkins from Art X Detroit on Vimeo.

Art X Detroit is pleased to present a short video by Emmy award-winning filmmaker, Stephen McGee, featuring Kresge Literary Arts Fellow, Dr. Craig L. Wilkins. This is the eleventh video in a series featuring the 2008-2010 Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellowship Awardees and Eminent Artists. Join us on our Facebook and Vimeo pages as we feature a new video each day, leading up to the opening night of Art X Detroit on April 6, 2011.

Dr. Craig L. Wilkins from Art X Detroit on Vimeo.

Art X Detroit is pleased to present a short video by Emmy award-winning filmmaker, Stephen McGee, featuring Kresge Literary Arts Fellow, Dr. Craig L. Wilkins. This is the eleventh video in a series featuring the 2008-2010 Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellowship Awardees and Eminent Artists. Join us on our Facebook and Vimeo pages as we feature a new video each day, leading up to the opening night of Art X Detroit on April 6, 2011.

The Kresge Art X event is happening in Detroit as part of the ARTX project on 09 April, at 5:30PM, held at the N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art. Craig Wilkins, architect, educator and director of the Detroit Community Design Center is a 2010 Kresge Literary Fellow.

Wilkins is hosting panel discussion:

A Stronger Soul in a Finer Frame: The 100-year effort to create the National Museum of African American History and Culture

Dr. Craig L. Wilkins will read excerpts from his current work concerning the 100-year effort to create the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), set to open in 2015 on the National Mall. The outline for the event is as follows: 30 minute reading by Wilkins, a 30 minute panel discussion regarding the reading, the proposed NMAAHC and its significance in African America, American and architectural history and culture and finally, a 30 minute Q&A with the audience. The panel will discuss how the ethereal becomes manifest; the dream, a thing; in this case, architecture. It will explore not only what it means to create an architecture that might legibly and positively represent that complex experience in a country still deeply conflicted about its racial past yet optimistic enough about its future to elect it first African-American president.

The panelists are John Gallagher, architecture critic for the Detroit Free Press; Lee Bey, executive director of the Chicago Central Area Committee and former critic for the Chicago Sun-Times and; Robert Fishman, professor of architecture and planning, University of Michigan. http://sitemaker.umich.edu/clwilks/home

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