the lucrece project: call for collaborators

The Lucrece Project: Creative Experiments in Critical Practice is pleased to announce the three projects we have chosen to sponsor for the coming academic year. We are looking for collaborators to help us bring these projects to life–people who are creative, flexible thinkers. These are year-long collaborations culminating in a conference in April 2012, when each project will be exhibited/performed/discussed. Attached are the full calls for collaborators and details for how to get in touch with the leaders; below are three short descriptions of the three projects:

Trash Lab is a performative experiment that models non-traditional economies and notions of value. Trash Lab is based on the work of artist Max Liboiron, who builds miniature landscapes out of trash and invites viewers to interact with the installation according to one or two simple rules of exchange. In the past, rules have included: take anything away at any time, take something if you leave something behind of equal or greater value, and take something to pass on to someone else. These interactions are documented through surveys, video, participant-observation or interviews, and the resulting data show spontaneous economies that exhibit different characteristics than those of everyday market-driven capitalism. They show that people are not inherently greedy, self-maximizing, or selfish, but generous, creative, and even daring in their relationship to each other and to trash.

Prometheus Mediated: Exploring Audience Perception Through an Evolution of Forms, led by Joyce Mishaan
Using the ancient Greek myth of Prometheus as content and the work of media theorist Marshall McLuhan as context, this group will explore the Prometheus story through three different media: a short theater performance, a short film piece and a new media piece that incorporates a variety of digital forms and social media tools to enhance the audience’s experience. Bringing together a dynamic group of scholars, artists and media makers interested in exploring form’s effect, not just on content but on the audience experience of content, the project will rely on a collaborative interdisciplinary process to shed new light on an old question. We are particularly interested in examining how the evolution of the mediated audience experience from a massive social gathering to an individual, human-computer interaction changes the implications and understanding of content. The project will be realized in a site-specific installation that allows audience members to experience each of the three pieces as individual forms and as a continuous media event.

Jubilate Agno, led by Samara Weiss

“Jubilate Agno,” an 18th-century poem by Christopher Smart written while he was in London’s Bedlam psychiatric hospital, is sprawling, erudite, repetitive, personal, mystical, and very likely an artifact of insanity. It presents an intricate vision of persecution and religious redemption, draws on Hebrew poetry and 18th-century science, and is sometimes found excerpted in adorable books for cat-fanciers. It is above all things puzzling, full of mysteries small and large that may not be solvable. The goal of this group is to produce a play to engage with that mystery, while simultaneously revealing, in its structure, content, or performance, the critical and scholarly thought that gives rise to and influences a work of art. Avoiding both “art by committee” and the non-freedom of a “Choose Your Own Adventure” approach to creation, the goal might be to take critical thought as both raw material and guiding light in the production of an autological work both incisive and moving.

Please contact the leaders directly if you’re interested in participating in any of these projects. Also, don’t forget about our first plenary session, “Make and Do,” on Tuesday, October 11th. Hope to see you there.

Johanna Devereaux and Q. Sarah Ostendorf

Co-Directors
The Lucrece Project: Creative Experiments in Critical Practice

www.thelucreceproject.com
lucreceproject@gmail.com