Please note: this workshop is open to graduate students and limited to 20 participants. Register in advance to secure your spot.
This participatory workshop aims to disrupt modes of "doing" scholarly analysis of visual art, performance, film and other cultural productions. Frequently, scholars are trained to apply theory to unpack a cultural object, and in so doing, flatten the object so it is merely reflective of a larger social phenomenon. What if, instead, cultural productions were acknowledged as being generative of theory itself, and looked at or listened to as such? Dr. Thea Quiray Tagle will bring in examples of writing and curatorial projects which reflect this approach to cultural studies, and asks participants to bring in a cultural production they are interested in but have never written about previously (a photograph, a song, a meme, or any other short form object that can be apprehended quickly—no novels, full-length films, etc). Together we will engage with these works, and practice writing about them from a standpoint of un/knowing and un/doing.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Thea Quiray Tagle, PhD (she/her) is a Filipinx femme curator, writer, and transdisciplinary scholar whose research broadly investigates photography, socially engaged art and site-specific performance; visual cultures of violence and waste; urban planning and the environment; and grassroots responses to political crises and ecological collapse in and across the Pacific. Across her various research and creative projects, a question that drives Thea’s work is: how can socially engaged art and performance move us, collectively and individually, to work towards more just and livable futures that are anti-capitalist, feminist, and queer? How can art and performance model practices of right relation with other humans and non-human life, that might impact how we choose to live in the day-to-day? She was the Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Associate in Asian American Studies at UIUC from 2015-2016, and earned a PhD in Ethnic Studies from UC San Diego. Her writing has been published in a variety of outlets including American Quarterly, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, Hyperallergic, and BOMB Magazine. She is co-curator of New York Now: Home, the inaugural contemporary photography triennial at the Museum of the City of New York, scheduled to open in March 2023. Dr. Quiray Tagle is the Associate Curator of the Bell Gallery and Brown Arts Institute (BAI) at Brown University. Photo by Dan Paz