1st Feb 2010 12:00pm
Sallis Benney Theatre
The Monday Lecture series has been running since 1997 as a series of presentations by contemporary artists and cultural practitioners who work across disciplines. This is an opportunity to hear artists, writers, cultural activists talk about the history of their practice and show examples of their work. The lecture series is coordinated for The School of Arts and Media and as part of the Sallis Benney public lecture programme.
FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
(12noon-1pm presentation, 1-1:30pm Q&A)
Simon Lewandowski (UK)
In his 1967 essay "Art and Objecthood," Art critic Michael Fried's central thesis was "Theatre's profound hostility to the Arts": "Theatre and theatricality are at war today, not simply with modernist painting (or modernist painting and sculpture) but with Art as such." Art was being "corrupted or perverted by Theatre”.
Artist and curator Simon Lewandowski has made it his business in nearly 30 years of work in both Art and Theatre to continue this process. Furthermore, his broad-based and low-key practice also “corrupts and perverts” Art with Design, Science, Craft, Hobbyism, Poetry and even, occasionally, Politics.
His projects have included kinetics which develop a notion of “artificial stupidity”; a book that combines the heuristics of overcoming a creative block with an exploration of a fictional language of real objects; hypnotising spectators in an empty gallery in order to record what they “see” and most recently, curating a series of site-specific “occupations” in a suburban basement. http://www.lewandowski.lowtech.org
