Past as Prologue: Time, History and the Visual Arts

The University of Arizona School of Art Visiting Artist and Scholar Series, 2010-2011

Ken Gonzales-Day

Thursday, September 23, 2010, 5:30 PM | Center for Creative Photography 108

Ursula Von Rydingsvard

Thursday, October 28, 2010, 5:30 PM | Center for Creative Photography 108

Jean Shin

Monday, November 15, 2010, 5:30 PM | Center for Creative Photography 108

Amelia Jones

Monday, January 31, 2011, 5:30 PM | Center for Creative Photography 108

John Tagg

Monday, February 28, 2011, 5:30 PM | Center for Creative Photography 108

David Pagel

Monday, March 28, 2011, 5:30 PM | Center for Creative Photography 108

Kevin Tavin

Monday, April 18, 2011, 5:30 PM | Center for Creative Photography 108

Past as Prologue / Present as Future is a two-year, two-part lecture series which aims to increase public understanding of the role of contemporary art in helping us recognize the critical issues of the present-day, by redressing our record of the past and postulating ideas for the future.
The impacts of environmental and temporal anxiety are visible in many facets of contemporary global culture, but none more profoundly than in contemporary art. In recent decades, artists have revisited history, materials, and historic and emergent forms of technologies to create art that questions that validity of the archive, the potentials of technology, and the anxiety that surrounds irreparable planetary change. Through this two-part series we hope to immerse students and the interested public in the intersections of time, narrative, science, and sustainability as it is filtered through the visual arts.

As the 21st century has gotten underway, we have seen a simultaneous fascination with looking back, via national cultural memory projects and individual personal archiving practices, as well as with the sustainability of our present in the future, as scientific developments have made all too apparent the fragility of our climate, our planet, and our local ecosystems. Ultimately, both tendencies reveal the most critical visual arts practices of our day to stand not alone, but as fundamentally entwined with the cultural, economic, social, scientific, and pedagogic concerns of our time.

The School of Art Visiting Artist and Scholar lecture series is made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Edward J. Gallagher, Jr. Memorial Endowment, The School of Art Advisory Board Visiting Artists and Scholars Endowment, The School of Art, The College of Fine Arts Dean’s Fund for Excellence, and Center for Creative Photography.