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Master of Fine Arts in
Contemporary Art Practices at
Portland State University
Remember - prospective students have to apply for Remember - prospective students have to apply for scholarships by Feb 1 as well! Good luck 🙌🏼 @psu_artanddesign
More from Conversations on Everything, an ongoing More from Conversations on Everything, an ongoing collection of interviews for the Social Forms of Art Journal, which the program has produced since 2018. Each term, graduate students in the program interview someone as part of their artistic research. The interviews in this collection reflect the diverse concerns of a band of today’s contextual practitioners, who are sited and making work in different locations within the U.S. during a global pandemic and social upheaval. Topics and themes explored in this issue include: the complex intersections of religion, culture, and art; equity and lineage in the social practice field; letter-writing; collecting; arts administration as a social practice, and more. Read it at psusocialpractice.org/journal ! Next issue out end March. Edited by @saltythunder13, PDF design and layout by @emmaduehrmitchell, web by @rebeccalcopper.
It’s launched! — Our inaugural issue of Conver It’s launched! — Our inaugural issue of Conversations on Everything, an ongoing collection of interviews for the Social Forms of Art Journal, which the program has produced since 2018. Each term, graduate students in the program interview someone as part of their artistic research. The interviews in this collection reflect the diverse concerns of a band of today’s contextual practitioners, who are sited and making work in different locations within the U.S. during a global pandemic and social upheaval.  Topics and themes explored in this issue include: the complex intersections of religion, culture, and art; equity and lineage in the social practice field; letter-writing; collecting; arts administration as a social practice, and more. Read it at psusocialpractice.org/journal ! The team - design by @emmaduehrmitchell, web by @rebeccalcopper and editing by @saltythunder13 🙌🏼
Recent program grad @zephxfish just wrapped up a p Recent program grad @zephxfish just wrapped up a project at Portland’s Five Oaks Museum! . #Repost @fiveoaksmuseum ・・・ The images and future genders created in the Sum of its Parts: Glimpses of Future Genders collaborative photo project as part of the Gender Euphoria exhibition are now available to view! Check them out in this post! . Here’s a project description from artist Zeph Fishlyn: Close your eyes. Imagine a future gender. It could be five years from now or five thousand years from now. It could be human or inhuman. What could it look like? What color(s) is it? What shape(s) is it? What does it sound and smell like? What does it wear, how does it move? What is its spirit? . Glimpses of Future Genders is a crowd-sourced photo project that experimented with remote forms of co-creation in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. Created in collaboration with curator Becca Owen, the project was entirely conducted via web, snailmail and remote pickup. Members of the public anonymously contributed descriptions of future genders, which then became prompts for photographs. We paired those prompts with disposable cameras made available via five porch-pickup locations around Portland. Participants picked up a camera, then snapped a photographic fragment or glimpse of a future gender. . The result is a kind of “contact sheet” that is simultaneously a portrait of a certain present-day Portland amidst a pandemic, and a glance towards an imagined future beyond the gender binary. . Thank you to my collaborators: 🔸All of the anonymous and semi-anonymous participants who contributed new names for genders and snapped photographs. 🔸Porch Pickup Hosts— Becca Owen, Everett Owen, Molly Alloy, Brendan Curran, Victoria Sundell 🔸Blue Moon Camera @bluemooncamera . #FiveOaksMuseum #ZephFishlyn #GenderEuphoria #CollaborativeArt
Two weeks left to apply! It’s not too late - rea Two weeks left to apply! It’s not too late - reach out if you have questions! This image is from the annual program campout last year when @rozcrews facilitated an activity.
REGISTER NOW! 💯 Winter Term 2021/ THURSDAYS fro REGISTER NOW! 💯 Winter Term 2021/ THURSDAYS from 9-10:50 PST!!!! . . In this seminar course, students are introduced to the field of socially engaged art and asked: how can artists use their practice to disrupt, transform, critique, and challenge social dynamics and institutions? This course– which includes lectures, readings, discussions, and community-based learning– is designed to support students with both conceptual development as well as in-practice application of the strategies involved in socially engaged art projects. The community partner for this course is Trans Boxing– an art project in the form of a boxing club which was founded in New York City in 2017. Students will have the opportunity to engage directly with the project and it’s participants throughout the term. . .
💡Graduate Publication Spotlight💡 some light 💡Graduate Publication Spotlight💡 some light, shades of support in our current art ecosystems, by @roshanithakore, 2020 graduate . This publication examines the support systems created by artists and organizers BECAUSE of the systems that continually fail us. Made during the global pandemic of 2020, some light comes in the form of an inverted rainbow packet mailed to each recipient to pause, reflect, and examine the shades of support in our current art ecosystems. . some light was produced by nůn studios: an emerging print co-operative and affordable print resource in NE Portland. nůn creates artist books and community organizing curriculum for global solidarity movements, centering BIPOC womxn, femmes, GNC and non-binary folks. . You can receive a printed version with sliding scale funds that will go towards the cost of production as well as support nůn studios. Visit psusocialpractice.org/publications for a link and to check out the rest of our publications ☎️
💡Graduate publication spotlight💡 The Artists 💡Graduate publication spotlight💡 The Artists’ Emergency Response Cycle by @zephxfish, 2020 graduate: Zeph began to research disaster in spring 2019—one year before the beginning of a pandemic, economic chaos, a racial justice uprising, and ash falling from orange Western skies. This book details some of their research and projects through this eventful time, and appropriates a standard tool of emergency management to propose the necessity of play, ambiguity and open-ended questions in urgent times. Get a print copy or download a PDF here: zephrocious.com/response-cycle . We have a growing number of grad publications on our site and will start featuring them here. Head to psusocialpractice.org/publications/ to check them out!
Comment below or DM us! Once we have enough questi Comment below or DM us! Once we have enough questions we will get together and answer them for you 🙂 Applications are open Dec 1 to Jan 15.
🎉TOMORROW meet the East Portland Art + Justice 🎉TOMORROW meet the East Portland Art + Justice Lab’s first cohort of Artists-in-Residence! From September 2020 – November 2021, Sabina Haque, Cary Miga, Roshani Thakore, Nikki Acevedo, Myra Aldan, and Felecia Graham will work together to create new community artworks for East Portland, all situated in and around the Orchards of 82nd (O82). Hear what projects they are working on and how you may be able to get involved. Join us to get to know your neighbors, friends, and fellow artists!🎉 The East Portland Art + Justice Lab’s Artist Residency Program is an initiative that developed from the community member recommendations from the Orchards of 82nd Art Plan, Living Culture: Past, Present and Future. Each pair’s community artwork will be focused on relevant social topics including education inequities, immigration, and reproductive justice. This relationship-prioritized program will help build pathways to preserve and sustain connections between neighborhood residents in order to cultivate community resiliency and a strong social fabric. The event will be online tomorrow, Friday the 13th at 5:30 pm as part of @apanonews East Portland Arts + Literary Festival. More info about how to register and the festival can be found at www.apano.org/epalf-2020/
Application open Dec 1 - Jan 15 — Included in @a Application open Dec 1 - Jan 15 — Included in @artsy’s list of The Top 15 Art Programs in the country, the Art and Social Practice MFA is a three-year, flexible residency program combining individual practice, group work, community partnerships, and experiential learning with diverse faculty. The program's blend of critical and professional practice, alternative pedagogy, collaborative social engagement, and transdisciplinary exploration produces an immersive educational environment. As part of the flexible residency format, students can be in Portland, Oregon or away making work in diverse locations. As an extension of the program’s unique approach, graduate students have the opportunity to collaborate directly in ongoing projects including @crci.art and @ksmoca. To support writing and web-based projects that offer documentation, critique, commentary and context for a field that is active and expanding, the program produces @sofa_journal, a bi-annual journal. Graduating students are offered the opportunity to design and teach their own class; they also each produce a graduate project, a public artist lecture surveying their work in the program, and a graduate publication that adds to the unique breadth of publications on socially engaged art emerging from the program. Each Spring the program hosts Assembly, a co-authored social practice conference with workshops, lectures, and participatory projects. A Visiting Artist program creates exposure and sustained mentorship for students through the academic year. @artandsocialpracticearchive, a new initiative housed in the PSU Library Special Collections, is the first public archive of ephemera related to art and social practice. Learn more and apply at psusocialpractice.org!
*bri @briandthesea takeover continued* Here we ar *bri @briandthesea takeover continued* Here we are—Nola, Jordan and I, fellow cohort members, thinking about our art practices, overjoyed at the sounds of the leaves in the wind behind our heads. @_nolahanson and I often talk about our practices with each other as we both do a lot of organizing work and combine sports and art in our work ( @_nolahanson being @transboxing and me with @sea.together.mag ) @zeroprocess is teaching an amazing class about design in spaces next term that you should consider! If you scroll to the next slide, it’s an Eagle I spotted at the beach (maybe golden?) that continued to hover in place and the three of us watched it together for like a half hour. 🦅😍🌊 • The next post will be about the bunnies 🐰
Don’t worry. You didn’t miss the (pending) Mas Don’t worry. You didn’t miss the (pending) Master Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr. Artist Residency + Lecture Series @ksmoca + @psuartandsocialpractice graduate lecture! The recording is live over at the @ksmoca YouTube now! It’s also the top link on my https://linkTr.ee/ambsj which is in my bio. There’s also a direct link over @ksmoca. And, if you’re on Facebook, the link is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxor746f91w&app=desktop You’re welcome 🧛🏼‍♀️👹🥳
*Instagram Takeover* [[Photo caption: We had our p *Instagram Takeover* [[Photo caption: We had our program campout in September at the beach and we went to my local surf shop where we met up with Dennis owner of @seasidesurf ! Thanks to Dennis for making it happen for everyone to go surfing during our weekend!]] My name is Brianna Ortega @briandthesea! I’m in my last year of the MFA Art & Social Practice program! I use art as a tool to explore the relationship between identity, power, and place through questioning power in social constructs and physical spaces, oftentimes through the lens of surf culture. I engage with otherness and the in-between spaces of identity through publishing, organizing, performance, video, and other projects. For my whole life of moving over 28 times I’ve explored the question: What does it mean to be a local? Look for more posts about my work coming this week 🐳🏄🏾‍♀️⭐️😇
Final grad lecture of the year alert! ⚡️ Don’t miss @michaelstevensonjr this Friday 10am PST! Also part of the virtual artist-in-residence lecture series at @ksmoca ⚡️Register at bit.ly/ambsjgrad . Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr. is black, non-binary, and practices primarily in America. Their collaborative approach results in artwork by and for the people. Stevenson’s practice has been dedicated to supporting young people ages 4 to 18 in developing the necessary skills to encourage advanced imaginative thinking and self-confident expression. They have spent the last year developing the Afro Contemporary Art Class at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School. Stevenson also has a robust portfolio of artist projects centering food and gathering around it, and new work in collaboration with currently and formerly incarcerated folks such as Gallery Blue, a curation and exhibition project, as well as Tin Can Phone, a forthcoming radio show on KBOO Community Radio. They pursue these professional and creative goals passionately because they believe that empowered and open-minded young people are the best and most direct way toward ensuring a sustainable and prosperous future for all.
Welcoming Lucia Monge @plantonmovil, our other vis Welcoming Lucia Monge @plantonmovil, our other visiting artist, also artist-in-residence at @ksmoca this year! Lucia is a Peruvian artist with a background in education and art + science collaboration. Her work explores the way humans position ourselves within the natural world and relate to other living beings, especially plants. For the past nine years she has organized Plantón Móvil, a yearly “walking forest” performance that leads to the creation of public green areas. . Lucia has exhibited in South America, Europe, and the United States as well as at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP20). She has presented her work in conferences including Performance Climates at Melbourne University and Open Engagement at the Queens Museum and has been included in publications such as Global Performance Issues and MoMA’s Uneven Growth as well as in the popular press.
Introducing one of our program’s visiting artist Introducing one of our program’s visiting artists for the year, @soheilaazadiartist, also currently an artist-in-residence at @ksmoca! Soheila is an interdisciplinary visual artist, writer, educator, and a mother based in Portland, OR and Iran. Born in the capital of Islamic cities, Esfahan, she absorbed story-telling skills through Persian miniature drawings and Islamic architecture since she was nine. Her inspirations come from her experiences of being a woman of color living under Theocracy and Democracy. Now residing in the U.S. Soheila is dedicated to Transnational Feminism with a passionate devotion to the ways in which gender, sex, race, culture and religion intersect. She uses different media to both investigate, materialize, contextualize, and narrate stories of women as minorities.
#Repost @zephxfish with @make_repost ・・・ The #Repost @zephxfish with @make_repost ・・・ The world may be on fire, but @zephxfish is graduating come hell or high water (or election). Zeph is excited to share the last few years of work with friends, collaborators and community, as part of the PSU Art & Social Practice graduate lecture series. We hope you'll join! Thursday, October 22nd 6-7:30 PM PT RSVP at bit.ly/zephgrad to get the Zoom link Zeph will also be previewing a small book, The Artists' Emergency Response Cycle, about the role of art in a crisis. It draws from 18 months of research and interviews about disaster, frameworks from emergency management and survivalism, and their recent projects as they put their ideas to the test.
@transboxing is an art project in the form of a bo @transboxing is an art project in the form of a boxing club, founded by final year student @_nolahanson in 2017. By centering the participation of trans and gender variant people and partnering with local gyms, arts institutions, and community organizations, Trans Boxing critically intervenes in the rigidly gendered system of athletics, and increases availability to people who typically experience barriers to access. . Find out more at transboxing.org or watch a video on transboxing by BK Stories at bit.ly/transboxing1. Trans Boxing is supported by a Research Assistantship from the PSU Art & Social Practice MFA program. . #transboxing #accessibility #socialpractice #sociallyengagedart
Hola amorcitos!! We have a pop up coming up ❤️❤️❤️10/10/20❤️❤️❤️ At the @localloungepdxx 🌈 🌈 details in @mistaconespdx bio 🌈🌈 We are bringing back our #nachos Can’t wait to see y’all there Online orders will be available We perfected it 😉😉😉 #queer#popup#local#brownbuisness#queerbuisness#support#community#vegan#pdx#tacos#comidamexicana
Join Portland State University’s Art & Social Pr Join Portland State University’s Art & Social Practice MFA Program for its Graduate Lecture series! Due to the onset of the pandemic last spring, a number of the 2020 MFA candidates decided to postpone their graduation to the Fall. Join us on Thursdays this October for a series of lectures detailing the themes, projects, and practices of our most recent graduating class. All lectures will be available to join via Zoom. Swipe to see rsvp links, dates and times.
This year’s program campout at Cannon Beach 🤍 This year’s program campout at Cannon Beach 🤍
Tomorrow at 10am PST (1PM EST) is the Tin Can Phon Tomorrow at 10am PST (1PM EST) is the Tin Can Phone debut! Check out @michaelstevensonjr @armon.poost @misfit_otti @joseph.rosenberger at @picapdx Tin Can Phone is a radio-based project that originated inside the Columbia River Correctional Institution and is being supported by KBOO Community Radio in Portland, Oregon. The initial collaboration took place over the course of a few months in which Armon Poostpasand, Queaz Otti, and Joseph Rosenberger (all inmates at the same time) worked with Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr. to interview their peers inside the prison. Starting this summer, all members of the project have since been released and are actively recording the podcast for release on KBOO this fall. As part of PICA's TBA Institute, the Tin Can Phone team will meet online to record an episode of Tin Can Phone live with an opportunity for participants to have questions answered as part of the show. Check us out at PICAtv.org - Direct link: https://watch.eventive.org/tba20/play/5f49884f97161d0036722f97
@blackboxconversations is a project by incoming fi @blackboxconversations is a project by incoming first year student Kiara Walls (kiarawalls.com) and supported by a Research Assistantship from the PSU Art & Social Practice MFA program. It broadcasts weekly - check out their past episodes and the next on forgiveness happening Friday 9/25. Edit: Tonight episode is postponed. The next episode will be next Friday 10/2.
Program faculty @la_pati_vg wrote Compass, a short Program faculty @la_pati_vg wrote Compass, a short piece on the ethics of being a socially engaged artist for @presencecneserp magazine! The article includes questions generated by graduating students @tiakramer @roshanithakore @michaelstevensonjr @zephxfish @ericjohnolson. You can support this independent publication by buying a printed copy or a pdf at https://grouper.bandcamp.com/merch/presence-issue-1-in-the-mist - link in bio. . #ethicsandart #sociallyengagedart
Tonight @michaelstevensonjr will be talking about Tonight @michaelstevensonjr will be talking about their practice with friend and art partner @brushfireheart.art on ART.V. Which you can see on IG LIVE @adxportland tonight starting at 6PM PST Tonight! Don’t miss it!
Former student @michaelstevensonjr has been postin Former student @michaelstevensonjr has been posting all about their practice oriented around food on the @fiveoaksmuseum Instagram. Go check it out!
#Repost @zephxfish with @make_repost ・・・ Ami #Repost @zephxfish with @make_repost ・・・ Amidst uprisings and crises, take time to imagine the futures of gender. You have one more week to participate in our Portland photo collaboration for @fiveoaksmuseum’s Gender Euphoria exhibit! Pick up a disposable camera at one of our no-contact porch pickup locations and take a moment to play. Go to bit.ly/5oaks_photo for more info. Not in Portland? You can still dream up more fantastical descriptors for future genders at bit.ly/gender_prompts! . #socialpractice #scavengerhunt #genderfuck #genderfluid #transgender #genderqueer #lgbtq #queerartist
Portland-area folks: @zephxfish and @fiveoaksmuseu Portland-area folks: @zephxfish and @fiveoaksmuseum invite your participation in a collaborative photo scavenger hunt capturing the multifarious futures of gender! We have created five no-contact porch-pickup locations around Portland, each with a disposable camera and a card with crowd-sourced photo prompts suggesting possible genders. Check out a camera, then snap a photo that reflects one of the prompts on the list, or invent your own. For more information: https://fiveoaksmuseum.org/gender-euphoria-sum-of-its-parts. This project is part of the @gender_euphoria_art exhibit. Stations will be in action until Aug 9th. . #socialpractice #scavengerhunt #genderfuck #genderfluid #transgender #genderqueer #lgbtq #queerartist
Call for participation: Imagine a future gender, h Call for participation: Imagine a future gender, human or inhuman. What could it look, taste or feel like? What is its spirit? Share 3-10 words about this gender at the link in @zephxfish’s bio. This ask is part of Sum of its Parts, a collaborative photo project that is part of Five Oaks Museum's Gender Euphoria exhibit. @zephxfish will remix your prompts to inspire project participants to create photographs offering glimpses of future genders. More info to come. . #futuregender #queerartist #transart #genderreveal #genderqueer #genderfluid #genderfuck #socialpracticeart
Hi there👋🏽@roshanithakore here. I’ll be gi Hi there👋🏽@roshanithakore here. I’ll be giving my graduate talk tomorrow online at 5 pm PST. I’m looking forward to sharing what I’ve been working on with different communities in Portland in relation to power, relationships, and community. Registration required - email rthakore@pdx.edu 💜🦚💥🌈
🐳Thank you all who joined us yesterday at 5PM f 🐳Thank you all who joined us yesterday at 5PM for Be a Local Of My Life with artist and surfer @briandthesea with special guest surf researcher Dr. Rebecca Olive from Byron Bay, Australia. @briandthesea presented her project and we had @rebeccajaneolive join us in a group discussion on surf localism & white colonialism in surfing. 🌊🌊🌊About the project: “For my project Be a Local of My Life, I sent out an email to community members inviting them to participate in a local tour to explore five specific landmarks that have specific significance to me. Our community is situated in a small town on the Pacific Northwest Coast. In the email, the community members were invited to go to each of my personal landmarks and take a photo there as documentation of going to the place from my memory. After working through the personal landmark tour, the community members emailed photos back to me, along with a written response to each memory. Once I received these responses, each community member received a certification for being a “Local of Brianna’s Life.” Inspired by both surf localism and locality, Be a Local of My Life explores what it means to be a local person in a community. In this project, community is defined as the people you come in contact with and have relational, verbal, social, or object exchanges with on a recurring basis. How do intimate relationships with a place shape a community? How can our identification as a local be shaped by memory-based knowledge instead of only site-specific factual information about a place? How does power, memory, and time influence a community member's journey to becoming a local?” — @briandthesea •••Be sure to tune into the programming of amazing events today and tomorrow on zoom with the rest of the MFA Art & Social Practice Program! ASK US if you have any questions!
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