A Preemptive Study: from public amateurism to community science

A Preemptive Study: from public amateurism to community science
Register here before March 6 (capped at 15 persons) Free and open to all
Study Group: 8 online sessions bi-weekly on Sundays from 1-3pm*
Scheduled meeting dates: March 13; March 26; April 10; April 24; May 7 (Sat); May 22; June 5; June 18 (Sat). 

As part of the research for (un)disciplinary tactics: Beatriz da Costa, LACE presents A Preemptive Study: from public amateurism to community science, a free online study group on the work and research of the late artist Beatriz da Costa (1974–2012). Organized by (un)disciplinary tactics curator Daniela Lieja Quintanar and curatorial advisor Andrew McNeely with curatorial assistant Ana Briz.

This study group seeks to locate da Costa’s work within a growing discourse around community-led scientific research. Join us for eight sessions as we collectively explore da Costa’s notion of the artist as a dissenting amateur and her theory of tactical biopolitics.

After years of exploring the impacts of a society that prioritizes capital over people and their well-being, da Costa passed away at the age of 38 from metastatic breast cancer. This study group aims to continue da Costa’s important thinking on art’s value to the sciences. Participants will contemplate the value of amateur experimentation to the sciences on both the individual and collective level.

A Preemptive Study’s focus will interest readers concerned with the boundaries of art and science, the politicization of scientific expertise, technocracy and deliberative democracy, and emerging forms of equitable policy-making. Fields that will be explored include biopolitics, interspecies collaboration, queer indigenous feminisms, and race and ecology. In pursuit of these themes, we will discuss influential texts by Donna J. Haraway, Michel Foucault, Achille Mbembe, Bruno Latour, and Mel Y. Chen to name only a few. The study group will also feature invited guest speakers such as artist Robert F. Nideffer, artist and writer Antoinette LaFarge, researcher and scholar Bhavna Shamasunder, and community organizer Sandy Navarro of L.A. Grit Media. 

This study group is organized in two parts:
Part I (spring) will take place from March 13 to June 18, 2022. Da Costa’s PigeonBlog (2006-2008) project will serve as a point of departure to explore public health and environmental justice. Part II (fall) coming soon.

*Note: A Preemptive Study seeks to build a space for collective thinking. We expect that participants can commit to attending at least 7 of the 8 sessions we host.

For any additional information, please contact us at ana@welcometolace.org

This program seeks to build a space for collective thinking and research for (un)disciplinary tactics: Beatriz da Costa, curated by LACE Chief Curator and Director of Programming Daniela Lieja Quintanar as part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: Art x Science x LA initiative.

Team
Andrew McNeely is a writer, editor, curator, and a curatorial advisor to (un)disciplinary tactics. Andrew’s curating focuses on aesthetics, the philosophy of race, and spatial and environmental politics. His recent exhibition at LACE, A NonHuman Horizon (2019), investigates the articulation of racial identity in the work of three generations of environmentalist artists. He also curated Restless Debris (2016) at UCI’s UAG, which highlights the collective attachments to superfund sites often found in communities of color. Since 2018, Andrew has stewarded the Community Reading Group (CRG), a collective that is dedicated to verbalizing the limits of community and the duties of common life. CRG is organized by Olivia Leiter, Michael Berlin, Joy / Jade, Hailey Loman, and Zach Whitworth. 

Daniela Lieja Quintanar is Chief Curator and Director of Programming at LACE Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. She works between Los Angeles and Mexico, emphasizing contemporary art and curatorial practices that explore the politics and social issues of everyday life. In 2018, Lieja Quintanar was awarded with the Warhol Foundation Curatorial Research Fellowship. She was part of the curatorial team of MexiCali Biennial 2018-19. She served as Project Coordinator and Contributing Curatorial Advisor for Below the Underground: Renegade Art and Action in the 1990s Mexico at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, Getty PST:LA/LA initiative. In 2016, she worked with artist Teresa Margolles for her contribution La Sombra to the Public Art Biennial CURRENT: LA Water. She organized with LACE La Pista de Baile by Colectivo am, as part of the Getty/Redcat PST: Live Art LA/LA Performance Festival. She curated Interglactix: against isolation/contra el aislamiento (2021), Unraveling Collective Forms (2019); CAVERNOUS: Young Joon Kwak & Mutant Salon (2018) and Emory Douglas: Bold Visual Language (2018 co-curated with Essence Harden); home away from by Jimena Sarno (2017), El Teatro Campesino (1965-1975), (2017 co-curated with Samantha Gregg) at LACE. Lieja holds a BA in Ciencias de la Cultura from the Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana, Mexico City, and an MA in Art and Curatorial Practices in the Public Sphere from the University of Southern California.

Ana Briz is a researcher, writer, and curator in Los Angeles, the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Tongva peoples. In 2021, she joined the LACE team as curatorial assistant to (un)disciplinary tactics: Beatriz da Costa. Her research is situated in the field of performance, art, and visual culture in the United States with an emphasis on queer, feminist, and anti-racist work by BIPOC in California. She is broadly interested in issues of displacement, gentrification, mourning, and resistance in contemporary art and culture. The abolitionist imaginary informs her curatorial practice and research interests. Briz is currently a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California and holds an M.A. in Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere from the University of Southern California and a B.A. in Art History from Florida International University.

This program is funded by the Getty Foundation.

LACE thanks our A Preemptive Study group participants: janeth aparicio (part I and II); Carmen Argote (part II); Ajani Brannum (part I); Toro Castaño (part II); Anna Cho-Son (part II); Tobias Dias (part II); Jenna Didier (part I and II); Chantal Eyong (part I and II); Robert Herbst (part II); Lauren Klein (part I and II); Steve Maldonado Silvestrini (part I and II); Pasha Mckenley (part II); Angie Morrill (Klamath [part I]); Hillary Mushkin (part II); Christina Ree (part I); Jay Sharma (part I); Rose Simons (part I and II); Liz Stringer (part I); Sara Suárez (part II); Nina Waisman (part II); devika wickremesinghe (part II); and Layla Zbinden (part II).