A Preemptive Study: from tactical biopolitics to the cost of life

A Preemptive Study: from tactical biopolitics to the cost of life
Register here before August 14, 2022 (capped at 10 persons)
Free and open to all

A Reading Series with Curator Andrew McNeely
Sessions: 9/4, 9/18, 10/2, 10/30, 11/13, & 12/04  1-3pm
Getty PST Initiative Art and Science

As part of the research for (un)disciplinary tactics: Beatriz da Costa, LACE presents A Preemptive Study: from tactical biopolitics to the cost of life, a free online study group on the work and research of the late artist Beatriz da Costa (1974–2012). If A Preemptive Study’s first semester was philosophical, now the second semester is historiographical and asks the questions: how does one write Beatriz da Costa into the history of art? How does one ethically attend to her life story and experience? Part II will focus on contextualizing da Costa’s work by closely analyzing her collaborative, tactical media projects as well as her late-career work The Cost of Life series, which deals primarily with her experience of cancer. For the October 30th session, guest speaker Kavita Philip will be sharing her experience collaborating with da Costa.  A Preemptive Study is organized by (un)disciplinary tactics: Beatriz da Costa curator Daniela Lieja Quintanar and curatorial advisor Andrew McNeely with curatorial assistant Ana Briz.

To complement its exploration of the intersection of art and science in the work Beatriz da Costa last spring, for its fall session, A Preemptive Study will focus on artistic interventions between the politics of debility and the commodification of life. This collective study group will explore critical ideas in the work of Beatriz da Costa, Audre Lorde, the Critical Art Ensemble, Naomi Klein, Gregory Sholette, Achille Mbembe, and many others. Participants are invited to not only engage with the readings and films that make up A Preemptive Study’s research itinerary but also share their own work to broaden the group’s discussions beyond its core focus.

This program seeks to build a space for collective thinking and research for (un)disciplinary tactics: Beatriz da Costa (Fall 2024) curated by LACE Chief Curator and Director of Programming Daniela Lieja Quintanar as part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: Art and Science.

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. 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 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.

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).

Caption: Critical Art Ensemble, Free Range Grain, ESC Gallery, Graz, Austria, 2003. Courtesy of the Beatriz da Costa Archive.