“The Life and Artistic practice of Beatriz da Costa”, a Roundtable Discussion

“The Life and Artistic Practice of Beatriz da Costa”, a roundtable discussion
Featuring Robert F. Nideffer, Antoinette LaFarge, and Brooke Singer
moderated by Andrew McNeely
March 26, 2022   1pm to 3pm

Moderated by (un)disciplinary tactics: Beatriz da Costa curatorial advisor Andrew McNeely, “The Life and Artistic Practice of Beatriz da Costa” is a roundtable discussion with artists Robert F. Nideffer, Antoinette LaFarge, and Brooke Singer. Join us as they engage in a lively conversation and celebration of the late Beatriz da Costa (1974–2012). The discussion will be followed by a Q&A session with the audience. This event is presented as part of “A Preemptive Study: from public amateurism to community science”, a free online study group on the work and research of da Costa, hosted by LACE on the occasion of the upcoming exhibition(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.

Panelists
Robert F. Nideffer holds a Ph.D. in Sociology (1994) and an MFA in Computer Arts (1997), from the University of California, Santa Barbara. From 1998-2013 he was a Professor of Art at the University of California, Irvine, where he held a courtesy appointment in the Department of Informatics within the School of Information and Computer Science. He was made a tenured Associate Professor in 2002, and Full Professor in 2008. In 1999 he founded the Game Culture and Technology Lab, which went on to raise over $5,000,000 in sponsored research grants with a variety of academic, federal, and international partners. In 2005 he created an interdisciplinary undergraduate program in Game Culture and Technology. From 2005-2007 Nideffer was Co-Director, and from 2007-2009 Director, of the Art Computation Engineering (ACE) Graduate program, housed between the School of the Arts, the School of Information and Computer Science, and the School of Engineering. His work has been exhibited at a variety of national and international venues including the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte in Spain; the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach, California; the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the 2002 Whitney Biennial. He has lectured extensively both inside and outside the academy, and his projects have been discussed in major media outlets including books, journal articles, television, the internet, film and radio. In 2013 he joined Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) where he served as Head of the Department of Arts until 2018.

Antoinette LaFarge is an artist and writer whose visual work has taken form as computer-mediated performance, programmed installations, and digital prints. Recent art projects include Deep Earth (2021) and Burning Time (2018). Recent books include Sting in the Tale: Art, Hoax, and Provocation (DoppelHouse Press, 2021) and Louise Brigham and the Early History of Sustainable Furniture Design (Palgrave Macmillan 2019). Her writing and artwork have appeared in Art Journal, Wired, Leonardo, Ada, the Southern Quarterly, the MOSF Journal of Science Fiction, and elsewhere, as well as in anthologies from MIT Press, Oxford University Press, and other international presses. She is a longtime contributor to Wikipedia, where she focuses on closing gaps in the coverage of women and people of color. She is a professor of new media art at UC Irvine.

Brooke Singer engages technoscience as an artist, educator, nonspecialist and collaborator. Her work lives “on” and “off” line in the form of websites, workshops, photographs, maps, installations, public art and performances that often involves participation in pursuit of social change. She is Associate Professor of New Media at Purchase College, State University of New York, a former fellow at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center (2010-11), co-founder of the art, technology and activist group Preemptive Media (2002-2008) and co-founder of La Casita Verde (2013-). From 2018-2020 she was a research affiliate with the Groffman Research Group, Environmental Sciences Initiative, Advanced Scientific Research Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She has exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions such as MoMA/PS1, Warhol Museum of Art, The Banff Centre, Neuberger Museum of Art, Diverseworks and Matadero Madrid. She has been in residence at New York Hall of Science, Marble House Project, Headlands Center for the Arts, Helsinki International Artist Programme, among others. Her writing has been published in Big Data and Society, Radical History Review and Brooklyn Rail. She is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Microsoft and Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy.

Moderator
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.