Artist Misha Ilin and scholar Colby Chamberlain will discuss instruction-based practices and its historical precedents. By detailing the principal elements of Ilin’s newly published book, namely the instruction table and the 65 instructions contained within, the conversation will immerse the audience in diverse methodologies for acquiring, structuring, and articulating knowledge.
They will focus on parallels between Fluxus founder George Maciunas’s charts and Ilin’s instruction table as organizing systems for instruction-based practices. Maciunus and Ilin both utilize design aesthetics and advance a structured categorization of instruction art forms—including word and graphic scores, manuals, and scripts—that reflect both artists interests in autodidacticism (and, perhaps, their experience of cultural relocation) and their ability to organize acquired knowledge with an unconventional yet insightful logic.
This program accompanies the launch of Misha Ilin’s meta-meta book (Washington Project for the Arts, 2023). Objects and drawings created to animate this discussion will become part of the meta-meta project exhibition on view October 14 - December 9 at WPA's Project Space (2124 8th St NW, Washington, DC).
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About the Participant
Colby Chamberlain (he/him) is faculty in residence at the Cleveland Institute of Art and previously taught art history at the Cooper Union and Columbia University. His scholarship has appeared in publications including ARTMargins, Art Journal, caa. reviews, Grey Room, and October, and he contributes frequently to Artforum as a critic. His book Fluxus Administration is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press.
Dates
Friday, November 17, 7–8pm
