Reframing the House of Dust: A Symposium brings together at RedCat an internationally renowned group of scholars, curators and writers to reflect upon Fluxus artist Alison Knowles' House of Dust project and the historical and theoretical perspectives it provides on both the Fluxus legacy and contemporary art practices. Amond them, French curators and scholars Sébastien Pluot and Maud Jacquin.
On Friday, March 23, “Reframing the House of Dust: Activations,”– a performance event free and open to the public – will take place on campus in the newly built House of Glass, a response to the House of Dust that was designed and built by faculty students in January 2018. For the event, Knowles herself will conduct one of her signature Fluxus performances, Newspaper Music, along with newly commissioned work by an international roster of artists and reinterpretations of scores by CalArts faculty and students.
On Saturday, March 24, “Reframing the House of Dust: A Symposium” will feature Sarbanes, Pluot and Jacquin, alongside art historians Hannah Higgins and Nicole Woods, curator and Fluxus scholar Karen Moss, poet and scholar Jasper Bernes and architectural historian Sylvia Lavin.
Co-produced by a computer in 1967, the House of Dust poem was open to multiple interpretations, one of which took an architectural form: a 1968 social sculpture that traveled with Knowles from New York to California when she came to teach at the newly minted CalArts, and hosted numerous performances, readings and classes on campus. Now enjoying its 50th anniversary, House of Dust will serve as a focal point for this day of conversations around art and technology, art and architecture, art and translation, and art and feminism; as well as the history of radical arts pedagogy at CalArts and beyond.
Sponsored by the CalArts MA Aesthetics and Politics Program, Art by Translation, the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, FLAX Foundation and the French Ministry of Culture.
