BYOL (Bring Your Own Lonche): Conversations with DoArt Faculty

In celebration of the 2023 UTEP Faculty Biennial, the Rubin Center presents a series of brown bag lunches featuring faculty in conversation about their work, creative processes, academic research, and the practicalities of being an artist. These talks are open to the public, and you are invited to bring your lunch.

Sounding Contemporary Art: Six Sonic Sculptures

DoArt professor Dr. Melissa Warak lecture about her current research. 

In recent years, more and more contemporary sound artists have merged aesthetic concerns with politicized content to use sound, music, or silence as vehicles for nuanced takes on issues of identity, representation, and geo-political realities. Dutch composer Louis Andriessen wrote the following of music, though it applies equally to contemporary sound art: “Good composers only rarely strive for something which people call beautiful. They want to pose problems, not to solve them. They want to show that the world, and also the world of thinking, is more complex than we want to think.” This talk situates sound as a field of art and, in particular, contemporary sculpture in terms of sonic output and engagement with social issues, history, and memory. Based on Dr. Warak’s forthcoming book, the lecture will assess six sculptures by Janet Cardiff, Kara Walker, Nick Cave, Christine Sun Kim, Ragnar Kjartansson, and Phil Collins to consider the use of sound as a force of social engagement in a variety of public spheres.