Ephemera

In the pages that follow, you will see the correspondence, budgets, grants, readings, and writing required to create and run the arts advocacy collective BFAMFAPhD, as well as a printed excerpt from the book, Making and Being (Pioneer Works Press/DAP, 2019), co-authored by BFAMFAPhD core members Susan Jahoda and Caroline Woolard with support from BFAMFAPhD core members Emilio Martínez Poppe, Agnes Szanyi, Emily Tareila, and Vicky Virgin.

Woolard has selected ephemera that serves as visual reference points for BFAMFAPhD. All materials here are reproduced with the consent of collaborators.

“What do we hope, and what can we hope, that institutions can do for us, as writers and artists and intrinsically creative beings? And how further can we not be ashamed of and rather redeem the ‘institutionality’ of writing and artmaking in our time? A utopia where the collectivity we experience in our institutionalized lives is redeemed as a precondition for collective action.” — Mark McGurl, event organized by BFAMFAPhD at the Queens Museum, 2014

Making and Being: Embodiment, Collaboration, and Circulation in the Visual Arts is a multi-platform pedagogical project that offers practices of contemplation, collaboration, and circulation in the visual arts. Making and Being is for artists and art educators who want to connect art to economy, and for students who want to make artworks that reflect the conditions of their own production. Making and Being provides a framework that guides artists to explore both who they are becoming as they make projects and also what their projects are becoming as they take shape and circulate in the world. Making and Being is a book, a series of videos, a deck of cards, and an interactive website with freely downloadable content. More information is online at: http://makingandbeing.com

fig. 5-9 BFAMFAPhD, Making and Being: Embodiment, Collaboration, and Circulation in the Visual Arts, Making and Being: Embodiment, 2019. Still from a video by Alex Mallis. Courtesy of BFAMFAPhD.

“What is the social field we want to be in to recognize things as novel, whether those things are social or aesthetic or economic? And is the institution the place for that to happen, if that is a place that does produce a certain amount of conformity?” — Leigh Claire La Berge, event organized by BFAMFAPhD at the Queens Museum, 2014