Chat About: Brett Swenson & Kirsten Ihns

Workshop

4 February 2022 7.00pm - 4 February 2022 9.00pm

Hybrid

Add to Calendar 2022-02-04 19:00:00 2022-02-04 21:00:00 Chat About: Brett Swenson & Kirsten Ihns Dunt Brett Swenson and Kirsten Ihns introduce their single-channel video series, Dunt (2019-ongoing). Toby Wu prefaces/waxes lyrical about surface tension in Dunt. We watch The Giant Bowl (2021) in full, then excerpts of Sleep Noises (2020). Everyone talks about how they feel. Kirsten reads her 2021 poem, hi hi hi hi, Brett shares sculptures in progress; they talk about world building together. Sophia Anthony, in conversation with Claire Rich Focusing on the notion of multiple or simultaneous practices (different modes of painting, photography, and drawing) within an overarching, singular practice à la Marlene Dumas or Gerhard Richter, Claire Rich and Sophia Anthony will discuss how Anthony’s work highlights the often complicated relationship between images and paintings. The talk will also look to Anthony’s influences and inspirations across time and space, from the historic baroque to the contemporary current, and how they develop in her work. Presenter Bios Brett Swenson (b.1987) makes videos and objects that explore the felt mechanics of seeing and perceiving. He’s the other half of dunt project. A graduate of the RISD Glass program (BFA, 2010), he recently completed his MFA at the University of Chicago (2020). His work has been exhibited at venues including the University Club of Chicago; Equity Gallery, New York; Agnes Varis Art Center, Brooklyn; SIKKA Art Fair Dubai; Ying Space, Beijing; and the Greenpoint Film Festival, Brooklyn. He’s held residencies at Urban Glass, NY, Residency Unlimited, NY, Pioneer Works, NY, RAMDOM: DEFAULT 15, Italy, the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, and elsewhere. He is currently a teaching fellow in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago. Kirsten Ihns (b. 1990) is the author of sundaey (Propeller Books, 2020), and half of the video collective dunt project. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow in Poetry, she is currently a PhD candidate and Neubauer Distinguished Doctoral Fellow in English at UChicago, writing a dissertation on aspect choreography in long contemporary poems and some films. She works as a poetry editor for Chicago Review and Fence, and co-organizes the reading/artist talk series the cclouds. Individual poems appear or are forthcoming in Hyperallergic, jubilat, PoetryNow/The Poetry Foundation, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere, and recent readings and interviews may be found at The Brooklyn Rail and Kenyon Review. Toby Wu (he/him/his) is a Master’s candidate at the University of Chicago reading Art History and Media Studies. He is interested in the emergence of time based media practices in the Global Contemporary, specifically through Transpacific exchanges between Japan, Southeast Asia, and the U.S. Sophia Anthony is an MFA candidate working primarily in painting and drawing. Her practice is interested in the exploration of photographic images through hand rendering, often contending with and negotiating the parallel portrayals of masculinity in painting and film. Claire Rich is a MAPH-TLO student specializing in contemporary art history. She is particularly interested in exhibition practices, curatorial studies, and the study of non-traditional materials. Location: HYBRID—Logan Center of the Arts, Performance Penthouse, and Zoom. Time: This Friday 2/4, 7–9pm Registration is required for in-person attendance and capped at 25 pax, please reply this email (to tobywu@uchicago) to indicate your attendance. Please contact Toby Wu (tobywu@uchicago.edu) or Catilyn Au (cmau@uchicago.edu) with any questions. Chat About is a student-run open-critique hosted by graduate students, supported by the Department of Art and the History Department of Visual Arts. These open-critiques are organized to build community and to hold space for inter-disciplinary discourse—with an emphasis of thinking alongside practice and research. Artists open their work to a spectrum of opinions and articulate their practice; art historians, curators, and scholars probe, suggest and situate these works through research and exploration. We hope that Chat About inculcates space to discover new affinities and relationships. Hybrid Department of Art History drupal@seastar.uchicago.edu America/Chicago public

Dunt
Brett Swenson and Kirsten Ihns introduce their single-channel video series, Dunt (2019-ongoing). Toby Wu prefaces/waxes lyrical about surface tension in Dunt. We watch The Giant Bowl (2021) in full, then excerpts of Sleep Noises (2020). Everyone talks about how they feel. Kirsten reads her 2021 poem, hi hi hi hi, Brett shares sculptures in progress; they talk about world building together.

Sophia Anthony, in conversation with Claire Rich
Focusing on the notion of multiple or simultaneous practices (different modes of painting, photography, and drawing) within an overarching, singular practice à la Marlene Dumas or Gerhard Richter, Claire Rich and Sophia Anthony will discuss how Anthony’s work highlights the often complicated relationship between images and paintings. The talk will also look to Anthony’s influences and inspirations across time and space, from the historic baroque to the contemporary current, and how they develop in her work.

Presenter Bios

Brett Swenson (b.1987) makes videos and objects that explore the felt mechanics of seeing and perceiving. He’s the other half of dunt project. A graduate of the RISD Glass program (BFA, 2010), he recently completed his MFA at the University of Chicago (2020). His work has been exhibited at venues including the University Club of Chicago; Equity Gallery, New York; Agnes Varis Art Center, Brooklyn; SIKKA Art Fair Dubai; Ying Space, Beijing; and the Greenpoint Film Festival, Brooklyn. He’s held residencies at Urban Glass, NY, Residency Unlimited, NY, Pioneer Works, NY, RAMDOM: DEFAULT 15, Italy, the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, and elsewhere. He is currently a teaching fellow in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago.

Kirsten Ihns (b. 1990) is the author of sundaey (Propeller Books, 2020), and half of the video collective dunt project. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow in Poetry, she is currently a PhD candidate and Neubauer Distinguished Doctoral Fellow in English at UChicago, writing a dissertation on aspect choreography in long contemporary poems and some films. She works as a poetry editor for Chicago Review and Fence, and co-organizes the reading/artist talk series the cclouds. Individual poems appear or are forthcoming in Hyperallergic, jubilat, PoetryNow/The Poetry Foundation, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere, and recent readings and interviews may be found at The Brooklyn Rail and Kenyon Review.

Toby Wu (he/him/his) is a Master’s candidate at the University of Chicago reading Art History and Media Studies. He is interested in the emergence of time based media practices in the Global Contemporary, specifically through Transpacific exchanges between Japan, Southeast Asia, and the U.S.

Sophia Anthony is an MFA candidate working primarily in painting and drawing. Her practice is interested in the exploration of photographic images through hand rendering, often contending with and negotiating the parallel portrayals of masculinity in painting and film.

Claire Rich is a MAPH-TLO student specializing in contemporary art history. She is particularly interested in exhibition practices, curatorial studies, and the study of non-traditional materials.

Location: HYBRID—Logan Center of the Arts, Performance Penthouse, and Zoom.
Time: This Friday 2/4, 7–9pm

Registration is required for in-person attendance and capped at 25 pax,
please reply this email (to tobywu@uchicago) to indicate your attendance.

Please contact Toby Wu (tobywu@uchicago.edu) or Catilyn Au (cmau@uchicago.edu) with any questions.

Chat About is a student-run open-critique hosted by graduate students, supported by the Department of Art and the History Department of Visual Arts.

These open-critiques are organized to build community and to hold space for inter-disciplinary discourse—with an emphasis of thinking alongside practice and research. Artists open their work to a spectrum of opinions and articulate their practice; art historians, curators, and scholars probe, suggest and situate these works through research and exploration. We hope that Chat About inculcates space to discover new affinities and relationships.