Moderator
Melissa Lee, Education and Public Programs Curator
Summer Institute is a two-week programme of student seminars and distinguished lectures aiming to address the ways in which urgent philosophical issues apply pressure to contemporary cultural production.
Derived from the belief that common resources such as air, water, a habitable earth, and current resources such as technology and medicine belong to everyone, “Future Commons” is the speculative exploration of how communities are able to determine customs of life within sustainable means.
Martha Rosler
Martha Rosler is an eminent artist, theorist and educator as well as a leading contemporary critical voice within feminist discourses. Rosler’s work encompasses photography, video, installation, photomontage and performance. She has also published over fifteen books of her works and essays exploring the role of photography and art, public space, transportation, as well as public housing and homelessness. Rosler studied at Brooklyn College in New York and subsequently at the University of California, San Diego, obtaining her MFA there in 1974. Her widely seen video work Semiotics of the Kitchen 1975, reflecting her longstanding interest in the position of the female subject within patriarchy, uses humour in this parody of cooking shows to address the implications of traditional female roles.
Rirkrit Tiravanija
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Rirkrit Tiravanija is widely recognized as one of the most influential artists of his generation. His work defies media-based description, as his practice combines traditional object making, public and private performances, teaching, and other forms of public service and social action. Winner of the 2004 Hugo Boss Prize awarded by the Guggenheim Museum, his exhibition there consisted of a pirate radio (with instructions on how to make one for yourself). Tiravanija was also awarded the Benesse by the Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum in Japan and the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Lucelia Artist Award. He currently teaches at Columbia University.
