THOMPSONSPF10RESEARCH

Interest: I think Cal Arts would be a good next step for me because of the location and connections I feel I could make in California. I once worked in California and would love to be in that atmosphere again. I think that Cal Art has a great program that focuses on concept based work and has other programs such as video, graphic design and sculpture to draw influence from.

“Ashley Hunt is an artist, activist and writer who engages the ideas of social movements, modes of learning and public discourse. His recent performance, Notes on the Emptying of a City, explores the first-person politics of being in New Orleans with a camera in the months following Hurricane Katrina, when he engaged with community activists to research the city’s refusal to evacuate the Orleans Parish Prison. Other works include The Corrections Documentary Project, the collaborative 9 Scripts from a Nation at War, and On Movement Thought and Politics, an ongoing collaboration with dance and performance artist Taisha Paggett. Recent exhibitions include P.S.1/MOMA, Project Row Houses, Documenta 12, the Nottingham Contemporary, the Gallery at REDCAT, Tate Modern and the 3rd Bucharest Biennial. Recent publications include Printed Project 12 (’09), Radical History Review (’08), Journal of Aesthetics and Protest (’08, ’07 and ’05), Art Journal (’07), An Atlas of Radical Cartography (’07) and Rethinking Marxism (’06).”

“Constructing a body of work that ranges from the banal to the uncanny, the artist’s twist on the pared-down, documentary aesthetic, creates clear but complex, and ultimately compelling, layers of meaning. Transforming three-dimensional objects onto flat picture planes, Coolidge balances the worlds of art and life in such a way that a simple change of perspective produces images that are inventive and unexpected.”