In a memorial service for one of our founding associates, cigars, food, money, and a healthy shot of whiskey were used to conjure up Papa Legba, the spirit guardian of the Crossroads. Incantation derives from Middle English, from the Anglo-French enchanter, reminding us that the casting of spells … Continue readingICI Technic: Incantation
As Susan Stewart has proposed, the miniature operates at the place of origin—the childhood of the self—creating an “interior temporality of the subject,” a place for private contemplation. When the physical dimensions of material ideas are decreased, so too are the roles of hierarchy and narrative. Miniaturization … Continue readingICI Technic: Miniaturization
Data Collection is sometimes undertaken before a research ‘question’ is in mind. Some materials are collected because their physical presence is absorbing and compelling. Other times we encounter objects or their fragments that disrupt our current belief systems even when the relationship of their content … Continue readingICI Technic: Data Collection
The Enlightenment brought a paradigm shift from monocular to binocular vision and with it an understanding that ways of seeing involve issues of focus but also, we believe, a growing understanding that with focus some elements will be “out of focus,” or unseen (or maybe … Continue readingICI Technic: Disrupted Vision
As visual thinkers, we often resort to the impromptu diagram to help bring us through a conceptual morass. Through the years, we have taken this conceit one step further in our belief that our nascent theories and philosophies should lend themselves to a visual form. … Continue readingICI Technic: Diagramming
In art schools near and far, it is still a tradition for young artists to copy the masterworks of art history in oils on canvas. The comparable tradition has, for the most part, died out in the training grounds of literature, a trend that the ICI … Continue readingICI Method: Copying
Featured here are images from the 100/10∆10: Mappa Mundi: The Earth Project, a documentation of the last iteration of the 100/10 project.
The ICI is anchored by the belief that building worlds is a creative act. We understand art as a uniquely open field of possibilities inside society where it acts as a reflection of complex and sometimes hidden relationships, as a catalyst for imaginative speculation and … Continue readingAbout the ICI
We are the Associates of the Institute of Cultural Inquiry.
