How to use this site:
This is the virtual site of laboratory research and play at the Institute of Cultural inquiry (ICI). Click on a theme in RHIZOMES to see how disparate parts of the ICI archive are joined together around a fleeting thought or by a slip of the eye or the shutter. Click on a subject in ICI CONNECTIONS to see how recurring concerns coalesce around recurring themes or click on a place in the ICI ARCHIVES to see the raw material of our collections. TAGs below each post reveal hidden relationships between objects, thoughts, and interpretations.RHIZOMES
ICI Connections
AIDS/ Behind the Curtain Technologies/ Body as Model/ Body as Sign/ Building as Sign Camarón que se duerme.../ Collective Camouflage/ Dead/ Digital Book Dirt/ Dust/ Epistemophilia/ Esoterica/ Firsts/ Hidden in Plain Sight/ Hidden in Plain Site/ ICI Methods and Techniques Image-text gaps/ Lasts/ Liber Creature/ Man's History of Photography/ Manual of Lost Ideas/ Marginalia/ Masonry/ Monkey Head Nature as Model/ Out/ Phobias/ Photography's History of Us/ Plagues/ Re-membering/ Sebaldiana/ Seen in Plain Site/ Sexual identity/ Signs/ Slips of the Ear/ Slips of the Eye/ Slips of the Tongue/ Still Lies Quiet Truth/ That was Now/ Thin End of the Wedge/ Things that Glisten/ This Could be a Place of Historical Significance/ This is Then/ We are the ICI/ We Did This All While You Were Watching TV/ Who Decides/
Category Archives: We are the ICI/
ICI Technic: Incantation
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 … Continue reading
ICI Technic: Miniaturization
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 … Continue reading
ICI Technic: Data Collection
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 … Continue reading
ICI Technic: Disrupted Vision
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 … Continue reading
ICI Technic: Diagramming
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 … Continue reading
ICI Method: Copying
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, … Continue reading
EPHEMERA KABINETT: Site of the Ephemera Kabinett
100/10∆10 The Earth Project Documentation
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.
About the ICI
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 … Continue reading