Jones is currently curating a reconsideration/ reinstallation of the "systems aesthetics" work of Hans Haacke that premiered at MIT in 1967, before his turn to the social. While best known for politically charged work employing investigative methods and focusing attention on politicians and corporations, Haacke initially was involved with physical and biological systems: living animals, plants, and physical states of water and wind. Haacke’s 1967 solo exhibition at the Hayden Gallery included works he called “systems,” produced with the “explicit intention of having their components physically communicate with each other, and the whole communicate physically with the environment,” according to the artist. Jones’ talk addresses the true challenge of historically understanding this period of Haacke's work, and of recapturing what one curator beautifully referred to as "the technological innocence of the audience" from that time. She will also comment upon the current, undertheorized uptake of "systems" art in the contemporary moment, particularly with regard to the work of Olafur Eliasson.
Caroline A. Jones is Professor of Art History and Director of the History, Theory, and Criticism Program in the Department of Architecture, MIT, and the author of Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar American Artist; Eyesight Alone: Clement Greenberg's Modernism and the Bureaucratization of the Senses; and editor of Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art.
This lecture is part of the six-part series "Art and Technology" organized by Joyce Tsai and Kerry Oliver-Smith. For a full description of the series, see the poster here.
For more information, contact joyce.tsai@ufl.edu or kos@ufl.edu
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