8 minute read
News
from 10.1.21
Veteran Center changes name, expands focus
ALEXANDER HURLA
Advertisement
staff writer
The Student Veterans’ Center, located in Student Union 217, recently changed its name to the Military Affiliated Resource Center — or MARC for short.
Justin Frederick, assistant dean for the Office of Student Life, said the name change better reflects the diverse community it serves.
“We’re serving our student population that is more inclusive and representative to who’s using the center and who can benefit from the center,” Frederick said. “So, kind of working with all of the military-connected populations, whether that be dependents, active, ROTC, veterans, National Guard, all those kinds of areas and really being a place for that community to come together on campus.”
Kevin Nalette, Military Affiliated Resource Center coordinator and 27-year Air Force veteran, began his position this semester. He said he is spending his first months in the position gauging the needs of MARC and K-State’s military-affiliated population.
“In typical military fashion, I’m taking the first six months or so, and I’m evaluating ... what we currently have, and I’m listening to students as they come in to talk about what it is they think they might want to have in the future,” Nalette said. “I will make an assessment over this semester if there is something we need to do differently or do better.”
Nalette said the primary goal of the MARC is to work with the Veterans Administration representatives on campus to answer questions and provide information about veteran benefits. Additionally, the center provides a space for people in the military-affiliated community — typically non-traditional students — to connect.
“What we’d like to do is provide them a space where they can just take a breath and have a conversation with folks that have shared experiences,” Nalette said. “We all like our shared experiences, and this just happens to be a spot where us who served in the military, in some form or fashion, can just bend a friendly ear if we need to.”
The MARC provides group collaboration and study spaces along with a computer lab connected to K-State’s network.
“We’ve had study groups,” Nalette said. “But mostly, it’s just a quiet environment for folks in between classes to get a little work done and then go forth and conquer.”
On top of these resources, the MARC hosts the Student Veterans Association, which helps veterans transition into academia. However, the SVA was unable to renew its membership with the national organization this past year during the pandemic.
“What we are working to do is reinvigorate that organization,” Nalette said. “We need to find the right time for the students that are back on campus to meet, reregister the organization and generate some support.”
When active, Nalette said the SVA is more in touch with the local community.
“This is the private organization, if you will, that can do different things with veterans on campus and the community,” Nalette said. “They’re the ones that can do a lot of the different activities with the veterans and community that we’re not able to do as the facility. So, we’re hoping to generate some interest in getting that organization going again.”
While Nalette and his staff are working to restart the SVA, the MARC continues to provide a meeting place for the military-connected community.
Aaron Debolt, senior in finance, said the MARC is vital to K-State and its military-affiliated population.
“It means everything to K-State,” Debolt said. “It’s absolutely the place to be to chat up other military people, get resources and have a good time.”
Nalette said he believes this collaboration and use of resources fulfills the purpose of the MARC for K-State.
“If you want to connect with your fellow veterans, come over here and hang out with us for a while,” Nalette said. “Have the conversation with your peers and use the space that we have.”
More information about the Military Affiliated Resource Center is on the K-State Non-Traditional and Veteran Student Services website.
Transfer our classes seamlessly!
Fall 2021 Session 4 October 18 - December 12 (8 weeks)
GoBarton.com/online
New Beach Museum exhibition provides aesthetic history experience
ALEXANDER HURLA
staff writer
The Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art welcomed a new installation to its building on Sept. 21. Artist and photographer David Lebrun of Los Angeles created a video animation called 45 Paleolithic Handaxes from Transfigurations: Reanimating the Past, using photographs of Paleolithic handaxes from museums in France that uniquely shows the objects.
Lebrun said he and his team took hundreds of photographs of Paleolithic handaxes at museums in France. He then put them into a sequence based on likeness and used computer technology to achieve the morphing technique as one handaxe changes into another.
“They become as like something alive and breathing,” Lebrun said. “Changing and evolving, changing in shape over time.”
A computer outside of the installation called the Exploration Station provides further information on what visitors are looking at, including who made the tools and where they were created. It also gives information about the larger project, Transfigurations: Reanimating the Past.
Linda Duke, director of the Beach art museum, said the original plan was to show the entire Transfigurations project in six different alcoves. However, she said the pandemic made that impossible. She recalls making the decision to cancel the original show and breaking the news to Lebrun.
“When the pandemic came, at first, I don’t think any of us quite realized how long it was going to be or how bad it was going to be,” Duke said. “But gradually it sunk in for me that we were not going to put this kind of effort and try to raise the money we would need for the technology to do something when maybe the museum wouldn’t even get to open or that it would get shut down halfway through. … And so, it was very difficult for me to make that call to David and tell him.”
Despite the decision, Duke said a new idea emerged to show Lebrun’s work at the museum.
“As we grappled with that disappointment, what we decided to do was that when the museum could reopen, on a smaller scale we would show one of the animations,” Duke said. “And it’s still a premiere. I mean, it’s never been seen like this in public.”
Cytek Media Systems, a company that provides technology support to K-State, assisted the new plan.
“When I talked with the Cytek folks about this … they wanted to help,” Duke said. “So when it came time to set up this installation, they gifted us all of the strategies. They sent a team of three guys over here that spent two days running wires through the ceilings. They donated all of the cabling and connections. … They were our constant advisers on what to buy and then how to set it up and make it work.”
Lebrun collaborated with his own team of advisers when they worked on the larger Transfigurations project in 2009 with a trip to France in 2011 to take the photographs now showing in the Beach art museum.
“One of the things that we do in this project is we work with an advisory board of archeologists, scholars and museum people,” Lebrun said.
This includes archeologist of the Paleolithic, Roberto Ontañón-Peredo, the director of the Museum of Prehistory and Archeology of Cantabria in Spain.
As Lebrun began photographing the handaxes and putting them in the animation, he said he had a revelation.
“What became really clear to me in doing this animation was that at least some of these were works of art, they weren’t just tools,” Lebrun said. “They were objects of great beauty and power, and made to be that.”
Duke said she hopes visitors have a similar encounter with these objects, which is different than they might have at a history museum where there are labels filled with information about them.
“Reading about something is not the aesthetic experience,” Duke said. “The aesthetic experience is being with it in your senses and finding personal meaning in that.”
Lebrun said he believes the technology used for the animation makes the artwork and aesthetics of the pieces truly shine. An 84-inch 4K screen in the middle of the installation is accompanied by two smaller screens on either side of it that shows each object in actual size.
“I feel like it’s like you’re looking into a landscape,” Lebrun said. “It’s like looking into the desert from the air or landscape forms — you really immerse yourself in it.”
Paige Scott, Manhattan resident and Beach art museum visitor, said the animation allows the viewers’ imagination to run wild.
Sophie Osborn | COLLEGIAN MEDIA GROUP David Lebrun and his team took hundreds of photographs of Paleolithic handaxes, then put them into a sequence based on likeness and used computer technology to achieve the morphing technique as one handaxe changes into another.
“It looked otherworldly when [the handaxes] changed into the next one,” Scott said. “They didn’t look like stone tools.”
That type of aesthetic experience is what Lebrun said he hopes his work gives to viewers.
“I try to disappear, as it were, and give the viewer as direct a relationship as possible with the ancient objects,” Lebrun said. “So, I work very hard to make every transition in the work seem as natural and organic as possible, not to call attention to my own interventions.”
More information about the installation and upcoming events at the Beach art museum is available on the museum’s website.
