SIMBIG50 Celebrating 50 Years of the Studio for Interrelated Media at the Massachusetts College of A

SIM

SIMBIG50 CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF

THE STUDIO FOR INTERRELATED MEDIA AT THE

BIG

MASSACHUSETTS COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN

GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCTIONS, GNC, ONE OF MANY SIM GROWN BANDS,

1971

PROFESSOR DONALD BURGY JOINS SIM FACULTY

SIM STUDENTS PRODUCE AMOEBA EVENT AT SAYLES HALL, BROWN UNIVERSITY

PROFESSOR DAWN KRAMER JOINS SIM FACULTY

THE EVENTWORKS EXPERIMENTAL ARTS FESTIVAL IS LAUNCHED

DANCE COLLECTIVE COLLABORATES WITH SIM ON THE FLIGHT SHOW INTEGRATING LIGHT,

1974

1975

1976

1977

1978

PROFESSOR LOWRY BURGESS JOINS SIM FACULTY

ALEX GREY’S PERFORMS “HUMAN RACE” AS PART OF EVENTWORKS INTERNATIONAL

DANNY MYDLACK PERFORMS IN THE 7TH EVENTWORKS FESTIVAL,

1981

1982

1983

1986

1985

PROFESSOR DANA MOSER JOINS SIM FACULTY

“EFFORT TO IMPROVE THE LIFESTYLE FOR STUDENT OF MASSACHUSETTS COLLEGE OF ART”

ALISON PILCHER RECEIVES LETTER OF AWARD AND APPRECIATION FROM MASSART PRESIDENT JACK NOLAN FOR HER

NORTH CRACKATORIUM IS NAMED AS THE RESULT OF THE LOAF ART EXPERIENCE

EVENTWORKS PRODUCES THE STYLE RIGHTS BREAK DANCE, HIP HOP AND GRAFFITI EVENT IN DOWNTOWN CROSSING /

I gave student artists freedom --another name for self confidence --by convincing them

1984

PROFESSOR JOHN HOLLAND JOINS SIM FACULTY / CHRISTIAN MARCLAY GRADUATES FROM SIM

1980

EARNING THE TITLE “THE ODDEST ART” IN THE BOSTON GLOBE

ROS AND HARRIS BARRON ARE FEATURED IN THE BOSTON GLOBE

1979

SOUND, MOVEMENT, AND CHOREOGRAPHY

DAVE ARMSTRONG IS THE FIRST SIM STUDENT TO GRADUATE FROM THE PROGRAM

SIM PERFORMS FOR THE FIRST TIME AT THE BOSTON MUSEUM OF SCIENCE, HAYDEN PLANETARIUM

ZONE PERFORMS YELLOW SOUND AT THE GUGGENHEIM IN NYC /

that it was up to them to secure it for themselves, by dissolving fear into love: that, once decided, possession would be secured with time and energy and will.

1973

1972

PROFESSOR HARRIS BARRON STAKES SIM’S CLAIM IN THE LONGWOOD THEATER

1970

SIGNS RECORD DEAL WITH METROMEDIA RECORDS

THE CONCEPT FOR THE STUDIO FOR INTERRELATED MEDIA IS BORN

1969

PEDAGOGY

by Harris Barron (SIM Teacher)

SIMBIG50: CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF THE STUDIO FOR INTERRELATED MEDIA AT THE MASSACHUSETTS COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN

CONTENTS

FOREWORD ESSAYS REPRODUCED TEXTS SIM FOUNDING FACULTY FROM THE ARCHIVES PEDAGOGY AND COMMUNITY CONCEPTUAL ART MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY MUSIC AND SOUND PERFORMANCE AND THE BODY EVENTWORKS FESTIVAL GODINE FAMILY GALLERY GLOSSARY 5 MARY K. GRANT

NOT JUST AN INTRODUCTION 9 NITA STURIALE

FROM BOGOTÁ TO BOSTON 17 JUAN OBANDO

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70

94

98

154

202

272

344

410 458

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“The major thing is not the tools, hand skills, or even worldview… it is in the building of confidence, and finding out what it is you want to do. When you have made that leap, everything else will follow.”

— Harris Barron Founder, Studio for Interrelated Media

FOREWORD

SIM Professor Nita Sturiale notes in her background piece that the SIM program was created in a time of social upheaval. And, as Catalog Curator and passionate historian for SIM, Professor Sturiale and her team have crafted a wonderful history and mission statement for SIM. I recommend to all a careful read of SIMBIG50. It’s just remarkable.

One question I would pose is: When have we not been in a time of upheaval? Different times, different tensions, different issues perhaps, and yet some issues remain constant. From Woodstock, Stonewall, Vietnam, and the civil rights movement of the late 60s, to climate change, the Covid-19 pandemic, and threats to our democracy today, there is always much at stake. So, what role does the education of art and design play in our ability to make sense of these times, call out tensions, and address issues? What are the skills that citizenartists need to nurture and develop? How do we as an institution teach these skills? Can they be taught?

One hundred and fifty years ago, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, then the Massachusetts Normal School of Art, got its start in rented rooms in Pemberton Square in Boston. The opening was a response to both the 5

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challenges and opportunities of the times. It was a response rooted in the spirit of creativity and on the premise of let’s get going. Let’s invest in educators and artists, invest in the skills necessary to address our needs, and move the Commonwealth and the country forward. When asked by one of his favorite teachers “What is it that artists do?”, the writer Kurt Vonnegut famously said, “They do two things, first they admit they can’t straighten out the whole universe and then second, they make at least one little part of it exactly as it should be. A blob of clay, a square of canvas, a piece of paper, or whatever.”

Today at MassArt, we are one little part of the world that has a big impact.

We are making a difference through our mission, purpose, community, students, and graduates. And now we get to celebrate a milestone of SIM — its professors, students, and graduates — making a difference for 50 years.

This past July, Amanda Fortini of the Black Mountain Institute at the University of Las Vegas, Nevada wrote an article in The New York Times that began with the question, “Why are we still talking about Black Mountain College?” What a great question. Founded in 1933 in the hills of Western North Carolina (a place where I have spent some time), Black Mountain College was organized around John Dewey’s educational philosophy, which emphasized holistic learning and the study of art as central to a liberal arts education. In its relatively short lifespan, the school was home to some of the most notable artists of the time and produced alumni who went on to spread the seeds of interdisciplinary art, including painting, music, poetry, and architectural design.

Black Mountain College experimented with new ways of teaching and learning, sought perspectives from different experiences and cultures, prioritized community engagement and a commitment to learning from experience, and had a central belief in art’s ability to expand the way one moves through the world, opening us up to previously unknown possibilities.

Black Mountain College may have lasted only 24 years — but its impact is still felt today. And yes, we are still talking about it, as Fortini notes, because “it offered a model of experimentation, optimism and freedom, set alongside social responsibility, and it taught a generation of artists to perceive the world with an ethical clarity that’s all too rare now.”

Although MassArt preceded Black Mountain College by at least 60 years, and now has achieved 150 years of making an impact, the lasting values and lessons of Black Mountain live on here at MassArt, and can be found deeply embedded in SIM.

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FOREWORD

How I wish I could have met SIM’s founder, Harris Barron, a veteran of World War II, a citizen-artist, and an educator who believed that “shared experience creates community and community may alter the landscape.” How proud Professor Barron would be to see all of you — all of us — in this altered landscape. SIM, built on the foundations of creativity, inquiry, exploration, action, collaboration, expression, and community, has helped nurture and develop the skills necessary to bridge divides, come together, and question assumptions.

By engaging in “civic art,” for lack of a better term, artists are challenged to not only respond to the civic need for art, but also the protocols and occasional limitations of the civic space. If you are looking for inspiration or guidance, I would direct you to the wonderful works of Artists for Humanity and the civic art of SIM’s alumni. Where would Boston’s First Night, Sesame Street, Boston’s Lyric Opera, Adobe, or Netflix, to name a few, be without SIM’s civic-minded alumni?

Finally, I return to Professor Harris Barron who once said, “The major thing is not the tools, hand skills, or even worldview… it is in the building of confidence, and finding out what it is you want to do. When you have made that leap, everything else will follow.” He added that “the extreme high of seeing individuals come into possession of themselves,” was among his most memorable experiences.

As President of MassArt, I am both proud and humbled to be part of this unique enterprise. It is a benchmark of public higher education that we optimize the freedom to experiment. It is our challenge, our opportunity, and our honor to create an environment of interdisciplinary and collaborative education, not only in the interest of art, but also in the interest of our responsibility to seek justice, equity, and inclusion. For 50 years SIM has been engaging, making, and doing. And for 150 years and counting, MassArt has been leading the way. We know there is still much to learn and much to be done, but the joy is in the doing. The joy is in seeing individuals come into possession of themselves. Read SIMBIG50. In the words of my late brother-in-law, “Go forth and be crazy.” Make good trouble, as civil rights activist John Lewis would urge us.

Congratulations SIM—students, faculty, staff—and to all who came before us.

Mary K. Grant, PhD President Massachusetts College of Art and Design

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“SIM served as a combination Shaolin temple, sanitarium, A/V closet, and Bat Cave…

Everything was going on there—and if it wasn’t, it was your duty to manifest it.”

— Tucker Stilley BFA SIM ‘86

NOT JUST AN INTRODUCTION

“Since the nature of SIM is collaborative, that is, everyone is a teacher, a leader, and a helper — I posted a sign that read —Shared experience creates community and community may alter the landscape.” said artist, poet, veteran, and pilot, Harris Barron (1936–2017), remembering the early days of the Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM), the undergraduate fine arts program that he launched within the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt) in 1969.

It is this landscape that we hope to fly over throughout the pages of this catalog as we celebrate over 50 years of Harris’ invention and 150 years of the Massachusetts College of Art and Design’s commitment to undergraduate fine art and design education. Since 1873, MassArt has built a legacy of leadership as the first freestanding public college of art and design in the country, and the nation’s first art school to grant a degree. With the first cohort of SIM majors to earn a Bachelors of Fine Arts, MassArt revolutionized the possibilities and the parameters of a university BFA degree in the United States.

SIM is an undergraduate major designed for student artists interested in a curriculum that supports idea-centered, interdisciplinary, and non-media specific artistic practice, alongside collaboration and self-governance. SIM majors work with sound, light, motion, digital media, live performance, social 9

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practice, interactive installation, print and spoken word, event production, curatorial practice, and/or a combination thereof.

The Studio for Interrelated Media was created in a time of incredible social upheaval and experimentation. Starting in the same year as the Woodstock Music Festival, the Stonewall riots, and the lunar landing, it was an era defined by a sense of cultural innovation. Lucy Lippard’s highly influential 1968 essay, “The Dematerialization of Art” questioned whether or not the concepts and ideas in art even needed physical objects to express themselves, an idea which was very much congruent with the anti-capitalist sentiments of those revolutionary times. As a result, many artists were investigating alternatives to the traditional practice of creating precious art objects to be consumed by a wealthy elite in commercial galleries. Three prominent alternatives emerged: the performance of live events, concept art, and the use of interactive, time-based works using sound, light, and motion.

In their own work at the time, Harris and Ros Barron (fellow ceramicist, painter, pioneering video artist, and Harris’ wife of over 60 years), were weaving together all of these threads as they, with collaborator Alan Finneran, created “ZONE,” an experimental “visual theater” company that was a precursor to the Studio for Interrelated Media. ZONE created major productions combining inventive combinations of polarized film and slide projection, live and recorded sound, non-traditional dance choreography, costume, and set design. In addition to contemporary work such as Allan Kapprow’s “Happenings” in the 60s, the ZONE artists were inspired by theatrical events created in the school of the Bauhaus in the 1930s by artists/instructors such as Oskar Schlemmer and Wassily Kandinsky. ZONE staged a production of Kandinsky’s “Yellow Sound” (“Der Gelbe Klang”) at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City in 1972 with members of the SIM department. Donating their own equipment for the use of students in the newly created department at MassArt, ZONE functioned as a conceptual and technological precursor to SIM. These experiences, infused with his skills as a painter, a sculptor, and the confidence of a sailplane pilot, led Barron’s teaching approach away from traditional media toward theatrical experimentation, cutting-edge technology, and primary natural phenomenon — light, sound, and time. He was convinced that artists needed to have access to any medium at any time to make truly relevant work. In his early SIM class meetings, students and faculty would gather each week with an abundance of time and no scheduled agenda. This indeterminate structure allowed spontaneous action, improvisation, and experimentation with 10

NOT JUST AN INTRODUCTION

available materials. Most importantly, it provided a laboratory where active collaboration alongside individualized development built students’ self-confidence as aesthetic inventors.

Barron advocated for the artistic necessity of “unstructured time,” when students could explore in a manner that was specifically not goal oriented. While Barron’s approach did drive a few students away, most soared. All students were required to confront themselves and responsibly shape time according to their own interests, desires, and abilities. Students had to become resourceful, proactive, and collaborative to make the program work. This multimedia, performative, technically infused explosion, housed within a visual arts college, birthed a trajectory that the department is still riding today.

In 1969, Barron managed to get the new department approved by MassArt’s administration with one catch: there would be no budget for the first year. In order to begin classes the following semester, he had to scrape together audio/visual equipment and meeting space to back up his curricular ideas.

Barron reflects: Now, how do you begin a program of the SIM sort without funds, in an empty classroom, with just a few chairs? Come September 1970, I set up a SIM shop with a hodge-podge collection of personal, borrowed, and found audio/visual equipment.

No budget is a great way to make nothing work. Searching educational media catalogs, I lucked out to find free films, for only the shipping fees….

Audio was helped with materials I was able to record from sources I felt were illuminating the possibilities for sound works….

When I realized that there was a theater space (in the college’s original building) that was hardly used, I moved my classes to the theater as SIM Studio….We had no money, but space luxury, a home!

In this catalog we share with you curated imagery from the SIM Archive— a room full of acid free boxes and a terabyte of digital files — that reveal the themes and individuals that define the first half century of SIM. We’ve organized this book to highlight SIM’s grounding in Conceptual Art, the interconnectedness of Pedagogy and Community, curricular threads exploring Media and Technology, Music and Sound, Performance and the Body, and the art of 11

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event production evident in the student-driven Eventworks Festival and the Godine Family Gallery.

One of the most unique aspects of this program is its commitment to social education. All majors at each level share the same class, space, equipment, and faculty every Thursday for six semesters. It is this structure that catalyzes true interdisciplinarity — in both thought and action. We invite the reader to appreciate that the projects, artworks, performances, collaborations, flops and flights documented on these pages are the product of wildly diverse individuals coming together to make art. *** The first time I met Harris in 1986, I was a student at MassArt and in search of glow in the dark paint for a performance. Someone sent me to look for a professor named Harris Barron. Once I found him, I remember saying that I “just” needed a little. Harris proceeded to admonish me for using the word “just” for several minutes, looking straight into my eyes, while asking me question after question about my idea, what I wanted to do, and how I was going to do it. “YES! YES! YES!” I can still hear his optimism today. He was modeling the mindful, fully present, supportive, collaborative, honest, brave, and energized character of a SIM artist on their best day. I was sold.

Since that introduction, I embraced the ethos of the SIM program, and its faculty, students, technology, chaos, and love. I graduated from the program in 1990, and after two graduate schools and teaching in several other institutions, I came back to SIM in 2000 as a professor. Since then, I have handed over hundreds of handmade gifts to SIM graduates during our traditional SIM senior ceremony and protected the mission of the program as Department Chair for many years.

I share this commitment to the program with my colleague, Max Azanow (BFA SIM ‘85), Associate Director of SIM’s Studio Management. Max has his own SIM stories to tell — his time as an Eventworks producer in 1985, his experience as a professional stage technician and teacher of SIM’s iconic Stagecraft and Technical Theater course. Max and I co-produced several annual SIM Alumni and Founders Days in previous years, and we longed to celebrate the SIM program in a more public way, especially in light of MassArt’s 150th anniversary. At 50 in 2019, SIM is the oldest undergraduate interdisciplinary fine artist program in the country and yet still a bit of a secret. We believe SIM 12

NOT JUST AN INTRODUCTION

has much to offer and we want to share our unique pedagogy, highlight our incredible alumni and faculty, and provide a visionary example to our current and incoming SIM students as well as other educational experimenters around the world.

While we had originally planned several live exhibitions and events in 2020, a global pandemic threw us a curveball. We pivoted, re-invented, and compromised, leveraging our technical know-how, expertise in shaping live events, sense of humor and playfulness, and perseverance to produce a virtual celebration on a shoestring budget that took place on April 17, 2021. It was fantastic. There were many attendees still zooming along hours after the event had officially ended.

“I forgot we were on Zoom …” an alum told me after the event.

For this celebration, we also launched our SIM Archive and timeline project (www.massartsim.org/about/sim-archive), which brings together an incredibly rich collection of digital documentation that captures the evolution of experimental interdisciplinary art education in Boston since 1969.

In this catalog, we hope to capture the DIY, provocative, laborious, and at times, irreverent, productivity of SIM. This catalog highlights the founding faculty and a curated selection of alumni that represent the diverse pathways that students follow while in the program. It will also provide snapshots of the invention and evolution of thinking that shaped the SIM pedagogy over the years.

It is not intended to be an encyclopedic or exhaustive list, but rather a momentary capture.

I believe SIM nurtures and supports young artists to challenge barriers and categories, to expand their thinking into uncharted domains, and to invent themselves against all odds. During these times of global climate change and political divisiveness, we hope that this catalog, in the words of my co-writer Kate Redmond, will “remind us that we are all in a beautiful forest, to look around, notice something new, and derive the pleasure and meaning that we are all seeking.”

Designed by Mary Y. Yang, written by Kate Redmond (BFA SIM ‘89) and myself, with contributions by Dana Moser (MFA MPA ‘82), Elaine Buckholtz, Mary Grant, and Juan Obando, and archival materials curated in part by Evan Smith (BFA SIM/AH ‘13) and Sam Toabe (BFA SIM/AH ‘12), we want these pages to reveal what Tucker Stilley (BFA SIM ‘86) wrote about his experience as a SIM student, “SIM served as a combination Shaolin temple, sanitarium, A/V closet, and Bat Cave….Everything was going on there — and if it wasn’t, it was your duty to manifest it.”

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SIM is unique — try finding another program like it! SIM’s successful intertwining of social activism, live event production, individual artistic practice, and community building is a story that needs to be told, a jewel in MassArt’s crown and a model for education everywhere.

September 2022 Nita Sturiale (BFA SIM ‘90) Catalog curator, writer, and project manager To learn more about the SIM curriculum, please read “Revisiting the Sandbox— The Studio for Interrelated Media at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design” (2016)

by Nita Sturiale, available on the SIM website: www.massartsim.org

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“SIM constantly redefines roles, markets, media-specificity, authorial, spatial, and temporal restrictions. These practices could be cataloged as Post-Art, as they signal a multi-versal moment in which artists operate beyond institutional time and space while pushing art-thinking into new spheres.”

— Juan Obando SIM Professor 2015–2022

FROM BOGOTÁ TO BOSTON

In 2015 I received an invitation from the Studio for Interrelated Media department to visit Boston as a full-time faculty position opened at MassArt. I lived in Bogotá, Colombia, then — my hometown. Finding out about the SIM department from afar was like putting pieces of my own history together. Growing up in Bogotá, I became immersed in art from an early age through autonomous, do-it-yourself, music-oriented punk communities of the mid-nineties. Later, my friends and I developed our own art scene, independent from large institutional spaces and hegemonic gallery circuits, and became part of a critical moment in Colombian contemporary art history. I saw this history reflected in what I was learning about SIM as a space for collaborative learning, artistic innovation, counter-cultural development, and creative, autonomous communities.

While preparing for my visit to Boston, I discovered a YouTube video of the DC-based post-hardcore band Fugazi performing at MassArt in 2002, which cemented my curiosity in the school and in SIM. Apart from being a major aspect of my musical upbringing, Fugazi has been a reference for many elements of my artistic practice. More than a band, I think of Fugazi as an art project operating in the realm of ensemble and experimental collaborative practices. They followed a set of rules and tenets that connected ethics, politics, 17

FROM BOGOTÁ TO BOSTON

and aesthetics that challenged the music industry of the early nineties: They relied on improvisation and band chemistry rather than a setlist. They worked closely with filmmaker friend Jem Cohen to create abstract films and produced a 10-year long documentary project instead of producing MTV music videos. They performed all-ages shows and charged five dollars at the door instead of working with big venues and ticket retailers. They grew their own community and took control of the dissemination of their work instead of signing to a major label.

It was never an easy ride but it was one that radically redefined the relationship, between not only its members and styles, but also between the audiences and the music industry. It is no surprise that this band chose to work with SIM students to produce that cathartic show in in the MassArt gym in 2002 that I watched on my computer screen from in Colombia.

I started to see SIM in a similar light — one full of the same redefining potential. While operating within a traditional accredited academic institution, SIM works as a collective and independent unit, constantly improvising its way through a world that feels more regulated and standardized every day.

Throughout the years SIM finds new methods by which to twist the precepts of contemporary art education, fostering experimental practices that defy categorization. During my time in the program, I have witnessed artistic processes completely contrarian and alternative to the often strict canon of “Contemporary Art, inc.” SIM constantly redefines roles, markets, media-specificity, authorial, spatial, and temporal restrictions. These practices could be cataloged as Post-Art, as they signal a multi-versal moment in which artists operate beyond institutional time and space while pushing art-thinking into new spheres.

Despite its uniqueness, I often envision a decentralized future where the experimental pedagogic project of SIM multiplies and exists independent of an institutional system, powered by pure creative autonomy and by the cosmology of knowledge built and shared by similar communities all around the world. This dream had been enunciated by Nita Sturiale in a WikiHow-style text I found hidden in an earlier version of the SIM website titled “Build Your Own SIM.” Today, more than ever, I believe it is essential for individuals and groups to foster independent unschooling and post-institutional learning environments. In the last ten years the social-Internet has expanded our notions of time and space.

Even if algorithmic capital has increasingly taken over its structure, the popularization of image-making technologies and the growth of online communities has had historical impact, pushing forward an ethos of autonomous learning, independent creativity and the alternative dissemination of culture and knowledge.

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FROM BOGOTÁ TO BOSTON

It has also opened the door for information to circulate outside of hegemonic academic circuits.

These intersecting conditions make way for us to consider our dependence on centralized systems and the obsolescence of hegemonic institutions. Many of the questions our world faces today lie in the conundrum brought by the instrumentalization of Freedom by technocratic neoliberalism. As a community, SIM faces that struggle daily and most of its work is the result of experiments on decapitalizing freedom. And most of the time it is very good at it. We can only hope that these experiments mold the path for new generations to expand this network, relocate power, reclaim independence, and develop new systems for learning from each other, for one another, and all others.

Juan Obando SIM Professor 2015–2022

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RE PRO DUCED TEXTS

We have included five previously published articles that

tell a public story of SIM. From Robert Taylor’s 1969

Boston Globe profile of the Barron’s and Allan Finneran’s ZONE adventure, to Evan F. Smith’s critique of a 2012

exhibit in the Godine Family Gallery in Big Red and Shiny.

In 1982, Eventworks caught The Boston Globe’s attention

again with its embrace of “Provocation, Spontaneity, Even

Danger.” Author Susan Orlean interviewed Keith Kurman, Chris Shine, and san shoppell about their Eventworks

production in 1984. Ron Wallace, wrote in-depth biography

of Harris Barron for the MassArt Alumni Newsletter in 1988

that chronicles the evolution of an individual artist that

led to the emergence of community of artists.

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SECTION

C.,

MS, IN A E R D & AGIC

MYTH, M

BOSTON GLOBE

January 5, 1969 Story by Robert Taylor Photos by Gilbert Friedberg ZONE, between dreams and weather. The falling shadow. Breath dissolving upon a windowpane. The reflection of an airliner within the circlet of a rainbow. ZONE is the place where we exist without knowing it.

In more prosaic terms, ZONE, a legal business, might be called Barron & Finneran, Dreams, Inc. The business partners are Harris and Ros Barron, husband and wife, who are artists (he is a sculptor, she a painter) and Alan Finneran, a filmmaker and theatrical innovator. They incorporated more than a year ago when they shared basic attitudes.

“The theater today just isn’t making use of the devices of modern technology,” explains Harris Barron, a man of medium height, with a patient, lucid manner (like most artists he must cobble his livelihood from teaching) and a sartorial style that oscillates from blue-collar hippie to leather-patched academic tweeds. “Things like theatrical form ought to be relevant to contemporary life.”

The Barrons and Finneran are not alone in their belief that we must cease whittling buggy whips in terms of the arts, and start thinking in terms of rocket thrust. ZONE is a spin-off from ATI-Art and Technology Inc., formerly EAT, or Experiments in Art and Technology (apparently, alphabet soup is one of the prices we must pay for the future), an organization of artists and engineers.

The Boston Chapter of ATI has some 160 members. (Because of the universityelectronics industry complex, the influence of engineers and scientists 27

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outweighs the influence of the fine artists — a situation reversed in the New York City Chapter which draws upon a population of countless artists attracted to New York by the apparatus of national propaganda located there.) ATI meets regularly at the former headquarters building of The Institute of Contemporary Art on Soldiers Field Road, Allston, and last July presented a light show in the Boston Tea Party auditorium.

Light shows, however, do not attract the partnership of ZONE. Finneran and the Barrons concluded that if artists today are exploring new methods, new frontiers of perception, the results are largely devoid of artistic interest. What’s happening, they agreed, is a matter of pure laboratory concern — light, color, sound, sensation examined for its own sake. “For us the medium was not the message, or rather, that didn’t go far enough.”

Suppose, they speculated, suppose you work from a different direction?

Really make dramatic use of modern devices, live actors and film, strobe lights, audio-visual relationships, neon hallucinations and computer grids? It wouldn’t be literary. The theater of Shakespeare and Sheridan, of verbal structures, is in a sorry state of decay. Almost any competent director can state more in a few hundred feet of wordless film than most of the plays on Broadway. On the other hand, the new theater would have a distinct purpose, a controlled aim. So they set out to create a show possessing qualities of myth and magic and dream, an experience of the onrushing 21st Century.

Dr. William Seitz, director of Brandeis University’s Poses Institute of Art, heard about the project. He saw aspects of performance and was impressed by the total idea. On January 10 and 11 the world premiere of ZONE in the theater (the corporation plans to invade other fields later) will occur at the Spingold Theater, Brandeis. Dr. Seitz’s enthusiasm is significant: for the first time at Brandeis — and possibly any U.S. school — the impetus of a major stage event originated in the museum. (The Bauhaus in Germany used to stage performances in which art objects were the actors.) ZONE’s performance is not theater as traditionalists might define theater. If it works, it may be a new medium.

Preparing their debut, the Barrons and Finnerans in their Brookline studio work amidst a welter of sound mixers, flood lamps, slide projectors: amplifiers, movieolas, tape recorders and circuitry. An ancient Victrola horn hangs suspended from the ceiling. There is a dangling gas mask on one bare wall and, adjacent to the main studio, a room containing Ros’s polarized light machine, she has been long fascinated by the phenomenon of light polarization, and some time ago, disclosed some of its artistic potential in a DeCordova Museum 28

REPRODUCED TEXTS

exhibition. Beneath polarized light, objects glow and change prismatically, like dull boulders transformed by ultra-violet rays into cairns of burning jewels. “We plan to have a polarized stage set in one of the performances,” Ros says.

The Brandeis show is a triptych, she continues — each of the artists in charge of a separate panel, although more than 20 live performers will appear in the three sections. The resources of the university theater department have been placed at ZONE’s disposal, the Jan Kessler mime group, the theater lobby and gallery where the surrounding environment will be associated with the showing.

“The three parts of the performance are called ‘Water Bodies’ — that’s Alan’s — mine, which is called ‘The Eighth Coming’, and Harris’s ‘Glide’, says Ros.” I would consider them connected in a certain sense; they are designed to give the audience a feeling of an individual interior experience. I deal in ‘The Eighth Coming’ with abstract relationships between aural images, live dancers, screen images, and polarized light, together with a distinct theme: progression from the rituals of primitive man to the rituals of mechanized man.”

Alan Finneran, looking like a Bret Harte gentleman-gambler from Roaring Camp, tests a snout-shaped mask containing a labyrinth of wires. “This is a projection helmet,” he says. “Some of the costumes will project film onto unconventional surfaces, round, diamond-shaped, expandable, unlike the accepted rectangular screen. ‘Water Bodies’ itself deals with innate powers of aggression and destruction — both individual and social — powers of evil which we inhibit because we’re afraid to admit them. Despite the eerie atmosphere of nightmare, it concludes on an optimistic note. In my estimation the contemporary mood is obsessed with physical sensuality, both human and mechanical, and sexual sensuality, both psychic and physical, and my approach is conditioned by this.”

Harris Barron demonstrates portions of “Glide,” “I intend to arouse in the audience the sensation of flight, of navigating the void.” Slides of bat-wing gliders, relics of the primeval era of flying, flick past. Lilienthal in a contraption of matchsticks and tissue. Orville Wright. Harris is an admirer of the Wright Brothers. (“The Wrights had to unlearn everything that people taught them about stable and unstable flight mechanisms.”)

Flight enthralls Harris because he considers it an interior, not an exterior experience. “When you take a plane somewhere today, say, from Boston to New York, you fly in a cavernous room, chiefly inside yourself. There’s no realistic sensation of actually flying. Now that’s what I want to catch — the mental state; a kind of mythic feeling, only awake. As though you’re falling in a dream. Only it isn’t a dream anymore — do you see what I mean?

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“It begins in absolute darkness, with wind blowing through the audience and merging with the percussions of a heartbeat. Then we get a combination of audio and visual effects, with tiny lights describing distance, with whispering voices, all culminating in a single flight figure before a screen on which a trio of dancers sway in giant projected image. The flight figure is motionless, appearing to move by contrast with the others, then melting into the screen, reappearing, whirling….Meanwhile, the media are gyrating and spinning polarized animations, the light leaking away, bombardments of shadows and sounds supporting the sensation of a fresh dimension. You feel, ultimately, that you are moving over that void where you were launched.”

To secure the elaborate equipment necessary for such a performance, the ZONE partnership has undergone considerable financial sacrifice. Harris and Ros, parents of two children aged 9 and 11, have expended much energy, time, and labor. He has just received a Rockefeller grant to do a year’s work as Television Artist-in-Residence at Station WGBH. “Next May during the computer conference in Boston, we’re scheduling a performance that will grow out of the interaction of people with computers,” Harris says. “We’ll work with a sense of what computers do and can’t do. The show will involve people acting on computers, and vice-versa, people possibly hitched to computers, a biomechanical exchange.” ZONE, he points out, is merely attempting to bend the present age to the arts of performance, and differs from such radical theatrical ventures as The Living Theater “which has importance as a nonverbal collective attitude” oriented toward the politics of anarchy.

“You see, what’s important to us is to get the audience to respond as individuals, to realize that within each of us exists this unique world. One’s special fantasy. Our other-world experience is an individual emotional experience, in that sense, you might call us romantic, yes, the word is romantic.”

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EVEN T SPON WORKS: P TANE ITY, E ROVOCATI ON VEN D ANGE , R

BOSTON GLOBE May 2, 1982

John Engstrom and Jeff McLaughlin Somebody drives a Cadillac at top speed through a tower of piled-up TV sets, and calls it art. Somebody else drops scraps of string on a canvas, slaps the canvas with varnish, and calls it art. Yet another arranges for a friend to shoot him in the arm, and calls it art. It’s premeditated spontaneity. It’s analytical expressionism. It’s programmed anarchy. Welcome to the world of 20th century art. Art has always involved breaking down barriers — of form, content, even motive — but not until the 20th century has the process of breaking barriers, the very event, the instant, come to be regarded as art. Following the model of the European Dada movement in the ‘teens — a self-conscious celebration of anarchy, absurdity and accident — avant-garde artists in the past two decades have attacked what they perceived as crusty old artistic molds. The movement spread from New York, Paris, and Berlin, and in recent years has found a home in Boston, centered around the Massachusetts College of Art. The artists involved have provoked, insulted and sometimes endangered the spectator and themselves. They have turned their bodies and personas into art objects. They have insisted that the creative process is as important as the product. In their quest for new definitions of art, they have embraced the notions of spectator-as-witness and spectator-as-artist (or at least as collaborator).

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The common thread in such works is an assault on the audience’s expectations. Andy Warhol invites the media to a film premiere, and the film, at least eight hours long, consists solely of droning images of the Empire State Building.

Chris Burden has himself shot in the arm; pent up in a locker for five days; chained to the floor between bare electrical wires and buckets of water — one false move and he’s fried. The Performance Group actors, in “Dionysus in ‘69,” simultaneously play Euripides’ characters and themselves, nude, improvising their own lines as well as delivering the playwright’s, with the audience invited to take the roles of the Bacchae in the tumultuous birth fest.

Reverence for the written word is cast out, as is reverence for structure, even property — New York graffiti artists scrawl their colorful hieroglyphs all over public trains, mutilating or enhancing them, depending on your point of view — and risk their lives crawling over live tracks through pitch black tunnels en route to their car yard/studios.

Chance. Danger. Spontaneity. Relativity. Artists in search of a new vocabulary.

That evolving vocabulary was the lingua franca of “Eventworks International,” the just-concluded eight-evening (April 8–29) festival of music, media and performance sponsored by the Massachusetts College of Art, one of the institutional pioneers responsible for the growing assimilation of new art into the mainstream. (Many art schools now grant degrees in performance art and multimedia disciplines.) MassArt was not the first academic institution to formally acknowledge innovations in visual art, music, video, film and performance, nor is it the only one in Boston (others include the Museum of Fine Arts School and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT). But with its Studio for Interrelated Media, and with the 6-year-old, student-produced “Eventworks,” MassArt is indisputably one of the most important centers on the East Coast.

This year “Eventworks” coordinator James Williams, a MassArt graduate student, decided to make the festival an avant-garde retrospective on a global scale, showcasing recent developments in avant-garde art from all over the world. With a budget of just $4000, he secured artists from West Germany, Britain and Russia. From Germany came percussionist Michael Jullich, who improvised on 40 bronze gongs and carried on a “Percussion Discussion” with drums and electronic synthesizer, the latter operated by environmental artist Chris Janney of MIT. From England came Paul Burwell, whose provocative piece combined slides, paint and percussion. The Soviet Union was represented by expatriates Vitali Komar and Alec Melimid, who capped the “Non-Nuclear 34

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Eventworks” evening (the only one with a political theme) with a hilarious slide show of Soviet propaganda slides on nuclear war.

Boston’s experimental art community is burgeoning and was well represented: painter and performance artist Alex Grey, the video/performance group Kitchen Sync, MassArt media student Jeanne Marie Caruso, audio-visual artist (and Museum School instructor) Larry Johnson, and the electronic music trio Syne were among the standouts. (MassArt, the Museum School and MIT are the academic leaders here, but multimedia performances are now presented as well at such non-academic venues as the Boston Film/Video Foundation in the Fenway, Gallery East and Eleventh Hour in the Leather District across from South Station, Helen Shlien Gallery in the Fort Point Channel area as well as artists’ lofts all over the Boston-Cambridge-Somerville area.)

The range and variety of the “Eventworks” proceedings were impressive, their quality less consistently so. Some of the presentations fell short of expectations because of the artist’s overreaching. For instance, Californian Chip Lord narrated a series of slides depicting various Western cities, desert highways, motels, airports, suburbs and golf courses. The slides were in every way exquisite, but Lord’s wan narration did not evoke the alienation captured so thematically in the images. Combining media is a hallmark of the new movement in art, but some artists forget that Renaissance men like Leonardo da Vinci not only did a range of things, but were good at all of them.

Indeed, the most satisfying performances in the series — as well as the most accessible — were those in which the artists, rather than spreading themselves thin over several art forms, confined themselves to what they did best.

One of the festival highlights, for example, was Paul Burwell’s untitled musical performance — an exhilarating example of the kind of freedom an artist can find within the tightest discipline.

Burwell, a 30-ish English artist who has performed all over Europe, began as a percussionist and later trained as an artist at the Royal College of Art (an early stomping ground of David Hockney). But he has never swerved from his musical path. At the Longwood Theater he went wild — drumming furiously, spattering paint all over the walls and ceiling and on his drum set (which he later hurled across the room), playing with Tibetan finger cymbals, scattering dried peas over the floor, finally setting off a string of firecrackers. But despite the performance’s powerful visual components, virtually everything Burwell did had a musical sense of gradation and transition. “I see the whole performance as primarily musical,” he said afterward. “It’s more about music than being music.

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Primarily everything is there for musical rather than dramatic reasons. You’ve got transformations of several elements, which is what music and alchemy are about. I’m not desperately mystical about stuff like this, but you can see that you're dealing with archetypal things — but in a very unself-conscious way.”

Of all the “Eventworks” events, none was more controversial than Alex Grey's performance on April 17 entitled “Human Race.” Grey is 28, a gifted Boston painter and performance artist. For “Eventworks” he built, with artist Alan Michel, a contraption called the “Human Race Vehicle — a black metal isosceles triangle, its furthest point affixed to a pivot anchored to the concrete floor. This vehicle had a single wheel, a gasoline engine with a pull-starter, and a human skeleton suspended underneath its steel bed. A white-clad, shaven headed Grey stepped gingerly into the performance space and tugged at the engine cord. The engine sputtered to life; Grey lay face up on the bed; the infernal machine slowly revolved around the pivot. Every few minutes, the engine would die and the artist would hop off and pull-start it again. (It became clear from his agitated expression that Grey was not prepared for these breakdowns.)

After about 15 minutes of stopping and starting—the air reeking of gasoline—the vehicle finally achieved a sustained, terrific speed (25 to 30 miles an hour) and whipped Grey around in dizzying circles. It was a striking metaphor for human helplessness in time and space.

Then something terrible happened. The pivot ripped free of the floor.

The Human Race Vehicle roared toward the front row of spectators, all of whom leaped up, screamed and dispersed. Nobody was hurt. When the motor died Grey, who had disembarked by then, said quietly, “It’s over.” Then he walked away.

Now, Grey regards the near-catastrophe as a legitimate art event: He has added it to his resume; he even has a record of it on videotape. But some members of the audience were and still are furious with him. “One pitfall of performance art,” said David Finn, a MassArt sculptor who was in that front row of spectators (he also performed in “Eventworks” on April 15), “is (its assumption* that to be spontaneous in any way is a positive value.” Mobius Theater director Marilyn Arsem put it this way: “Alex is into death, and on Saturday night he almost got it.” James Williams confesses that when he accepted Grey’s proposal to do the piece, he was aware neither that the machine was capable of such a powerful speed nor that it could fly out of control. “There ought to be a law against this sort of thing,” he says, “and indeed there is, and probably we broke it.” And yet, Williams points out, there are more than legal and ethical issues involved here, for Grey's “Human Race,” whether intentionally or not, entered 38

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the ambiguous realm between the planned and the accidental in art — a realm that artists have been probing since the beginning of the century.

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ART, E H T OF STATE ULTURE C MASS

BOSTON PHOENIX, SECTION 3 April 17, 1984 Susan Orlean Eventworks is a month-long festival of performance and media arts produced for the last eight years by Massachusetts College of Art students. This year’s model has style (chopped hair, black jeans) and substance (Canadian performance artists Randy and Berenicci, English sound and video band Psychic TV, Boston animator Lisa Crafts) and is likely to dispel the notion that “new genre” art is less happening and more hoopla. Eventworks is one of Boston’s most ambitious and adventurous art programs; perhaps because of its avant-garde pedigree and eclectic spread (this year the program ranges from video to audio works to Rappers International to a German technoband to composer/performer Diamanda Galas); it has been accepted but not heralded.

Crucial data: the festival runs from April 4 through May 1, has 14 events held in almost as many different locations (call 731-2040 to find out), is being documented by a very watchful guy with a typewriter (low tech) and cable TV (high tech). After attending the opening event (a screening of six independent films), I spent a morning with the three people responsible for Eventworks 1984. ***

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BOSTON PHOENIX What do you do besides Eventworks?

KEITH KURMAN I’m no longer an artist and no longer a musician. Eventworks has sort of swallowed up everything. Right now, I’m trying to finish off my schooling, which has been going on for the last 15 years.

SAN SHOPPELL I’m working on my BFA in the media- and performing-arts department. I came here right out of high school to major in the ceramics program, but they couldn’t facilitate my ideas. I got interested in production and management of performance arts, so I’m going that route. Most people who come to the studio do their own work.

C.K. SHINE I started at MassArt last year after being out of school for about six years. I had heard of this department, Studio for Interrelated Media, and I had a lot of ideas I thought I’d work on here.

BP How did Eventworks evolve?

SS I’m the history buff, so I’ll start. It was started eight years ago by a student named Joel Rubin. MassArt had all this space but no program for students to show off their work. So it began as a music-oriented festival for MassArt students and other students around here. From there, it started growing, and included more than music, and then started including artists from all across the United States. Then in 1982 I worked on it with James Williams, and we had some international artists too. The way it’s turned over in the past is that whoever is the next interested 44

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party just takes over. In the beginning there were a lot of people involved this year, but it ended up with the three of us.

CS Oh, there’s never been any problem with people wanting to take charge.

We’re the remains of that original core group of 12 or 15 people.

SS We began by going to the student government and getting a starting grant of $5000. Then we just go out and network to try to get the rest of the money.

CS The festival will cost about $30,000. We’re only about $4000 short right now, so if anybody wants to boot in a few thousand, we can provide full deification rites at the end of the festival.

BP How long does it take to organize Eventworks?

KK Longer than the time we have to put it on. It really ought to be a year-round thing, and the people who are thinking about it for next year should already have their feelers out.

SS We’ve been working on it every day for months plus none of us are really taking any classes. We’re here every day.

CS We do get some credit toward our major, which is nothing, because the amount of work we do is worth a master’s degree.

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KK We’ve talked to the school about that and we get a smile and a pat on the back and “You’re doing a great job, kid.”

SS We really dodge the administration all the time. We set up a system and we go for it. Last year, we’d try to do things and they’d throw huge rocks in our way on top of all the other stuff we had to do. So this year, we figured we just go around them and if they find out, they find out.

BP Has anything in the festival ever been too provocative for the administration?

SS None of them have ever really come to see what we're showing, and if they did, some of them would have probably shit their pants, honestly speaking: They’d have been really upset.

KK By default last year, the president attendance for the duration of an installation Shine and I did. We had an open microphone in the gallery, which was totally empty. People would come in and speak, and their voices would be fed into the sound studio and through all these tape loops, and the gallery would be filled with this delicious sound. It was called “Psychic Envelope.”

CS The president asked us to take it down because, in the president’s opinion, it was not art. And partly because people would, uh, really get free with what they did with the microphone. I think he also had a problem with the volume levels.

It was something he didn’t enjoy very much.

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BP What kind of proposals did you get this year?

CS Well, in the past, it’s been pretty much open invitation. This year’s proposals were a whole range— SS They ranged from some simple, straightforward things to some really stupid, idiotic things.

CS One year Laurie Anderson sent a proposal but it was close to $5000 for the piece.

SS But she did do a lot for us last year. Her performance at the Berklee was during the festival, but not on the night of one of our shows, and there were more people at her show than had ever gone to see performance art in Boston in the last 10 years. So we leafleted the Berklee, and then audiences for our shows really jumped.

BP Who comes to Eventworks?

CS Well, we get people who go to the ICA’s Friday night specials, and to BFVF, and Mobius Theater. But we’re also picking up some people who are sort of outside the stream of this sort of art.

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KK Our decision this year was to show all new works, because the other organizations like the ICA that present works will tend to take things that are already safe.

CS That “safe” should be in quotes, though. Who is it safe for?

KK But as far as seeing that very provocative and exciting work get presented, it just doesn’t happen in this town. It’s mostly bland.

CS That’s a tradition in Boston. You make it in New York, you get written up in Art in America, and then people in Boston will present you. We’re going out and really looking for artists who are performing vital works.

KK I think there’s a lot of pioneering work done in this field— SS That’s what I’m interested in.

KK that can legitimize the field to the public. I think a lot of times people put together performance works that aren’t really ready for the public and they put it out and the public sees it and say—

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SS “Yuch!”

CS “So this is performance art. Well, maybe next year… or they get turned off to it altogether. So this year we wanted each event to be— SS Professional.

KK we wanted every event to be of the highest caliber and yet very groundbreaking at the same time. We’re not going to take anything that was produced in ‘83 or ‘82 or ‘81. We don’t want to rehash what’s already been done. There are exciting new things being done every day.

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HARRIS BARRON

1988 Ron Wallace Author’s note: this article was written on the occasion of Harris Barron’s retirement from Massachusetts College of Art in 1988.

It was originally published in the MassArt alumni/ae Newsletter.

Harris Barron, painter, sculptor, performance artist, teacher, aviator, writer, and mentor to many, will be leaving the college at the end of the Fall semester to continue his career as artist, thinker, and lover of life. Those of us who know Harris realize that this is not an ending but a beginning, a time for him to refocus on his work and tap the rich resources of his life experience. For the college, however, it is a loss that is only ameliorated by the fact that so much of what he has contributed will continue in his absence.

Harris was born in 1926 and spent his childhood in depression-era Boston.

His passion for the arts developed at an early age, as did an intense love for the air and for flight (in time, these passions would become one and the same). He enlisted in the Navy straight out of high school, serving as an aircraft gunner for three years in the Pacific.

In 1947 Harris was discharged from the Navy and entered the Vesper George School of Art in Boston’s South End. He studied painting for two years, quickly garnering a reputation as one of the school’s best students. Realizing that Vesper George offered little exposure to contemporary art, he enrolled in a summer painting program on Nantucket Island in 1949. When he arrived, he was pleased to discover that nearly everyone in the program was from New York City. Harris had his first opportunity to meet people who were excited about art

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ideas and who were conversant in the current trends in the art world. By the end of the summer, he was planning to move to New York.

Harris describes the three years he lived in New York as “mind expanding” and credits the city with establishing his tastes for music, theater, food, and literature. 1949 was an exciting time to be an artist in the city — the first stirrings of the New York school were just being felt. Harris made his living working as a graphic artist for various ad agencies. Evenings were sometimes spent doing life drawing studies with a group of fellow artists who met on a regular basis.

Despite the enormous personal growth he experienced during this time, he was not able to make significant connections to further his career as a painter.

He returned to Boston when he came to realize that being good wasn’t good enough — one had to invest time and energy to “sell” oneself in order to succeed and thrive in the New York art scene. He was troubled by the philosophical directions of the painting establishment and what he perceived as many artists’ self-conscious preoccupation with the past. “Most people were interested in the history of where art had come from and how they fit into that … I was really interested in what was inside.” Put simply, Harris Barron was searching for a means to address and express the very time in which he was living.

In the fall of 1951, Harris enrolled as a special student at MassArt. There he met and became engaged to future wife Ros, who turned out to be a kindred spirit in Harris’ search for new means of expression. Though Harris and Ros had strong backgrounds in painting, they decided to join the college’s fledgling ceramics program, headed by Charles Abbott. Abbott’s deep interest in oriental philosophy, particularly Zen Buddhism, was a magnet for them. “We thought that pottery, with that connection [Zen Buddhism], seemed very real and substantial … that it had a connection with the history and development of man.” It was also an opportunity for Harris to work in a medium that was more dimensional than paint on canvas. After graduation in 1954, Harris and Ros established their ceramics studio in a storefront in Brookline Village, hoping to support themselves by producing art pieces for the market. At first they primarily produced wheel-thrown pottery, but soon they began experimenting with the three-dimensional nature of clay. They would cut clay into shapes, fire it, and assemble the pieces on a concrete shell. In the finished piece the shapes formed pictures in a manner similar to mosaics but with the added dimension of depth. This simple but unique process is characteristic of what was becoming Harris’ general approach to art, that of creating important new categories by perceptive combinations of media.

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Their mosaic technique soon won them commissions to do large-scale mural works for architectural firms involved in the construction of new buildings. These “architectural sculpture” commissions continued through the fifties and into the early sixties and earned the Barrons some notoriety in the art world.

In the process they had the opportunity to work with Walter Gropius and his Cambridge-based Architects Collaborative as well as with the renowned architect, Hugh Stubbins. They produced flat wall pieces, friezes, and free-standing works, both indoors and out, for nearly seventy-five commissions. Over the years the work underwent many changes in style and form as Ros began to gravitate towards painting and Harris towards sculpture. Harris’ transition to sculpture was a result of his desire to explore fully the idea of three-dimensional objects.

He saw sculpture as a more honest and relevant form of expression because, for him, a sculpture “… wasn't an implied image on the surface of arbitrary space … it was the thing itself.” He was also excited with the notion that the viewer’s point of view was not fixed by the artist but changed dynamically as the object was experienced. During the eight years that Harris worked intensely as a sculptor, he employed extremely varied media, though his major concern was with the relationships of forms in space: presences and absences, differences in scale and depth, the play of light, and the vantage of the viewer.

Though Harris’ career as a sculptor was relatively brief he was able to build a reputation which got him one-man shows at galleries in Boston and New York. He participated in many group shows at museums and institutions around the country and won awards, including one for a show at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston. In 1969, Harris, Ros, and a former painting student of Harris’, Alan Finneran, embarked on a project that was a precursor to the form now known as performance art. Harris was at the end of a long period of artistic inactivity and had begun to experiment with the use of light, sound, and objects in an environmental sense. Ros had been interested in adapting the historical idea of the puppet theater or peep show into a modern context. Alan had just returned to Boston after completing extensive studies in filmmaking.

The three decided to collectively create art works in real time, for an audience, in a theater context. These works would combine light, sound, projected image, and movement. They invented the term visual theater to describe this new form, to emphasize that they were visual artists who were expanding their ideas into a new context, not attempting to adapt or redefine traditional theater. The tightly-knit group of artists they formed out of these discussions was named ZONE. ZONE was active from 1969 to 1972 and produced six works, each of which was a 53

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major undertaking involving live performers with elaborate costumes, large set pieces, complicated sound and projection systems, custom hardware, and a knowledgeable technical crew. Fundamentally, ZONE was a laboratory for the exploration of art in a real-time context. Harris used the experience to expand upon the ideas about form, scale, and dimension he had first pursued in his sculpture. To these elements were added aspects of time such as duration, simultaneity, and the element of surprise. From this synthesis, Harris was finally able to create works which would provide an all-encompassing experience for the viewer, addressing the senses and the intellect simultaneously.

Once again Harris’ importance as an artist was recognized when ZONE was awarded two grants from the New York State Council for the Arts to produce ZONE: On Tour. This performance was presented at Automation House in New York and ten SUNY campuses. ZONE was also awarded a Guggenheim grant in 1972 to produce The Yellow Sound (based on notes by Wassily Kandinsky) at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. At the end of The Yellow Sound’s run, however, ZONE disbanded. Significant support for such experimental groups was sorely lacking, and since ZONE’s work did not fall into any of the traditional disciplines, there was no serious critical treatment of it by the press. In late 1969, Harris approached MassArt’s new college president, Jack Nolan, with a proposal to create an undergraduate program patterned after the ZONE group.

Harris had returned to the college in 1963 at Charles Abbott’s urgings to teach in the ceramics department part-time. Abbott recognized Harris’ unique ability to get people in touch with their sources of creativity. Harris explains his general approach as follows: “Essentially I would come in and try to energize people to believe in themselves, then throw hand grenades and leave” His 1969 proposal was therefore a natural extension of these classes, to create an area in the college where the exploration of ideas would be more important than the acquisition of skill or technique. President Nolan agreed that such a program would benefit the college and provided $1000 worth of budget and a room in the Overland Annex building to get it started. Thus the Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM) was born. During the first few years of SIM, Harris was able to attract a small group of motivated students to transform the room at Overland into a viable space for performances. From 1970 to 1973 the SIM budget was slowly increased. In 1972 the college created the Media and Performing Arts Department and Harris served as its first chair. With the creation of the department came the opportunity for students to major in SIM and the program entered its first stage of real growth. Between 1972 and 1977, Harris took 54

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another sabbatical from his own work to make a big push to develop SIM into the lively and important part of the college that it is today. During that time SIM established the college’s first electronic music studio and totally revamped the Longwood Theater by rewiring it for sound, lighting, and communications. SIM also provided students with systems for video and film production. Harris fought for the creation of movement and sound classes, created a SIM artist-in-residence program, brought numerous performance art, theater, opera, dance, and music groups to the college to interact with students and use them as paid technicians. In 1975 he created AMOEBA (All Media Open Exchange By Artists), an exchange program involving Brown, Wesleyan, and Ohio State universities. All of these activities resulted from the energy and efforts of Harris and the students and received little or no official support from the college.

Central to the SIM curriculum were fundamental studies in the use of sound, light, movement, space, time, etc., and their integration into performance works. Another important aspect was doing. Harris believed that a student’s most substantial work was done outside of class and so he provided a structure that recognized that fact. Equally crucial was the collective structure of SIM which used the group to support and to give and receive feedback to its members. As Harris said recently: “The undergraduate experience should be a welter of confusion, but that confusion should come from bumping into, exposing ideas that you may not have come onto yourself, and seeing other people's response to them. That is the value of the group.”

In 1977, SIM students conceived of and held the first Eventworks, an international festival of performance and music. Eventworks has occurred every year since and each time is produced entirely by students. Today this festival is recognized as an important and anticipated part of the New England art scene, attracting work from around the world. It is significant, therefore, that 1977 was also the year Harris returned to creating his own performance works. He realized that what he had hoped for had occurred: students had come to view SIM as something of their making as well as his. When Harris returned to performance in 1977, it was with a new awareness created from the experience of learning to fly. Harris had received his license to fly glider craft in 1975 through his association with the MIT glider club. His yearning for the air had stayed with him since he was a boy; for years he had been constructing and flying scalemodel, radio-controlled aircraft. Harris was ready to merge his experiences in sculpture, architectural work, and visual theater with new perceptions generated from his solo glider flights. The new works became combinations of performance 55

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and installation. He coined the term SCULPTUREVENTS to describe the new synthesis. The first work in this series was entitled Einstein’s Vanishing Point, which premiered at the Helen Shlien Gallery in November 1978. As in the ZONE works, the concern with presenting several parallel layers of reality was present, but this time the result was cleaner and more focused as Harris limited the number of physical elements within the piece. Harris’ emphasis was to recognize and use the space’s characteristics directly in the work, rather than think of the space as a vessel that contained the performance. Another concern was the aspect of visual paradox: Harris used flexible “bungee” cords to delineate “lines” in the space which suggested boundaries, planes, infinite spaces, and stored kinetic energy.

Einstein’s Vanishing Point and a related work, Fishing (1979), were important departures from the earlier work of the ZONE years, but still shared with ZONE the orientation towards large-scale choreographed productions with many performers and technicians. By 1980, Harris had decided to move in a different direction, to focus more on philosophical issues and to increase his contact with the audience. Harris’ work had always been intensely personal, involving the desire to see the world around him more clearly and reflect it to the audience. He decided to perform by himself for the first time in his career. He had a strong desire to remove any barriers, symbolic or otherwise, between him and the audience. This also led him to eschew the former technological trappings of his performance work for more accessible and familiar tools. Out of these resolutions came a series of works under the umbrella title Air. The works were characterized by Harris’ appearance as the lone performer, usually accompanied by an inexpensive cassette tape recorder and a stack of 3 × 5" index cards. The cards contained notes for improvised speeches and sometimes sections of text that were recited verbatim. The tape machine provided aural counterpoint to Harris’ speeches; at times he would even engage in dialogues with his own voice on tape. The content of the speeches were strings of facts designed to provoke and engage the audience.

These facts ranged from political observations to recollections of experiences he had as a solo pilot. Though the stories and observations sometimes seemed esoteric or unconventional, they were held together by Harris’ message to the audience, to “take responsibility for their own comprehension.” Throughout these works he used the metaphor of flight as a model for everyday life. “When you are flying you are required to take complete charge of your life or you may not survive.”

Harris used simple gestures and devices to express his themes. An excellent example of this is in Air: Discrete Disclosures (1981), which was performed 56

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in MassArt’s Thompson Gallery. At one point early in the performance Harris opened a new can of ground coffee and drew a line with it on the floor of the gallery while describing how long it would take for the smell to reach the nostrils of the audience. For the remainder of the performance the strong fragrance remained an undeniable presence in the space. Here Harris took an everyday object and pulled it out of its normal context to emphasize dramatically how easily we become separate from the reality of our surroundings and, by extension, our lives. Harris has produced a total of seven Air works, the most recent being Landscape with Brain (1987).

Over the years Harris’ work has increasingly involved writing. The primary element in the Air performances was the use of the spoken word, whether improvised or prepared. From those works Harris realized that a need was emerging in him to employ a form that would allow his ideas to be explored to a greater depth and breadth. His summers on Cape Cod were now spent writing, though some of the texts were not clearly planned for performances.

As was so often the case, he was moving towards some kind of change in his work. In the spring of 1988, Harris got the opportunity to accompany an old pilot friend, Frank Scarabino, on a coast-to-coast trip in a vintage open cockpit biplane. Harris took along a portable tape recorder and made extensive notes every step of the journey. When he returned, he realized that the trip was the catalyst he was waiting for. He is currently working on a book, tentatively titled Taking the Air: Crossing the Country in an Open Cockpit Biplane. Although he plans to use the trip as the basic framework for the text, the narrative will support his real purpose: to expand upon and articulate the themes that he has developed over the years as an artist. It is impossible to imagine what the Massachusetts College of Art might be today were it not for the presence of Harris Barron. In addition to creating the SIM area, he has always been a tireless advocate towards making the college a better place for students. The integrity, energy, perception, intelligence, and love that he infuses in his works has been shared freely with students and associates. The challenges he has posed for himself and his art he also posed to the college and its administration. As an educator he placed the utmost value in facilitating students in their quest to find themselves. “The major thing is not the tools, hand skills, or even worldview … it is in the building of confidence, and finding out what it is you want to do. When you have made that leap, everything else will follow.”

When Harris was asked recently to recount his most memorable experience in SIM, he replied that there had been many of them, but each involved the 57

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“extreme high of seeing individuals come into possession of themselves.”

Harris’ legacy at MassArt will be the people he touched, encouraged, and supported. Their number is great.

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SECTION

LOWS: L A H S E H T G IN D A TRE THE ART D N A G IN G G O J E NOTES ON TH D SHINY N A D E R IG B , S IC OF POLIT

December 16, 2012 Evan F. Smith The 2012 election cycle is mercifully over, and the outcome is probably as good as we could have hoped for, considering options. While some milestones were crossed (a record number of women in the Senate, a few positive strides for marriage equality), much of the affair was business as usual. A surreal, ugly, record-breaking amount of money was spent by both sides. Attack ads and media pandering brought most of us to a state of resigned exhaustion. I found myself tuned to CNN on election night, watching a correspondent move his hands across a fake touch screen, lit up red and blue, pointing to sets of numbers that were nothing more than speculations of speculations. It was strange, boring, and hypnotic.

In the face of this kind of media saturation, we usually take a defensive posture, blocking out most of the unpleasantness and punctuating the monotony with our own ironic, snarky comments on the proceedings. It’s out of this climate that The Art of Politics emerged, an exhibition of works at MassArt’s Godine Family Gallery by online collective The Jogging.

The Jogging is a collaborative web presence (it’s a Tumblr) originally started several years ago by Brad Troemel and Lauren Christiansen, expanded to include a large and somewhat nebulous number of young artists as participants, most of them exciting and inventive in their individual practices.

Members of the group submit to The Jogging under a loose set of parameters, 61

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posting sculptural assemblages, digital images, videos, and performance documents more or less daily. The work is topical, consists of throw-away ideas and materials, shows a total disdain for craftsmanship, and usually carries gauchely literal titles, like ALL-PURPOSE WOODEN BRUSH with YELLOW and BROWN Scrubbing Bristles Wearing a PLATINUM BLONDE PAGE GIRL WIG from SPIRITHALLOWEEN.COM. Sources for such sculptural materials include Whole Foods, Hot Topic, bodegas, and internet wholesalers, though you’re just as likely to find repurposed images from Contemporary Art Daily or Gagosian’s website. Works often repeat themselves (a recently recurring element was a plastic Fiji water bottle filled with bath salts), reappearing as branded aftertrails in new posts. Any number of people contribute (most posts carry an alt-code text symbol that acts as a contributor’s signature, linking to their personal sites), but Troemel is one of the most vocal participants about the project, and writes and speaks regularly on the internet and its influence on artistic practice.

The text Free Art is the closest thing to a manifesto for the group. It reads: In the lives of contemporary artists, Free Art is a place to find one’s self through the existence of others — to individually reclaim the ability to self-mythologize and empathetically pick from your peers for influence. Thus, Free Art is marked by the compulsive urge of searching (or, surfing) to connect with others in a way that is not dictated by profitability, but found and shared charitably among individuals based on personal interests.

The name The Jogging is an accurate reflection of this attitude, which is present in both the making and viewing of the work — steady, leisurely, consistent, marked by things that catch your attention for only a few seconds as you move past them. The subjects and materials present in the work are also appropriate to the name. Like the act of jogging, they show health and fashion consciousness; though not ahead of the curve, they fall in step quickly; they point to suburbanism or semi-urbanism; but above all, they are unabashedly bourgeois. The Jogging tends to be something of a self-aware, visual cultural barometer, and recent posts have been occupied with the media circus surrounding the election, culminating in the collection seen in The Art of Politics.

The Jogging’s preoccupation with consumption, authorship, and taste is an appropriate lens through which to view the election. Attention throughout the race was focused tightly on public opinion rather than issues, arguably affecting public opinion through a representation of itself (very new media theory).

Pile on the flashy, alarmist voices and images of the election news cycle, and most people were left bitter and slightly dazed by the end of the season. Social 62

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networking sites like Facebook are where some of the most shallow and vitriolic engagements with politics take place, with users sharing badly Photoshopped images beside sourceless information, arguing with friends of friends, and standing only slightly above the fore by making sarcastic, meta-comments on the whole parade of opinions. The Art of Politics engaged not only with the media frenzy of the election but how it is recycled and regurgitated through the web and social media.

Installed in the Godine, a student-run space in the Studio for Interrelated Media at MassArt, The Art of Politics is the collective’s first physical exhibition of work, and it feels like it. Most of the work, while funny and interesting, I’d already seen online, and seeing it in person didn’t do much to add to it. There were a few particularly clever and memorable standouts. A police baton skewering two rolls of toilet paper, custom printed with mugshots of Romney and Obama respectively on each ply, makes a vague, ineffectual commentary on the vague, ineffectual attitude of lesser-of-two-evils cynicism. A 6XL blue and white tie-die shirt pulled across stretcher bars like a canvas perfectly synthesizes high and low culture.

The most successful part of the show was a set of videos, attack ads demonizing The Jogging in the terms familiar to anyone who sat in front of a television in November. But they manipulate the language of political mudslinging to address the criticisms that the collective faces: They’re making fools of their viewers, that the saturation of irony found in the project is endemic of a toxic, unproductive culture of hipster-ism, that the work is just plain bad because it’s sloppily executed. A stern voice asks over tense string arrangements, “Why has The Jogging refused to release their original Photoshop documents?

What do they have to hide?” It urges America to send The Jogging a message to “start making real art, or get off our newsfeeds.”

Another surprisingly polished work is a large digital print of sleek blue and red shapes streaking through a black field. It’s a still from the overblown digital effects of a TV news transition, caught in a moment of abstraction. This has, since the exhibition, become the branding element of the show on The Jogging website, imposed onto stock images of home entertainment centers, or of a toddler playing with a digital tablet.

This image regurgitation is where things get interesting. Some work just looks better on a screen than it does in person, and work from The Jogging aims for this effect. So what was the purpose of the exhibition? It becomes a staging ground for future works. The installation of work in the exhibition space is 63

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a kind of raw material for the blog, to be made into new digital mockups and collages. Circulating Tumblr are works from the show, crowded into a single digitally rebuilt space that is better lit and cleaner than the Godine Gallery. Works are resized to appear more impressive. Home Security (Mono-Ha Version), shows a series from the show (ADT home security signs embellished with the trademark Obama red-and-white striped “road to change” logo) digitally tacked onto a Nobuo Sekine sculpture recently exhibited at Blum and Poe (the high-resolution image likely pulled from Contemporary Art Daily). A few weeks after the show, work is starting to drift out of context and into the Jogging formula of piled-on references, where it’s perhaps most potent.

As I mentioned, this is the first time The Jogging has shown their work as physical objects in a space. It’s unusual that they chose to have an inaugural show outside the art world center, New York, and in a small student gallery in our satellite city of Boston. If the opening turnout was any indication, it’s likely an overwhelming majority will see the show online rather than in person.

The Jogging has organized exhibitions in the past, but not of physical works. An Immaterial Survey of Our Peers, a group show curated by The Jogging, placed digital images of the selected artists’ works into a virtual simulacrum of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s galleries, images which were then projected into the actual gallery. Artists often wrestle with the dilemma that with good lighting, a decent digital camera, and Photoshop, documentation of work can look better than the real thing. An Immaterial Survey embraced that dilemma by bringing both gallery and artwork together digitally, under “ideal” conditions.

Another slightly more extreme precedent for the exhibition could be found in Saint Lawrence Ice, a show curated by Ben Schumacher, whose own sculptures function similarly to The Jogging in a space between object and image. The show, which included work by Jogging artists Brad Troemel and Artie Vierkant alongside artists with a more plastic, but no less inventive approach, including Carol Bove, Hugh Scott-Douglas, and Jo-ey Tang, was staged for a single day on Wolfe Island, in rural Ontario. The sculptures and assemblages were set on the frozen surface of Lake Ontario, and while it’s unlikely anyone but the artists actually saw the work, the show was documented and shared with the world through Tumblr. Documentation is crucial to Schumacher’s work; he treats it as another layer of assemblage, adding watermarks and signatures to images of his sculptures. Jogging artist Artie Vierkant employs a similar strategy with his wall-mounted Image Objects, gradient prints on custom-cut Sintra that 64

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are modified in Photoshop so subtly it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s fake.

This concern with the documentation of an artwork, with its online reception, its digital life reflects a growing preoccupation with web presence in all facets of our digitized culture. In many ways the image-object approach can be read as a criticism of this relationship between self and web-identity. The mixture of pleasure and distrust elicited by the doctored images of artworks is very much in line with our growing dependency on and revulsion for sites like Facebook, and the begrudging impulse to represent ourselves and our interests through them.

In the past, The Jogging, as a project, eschewed this kind of criticism for a more positive outlook. More important than the problem of image vs. object is the idea that through the web, the acts of making, viewing, and sharing are similar, far more so than in the maker/viewer relationship in traditional practice.

Submissions to The Jogging by other Tumblr users is common. Reblogging and quoting are vital to the project and a creative exercise in their own right. Works lose their tags and credits, wash up on the blog of some teenager in Middle America with no background in art. Anyone could make a Jogging sculpture.

You could probably make one in five minutes at your local Rite Aid. There’s a liberating democracy to The Jogging, but is it wholly meant?

When Brad Troemel glues a Hot Topic hair extension to a Whole Foods hat, isn’t he making fun of both brands, and the people who subscribe to them? The concept of branding is hugely important in this oeuvre, and the extreme focus on branded elements reveals their ubiquity where they could otherwise be overlooked. It’s a pop tradition, to force the viewer to look closely at the thing they’d prefer to quickly swallow as something embedded in their routine. But there’s also an element of “taking back” the things that are forced on us, and making something new, however awkward, from them.

Having seen The Art of Politics, and feeling disappointed by the physical installation it’s clear to me that the work on The Jogging is secondary to how the web platform is used. As a blog, regularly checked, The Jogging is terribly interesting to watch: constantly moving forward, producing new rules or phrases in its aesthetic vocabulary. The life of an image can be very short on a site like Tumblr, and aesthetically speaking, a few weeks in the past can be ancient history for The Jogging.

One of John Baldesaari’s three rules to being a successful artist is “Talent is Cheap.” Now it would seem ideas are also cheap. With The Jogging, it’s not the strength of an idea that warrants attention or a long shelf life, it’s the rhizomatic potential of an image. How well does it, or elements of it, re-circulate, 65

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producing new avenues for experimentation? How does it stand stripped of context, or weighted with new layers of meaning? This is not only an underlying problem of the image in the digital age, but of the artist in an increasingly compartmentalized yet global world. How well can an artistic practice withstand translation out of its place of origin onto a global stage, or more realistically, a thousand smaller stages around the world? Inversely, how well can an artwork or artist adapt to new contexts, taking on new styles or languages, without losing integrity? These are sink-or-swim questions for artists and cultural workers today.

It’s also become increasingly true that the majority of looking among artists and curators, as well as the general public, is done online and not in person. The Jogging is merely proposing that we treat this dominant platform as a primary mode of both viewing and production instead of a secondary one.

We’re past the trope of an online exhibition because an exhibition is inherently a spatial proposition, and translating it to a web page still favors spatial questions that aren’t relevant to that platform. The Jogging instead responds to the particular qualities of Tumblr, simultaneously linear and disjointed, as a means of dialogue. Rather than creating or displaying a grouping of works around an idea, The Jogging imbues each work with a set of ideas or traits holistically, which are then passed on, discarded, or built on over time, like a complex visual game of telephone. It mirrors how specific trends and style as a whole develop and evolve online.

The same rules of taste apply in an election, as in any question of public opinion, and as much as we like to think of ourselves as well informed within our own communities, it’s undeniable that a large number of Americans choose their president the way they choose their brands. The Art of Politics underpins this narrow divide between real and superficial ideology, and it does so in a way that is knowingly superficial. The Jogging has tackled this kind of half-earnest look at democracy and its inherent frustrations before, in an event called ASSEMBLY. Originally hosted on the site jstchillin.org, a platform for artists’ web projects, ASSEMBLY invited visitors to vote on which institution or individual would be subject to a Denial of Service through mass-visitation, disabling the chosen site for a day. What followed is a little convoluted, but JstChillin’s host site caught onto the activity, the project was moved to The Jogging, which got itself deleted rather than abandon the project. Troemel framed the Denial of Service action as the web equivalent of a sit-in protest of the Civil Rights Movement.

Framed as a symbol of democratic power on the web, ASSEMBLY was in reality a completely insular internet art project that just happened to get noticed by 66

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people who took it seriously. No particular issues were raised by the action; the action itself was the message. The site with the most votes to be disabled was Rhizome, followed by Troemel’s own Jogging. The only way the project could be considered successful is if it is viewed as an illustration of the futility of protest.

And this is the feeling The Art of Politics left me with. Futility compounds upon futility, an action slated to fail does so unimpressively, creating a sensation wherein it’s difficult to trust the work or one’s own opinions on it. In a way this was even more pronounced online than in the exhibition. Following The Jogging on Tumblr through November meant regular updates of politically oriented works in new contexts, a repetition of the same bad visual gags along the election theme. The experience was uncannily similar to the exhaustion of similar images and rhetoric in the larger public sphere. But I see this not as a failure of the project, but as a success of The Jogging as cultural critique.

In an irony-saturated culture, the viewer has to tread lightly, mindful not only of the authenticity of images and ideas, but their intentions as well. This visual doublespeak, used so often in advertising, corporate language, and political platforms, can make for powerful stuff when used discerningly within an art practice. The cerebral exercise of pulling apart a Jogging project (layers of real vs. digital, sincere vs. ironic, original vs. knock-off), requires a mixture of invested scrutiny and cool detachment that is indicative of our culture as a whole.

Indeed, it seems now the only position of meaningful dissent left to the artist who work within the margins is an ironic one. One need only look at the carnival of art and money that is Miami in early December. Projects like Jonathan Horowitz’s “Free Store” that took place in Miami represent how quickly and cynically the commercial art system can co-opt socially and politically engaged art practices. Wherein most events of this nature offer visitors a free meal or meaningful social exchange, the project, a partnership with sleek, expensive, art-as-fashion publication Visionaire, is essentially a swap meet for rich people, featuring personal items of Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci and REM’s Michael Stipe. In contrast, The Jogging, in conjunction with Chelsea gallery Stadium, hosted Re-Mixology at a Miami beachfront, billed as “an exhibition (and sampling) of cocktails by The Jogging.” Advertised with a series of hokey, Corona-style ads featuring beachside lounge chairs, the event was more than likely a perfect storm of people who were in on the joke, and people who emphatically were not.

Re-Mixology co-opts the language of the hyped-up, over-branded art-parties that surround the fairs and threaten to strangle any shred of credibility out of 67

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them. It’s promising to see The Jogging again step out of their web presence in this way, and the collective’s adaptability to new venues and subjects promises an ongoing, rich tradition of ironic critique. The Jogging, like much of what is exciting about internet art or any kind of new art that explores popular culture, is highly skilled at perverse imitation. They identify and retune trappings of culture just slightly, tilting them so they can be seen in a different, slightly uncomfortable light. They do this formally with Photoshop filters and awkward stock images, and they do it conceptually by mastering and regurgitating new languages of advertising, Etsy listings, “green” culture, DIY culture, and most sagaciously, of the art world itself. At its worst an over-educated, self-inflated culture too cynical to confront its own faults, the art world is perhaps the most in need of this kind of critique.

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“Art is the accomplice of love.”

— Remy de Gourmont (a favorite quote of Ros Barron)

SIM FOUND ING FACULTY

The Studio for Interrelated Media is an ever-evolving,

responsive, organic set of principles, guidelines,

attitudes, and opportunities that are discovered and

invented by artists. The SIM faculty and staff manage,

facilitate, and protect these ideas and transform them

into an accredited degree granting academic journey for students. For this catalog, we have selected 8 faculty and staff that seeded the groundwork for the program

within its first 20 years. Their influence is still felt

in the curricular decisions made by current faculty.

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HARRIS BARRON Professor Emeritus BFA Ceramics ‘54, SIM Faculty 1969–1988

“Shared experience creates community.” It’s a credo Harris Barron lived by. It was the founding principle of SIM. He recognized that collaboration was a key to learning. And another, as SIM was modeled on the pedagogy of Summerhill, was that the experience is best driven by students themselves.

An experience grounded in the senses. One of the first classes for incoming students involved Harris having us close our eyes while he poured ground coffee on the floor.

Or cut a lemon. He led by example, curious about the world around us. His poetry, his activism (he was questioning the wisdom of surrounding ourselves with EMFs before there was literature about that). He loved airplanes, building models in his studio, and took a cross-country glider trip that he chronicled in his book Spaces in the Air. He took the poet’s name Eagle Air and shared generously.

He was a force of nature, uncompromising in the pursuit of essence. He was joyful and wry. He was keen in championing and interrogating young artists in critiques that never veered into withering. In SIM, he created a community that transcends a college program. Mentoring was something he encouraged, bringing in alumni to counsel and guide enrolled students in producing Eventworks and exploring new ideas and technologies. The relationships formed in that spirit continue to guide us, however long it’s been since we graduated. The licentiousness of those heady times cannot be underestimated. When SIM students would get in trouble with Security, the Provost, or the President, or even the legislature (MassArt is a state school with direct funding).

Harris went to bat for us.

Harris passed away in 2017.

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ROS BARRON Founding Advisor and Creative Co-Director of ZONE Theater

BFA Ceramics ‘54

When you are in love with an artist, their pursuits require your involvement. Ros Barron calls herself the grande dame of SIM. Harris founded it with ideas that came out of the ZONE Theater, their joint multi-media “visual theater.” She married Harris when she was 18 years old, and for over 60 years they made art individually and in collaboration.

She is a prolific painter and a seminal video artist. Ros experimented with the medium before most people understood it to be an artform. Her work explores surreal landscapes of the mind with the use of collage, spoken word, and improvisation.

The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts are a short list of who has exhibited her work. She’s been supported by grants for video art from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Bunting Institute of Harvard University, the New York Arts Council, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Town of Brookline, the LEF Foundation, and others. Somehow, with her incredibly rich artistic life, and raising two children at home, she also maintained a presence in SIM. In 2019 she was a visiting artist, and helped establish the Harris Barron Scholarship Fund after his passing in 2017. On their website, where they were clearly ahead of their time in stylish documentation, they include a quote from Remy de Gourmont, “Art is the accomplice of love.”

Harris and Ros Barron’s website: www.harrisandrosbarron.com

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DONALD BURGY Professor Emeritus SIM Faculty 1974–2001

Burgy, who mostly uses only his last name, once said “nostalgia is death.” Fortunately though, his work is chronicled. His association with Fluxus, an international conceptual art group in the 60s and 70s, situated him at the wind-blown prow of an ice-breaking ship expanding what was considered art. SIM was a perfect place for his professorial, sonorous voice. Ideas came first, and freedom was paramount. Burgy’s dedication to these two beacons guided his relationship to students and their development. At times students in specialized departments of painting, sculpture, or graphic design, including Christian Marclay, were kicked out for breaking formal rules. Burgy delighted in new ideas and welcomed these students to SIM with open arms. He could speak the word “AMAZING” like no one else. Perhaps ironically, he has been dedicated to the study of Paleolithic art. His scholarship proved the imperative for humans to engage in art-making. His “time-travel,” as his ideas were often described, took the hand of the Homo erectus and guided them to the year 4000 BCE. For his students, focusing on simple lines carved by simple tools was not to shine a light on rudimentary art, but rather fundamental. Not only “why do you make art?”, but also “Why do you want to make art?”

Especially time-based art that is gone when it is done and leaves no record.

Donald Burgy’s website: www.donaldburgy.com

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DAWN KRAMER Professor Emeritus SIM Faculty 1976–2014

Dawn Kramer came to SIM with a wealth of experience as a dancer and choreographer. She was co-founder and artistic co-director of Dance Collective in Boston. Though never quite a full-time faculty member, her influence was wide and her contributions in curriculum development and review boards was invaluable. Rochelle Royer-Llamas (BFA SIM ‘88) remembers the ground-breaking perspective of movement, not dance. She felt freed to express authentic somatic movement grounded in the five senses, which offered a confidence in spontaneity. An undiluted urgency connected students with a conduit to another consciousness, to spirit. Every day is a dance. Kramer was onboard with the emerging excitement of multi-media and collaboration with video, and created Imaginary Crossing, commissioned by WGBH New Television Workshop in 1980. In the early years, she taught on the beloved Longwood stage and in SIM’s home until 1990, the storied Space 46. In addition to teaching several movement electives, notably her iconic On The Spot, Kramer became an invaluable co-teacher in SIM Major Studio class until she retired in 2014. Kramer brought the critical perspective of movement to the work students created in a multiplicity of media. She continues to make performance work in video space with her collaborator Stephen Buck as they travel around the world.

Dawn Kramer’s website: www.dawnkramer.info

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BRUCE BOWEN Crypt Keeper BFA SIM ‘74, SIM Studio Manager 1978–2010

There once was a technician named Bruce who did not play fast and loose A tight ship he ran for SIM and its fans protecting the gear and its use There once was Bruce our technician who taught us to use our cognition The gear he checked out he knew and cared about and wanted it to be a tradition — Limerick by Kate Redmond

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JOHN HOLLAND Professor Emeritus SIM Faculty 1980–2009

Music as an Intelligent Model of Emotional Well-being is the title of a treatise written by John Holland, which encapsulates his relationship to music, or “electro-acoustic art.” He composes music that is at once difficult, and full of ease to slip into. It is brash and well-contemplated. Holland is a prolific artist. He continued a steady flow of personal output even while working as a full-time professor in SIM. He described his work as “post-modern.” With one foot in the world of contemporary music and the other exploring the latest scientific explanations of natural phenomena, his art output consistently demands a relationship between the two. Listening to his series of works The Continents, an ode to each of the 7 continents, you can identify the destabilization of meaning and the irony of multiple levels of experience setting foot on each of those continents. You could also call it a collage, but you might be wrong. John is an incisive thinker and encouraged that clarity in his students. He is passionately dedicated to curiosity and learning. An artist with Big Ideas he is also devastatingly witty and an ardent Celtics fan.

John Holland’s website: www.chocolateear.com

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LOWRY BURGESS Professor SIM Faculty 1981–1989

Lowry Burgess was the creator of the first official nonscientific payload and artwork flown into outer space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. He initiated the Master of Fine Art (MFA) program in 1981. He brought science collaborators from the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology to SIM. Melding scientific inquiry and artistic expression elegantly and intelligently, he pioneered the Space Art movement. Burgess taught color theory to freshman at MassArt and offered a non-traditional and eye-opening experience to students. In his class, he went beyond color wheel and Pantone swatch studies. His students worked with ideas, memories, and spiritual concepts of color in order to understand the topic. While he was in SIM only a few short years, he had a lasting influence.

Lowry passed away in 2020.

Lowry Burgess Foundation website: www.lowryburgessfoundation.org

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DANA MOSER Professor MFA MPA ‘82, SIM Faculty 1986–present

Dana Moser joined the SIM faculty in 1986. The world was going digital, and Dana was riding that motherboard, enlightening students to newfound possibilities. He came with the mind of a scientist, the acuity of a technician, the fierceness of an activist, and the heart of an artist.

His involvement in the Greater Boston arts and queer community extended to his students. He brought new terms to the SIM lexicon as networks were going global and multimedia tools were smaller, faster, and more powerful. In the 1980s Dana collaborated with a number of artists and engineers affiliated with the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT and brought a curriculum that included coding to the SIM Department. MassArt was among the first professional colleges of art and design in the US to have a website at the dawn of the World-Wide Web in the early 90s and MassArt’s first website was designed by students as a project in one of Dana’s SIM courses. His work and professorial style never veers into the didactic, but is firmly grounded in the changing world we live in. Over the years, Dana has been the department chair several times and has seen SIM enrollment grow from 25 students to over 100.

Dana Moser’s website: www.curiousart.org

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CURRENT FACULTY DANA MOSER

MFA MPA ‘82 SIM Faculty 1986–present

NITA STURIALE

BFA SIM ‘90 Professor 2000–present

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ELAINE BUCKHOLTZ

Professor 2010–present

MAX AZANOW

BFA SIM ‘85 Adjunct Faculty 1993–present Studio Manager 2011–present

ANTONY FLACKETT

MFA SIM ‘95 AV Manager and Adjunct Faculty 1995–present

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ERIC FREEMAN

MFA SIM ‘05 Studio Manager and Adjunct Faculty 2006–present

SIM FACULTY AND STAFF 1970–PRESENT HARRIS BARRON

ELLEN ROTHENBERG

BFA Ceramics ‘54 Professor Emeritus 1969–1988 Harris passed away in 2017

MFA MPA ‘78 Visiting Lecturer 1989–1993

LEILA DAW

ROS BARRON

Professor 1990–2000

BFA Ceramics ‘54 SIM Advisor and Creative Co-Director of ZONE Theater

MAX AZANOW

BFA SIM ‘85 Adjunct Faculty 1993–present Studio Manager 2011–present

JOE UPHAM Studio Manager 1970–1974

JACQUELINE CASSELLY

PAUL EARLS

Department Assistant 1996–2020

Adjunct Faculty early 1970s

ANTONY FLACKETT

DONALD BURGY

MFA SIM ‘95 AV Manager and Adjunct Faculty 1995–present

Professor Emeritus 1974–2001

RICHARD COLLIER

NITA STURIALE

Studio Manager 1974–1978

BFA SIM ‘90 Professor 2000–present

DAWN KRAMER

Professor Emeritus 1976–2014

COREY SMITHSON

BRUCE ROBERT BOWEN

Studio Manager and Adjunct Faculty 2001–2006

BFA SIM ‘74 Studio Manager 1978–2010

DENISE MARIKA

JOHN HOLLAND Professor Emeritus 1980–2009

MFA Program Coordinator 2005–2014 Denise passed away in 2018

LOWRY BURGESS

ERIC FREEMAN

MFA SIM ‘05 Studio Manager and Adjunct Faculty 2006–present

Professor 1981–1989 Lowry passed away in 2020

DANA MOSER

KIANGA FORD

MFA MPA ‘82 SIM Faculty 1986–present

Associate Professor 2006–2009

ELAINE BUCKHOLTZ

FRED WOLFLINK

Professor 2010–present

MFA MPA ‘85 Electronic Projects Guru 1986–present

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HEIDI KAYSER

BFA SIM ‘05 Adjunct Faculty 2010

SANDRINE SCHAEFER Adjunct Faculty 2013–2021

BEN BIGELOW Assistant Professor 2014–2015

JIMENA BERMEJO

MFA SIM ‘09 Adjunct Faculty 2015–2018

DANA COLLEY

BFA SIM ‘20 Adjunct Faculty 2015

JUAN OBANDO Professor 2015–2022

TOMASHI JACKSON Assistant Professor 2017–2018

DARREN COLE

MFA F/V ‘16 Assistant Professor 2018–2019

ELIZABETH MEZZACAPPA BFA F/V ‘10 Department Assistant 2020–present

CRYSTAL BI

MFA DMI ‘22 Assistant Professor 2022–2023

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FROM PEDAGOGY AND COMMUNITY 98

THE

CONCEPTUAL ART 154

MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY

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MUSIC AND SOUND

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AR CHIVES PERFORMANCE AND THE BODY

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In the following pages you will see images from the SIM

Archive that provide a glimpse at the shared experiences of SIM students and audiences over the years. We’ve organized these images into 6 categories: Pedagogy and Community; Conceptual Art; Media and Technology; Music and Sound;

Performance and the Body; Eventworks Festival; and Godine Family Gallery. Each section highlights a selection of

alumni that embody the categorical themes in a snapshot.

There are hundreds of SIM alumni that we would love to include. Each and every one of us.

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“Shared experience creates community, and community has the potential to alter the landscape.”

— Harris Barron Founder, Studio for Interrelated Media

PEDA GOGY AND COMM UNITY

“Shared experience creates community, and community

has the potential to alter the landscape.” Meaningful

interdisciplinary artistic practice depends on conversation between diverse beings. Radical acceptance, honesty,

tolerance, curiosity, and generosity are required for

collaboration, navigating conflict, and learning new ways of doing things. The Studio for Interrelated Media has

been a laboratory for holding these ideals in place for

new cohorts of students to try them out semester after

semester. Lighting designers brainstorm with poets.

Sculptors design alongside fashion designers. Public

speakers describe the concepts of graphic designers.

Programmers realize the dreams of painters. This exchange occurs within an educational petri dish catalyzed by a

freedom of exchange and permission that can often cause some trouble.

Over the years the administration’s filing cabinets

have been stuffed with letters of both complaints and

rebuttals triggered by many exhibits, performances, and events that demonstrate the risk, conflict, and debate

inherent in fostering a radical learning community. The

documents reveal how discomfort and conflict are not only byproducts but necessary components of a democratic and

open approach to artistic and pedagogical experimentation.

Self-governance, individual agency, civic society, and

personal responsibility are intertwined within an academic

structure. Skills are demonstrated, explained, and

practiced. The whole of SIM, over the last 50+ years, is

made up of a series of temporary communities within which

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individuals make lifetime friends and chosen family — all while they experiment with their minds, bodies, and

materials, learn how to design and hang theater lights,

edit video and sound, write proposals, and construct

immersive experiences. Community is pedagogy.

For many young artists the idea that their artistic

expression can impact “the landscape” is a new idea. As

Alex Nally (BFA SIM ‘16), now Assistant General Counsel at

the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, recalls,

“I remember the exact moment sitting at one of those

rectangular folding tables in North 181 when I first heard the words ‘social practice’ spoken by Professor Elaine

Buckholtz and realized I could use art as a vehicle for

social change.”

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JACK PIERSON BFA SIM ‘86

Jack exemplifies the potential of the Studio for Interrelated Media’s explicit balancing act between supporting an artist’s independent practice alongside its social, collaborative, and civic connective tissue. Pierson’s time in the Studio for Interrelated Media is a foundational aspect of a career that has always used a variety of media to explore the performative aspects of art making and life. During his years in SIM, he produced and promoted performances by his MassArt colleagues as well as others in the Boston performance community. His own magnum opus, entitled Teenage Face is legendary and ruined the reputation of many of those who took part in it.

Pierson’s move to New York City saw the evolution of staging in his work. Depicting recollections of autobiographical nights out and days in the studio, he constructed melancholic sets of half-remembered experiences and occasional, ironic gestures of self-portraiture. His collagist approach also applies to his photography and ongoing accumulations of imagery, which evoke shared notions of reminiscence and desire. His first word sculptures, composed of discarded signage letters found on the streets of New York’s East Village, question what is staged and what is casual, a theme that is unquestionably his own, in which material, object, subject, fragment, and life all coalesce. Pierson’s work is found in major public collections all over the world, to name just a few: CAPC Bordeaux, France; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, USA. Jack Pierson’s website: www.jackpiersonstudio.com

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DANNY MYDLACK BFA SIM ‘91

With his tall lanky build and his seriousness in holding his accordion that you could never quite tell was ironic or not, Danny Mydlack was a study in contradictions. He had an urgency as a student, grappling early on with the concepts of optimum environments for learning, what is meant by structure, and how to thrive in a classroom that defines it loosely. It became, in some ways, his lifelong work. Before becoming a professor, he spent fifteen years as an independent media producer in New York and Hollywood. He wrote, performed, and produced off-Broadway, winning a number of grants and awards, touring across the US and Europe, and opening at Radio City Music Hall. He now teaches at Towson University in Maryland. Acknowledging that resolving these questions in traditional scholastic settings is prickly, he says it could be as simple as giving the learner their time back in the proportion to which they want it. Sometimes professors must get out of the way. He and Burgy went around and around these questions. He tells a story where Burgy came up to him in the hall outside of Space 46 — a place where many insights were imparted — and said to him, “Structure is just process viewed from a distance.”

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Order Idea #1 Observe the order of yourself at several levels of magnitude:

Atom Molecule Cell Organ Organism Society Species Select one aspect of organization and map it at each level.

Design the maps’ symbols, orientation, and projection to be constant. Scale will very with level change.

The idea will be complete when the maps of all levels are in order.

— Donald Burgy SIM Professor Emeritus

CON CEP TUAL A R T

The early evolution of the SIM program was deeply influenced by the growing Conceptual Art movement of the late 60s

as defined by artists, critics, and artist groups such as

Fluxus, members of the Art & Language collaborative (Terry

Smith, Ian Burn, Mel Ramsden), Lucy Lippard, Joseph Kosuth, Doug Huebler, and SIM’s own Donald Burgy — to name a few.

In 1974, less than five years after Harris Barron secured the new SIM Program at MassArt, Art Forum published an

article about Burgy, securing his position as one of the

founding artists of the Conceptual Art movement in

the United States. It was also the year that Professor

Burgy was hired as SIM’s second full time faculty member

solidifying SIM’s foundational commitment to concept-based creative practice. Burgy’s Nature, Form, Analysis and

Paleolithic Art courses impacted generations of students, enabling us to shift our perspectives on what we see and

how we understand.

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The Conceptual Art movement was a radical departure from a materials-based practice in visual art and introduced

the use of language as an essential element to visual art practice. Since the curricular foundation of SIM

was explicitly designed to focus on the combination

of light, sound, and time, rather than materials and/or

specific media, SIM was a natural laboratory for the

teaching, learning, and creating of conceptual art. Ideas

and experience became the artistic medium for SIM students

to represent, shape, and produce. Beginning in the 80s

through the 2000s, Donald Burgy, John Holland, Margot Anne Kelley (MFA MPA), and Nita Sturiale traded off teaching

the course Nature, Science, and Art. The syllabus designed to interweave students’ curiosities and understandings of natural phenomena alongside artistic invention.

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recently, with courses like Observation, Data and Art

and Elaine Buckholtz’s course Mining Meaning, the SIM

curriculum continues to challenge students to articulate

their ideas through research, conversation, public

presentation, prototyping, and experimentation in order to

identify the best medium to fully realize their concepts.

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ELLEN ROTHENBERG MFA MPA ‘78

Ellen Rothenberg’s work is grounded in the knowledge of how images shape our understanding of current and historical events. In these destabilized times, Rothenberg’s installations and collaborative public projects address issues of migration, electoral activism, and the future of work. Living and working between Chicago, where she teaches at the School of the Art Institute, and Berlin, Rothenberg’s work is recognized internationally. As an MFA student at MassArt, Ellen performed on crowded city sidewalks and in subway stations, at the Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Boston Film and Video Foundation, collaborating with experimental filmmakers Daniel Eisenberg and MassArt colleague, Mark Lapore. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Rose Art Museum. “My experience as a student and lecturer in the MFA Program at MassArt was radicalizing and clearly delineated the necessity of taking a political stand.” SIM continues to be a fertile ground for discussion on the intersections of art and politics.

Ellen Rothenberg’s website: www.ellenrothenberg.com

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GAIL WIGHT BFA SIM ‘88

SIM has, since its inception, defied definition, specialization, and even categorization. So, it’s no surprise that one of our most celebrated alumnae align with those freedoms. Gail Wight’s work is exquisitely crafted, but that is where the thumbprint ends. Her imagination knows no bounds. Video, electronic sculptures, interactive sculptures, “live” mediums, drawing, prints, photos, text, and performance art all roil with her inquisitive nature. Evolution, chemistry, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence are but a sampling of her subjects of inquiry. Like her early black velvet painting, Ontological Roadmap, in which she outlines a synapse map with a “you are here” arrow, or her later Rodentia Chamber Orchestra, where mice in a sleek collection of enclosures play scaled down instruments, her work is infused with quirky humor. She exhibits internationally, and, for the greater good, teaches at Stanford University.

Her art-making trajectory combines a deep understanding of technology, science, and culture, which she counters with a healthy dose of skepticism and philosophy. While a student in SIM, these themes found expresssion in her 1986 piece, Digital Rohm, a computer pogram written to read tarot for individuals; a response to Joseph Weizenbaum’s “Eliza” program.

Gail Wight’s website: www.gailwight.com

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MAURA JASPER BFA SIM ‘05, MFA SIM ‘08

Maura Jasper has taught at Ball State University and Skidmore College. Without hesitation she says SIM has influenced her teaching. As the pandemic and neo-fascist politics have changed our society, so too have they changed artistic practice and the ways in which we speak about it. Maura sees students needing more structure. It’s not bad or good, it just is. She calls upon her students to show up, even when they don’t know what they are doing. When students show up, they are accountable to one another, eschewing a hierarchical structure to make room for collective problem solving, empowerment, and creating ownership of their own experience. While she believes in and teaches artistic rigor, there is also this sense of freedom handed from the firm sweaty palm of SIM. And with that juicy soup of freedom, there is also a container. Things can happen inside the fence. And the fence can be moved all the time.

The container needs to change shape, and the shape needs to be determined by the people inside of it. Maura started challenging containers while an undergraduate student in SIM when she presented A Study on the Rate of Decay, which included a display of dead rats in the hallway just outside Space 46 for several days in 1987.

Maura Jasper’s website: www.maurajasper.com

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“Multimedia theater with its use of light, color, image projections, mixed voice, and sound tracks in combination with live staged action aims to evoked a direct audience experience which gains impact from its parallel appeal on perspective, intellectual and emotive levels.”

— Harris Barron Sunday Herald Traveler, May 4, 1969

MEDIA AND TECH NO LOGY 203

The SIM Department came into existence at a time when the very definition of what constituted an artistic medium was questioned across the art world. “Happenings,”

performances, and concept art generated conversations about artistic form during a time when consumer electronics were in rapid development. Artistic process, often privileged over finished product, was central to Fluxus, an artistic collaboration (sometimes referred to as “intermedia”)

formed in the early 1960s by George Maciunas, a student

of John Cage. Fluxus attracted several artists such as Nam June Paik who actively blurred the lines between art and technological experimentation.

Harris Barron was interested in the new possibilities that electronic media brought to creative expression. Another

important influence in the arts of the time was Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), a non-profit organization established in NYC in 1967 which fostered collaboration between artists and engineers. The E.A.T. founders,

filmmaker Julie Martin, engineers Billy Klüver and Fred

Waldhauer, and the artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert

Whitman, shepherded a number of groundbreaking performances that incorporated new electronic technology. It was in this artistic climate that the SIM Department was born.

Creating a new department within the Massachusetts College

of Art of 1969 which focused on integrating new technologies was challenging, as there was no budget for acquiring the

tools to support it. Harris overcame this hurdle by simply making the materials and equipment of ZONE available to

students. This was initially an entirely analog investment, as digital equipment was not yet available in consumer

markets. The Barrons brought in reel-to-reel audio decks, 204

microphones, film cameras, film and slide projectors, video,

and theatrical lighting instruments. A significant amount of ingenuity and resourcefulness was required and taught in those early days. Recordings created in SIM’s first sound studio at the top of the Longwood Theater’s back stairs

needed to be protected from the emergency responder radio chatter since the building was in the center of Boston’s

Longwood medical area. A military-surplus copper screened Faraday cage was installed. This studio was equipped with 2 and 4 track reel-to-reel tape decks, as well as analog

synthesizers by ARP, a Newton, MA company, including both

their 2600 with a keyboard and the 2500 sequencer with racks

of patch cords. (You can still find this ARP in the SIM Sound Studio in the North Building today.)

Students and staff with experience in wiring electrical circuits shared their skills to enable the creation of

installations and set pieces used for live performance.

In this, the department benefited from its location in

Boston, a center for technological innovation. Important cross-fertilization came from interaction with other

institutional resources such as the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT.

The Sony Portapack, the first highly portable and relatively inexpensive video recorder became commercially available

in 1967. By the early 1970s it had become a fixture of the experimental art scene, but it was with great difficulty

that colleges of art and design were able to incorporate it into traditional painting and sculpture programs. At

MassArt however, SIM was already a welcoming home for new technology, and soon after its creation, video became a popular medium for artists in the major.

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This process was repeated with personal computer in the 1980s. As a tool for the desktop publishing revolution, the role of the computer in design and publishing was

clear. And yet, it’s application to the realm of fine art was much less obvious given the limits of early 8-bit computing. Hosting the first studio fine art computer

facility, SIM became the department where art students could explore the use of computers as a medium for

artistic creation. Music composition using MIDI and digital synthesizers became an early focus using Apple IIe and later Macintosh computers.

Over the years, sound art, music, and sound installation have continued to flourish in the department and have

grown in sophistication, keeping pace with the complexity of modern sound studio hardware and software. MassArt’s first webpage began as a SIM class project and Internet interactivity remains an essential educational pathway

for interested students. With the move to the campus on

Huntington Avenue, came the creation of the Pozen Center

for Interrelated Media, which has allowed SIM students to mount large-scale productions with professional lighting, projection, and sound equipment. This has expanded the

number of SIM graduates who have used their training to work professionally in audio and visual production. In the 1990s, adjunct faculty with engineering experience

began teaching the use of computer interfaces for homemade experimental analog circuits and kinetic works, developing a curriculum in computer-controlled devices. This evolved into a twenty-first century course in computer hardware

interfacing and programming called, Electronic Projects for Artists, shepherded by Dana Moser and Fred Wolflink, which take advantage of programmable Microcontollers.

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As the public has come to rely more and more on tech-

nology for daily activities, video projection mapping, virtual/augmented reality have become more common in

traditional gallery exhibitions and theaters. SIM continues to embrace new technological inventions with both playful experimentation and critical reflection that echoes the

program’s foundations. The first time SIM students produced a light, sound, and performance event in the Boston Museum of Science Planetarium Theater was in 1972. In 2013, SIM students returned to Hayden Planetarium with Sentient,

a 30 minute hi-def exploration of sound, animation, and

visual effects. In 2023, SIM includes Immersive Experience

Design as an expanding curricular topic exploring immersive theater, virtual and augmented reality technologies.

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RON WALLACE BFA SIM ‘77

Ron Wallace committed his whole heart and mind to projects and people he approached. Soft-spoken, kind, brilliant, and mindful, he was an art hero of SIM. Our community always involves alumni guiding and befriending students. Ron took this to heart, and took many of us on his Emerald Necklace walks — his art. These walks could take all day, during which long, languid, profound one-on-one conversations ensued. Even when ALS began to steal his body, he remained grateful and engaged, and would visit the Olmstead gem in his wheelchair.

Ron’s early work applied programmatic approaches to script writing and performance design. He was an early adopter of sound, video, and web technologies. He collaborated with Ros Barron, was an Emmy Award-winning computer engineer, and had a fruitful career at Avid working on cutting-edge video editing technology.

Ron took his final walk in 2015.

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CHRISTIAN MARCLAY BFA SIM ‘80

A celebrity in the art world, Christian Marclay was booted out of the Sculpture department because he was told that what he was creating was not sculpture. Harris and SIM opened their arms to him, where he thrived in the optimal ecosystem for artistic freedom and encouragement. He went on to win the Gold Lion, the top prize at the 2011 Venice Biennale, sometimes described as the “Art Olympics.” His colossal film/video, musical work The Clock runs for 24 hours. A brilliantly cut montage of clips from films that show time, synchronized with real time — it is mesmerizing.

One needs to clear their entire day to see it. Many venues, like the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston have held overnight events to showcase the work. Over the course of his career, Marclay has raised visual, audio, and material sampling to a high art form, and continues to formalize experimentation at a master level today. Marclay was an Eventworks Producer in 1980 and received MassArt’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2006.

Christian Marclay is represented by Paula Cooper Gallery: www.paulacoopergallery.com

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LINA MARIA GIRALDO BFA SIM ‘06

Lina Maria Giraldo is a Colombian-born designer, interactive media artist, and storyteller with a civic media, art, and technology background. As a student, Giraldo was the first Godine Gallery Manager in 2005. Her experience as an immigrant and skill as a storyteller formed the DNA of the Gallery as a public space with a newfound sensitivity to public exposure, marginalized perspectives, and multi-generational audiences. Giraldo told us “I experienced what it means to build something over the long run and feel the pressure that I was the first one to make it right. And make it right from a story-telling perspective. It’s not about how the exhibition looks, because anyone can do that, but it’s about whether or not a story is meaningful and that it is connected to how the students in SIM are represented.” Giraldo is currently an Assistant Professor of Data Visualization in the Journalism Department at Emerson College. Her work focuses on interactive storytelling for social change through immersive tools and research. It explores questions related to identity, focusing on Latino and Haitian experiences in the US and the environmental impact of consumption, which has included projects focusing on electronic waste through the power of collective storytelling. She likes to think of her work as a visual tool with an educational and civic purpose.

Lina Maria Giraldo’s website: www.linamariagiraldo.com

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“The department’s first sound adjunct faculty member was the MIT/CAVS fellow, composer Paul Earls, who with fellow composers, Lyle Davidson and Joyce Mekeel, performed a number of pieces with MassArt student performers in the 1970s, including ‘Kisses and Kazoos’ at the first Eventworks.”

— Joel Rubin Founder of Eventworks Festival

M U SIC AND

S O U D N

From the earliest years of the Studio for Interrelated

Media, music and sound have played a critical role in the

realization of immersive art forms that engage all five senses. Eventworks founder Joel Rubin remembers, “The

department’s first sound adjunct faculty member was the MIT/

CAVS fellow, composer Paul Earls, who with fellow composers,

Lyle Davidson and Joyce Mekeel, performed a number of pieces with MassArt student performers in the 1970s, including

“Kisses and Kazoos” at the first “Eventworks.” With the first Eventworks Festival in 1977, SIM became a significant venue

for both local and touring musicians in Boston, particularly for burgeoning genres like post-punk and electronic music.

Over time, sound art developed into a genre of its own right

within the program. Students utilized early synthesizers,

reel-to-reel tape recorders, and musique concrete strategies that saw the auditory potential of everything from

sheet metal to oil drums and typewriters to create live, experimental compositions.

Professor Emeritus John Holland founded the American Sound Group in 1974, which held residence at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design from 1975 to 1985. This

collaborative regularly composed, choreographed, and

performed original experimental sound works that laid the

groundwork for SIM’s Sound curriculum for years to come.

Holland joined the SIM Faculty in 1980 and led the

development of SIM’s Sound curriculum until his retirement

in 2009. The current state of the SIM Sound curriculum

includes the course Beat Research, designed and taught by Antony Flackett, a course born out of Holland’s sound

studio DNA but infused with hip hop, rap, and music video

authoring and remains one of the most popular and longest

running courses in the SIM curriculum. Eric Freeman keeps 274

our sound studios functioning and up to date and annually offers a course in Sound Studio techniques, while Elaine Buckholtz often teaches a Sound Performance course.

SIM continues to be a repository for music and sound

experimentation. Every discipline that falls under these

categories is explored in the department by one student

or another. In any given sound class, there may be a poet,

music producer, rapper, performance artist, folk musician,

beat maker, VJ, DJ, or visual artist. Given this diversity

of interest, classes are approached as laboratories for

creating sound. This makes for a wonderful environment for

cross-pollination and experimentation. Students expand their palette of references and explore new modalities. Live

performance and public speaking as well as collaboration and

skill-sharing are significant aspects of class activity. Even with their wide variety of sensibilities and disciplines,

students are tremendously supportive of one another’s work.

Of note is the close relationship between music, sound art,

and zine culture. SIM students have a history of creating posters, pamphlets, handouts, zines, as well as album,

cassette tape, and CD art. Over the years, underground, punk, and political activist aesthetics along with the

availability of cheap reproduction technology have inspired countless SIM students to publish visual components of

their sound.

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DANA COLLEY BFA SIM ‘11

Visual artist and iconoclastic saxophonist Dana Colley co-founded the band Morphine in 1989 with front-man Mark Sandman.

They both had played in other bands in the Boston music scene.

With Morphine, they hit on a unique sound and the world took notice. The band was signed to Rykodisc and then Dreamworks Records. They toured globally. During a show in Palestrina, Italy, Mark collapsed on stage, dying of a heart attack. A serious blow at the height of their popularity. Dana, along with surviving band members Billy Conway and Jerome Deupree, formed a nine-piece band, Orchestra Morphine to tour behind their posthumous final album, The Night. He has added his musical voice to a myriad of recordings and live projects. In 2014, Jeremy Lyons joined Dana and Jerome in a trio called Vapors of Morphine.

They play original material and keep the love going for the Morphine catalog, delighting devoted fans. SIM was lucky to have Dana as a student from 1980-85, a returning student in 2010, and an adjunct instructor of Sound Performance in 2015.

My interest in drawing brought me to Massachusetts College of Art after high school. There I became exposed to a variety of artistic expressions. I gravitated to the Studio of Interrelated Media (SIM). SIM was a performance art department. The elements of art were examined, light, sound, motion, time. There were no lines connecting Art with Music because they are one in the same. The difference seems to be boiled down to ... how is the art documented? Can you see it on a page or hear it in a room?

Can you put it on a wall or put it on a turntable and listen in your living room? Do you pay a dollar to stand in front of it? Or do you walk right over it on your way to work? How we interact with the information is as much the art form as the work itself.

From www.blues.gr/profiles/blogs/q-a-with-saxophonistvisualartist-dana-colley-one-of-the-most Vapors of Morphine website: www.vaporsofmorphine.com

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PAPER RADIO BEN JONES BFA SIM ‘99 CHRIS FORGUES BFA SIM ‘01 We are including Ben and Chris’ Paper Radio zine collaboration in the Music and Sound section because of the inextricable link between aesthetics and sound that has remained a consistent theme within the SIM program. The journal Art in America has dubbed Ben Jones and Christopher Forgues as “The two most important cartoonists of their generation.” The Paper Radio name came from Forgues’ experiments with building handmade radios and the idea of a paper object “broadcasting” ideas on a regular basis. They were deeply influenced by the music, art, graphic design, cartoons, performances, and energy emitting from Fort Thunder, a live/art space established in Providence by Mat Brinkman and Brian Chippendale, founders of the noise band Thunderbolt.

Forgues and Jones, met as students in the Massachusetts College of Art and Design’s Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM) program, an experimental course of individualized study.

Forgues remembers Jones as a guy with a weird haircut (“even for art school”) and sums up their differences as, “He was a hippie and I was a punk.” While in a previous generation such differing subcultural allegiances may have been an obstacle to productive collaboration, within SIM’s media lab and silkscreen studio, “punk” and “hippie” could meld into something new. As Jones recalls: As soon as I met CF ... we set up an appointment to meet again — a play date. I went over to his house, he was like, “Here it is, this is Fort Thunder, this is the Lightning Bolt/Forcefield seven-inch.” He played it for me. “These are the zines.” And then he looked me in the eyes and I was like, “Alright, I’m ready to devote my life to this.

I’ve been waiting 21–22 years for this and you’ve shown me the Holy Grail, what do we do now?” And he was like, “This is what we should do ... let’s do this Paper Radio thing.”

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Jones and Forgues found their own ways into making comics, but neither made a hierarchical distinction between mediums.

The idea of being an artist seemed absurd. Art seemed like the past, and a zine was the present — a way to proceed. Everything was fair game, except perhaps the remote-seeming New York art world. As Forgues recalls, “The idea of being an artist seemed absurd.” The venues, audiences, and markets for gallery art appeared totally foreign. “I’m going to do an installation?

Where? I’m gonna paint on canvas? How? Where am I gonna show?

At a coffee shop? Art seemed like the past, and a zine was the present and tangible... a way to proceed.”

Quotes are from the article “Punk and Hippie” in Art in America by Dan Nadel, April 28, 2016.

Chris Forgues’ website: www.333cf.org Ben Jones’ website: www.benjones.info

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“How do you capture the physical energy and weight of the live dancer in video? How can you liberate the dancer from gravity through video techniques?”

— Dawn Kramer SIM Professor Emeritus

PER FOR MANCE AND BO THE D Y 345

In 1976, Don Burgy hired Dawn Kramer at 1/5 time to

teach Movement Lab for SIM. Emanating from SIM’s ZONE

Theater DNA, movement as an artistic medium was a natural curricular priority. Kramer brought her company Dance

Collective to SIM as artists-in-residence. After a run in

Space 46 and the Longwood Theater, Kramer’s Housewares

production toured to New York City and Jacob’s Pillow,

bringing along SIM students with it. Kramer choreographed

Walter’s Dream on MassArt students for Harris Barron’s

Flight show in 1978, and her students performed for the

grand opening of the Pozen Center for Interrelated Media in

the North Building on Tetlow Street in 2004.

In 1980, WGBH New Television Workshop commissioned Kramer

to choregraph and film Imaginary Crossing. Subsequently, she

co-taught Performance in Videospace, first with Wilson Chao, a video pioneer, and then with Sylvia Morrison Wilson,

Antony Flackett, and Denise Marika. The combination of

body, movement, and video is still an essential element

of the SIM curriculum and interconnects with other

curricular topics in a myriad of ways. Responding to the

needs of MassArt students, Dawn created several courses: Choreography and Performance, Projects in Choreography/

Performance, Contemporary Dance Techniques, and On the Spot

(improvisation in moving, sounding and speaking). Jimena Bermejo (MFA SIM ‘09) added her spin to the curriculum

between 2013–19 as an adjunct professor before directing

the Dance Program at College of the Holy Cross.

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Drag, feminist body art, body modification, and spoken

word have all flourished in the SIM program over the years.

From 2013–2021, Sandrine Schaefer shaped several years of performance art education as an adjunct with the courses

Performance Art Fundamentals and Advanced Performance Art.

Schaefer also strengthened SIM’s long-running relationship with the Mobius Artists Group, founded in 1975 in Boston,

recognized as one of the seminal alternative artist-run

organizations in the US. More recently, Elaine Buckholtz’s Experimental Ensembles course has once again re-imagined

SIM’s movement curriculum with site-specific, form-

questioning collaborative experiences. SIM consistently

invites movers and choreographers as visiting artists and guest faculty.

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RICHARD STREITMATTER-TRAN BFA SIM ‘03

2012 awardee of the MassArt Distinguished Alumni Award, Streitmatter-Tran is busy. In the classic SIM approach, his “works” tab on his website includes sculpture, painting, drawing, performance, photography, conceptual art, new media, and the wonderfully vulnerable, “unrealized.” During his time in SIM his performances were visceral, elemental works that used his body. Responding to the horrific images emerging from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, Gitmo/Satchmo involved him carving “No Exit” into his chest with a box cutter. He also stitched his lips together. The day after the 9/11 attacks, Streitmatter-Tran projected the non-stop news images onto his body while suturing his lips into a painful silence a second time. Well-informed, engaged, and unafraid, he says he owes a debt to SIM. He relocated to Vietnam in 2003, and formed ProjectOne, one of the country’s earliest performance art collectives based in Saigon. Two years later he was a founding member of Mogas Station, a group of international artists and architects based in Ho Chi Minh City. He works now in sculpture, painting, and drawing, and teaches Art and Media Studies at Fulbright University in Ho Chi Minh City.

Streitmatter-Tran is represented by the de Sarthe Gallery in Hong Kong and Vin Gallery in Ho Chi Minh City.

Richard Streitmatter-Tran’s website: www.diacritic.org

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BRIAN MCCOOK BFA SIM ‘05

Brian McCook is known by his drag persona Yekaterina Petrovna Zamolodchikova, or simply, Katya. SIM has always had a queer streak, so it is no surprise that it would spawn a drag queen star. Even though McCook is Irish, not Russian, they worked at learning the language and perfecting the accent. Katya has appeared multiple times on RuPaul’s Drag Race and other TV shows including, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee and the Boulet Brothers’ Dragula. In June 2019, a panel of judges from New York Magazine placed Katya on their list of “The Most Powerful Drag Queens in America.” She is the winner of three Webby awards in 2022 and travels the world performing for packed audiences. Brian birthed Katya during a SIM Major Studio Critique with the assistance of Movement Professor Dawn Kramer acting as doula. Katya grew up on the stage of Jacques Cabaret in Boston’s theater district.

Brian McCook’s website: www.welovekatya.com

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CORINNE SPENCER SIM ‘10 BFA

SIM alumnae all deserve accolades. They are brave creators of magic and knowledge, free expression, and wild intelligence.

Still, there are art stars that graduate from SIM with a clarion artistic voice that make us straighten our spine.

Corrine Spencer is one such artist. Her work is video-based, moving images that are luscious in every frame. She describes her art as “rooted in the Black feminine body as it moves through space, unbound by time and history.” It is multimedia of the highest caliber, using dance, theater, performance art, film, and sound. Each of these mediums is strong and could stand on their own, but together they are a portal to a world beyond words. Spencer creates interior landscapes where “the Black feminine body becomes the container of the universe.”

Every artistic choice is perfectly chosen, serving up both mystery and magic.

Corinne Spencer’s website: www.corinnespencer.com

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“I am thankful for the tenacity to believe that something that people keep telling you is “unattainable” is DOABLE. Go ask questions, let those questioned answer them. Need money for a project? ASK! Leave it to them to say yes or no!”

— san shoppell SIM Alum ‘84

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EVENT WORKS FEST IVAL

The annual, student-run Eventworks Festival was born out of curiosity. Joel Rubin produced the first in 1977 in

the Overland Building (MassArt’s temporary annex space on Fenway’s Overland Street), in an effort to connect

with the greater community and discover who in the Boston music scene was exploring similar pathways. He said

that performers were redefining aesthetics according to

what was irritating, pleasant, unpleasant, and/or ugly.

Broadening this aesthetic dipped into dangerous territory.

san shoppell, now a professional chef and political

candidate, produced the festival in 1983 and 1984 after acting as under-study to James Williams in 1982 — the

same year that presented Chris Burden (who, in 1971, as

performance art, shot himself in the arm). shoppell was

fired up by Alex Grey’s performance. After an hour of Grey

tediously spinning on a stretcher powered by a two-stroke

engine, it sped up uncontrollably and came loose, careening

into the audience. In those moments shoppell became a producer­­ — noticing the dangers, exits, details, and possibilities. shoppell reflects:

I am thankful for the tenacity to believe that

something that people keep telling you is “unattainable”

is DOABLE. Go ask questions, let those questioned

answer them. Need money for a project? ASK! Leave it

to them to say yes or no! Run for public office? Ask

the voters to elect you! The skills I walked away with after producing Eventworks are: being ridiculously

organized (with paperwork, time and people); being

able to delegate duties and the importance of

teamwork; effective communication; and accountability.

AND I keep seeing the world of endless possibilities all around me.

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Improvisation, spontaneity, and the time-based feast of catharsis defined the substance of performance art in a

licentious atmosphere. It was an exciting time in SIM.

With his ZONE Theater experience, Harris Barron mentored

students and facilitated networking opportunities with

SIM alumni. SIM has always been more than a department or a program. It is a culture all its own. Eventworks takes

on the tenor of the students producing it in their year.

Students are empowered to contact and contract performers,

form a production team, as well as promote and present

annual slates of multi-disciplinary performers. Storied artists have participated, and continue to participate, putting SIM on the map that traces the timeline of

performance art from Fluxus and Living Theater, to Carolee

Schneemann and Hip-Hop freestyling. The festival also firmly planted itself among Boston Film and Video Foundation, Mobius, and the Institute of Contemporary Art as a

laboratory for new, visionary work.

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EVENTWORKS PRODUCERS 1977

JOEL RUBIN, MICHELLE SNYDER

1978

JOANNE GUERTIN

1979

TODD MCCONCHIE, MICHAEL SWISHER, SUSI WALSH

1980

DAN KOHNFELDER, CHRISTIAN MARCLAY

1981

INGRID SELL

1982

JAMES WILLIAMS

1983

LAURA HANAFIN, SAN SHOPPELL

1984

KEITH KURMAN, CHRIS SHINE, SAN SHOPPEL,

1985

MAX AZANOW, J. BARR, AUDREY COLBY, SUSAN COUSINEAU

1986

J. BARR, SUSAN COUSINEAU, LAURIE MCKENNA

1987

TONY MACIAG, NITA STURIALE

1988

KATE REDMOND

1989

KEITH GODBOUT, LOLLY LINCOLN, FIDO RODENBECK

1990

FIDO RODENBECK

1991

MAYA HAYUK, JON LUKENOFF, MARK MOREY

1992

MARGO GIBSON

1993

JIM MCKAY

1994

JOSHUA GIGANTINO, BOB O’CONNELL

1995

JASON ARNONE, NICOLE MCDONALD

1996

BOBBY ABATE, MEREDITH DAVIS, SUE GRILLO, CORRINA QUIST

1997

MIA CASTOR, JENNY CIAFONE, LYNNE STABILE

1998

SHARON BENEDICT, CLAY S. FERNALD, VASSILI SOTOS

1999

MARTY ALLEN, STEFAN RAITHER

2000

MAILE COLBERT, ROY SIMMONDS

2001

BRIAN SNIOKAITIS, JASON TALBOT

2002

BEN SISTO, JANELLE VASSEUR

2003

CAROLINE BLOOMBERG, MATT MAZZONE

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2004

PETER BERDOVSKY, SARAH IBRAHIM, SEAN RYLE

2005

MATT HOWELL, JAMIE O’BRIEN, MEGHAN TOMEO

2006

ANDREW DEVECCHIO, EMILY GEANACOPOULOS, CASEY MORAN, KRISTEN PALUMBO

2007

ANDREW DEVECCHIO, DAN DELUCA, SEAN O’BRIEN, GEORGE SCHAROUN, JAKE TURCOTTE

2008

JEREMY COUSINS, TOM FAHEY, DANIEL KENNEY, MARK PERSONS, ANDREA ZAMPITELLA

2009

SANDRA ARONSON, BEN BROWN, PAIGE PETERSON

2010

IAN DELEON, KARA STOKOWSKI

2011

BRENDAN ANTONELLI, SCOTT HADLEY, DYLLAN NGUYEN, ALY STOSZ

2012

JOHNNY CHANTHAVONG, MONICA CHIANG, ALEX KENNEDY, BROOKE SCIBELLI

2013

ANTHONY BLOMLEY-CASSETTA, NELL ROBINSON, NOAH ROSCOE, MERRI SIBLEY

2014

MEGAN DAUPHINAIS, MOLLY RENNIE, KELSEY TROTTIER

2015

LUKE DILLON, CAITLYN POZERSKI, POLINA PROTSENKO

2016

DAN CALLAHAN, JESSIE HANSON (FA15), IMAN LOUIS-JEUNE (SP16), ELIZABETH ST. GERMAIN

2017

MICHEALA BOCCHINO, SAMMI HANSEN

2018

RYANN FELDMAN, KELLI FOX

2019

STEPHANIE AGUAYO, ALI BEAUDETTE (FA18), KAILEY COPPENS

2020

RANDY AGUILAR, MOLLY BREEN, SCHMO EDWARDS, MAGGIE FAVAZZA (SP20), AMBER HAYES

2021

KAY EHWA (SP21), ACE EPSTEIN, JULIA FERRON (FA20), SEN LUC MIGLIN, ALYSSA MOORE (FA20) EVELYN O’DONOGHUE (FA20),

2022

RE DELANEY, ETHAN ROY, MAX RYAN (SP22)

2023

KAY EHWA, OWEN GREENFIELD, EMMY KELLEY, GENESIS LARA, ONYX RAIA, TORI REGO (SP23), MEGAN ROSS, KYRA STUPIK

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“I experienced what it means to build something over the long run and feel the pressure that I was the first one to make it right. And make it right from a story-telling perspective. It’s not about how the exhibition looks, because anyone can do that, but it’s about whether or not a story is meaningful and that it is connected to how the students in SIM are represented.”

— Lina Maria Giraldo First Godine Family Gallery Manager

GODINE FAMILY GALLERY

In 1999, keynote speaker Hillary Clinton kick started our fundraising campaign to renovate North Hall, originally a dining commissary for the Boston Girls Latin School. The

renovation was completed in 2004 and SIM once again had its own performance venue, the Pozen Center for Interrelated Media, a new sound studio, classrooms, offices and a

beautiful open gallery with arched entrances, white walls,

and a cloth ceiling. What was missing was someone to manage this new public gallery space. In the spirit of Eventworks, SIM faculty proposed that SIM students should have the opportunity. Each year a new team of student gallery

managers reinvent what it means to run a gallery. Since

2005, 47 undergraduate students have curated, programed, and installed hundreds of exhibits, artist talks, open

mics, musical performances, and experiments. These students labor far beyond their required academic credit hours to challenge the limitations of the space, support emerging

artists, and experiment with new creative endeavors while learning professional skills. Many have graduated MassArt to become professional curators, scholars, educators, writers, and entrepreneurs.

Lina Maria Giraldo was the first Godine Gallery manager

in 2005. Originally from Colombia, Giraldo was new to the United States. Skilled, responsible, and ambitious from the start, Giraldo shaped the role and reframed how the

SIM department understood its relationship with a general public audience. As Giraldo remembers, “I was figuring

out my place as an immigrant while I was also figuring out

what kinds of stories this new gallery was going to tell.”

Previously, the SIM department was infamous for presenting

provocative content behind the closed doors of a performance venue, within a classroom, or for a niche audience.

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With this new gallery, the students had to think about an open space that was exposed to anyone walking by at any time. Giraldo remembers a particularly large pink penis that triggered a directive for some curtains from the

administration. SIM students cried “Censorship!” but after lengthy conversations with many different members of the community (Art Education, Public Safety, Admissions), a newfound empathy for a diverse audience was embraced.

Every year since, students have reinvented how a white cube can be manipulated. In 2018, Gallery Managers Marisa Cote, Andrew Grimanis, and Felix Kauffman staged a PR stunt that closed the Godine Gallery forever and turned it into the

Godine Vintage Furniture store. In the spring of 2019, Anya Talatinian and Kelli Fox constructed the “(non)sensical

miscommunication device.” Over several days a Rube Goldberg network of pipes, funnels, typewriters, wood, and humans

emerged creating both an instrument of voice processing and critique on communication. The inventiveness and maturity of this show prompted an invitation for these students to travel and install the piece as part of an arts festival in Kazakhstan that summer. 2023 started off with the

opening of VideoStore, a fully immersive experience of an 80s video rental store, complete with student work on VHS

tapes, store employees, and a creepy store manager’s office, by creative directors Megan Ross and Kay Ehwa, with sound design by Owen Greenfield.

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GODINE GALLERY MANAGERS 2005

LINA MARIE GIRALDO

2006

SEAN O’BRIEN

2007

MELANIE BERNIER, PATRICK MULLIGAN, NIKA NUNLEY

2008

ADAM GIANGREGORIO, MEGAN SUTHERLAND

2009

LAUREL O’CONNELL, ALI REID, EVAN F. SMITH

2010

MATTHEW SERPICO, SAMUEL D. TOABE

2011

HEATHER ARMSTRONG, KIMBERLY O’TOOLE

2012

STEPHANIE STREET DVARECKAS

2013

NICOLLETTE BOVAT, TYLER MURPHY

2014

MARISSA BEDARD, ESTHER MOON, ADRIAN SCOTT

2015

JAMIESON EDSON, MILO PROSCIA

2016

EMMA LANCTÔT, RENEE SILVA

2017

JULIAN CINTRON, SHANNON GALLAGHER, ENA KANTARDZIC (FA), MAY SINGLETON-KAHN, IAN SOLASKI (FA)

2018

MARISSA COTE, ANDREW GRIMANIS, FELIX KAUFFMAN

2019

SUNNY CHEN, JILLIANE MORTIMER (FA), JOURNEY TEMPLE (SP), ASH WASILEWSKI

2020

GINA LINDNER, KEAGAN MARCELLA, GABBY SCHAAB

2021

ERICA GAETA, SAM VISCOSI

2022

ISAIAH CRESPO-DOHERTY, A’KNESHA DAVIS-DARKWAH, ADINE RABOY

2023

EMILY CANALES, HANNAH RICHO

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GLOSSARY While we couldn’t include every detail of the Studio for Interrelated Media’s history in this catalog, we’ve added a glossary that references a portion of the cherished vernacular, crazy stories, famous and infamous examples of SIM productions, a few special friends from SIM’s early days, and the beloved spaces that have been oases of creativity for many. Each generation of SIM students have their own unique insider language and specialized references — and that “center of the universe” feeling, that never stops evolving, is what makes this lasting community so captivating.

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#BLAMESIM A hashtag started by SIM Majors Genna Gmeiner and Polina Protsenko in 2016 as part of a group performance that was created within Elaine Buckholtz’s “Experimental Ensemble” class. Participants were stamped on the back of their hands with “BLAMESIM” after being “cleansed” with a lint roller in a tunnel-shaped installation. The hashtag #blamesim has been used on social media ever since.

projects, including simultaneous multi-media performances, audio works in one location acting as audio scores for visual works in the other, and the projection of resonant frequencies of substructures of MassArt’s building being piped into Brown’s architectural spaces, and vice-versa. Some may remember the moment Ron Wallace extinguished a fire during Joel Rubin’s “Paper Piece” in Brown’s Sayles Hall. Rubin unrolled heat sensitive paper and used a propane torch to paint blue drawings with heat, accompanied by ambient sound produced by a synthesizer linked to the motions of the artist.

2D FRUITY Recurring Thursday small group, SIM Alum Shelli Paroline Lamb remembers, “we focused on more traditional 2D work: painting, illustration, comics.”

ART BOX Intrigued by the experimental potential of shared networks, Chris Shine introduced this worldwide art text space in one of John Holland’s classes in 1983. Art Box was a “pre-internet” component of IP Sharp’s IPSANET, an earlier iteration of the internet that began in 1970 as a Mainframe Computer Time Sharing scheme.

4D An abbreviation for 4-dimensional art, which includes 2 and 3 dimensions and time-based expression.

A ALEX GREY A New York based artist who staged radical performances reflecting on death, consciousness, spirituality, and taboo violation in the 1970s and 80s. He was an artist-in-residence in SIM and regularly performed in SIM produced performance programs and events.

AMOEBA (ALL MEDIA OPEN EXCHANGE

BY ARTISTS) An event series in which students from SIM, led by Harris Barron, collaborated and shared space with students and faculty at Wesleyan University, Brown University, and MIT’s Advanced Visual Study Center.

Collaborative events included an exchange with Wesleyan’s Electronic studio on April 11, 1975, and an event series at Brown’s McColl Studio for Electronic Music in May 1975. Student participants include Bruce Bowen, Mark Drobnis, Ralph Iasello, Shelly Laplante, Jane Pavlovich, Joel Rubin, Dennis Volpini, and Ron Wallace. SIM’s collaboration with Brown continued in April 1976, when a stereo telephone was rented to connect the two programs aurally for thirty days, leading to various collaborative intermedia

AUDIO LIGHT A multimedia event in 1977 devised by SIM alumnus Mark Drobnis (1971–75), who at the time was pursuing a graduate degree in the expanded Arts Program at Ohio State University, a program in interdisciplinary and technologybased art founded in the 1960s. Audio Light eventually became a collaboration between Drobnis and students from both Ohio State and MassArt, staged at both institutions as an exchange of ideas and knowledge between the two universities. In Audio Light, a threedimensional matrix of audio and light sources were triggered by participants’ movement through the space, creating a unique environment in which the audience’s interactions with their environment produced a live score.

B BENTMEN Epic theatrical punk noise band that played in the Longwood Theater in 1988, produced

by Eventworks, as part of the Institute of Contemporary Art’s “Static and Interference” Fest. See a recording of this event at www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8oJd1orjXQ.

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BFVF (THE BOSTON FILM & VIDEO FOUNDATION) An artist-run artist-supported organization that worked closely with SIM to present artists working in film and video in the early 1980s. BFVF was a regional arts center whose mission was to encourage and facilitate access to and understanding of film, video, and electronic media as a means of creative expression. BFVF offered programs in education, equipment access, exhibition, and financial and technical assistance.

BIG GROUP/SMALL GROUP In the SIM Major Studio course, the class alternates between “Big Group” and “Small Group” days. On Big Group days, one team of student producers will program, support, and present student work or visiting artist presentations to all SIM majors. On Small Group days up to four teams of student producers will program, support, and present student work in small groups simultaneously in different rooms. All SIM Majors register for this course every semester during their time in the program.

BIG SIM SHOW The original BIG SIM SHOW was 2 weeks of performances, artist talks, and exhibitions produced by san shoppell and Nita Sturiale in 1988, presented primarily within the Longwood Building, to honor SIM Founder Harris Barron.

While never intended to be an ongoing themed production, SIM students have repeated the BIG SIM SHOW concept to the present day, until they produced the END OF BIG SHOW in the fall of 2022.

BLACK BOX A blacked-out room with no furniture that enables flexible stage, sound, and lighting arrangements, allowing for maximum flexibility in the relationship between the artist/performer, objects, and audience.

BLUE LIGHT SPECIAL An evening of performance worked produced by SIM students at the Landsdowne Playhouse in Boston in 1995.

C CABLE SIM students know how to coil all types of cable. Special thanks to Bruce Bowen.

COFFEE CLAMP 27 Sundays at SIM student Mark Morey’s Allston apartment where he and his housemates created opportunities for individuals to explore self-expression and self-development through performance. For many, this was the first time they had performed in front of others. Programs and flyers were printed, coffee was shared, and presentations were teched by Morey. There were cookie, haiku, and surf band contests.

COSTUME SHACK A SIM community closet and collection of tech boxes in the Longwood Building. Inspired years of fun and debauchery. It was primarily a temporary residence for students hard in their luck.

COMPUTER ARTS An academic area of MassArt directed by Hubert Hohn, started in the mid 80s, located on the 7th floor of the Tower Building. Hu had come to MassArt to head Computer Arts after being involved in computer interfaces for artists’ residencies at the Banff Centre in Canada. One of the artists he worked with was John Cage. Dana Moser remembers standing with Cage looking out the 7th floor windows at the Gardner Museum, talking about computers, art, and chance. Moser was originally hired in Computer Arts in 1986 and then joined the SIM faculty in the Media and Performing Arts Department. Computer Arts had a small digital sound studio on the 7th floor that was run by John Holland, while the analog (“reel-to-reel”) sound studio was in Longwood, tended to by Bruce Bowen. In the early days, computer related activities at MassArt were handled

by John Holland, Hubert Hohn, Neil Leonard, Dana Moser, Ron Wallace, and Fred Wolflink.

CRACKATORIUM The colloquial name of the hallway space in the North Building of MassArt’s Huntington Avenue campus, coined as a result of

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“The Loaf” communal celebration event of 1984.

Alison Pilcher remembers, “Mischievous feral artists Gretchen Baer, Robert Brophy, Michael Labonte, Karen Loftus, Richard Murphy and Alison Pilcher, discovered Civil Defense supplies in the basement of the North building.

There was such a tremendous hoard of large rectangular tins of survival crackers, that the artists decided to liberate these ancient supplies from the 1960s. Karen, Gretchen, and Robert created interesting posters, which were posted throughout the campus, and included personal invites in each person’s mailbox in the cafeteria. A giant heaping mound of survival crackers, which had been removed from the tins, smashed against the wall, and dragged into the center of the lobby, as people banged on the tins and other metal, were hosed down and mixed into a loaf. The event was well attended by the entire school. This was the collaborative effort of a group of artists who wanted to unite the school together over something abundant, silly, and fun.” At least one t-shirt with the phrase “I survived the Loaf” remains in existence. Within the MassArt community this space is called “North Crack,” while a similar space in the South Building is now called “South Crack.”

CRITIQUE The exercise of giving feedback to artists about their work. There are many critique methods utilized in SIM classes: one-word responses, written, without the artist present, focused on form, content, or emotional responses, etc.

Students are invited to invent new forms of critique and encouraged to give generously and receive non-defensively.

CRYPT Originally located in the Longwood Building.

The Crypt was the home of equipment storage and sign-out, technical support, and hangout space as well as the office of long time Studio Manager, Bruce Bowen. The Crypt name moved to the first floor of the North building within MassArt’s main campus on Huntington Avenue, then to the back stage of the Tower Auditorium, then to the basement of the North Building. The Crypt is now the SIM Shop.

CYCLORAMA Constructed in 1884, the Cyclorama was originally created to house Paul Dominique Philippoteaux’s panoramic depiction of The Battle of Gettysburg. It is now part of the Boston Center for the Arts and is used as an event, performance, and art installation venue.

Over the years, SIM students have produced many events in the space and have been employed as both techs and event producers.

D DMC (DESIGN AND MEDIA CENTER) Opened in 2016 and replaced the Gym Building. With the DMC, SIM students gained access to flexible project spaces, a huge atrium, and a new sound studio. The Harris and Ros Barron Immersive Experience Design Studio is located on the 3rd floor of the DMC.

E ELECTRONIC PROJECTS LAB A room in the North Building that hosts the current version of the course, Electronic Projects for Artists. This particular course has had a 40+ year evolution and began as ComputerControlled Media taught by Ron Wallace before the era of Arduinos and inexpensive microcontrollers. It involved students soldering and breadboarding sensors that were attached to Apple II’s and IBM PCs. Eventually there were consumer interfaces (especially for Apple hobbyists) for things like MIDI, but in the early days you had to splice connectors attached to the motherboards and write custom code in assembler, C or Basic to interact with hardware.

The first “Electronic Projects Lab” was on the 3rd floor of the Tower Building in an area now used by the Animation Department.

EVENTWORKS An international film and music festival launched in 1977 by SIM student Joel Rubin. It was founded to provide venues for new experimental works and to create a link between MassArt and the professional art world.

Eventworks has presented hundreds of artists working in music, installation, film, video,

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performance, dance, sound, spoken word, and more. Eventworks produces events on MassArt’s campus as well as in theaters, galleries, and cultural centers throughout the metro-Boston area. Each year, the festival reflects the themes and personalities of its production team.

the old East Building of the Huntington Avenue campus. It was a way to provide free lunch to hungry students using student activity fees. Students proposed, prepared and served unique meals, along with music, art and conversation.

F

THE F*CKING BARBIES A performance band founded by Stephen Tashjain, with san shoppell, Christine Zitso, Paul Fitzgerald, Jack Pierson, John Stefanelli, and other guest appearances. The group has performed at numerous spaces in Boston, including the infamous Rathskeller, AKA The Rat, in Kenmore Square. The “musicians” played on pots and pans with an occasional tambourine solo.

FESTIVAL OF NARRATIVES Produced by the 2012 Eventworks team (Johnny Chanthavong, Monica Chiang, Alex Kennedy, Jess Lynch, Brooke Scibelli), this series of events focused on storytelling in many different forms. It included a TEDxMassArt event, story slams, theater productions, and an exhibition at the Piano Factory Gallery in Boston’s South End. FIRST NIGHT BOSTON Founded in 1976 by Zeren Earls, SIM Adjunct Faculty Paul Earls’ wife. Many MassArt students have performed, labored, and volunteered since. Gina Mullen, MassArt Sculpture alum and wife of SIM major Rick Campbell, eventually became First Night Boston’s Production Director in 1998, after working on many First Night projects.

FUGAZI An American post-hardcore band that formed in Washington, D.C. in 1986. The band consists of guitarists and vocalists Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto, bassist Joe Lally, and drummer Brendan Canty. They are noted for their DIY ethical stance, accessible ticket pricing, and contempt for the music industry. They were brought to MassArt and performed in the Tower Gym by Eventworks producers Ben Sisto and Janelle Vasseur in 2001.

FREE LUNCH Started by 3D Major Bill Storz (member of the Bob Jones Experience musical project with Sam Durant, Neil Leonard, Bob Schmitz, and Steve Wight) around 1986 and handed off to David Michael Curry (SIM), with the help of Rich Pontius (Film/Video), and Bill Germann (SIM). Lunches were hosted in the “Men’s Center” room, re-named by Storz next door to the “Women’s Center” room inside

G GENERAL CRITIQUE GROUP Recurring Thursday small group during SIM Major Studio class. Students are invited to present any kind of work with no guiding theme.

GHOST SHIP The artist collective that lived and worked in a warehouse in the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland, California. The warehouse burned down in 2016 during an illegal concert. One of the 36 victims was SIM alum and sound artist, Micah Danemayer. Micah’s family and friends founded a scholarship at MassArt in his name in 2017.

GODINE Short for Godine Family Gallery and the last name of Morton R. Godine, MassArt Dean of Administration (1975–79) and Director of Administration and Finance (1979–82).

In 1982 Godine helped to set up the Massachusetts College of Art Foundation and served as Chair from 1982–87. He was on the college’s Board of Directors from 1984–87 (served as chairman in 1985) and passed in 1988. The Godine Family has donated generously to the college over the years and dedicated the Morton R. Godine Library to MassArt in 1989.

GREEN ROOM/SIM LOUNGE In 2004, this room was originally renovated to be a Theater’s Green Room. The dressing

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INTERDISCIPLINARY In artistic practice, this term refers to the combining and mixing of materials, methods, forms, research, and/or vocabulary from traditionally discrete disciplines. SIM attracts students that have skills and experience in countless practices. They are placed together over the course of the 3-year program; creating a petri dish for intersecting ideas and inventing culture.

rooms were soon transformed into a studio manager office and the SIM Archive. The rest of the space, still green, has a couple of rickety couches, work tables, a couple of desktop computers. It’s used for naps, small group meetings, and a prep room for receptions.

GYM BUILDING Before the Design and Media Center (DMC) renovations that occurred between 2012–16, this space hosted graduation, registration days, rock shows, and even basketball games. MassArt’s basketball team was called the “Easelmen,” and they wore old uniforms found in the building. Fugazi performed in the gym in 2002. The gym basement is where many studios and installation spaces existed, including the squash courts, the shooting range painting studios, and the dance studio.

INTERESTING “My go-to polite phrase when critiquing performances.” Kit Gildea Lord, and others.

K KUIPERDOOM Multi-sensory immersive environment and performance that told the story of space travel created by Dan Callahan, Julian Cintron, and Gabe Goldfarb for the SIM Department show in 2016. Documented by Montana Gulbrand (www.vimeo.com/230658302).

H HAPPENINGS A term coined by artist Allan Kaprow in the late ‘50s. In his lecture “How to Make a Happening” Kaprow established 11 rules for art happenings.

Happenings are unique, unrehearsed events, combining elements of theater, music, visual arts, as well as, tactile and olfactory sensory experience elements, chance, and audience participation. Happenings and the resultant emerging genre of performance art, deeply influenced the formation of the Studio for Interrelated Media.

I ICA (INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART) SIM has a long history of collaborating with the ICA on events and many SIM students and alumni have both exhibited and worked at the ICA’s last two locations—25 Harbor Shore Drive, since 2006 and, before that, 955 Boylston Street, since 1973.

IDEA STICK A term used by Donald Burgy for a hand-rolled combustible shared experience, coined in the Projection Booth of the Longwood Theater.

L LE GROUP A group of MassArt artists and friends, including Gretchen Baer, Robert and Chris Brophy, Michael Labonte, Karen Loftus, Richard Murphy and Alison Pilcher, who collaborated on artwork and socialized together in the early 80s.

LIVE GIRLS An all-femme women’s spoken word show launched in 1999 by Ryan Hodson and Jannelle Codianni. The show featured a regular rotation of MassArt’s top performers and reflected a broad range of styles from rhythmic and reflective to cutting and comedic. After performing to packed shows at MassArt and producing two albums, Ryan and Jannelle embarked on a North East tour, performing at venues such as the Brooklyn Arts Exchange, CBGB’s 313 Gallery, and the ICA Boston.

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LOAD-IN The process of moving equipment and coordinating staging, tech, and installation necessary for a production or event.

THE LOAF See Crackatorium.

LONGWOOD BUILDING Massachusetts College of Art and Design’s building erected in 1929, before the college moved into the old Boston State and Normal School buildings on Huntington Avenue. The Longwood Building was identified as State Surplus Property status in the 90s and a renovated version is now the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. SIM Alum Ron Wallace spearheaded an unsuccessful “Save Longwood” campaign in the 1980s in an effort to register the building with the National Historical Registry. Quotes can still be found chiseled on the building’s façade, capturing its history as art school. “Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the Earth and the Sun.” by Emerson, and “The useful and elegant arts minister to the comfort of man and gladden his eye with beauty.” by Horace Mann.

LONGWOOD THEATER A classic proscenium theater and SIM’s first homebase within Massachusetts College of Art’s Longwood Building. Upon founding the SIM program, Harris moved in with SIM students who cleaned, fixed, and improved the space for use.

P THE PIT The Longwood Theater orchestra pit. In the early days of SIM this space was used for meetings, classes, and performance works.

PROJECTION BOOTH A traditional projection booth located in the back of the Longwood Theater balcony used for film projections onto the Longwood Stage.

Also refers to a secret space within the walls of the booth where ‘idea sticks’ and in-depth discussions were shared.

LUTHER PRICE MassArt Sculpture and Film major who collaborated with many SIM students on events, performance art, musical projects, films, and exhibitions. Before using the name Luther Price, he worked under various pseudonyms, including: Brigk Aethy, Fag, and Tom Rhoads.

He was an experimental filmmaker whose work has been widely screened in the United States and Europe at venues including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the San Francisco Cinematheque.

He was also an adjunct professor at MassArt and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts teaching his popular “Hand-made Films” curriculum. Luther passed away in 2020.

M MANIFESTO A written declaration of the intentions, motives, views, or goals of an artist, collaborative group, or artistic movement.

MEDIA AND PERFORMING ARTS DEPARTMENT (MPA) This department originally combined 3 programs: Photography, Studio for Interrelated Media, and Film/Video. MPA was split into 3 separate departments in 2009.

MULTIMEDIA The use of a variety of artistic or communicative media, such as sound, light, moving image, sculpture, performance, text, and others.

N NAKED PING PONG Performed in 1982 by Donald Burgy, Keith Jones, Rachelle Royer in the lobby between MassArt’s South and North Building, now referred to as “North Crackatorium.”

NORTH SOUND STUDIO Current home of the ARP synthesizer. Available to SIM students for band practice, small group meetings, and personal studio time.

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O

of the studio without requiring a crew. Video tape was originally a reel-to-reel system and then evolved into other formats including VRC, DVC, DVD, DVR. Ros Barron, SIM Co-founder, was an early adopter of the Portapak camera and created several video works using the system as early as 1968.

OMNIBIRTH A birthday party on a date that is the average of all the birthdays of the current SIM student cohort.

ORANGE The color identified with the SIM Department, started by the bright orange spray painted SIM tags that Bruce Bowen stenciled on each and every piece of SIM equipment in the department during his tenure as SIM Studio Manager and keeper of the Crypt.

OVERLAND BUILDING MassArt annex building from the mid-1970s to 1983. This industrial building housed classroom spaces, 3D studio spaces, and a large gallery area. With little administration or security presence, it was the “wild west” of campus life. SIM held a huge send-off party (Goodbye Overland) for the building on the last weekend of occupancy. All ground floor spaces were taken over by students to be used as installation and performance spaces. Many spaces were immersive experiences with color and sound coming at you from all directions. san shoppell co-produced the event with Laura Hanafin and Christine Zitso.

POUNDS OF SOUNDS An art and music event in December of 1981 in Space 46 of MassArt’s Longwood Building, organized by SIM students, san shoppell and Jack Pierson, featuring a mix of live performances, tape recordings, and installations. The event underscored the important relationship among music, particularly punk, with performance and experimental art within the program in the 1980s, a trend which also defined The Boston School that was emerging at the time.

POZEN The Pozen Center for Interrelated Media, first known as North Hall, when was transformed into a flexible performance space in 2004. Originally a commissary for the Girls Latin School. It is the main classroom, homebase, and playground of the Studio for Interrelated Media.

PRESENTATION CREDIT One of the foundational curricular requirements of SIM Major Studio, in which students are required to present their work before a group of peers for discussion and critique. The work can be in any media or form, in progress, or in a final state.

P PERFORMANCE ART Works of art that unfold over time, combining elements of theater, props, body movement, interactivity, and a variety of media for an asynchronous or live audience.

PRODUCER Person(s) responsible for managerial aspects, both financial and artistic, of making a film, video, performance, event, experience or staging.

PINK DINK A series of performances, video screenings, and drag shows highlighting the intersection of art, punk, and queer culture in Boston’s underground art scene of the early 1980s.

PRODUCTION CREDIT One of the foundational curricular requirements of SIM Major Studio, in which students are required to organize and facilitate a big or small group peer critique, skill share, workshop, field trip, faculty presentation, work day, rehearsal, show/exhibit prep, and/or department meeting.

PORTAPAK A heavy 6'' × 18'' × 12'' suitcase that held the workings of a video recording system that was attached to a camera. It was introduced to the market in 1967 and made it possible for a single person to shoot and record video outside

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PUNK ROCK FLEA MARKET Produced by Eventworks Producer Ben Sisto in 2002. The idea was borrowed from Sean Agnew of R5 productions, who was also doing DIY events in Philly. The motto was “Sell anything legal.”

There was a variety of vendors selling zines, original art, records, vintage clothing, VHS tapes, and more. DJs provided sound and Ben’s mom hosted a vegan snacks table. At its largest, the final market hosted 80 tables and 800 attendees.

PUNKT DADA MassArt’s outpost/clubhouse at 256 Hanover Street in the North End where many raucous parties and performances took place in the early 80s.

R R. BERRED OULLETTE An artist-in-residence in SIM from 1982–88, who guided students in the use of theatre and sound technology to develop immersive performance works and staged his own works in collaboration with students each year. Oullette went on to manage sound design for the Hayden Planetarium at the Boston Museum of Science and as a sound engineer for WBUR. SIM students worked with Oullette again in 2013 to produce a video and sound work for the Planetarium screen.

RATS NEST Famed Allston venue/flop pad managed by 10+ years of SIM students and alumni. SIM Alum Michaela (Mike) Bochino took a leadership role for many years and later became a Production Manager at the Boston Center for Arts and its Cyclorama space.

S SENIOR GIFT Since the 80s, SIM faculty have presented personalized and often handmade gifts to each graduating senior during a senior ceremony.

Gifts have ranged from SIM stenciled wrenches, electronic circuits, lightbulbs, t-shirts, puzzles, books, and custom-made SIM certificates, to name a few.

SEX, LOVE, AND PORN GROUP Recurring Thursday Small Group in the 2000s.

SHARED EXPERIENCE CREATES COMMUNITY “Shared Experience Creates Community, and the community has the power to alter the landscape,” written in early documents and on the backstage wall of the Longwood Theater by Harris Barron.

SIM BIG ASS The Studio for Interrelated Media portion of the MassArt All School Show which occurs each spring, including a live event in the Pozen Center as well as installations and gallery exhibits in several locations across campus.

SIM SHOP Previously known as the SIM Crypt. An equipment store room, troubleshooting, reservation and check-out center. The place where magic happens.

SIM SITE SIM was an early adopter of Internet technologies. The program embraced and integrated these technologies into the SIM Department curriculum since before the existence of the Web, going back to the 80s.

The first MassArt web server was created as an initiative of Dana Moser and the SIM Department in the mid-1990s with student participation. In February 2003, students Matt Karl and August “Kai” Kaiser, along with Moser, launched the first version of www.sim. massart.edu, a community contact portal and face book. It is also used to record student presentations and production schedules and share syllabi, calendars, research guides, studio management information, discussion boards, and portfolios. The site was built with an opensource software stack (Linux/Apache/MySql/ PHP) on commodity hardware and had a DNS entry created for it. Over the years, Matt Karl has continually re-written the interface for the SIM website, adapting to the specific needs of our department’s faculty and students. The SIM department emphasizes and promotes student participation, and uses the server to instruct students interested in network interactions and system administration.

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SINGLE CLAP Every Thursday’s SIM Major studio class begins with announcements. Students, faculty, staff, and guests share information about shows, opportunities, invitations to collaborate, and/or ask questions. There are a lot of announcements.

In the mid-2000s someone suggested we clap once in between each. We still do it.

SKUNKPISS Short run zine created by Margaret Bill Codington, Brian Curran (MassArt Alumni Award recipient), Mark Flynn, Jan Arthur Johnson, Magnus Johnstone, Bailey Rosenbaum, and others in the early ‘70s.

SOME INSANE MASSES (S.I.M.) A phrase that was used to refer to SIM community in the 1990s.

SPACE46 The principal classroom and flexible space for SIM located on the second floor of the Longwood Building before MassArt moved to the current collection of buildings on the corner of Longwood and Huntington Avenue in 1990.

Space46 was a “black box” space. The windows had custom made light and sound baffles built

by Bruce Bowen, SIM Alum and Studio Manager.

The room could be configured for multiple stage locations, audience in the round, long tables for dinner parties, etc. Since 2004, the current manifestation of Space 46 has been N181.

SPEED SHOW A series of six shows produced by Michael and Jim McKay during 1991 and 1992 in which film, video, sound, and performance works emphasizing brevity and speed with a runtime of (ideally) less than one minute were shown back-to-back. The final Speed Show at the ICA presented 36 works in 30 minutes.

SPOKEN WORD Genre of performing art focused on speech, reciting poetry, or other compositions intended to be spoken aloud before an audience. May or may not be rehearsed and is often improvised.

Intersects with rap as an artform.

SQUASH COURTS These courts were located in the basement of the Tower Gym before the 2012 demolition and renovations occurred. They were used as installation spaces, ritual alters, studio space, and recreation rooms. Though airless and with limited exits they were well loved.

STAGE FRIGHT GROUP Major Studio small group started by Spencer Murdock and provided support and encouragement to SIM majors interested in live performance.

STEPHEN TASHJIAN (TABOO!) Tashjian attended the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston where he became friends with fellow students Jack Pierson (SIM Alum) and Nan Goldin (a student at the nearby School of the Museum of Fine Arts). Stephen participated in several SIM projects in the early 80s. He moved to New York’s East Village in 1982 and became a regular performer at the Pyramid Club, appearing next to other drag legends like Rupaul and Lady Bunny. Tashjian has painted murals on city buildings and exhibited his paintings in many galleries internationally. Under the name Tabboo!, he designed flyers, record album covers, and advertisements for underground venues. Tashjian continues to perform in New York and exhibits his paintings, most notably a 2006 group show curated by Jack Pierson at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York.

STRIKE What must happen after every event and transforms individuals into community members.

STUDIO FOR INTERRELATED MEDIA (SIM) A verb. The act of immersing oneself into an interdisciplinary studio practice with collaborative community and access to technology and support, to produce and present, to explore, to invent new ideas, and realize them into art and endless possibility.

STUDIO FOR INTERRELATED WRESTLING (SIW) Conceived by SIM student Nick Regan in 2017, featuring professional wrestler Sully Banger. Under the guidance of Max Azanow, an authentic wrestling ring was installed

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in the Pozen Center to stage an evening of competitive wrestling matches. Produced

by Nick Regan, Michaela Bocchino, and Eventworks (Ryann Feldman, Kelli Fox) with support from Rasheed Lapointe. The Felix Kauffman vs.Felix Kauffman match ended up on the sidewalk outside Pozen.

STYLE RIGHTS Part of Eventworks ‘84, a community breakdancing/graffiti event in Boston’s Downtown Crossing, organized by SIM students Chris Shine and san shoppell.

T THIEVES GROTTO Historic basement show venue in Mission Hill drawing national underground acts produced by SIM students Bob Farrell, Alex Kennedy, and Devonshire Yaw in 2014.

TROUBLE The name of a folder in Donald Burgy’s teaching archives from 1983 that includes student letters, complaints, and meeting notes describing transgressions that took place during one of Burgy’s classes. Transgressions include exposure to “Satanic Art,” “destruction of property,” “socially decadent behavior,” and other “dangerous performances done in the name of ‘Art’.”

TUCKER STILLEY Diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), a motor neuron disease in 2005, Tucker lost the use of his limbs, and used a reflective bindi-dot on his forehead to control a complex system of computer technology. Using this technology, Tucker created sounds, images, collages, videos, and “breathtaking images of the frailty and strength of the human condition.”

Before ALS, Tucker worked professionally in Boston as a musician, San Francisco as a bohemian, and Los Angeles as a sound designer and film editor. Tucker was a visionary thinker, a founder of the Turquoise Rain and Shines band during his time as a student in SIM, a beacon of hope and an unstoppable artistic force. Tucker passed away in 2021 after living with ALS for 16 years. You can learn more

about Tucker by listening to this interview: www.humanmedia.org/product/tucker-stilley.

TURQUOISE RAIN AND SHINES The psychedelic country western musical tribe disguised as a cover band with members Max Azanow, Keith Jones, Neil Leonard, Laurie McKenna, M. Lisa Phipps, Tom Rhodes/Luther Price, Tucker Stilley, and Bill Storz. Notable performances include the Natick 4th of July Parade and “The Chair” a rock opera written by the band, performed at the Middle East Club, after which the band dissolved into “The Star Spangled MotherFuckers” also known as “The Neo Hobbyists.”

V THE VERNAL Starting in 1977, an annual performance art, ritual, music and dance party that occurred on the vernal equinox in March. Founded by MassArt Sculpture student Gina Mullen and SIM student Rick Campbell. The concept for the festival was triggered by SIM Professor Donald Burgy who asked Gina to come up with an art form that would go into the future for the longest possible duration based on her relationship with Rick. They decided this artwork should be linked to planetary cycles.

Gina said, “the cardinal points of the year— the two solstices and the two equinoxes—are universally important dates for most religions.

It has to do with our physical realities. We are in this reality, in this world, and we just don’t spend much time considering how it really acts on us.”

W

WALKING ART SIM Alum and performance artist Ron Wallace hosted numerous 8-hour, one-on-one walking events from August to October in 1984. Ron would walk from the Boston Common to Roxbury along the Emerald Necklace. In addition to the participatory performances, Wallace created over 1000 photographs of the park, combining them with aerial photographs to create detailed maps of Boston’s public spaces.

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Z ZONE VISUAL THEATER The experimental immersive theater company founded by Harris and Ros Barron and Alan Finneran in 1967. Much of ZONE’s theater equipment ended up on the shelves of and backstage of many live performances produced

by SIM students.

IMAGE CREDITS Images of documents courtesy of SIM Archives unless otherwise indicated. See following for photo credits. 2 SIM Major Studio, Pozen Center, Boston, MA, 2023. Courtesy of Eric Freeman. 5 SIM Air, Senior Gift, 2015. Courtesy of Nita Sturiale. 9 Harris Barron Teaching, Space 46, Longwood Building. 1971. SIM Archives.

18 Fugazi Poster, Ben Sisto, 2002. Courtesy of Ben Sisto.

CC-BY-SA-NC. 75 Harris in his studio. Harris receiving MassArt Alumni Award with Kurt Steinberg, 2014. The Barron Family in front of Ros’ painting. Harris and Ros Barron with Alan Finneran, co-founder of ZONE. Harris and Ros in Larz Anderson Park. Harris with model airplane. All photos courtesy of Harris and Ros Barron. 77 Harris and Ros in their studio. Ros Barron with infinite reflection. All photos courtesy of Harris and Ros Barron. 79 Donald Burgy, Space 46, Longwood Building, Brookline, MA, 1986. Donald Burgy with Media and Performing Arts Department Students, Longwood Building, Brookline, MA, 1984. Donald Burgy signing SIM Senior Gifts, Space 46, Longwood Building, Brookline, MA, 1989. SIM Archives.

81 Dawn Kramer performing in Housewares, Longwood Theater, Brookline, MA, 1981. Dawn Kramer performing in Rag, Boston Shakespeare Theater, Boston, MA. 1976. Dawn Kramer presenting SIM Senior Gift, Pozen Center, Boston, MA, 2006. All photos courtesy of Dawn Kramer. 83 Bruce Bowen and David Armstrong, Larz Anderson Park, Brookline, MA, 1973. Bruce Bowen with Tutu, Larz Anderson Park, Brookline, MA, 1973. Photos courtesy of Dave Armstrong. Bruce Bowen and Alison Pilcher, Space 46 Hallway, Brookline, MA, 1983. Courtesy of Alison Pilcher. 85 John Holland with early Macintosh Desktop Computer, 1984. John Holland Profile for SIM List, 1984. John Holland Performing, Pozen Center, Boston, MA, 2007. All photos courtesy of John Holland. 89 Harris Barron and Dana Moser, 1986. Dana Moser presenting SIM Senior Gift, Pozen Center, Boston, MA, 2006. All photos courtesy of Dana Moser. 90 Dana Moser, Space 46, Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA, 1986. Nita Sturiale, SIM Remember Room, Longwood Building, Brookline, MA, 1988. Elaine Buckholtz and Dyllan Nguyen, Pozen Center, Boston, MA. Dana Moser, Tower Building Office, Boston, MA, 2019. Courtesy of Dana Moser. Nita Sturiale Graduates, MassArt Gym, Boston, MA,1990. Photo courtesy of Nita Sturiale. Elaine Buckholtz in her studio, Boston, MA. Nita Sturiale Selfie, Pozen Center, Boston, MA, 2020. Courtesy Nita Sturiale. Elaine Buckholtz, courtesy of Elaine Buckholtz. 91 The Turquoise Rain and Shines-Max Azanow, Keith Jones, M. Lisa Phipps, Luther Price, Tucker Stilley, 1984. Photo courtesy of David Michael Curry. Antony Flackett at the Together Music Festival, Middle East Nightclub, Cambridge, MA, 2018. Courtesy of Antony Flackett. Eric Freeman Selfie. Courtesy of Eric Freeman. Max Azanow performing, Bruce Bowen on bass, Space 46, Longwood Building, Brookline, MA, 1984. Antony Flackett with Swiss Chard, Lowell, MA, 2022.

Courtesy of Rachel Flackett. Eric Freeman Selfie with Bell. Courtesy of Eric Freeman. Max Azanow inside the MassArt Time Capsule, MassArt Courtyard, Boston, MA, 2016. Courtesy of Max Azanow.

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98 SIM Dinner organized by Bob Allen and Nita Sturiale, live music provided by Ryan Cummings, Space 46, Brookline, MA, 1989. SIM Archives. 103 All photos courtesy of Jack Pierson.

105 All photos courtesy of Danny Mydlack. 106 Harris Barron teaching in the Longwood Theater, Longwood Building, Brookline, MA, 1971. SIM Archives. 111 AMOEBA event install, Sayles Hall, Brown University, Providence, RI, 1975. SIM Archives.

118 Party Scence, J. Foley’s apartment, Boston, MA, early 80s.

SIM Archives. 120 Alison Pilcher at the Loaf, MassArt’s North Crackatorium, Boston, MA, 1984. Courtesy of Alison Pilcher.

121 Alison Pilcher at the Loaf, MassArt’s North Crackatorium, Boston, MA, 1984. Courtesy of Alison Pilcher. Illustration Dept joins the Loaf, MassArt’s North Crackatorium, Boston, MA, 1984. Courtesy of Alison Pilcher. 124 Style Rights Hip Hop culture festival, Downtown Crossing, Boston, MA, 1884. Courtesy of CK Shine.

125 Style Rights Hip Hop Culture Festival, Downtown Crossing, Boston, MA, 1884. Courtesy of CK Shine. 127 SIM Hugs, Pozen Center, Boston, MA, 2018. SIM Archives. 130 Max Azanow and san shoppell, SIM Remember Room, Longwood Building, Brookline, MA, 1988. SIM Archives. 131 J. Barr, san shoppell, and Nita Sturiale, SIM Remember Room, Longwood Building, Brookline, MA, 1988.

SIM Archives. 133 Speed Show 1, Longwood Theater, Brookline, MA, 1991. Courtesy Michael McKay. SIM Group Photo, MassArt Courtyard, 1998. SIM Archives. 142 Micah Danemayer and Friends, Heap House, Mission Hill, Boston, MA, 2010. SIM Archives.

148 Karnival of the Koo Koo Flay, MassArt Courtyard, Boston, MA, 1993. Courtesy of Tricia Neumyer. 150 san shoppell and Nita Sturiale, SIM Remember Room, Longwood Building, Brookline, MA, 1988. SIM Archives. 152 SIM Group Photo, Longwood Building, Brookline, MA, 1983. SIM Archives. 153 Student Experimental Ensemble, Design and Media Center Atrium, Boston, MA, 2018.

SIM Archives. 154 Surface Tensions performance, Longwood Theater, Brookline, MA, 1977. SIM Archives. 161 Gail Wight, Space 46, Longwood Building, Brookline, MA, 1986. Digital Rohm, 1986.

Courtresy of Gail Wight. Art Critic Mask, 1985. Courtesy of Gail Wight. 167 Peformance still, Surface Tensions, Longwood Theater, Brookline, MA, 1977. SIM Archives. 193 N181 Classroom before North Building Renovation, Boston, MA, SIM Archives. 201 Donald Burgy and Dana Moser. SIM Archives. 202 Peristalsis Performance, Hayden Planetarium, Boston Museum of Science, Cambridge, MA, 1973. Photo courtesy of Dave Armstrong. 209 All photos courtesy of Ronald Wallace Estate. 211 The Bachelors, Even (Kurt Henry and Christian Marclay) performing at Boston Film and Video Foundation, 1979. © Christian Marclay. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

213 All Images courtesy of Lina Maria Giraldo. 218 Amy Cotton teching the Master Magician and Friends performance event, Longwood Theater, Brookline, MA, 1973. Courtesy of Dave Armstrong. 228 Bruce Bowen in the Crypt, Longwood Building, Brookline, MA. SIM Equipment. SIM Archives. 229 Unidentified students with SIM Equipment. 1980s. SIM Archives. 232 Inside Rhythms Music and Dance Event, Palace Road Theater, Boston, MA, 1985. SIM Archives. 233 Inside Rhythms Music and Dance Event, Palace Road Theater, Boston MA, 1985. SIM Archives.

250 Dr. Susan Blackmore Poster, Ben Sisto, 2002. Courtesy of Ben Sisto. CC-BY-SA-NC. 252 Performance install, Longwood Theater, Brookline, MA, 1970s. SIM Archives. 253 Performance install, Longwood Theater, Brookline, MA, 1970s. SIM Archives. 254 Film Professor Ericka Beckman collaborating on SIM Event, Longwood Building, Brookline, MA. 1980s. Derek Thomas skyping into SIM class from the Netherlands, 2009. SIM Archives. 255 Unidentified artist with slide deck array, Longwood Theater Balcony, Brookline, MA, 1972. All photos SIM Archive. 270 Dave Armstrong with theater lights. Courtesy of Dave Armstrong. 271 Peristalsis Performance, Hayden Planetarium, Boston Museum of Science, Cambridge, MA, 1973. Courtesy of Dave Armstrong. 272 Steel Cello Workshop, Longwood Theater, Brookline, MA. 1977. SIM Archives.

277 All images courtesy of Dana Colley. 292 Steel Cello Workshop, Longwood Theater, Brookline, MA, 1977. SIM Archives. 293 Steel Cello Workshop, Longwood Theater, Brookline, MA, 1977. SIM Archives.

311 Diamonda Galas Artist Talk, Space 46, Longwood Building, Brookline, MA, 1984. SIM Archives. 312 Diamonda Galas with two microphones, 1984. SIM Archives. 340 Performance Install, Longwood Theater, Brookline, MA, 1970s. SIM Archives.

341 Performance Install, Longwood Theater, Brookline, MA, 1970s.

SIM Archives. 342 Sakinah A Bramble-Hakim, Pozen Center, Boston, MA, 2015. SIM Archives. 343 Alumni and Founders Day performance, Longwood Theater, Boston, MA, 2014. SIM Archives.

344 Eventworks performers, 1984. SIM Archives. 348 All images courtesy of Richard Streitmatter-Tran. 350 All images of Katya courtesy of Brian McCook. 354 Location Piece performance, Brookline Village, MA, 1971. Courtesy of David Armstrong.

355 Location Piece performance, Brookline Village, MA, 1971.

Courtesy of David Armstrong. 358 ZONE Film stills, 1969–1972.

Courtesy of Ros Barron. 359 Surface Tensions performance, Longwood Theater, Brookline, MA, 1977. SIM Archives. 360 Surface Tensions performance, Longwood Theater, Brookline, MA, 1977.

SIM Archives. 366 Danny Mydlack Performing, 1984. Courtesy Danny Mydlack. 370 Alison Pilcher Graduates, MassArt Gym, 1984.

Courtesy Alison Pilcher. 371 Alison Pilcher Graduates, MassArt Gym, 1984. Courtesy Alison Pilcher. 378 Style Rights Hip Hop and Break Dance Festival, Downtown Crossing, Boston, MA, 1884. Courtesy of CK Shine. 379 Richard Gardner, Documentarian Artist, Eventworks Festival, various locations, 1984. SIM Archives. 383 Randy and Berrenici performance, Longwood Theater, Brookline, MA, 1984.

SIM Archives. 395 Naked Ping Pong with Donald Burgy, Keith Jones, and Rochelle Royer, North Crackatorium, Boston, MA, 1984. SIM Archives. 406 Performance in Space 46, Longwood Building, Brookline, MA, 1977. SIM Archives. 407 Performance in Space 46, Longwood Building, Brookline, MA, 1977. SIM Archives.

409 Fluid Poetics durational performance, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, MA, 2008. Courtesy of Kevin Clancy. 416 Ticket Booth, Eventworks, Longwood Building, Brookline, MA, 1977.

Courtesy of Joel Rubin. 462 Heather Armstrong and Kimberly O’Toole, Godine Gallery, North Building, Boston, MA, 2011. SIM Archives. 464 Godine Family Gallery with Godine Cube, MassArt, North Building, Boston, MA, 2016. SIM Archives. 470 Three Readers, Godine Gallery, Boston, MA, 2019. Three Writers Reading, Godine Gallery, Boston, MA, 2019. All photos courtesy of Anya Talatinian. 474 VideoStore Creative team and staff, Godine Gallery, Boston, MA, 2023. SIM Archives. 476 Godine Furniture Store, Final Days, Godine Gallery, Boston, MA, 2018. SIM Archives.

478 Godine Gallery Catalogs, 2010–2022. Courtesy of Nita Sturiale.

484 (non) sensical miscommunication device, Godine Gallery, Boston, MA, 2019. Courtesy of Anya Talatinian. 485 (non) sensical miscommunication device, Godine Gallery, Boston, MA, 2019.

Courtesy of Anya Talatinian. 497 Lisa Lee performing at Alumni and Founders Day Event, Pozen Center, Boston, MA, 2022.

TEXT CREDITS 26–30 From The Boston Globe. © 1969 Boston Globe Media Partners. All rights reserved. Used under license. 32–39 From The Boston Globe. © 1982 Boston Globe Media Partners. All rights reserved. Used under license. 40–49 Courtesy of the Boston Phoenix in the Phoenix/Media Communication Group records at Northeasthern University Archives and Special Collections.

We have tried our best to unearth a wide range of imagery that captures the SIM story in our archive collection. Too often we did not know where the poster, polaroid print, notebook page, typewritten sheet, or .jpg came from. We have included image credits when this information was requested and available.

The collection, identification, and cataloging of the SIM Archive is an ongoing project and we would love your help. Contact simarchive@massart.edu to contribute or to be credited for an image for future print editions.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors would like to thank the following individuals and groups for their support in making the Studio for Interrelated Media’s 50th celebration and this catalog possible:

Special thanks to those that have generously donated to the Harris and Ros Barron Immersive Experience Design Studio Naming dedication (as of December 1, 2022).

Sam Toabe and Evan F. Smith as original catalog advisors and image curators; Elaine Buckholtz, Mary Grant, Dawn Kramer, Dana Moser, Juan Obando for their writing and editorial suggestions; Danielle Weindling for her fast and fabulous editing skills; Alison Beaudette, Kevin MacDonald, Elizabeth Mezzacappa, Dyllan Nguyen, Noah Roscoe, Danielle Sangalang, and Brooke Scibelli for the work they did researching, preserving, digitizing, and cataloging the SIM Archive; Max Azanow for having the idea for the first SIM Alumni and Founders Day, and for expertly guiding the production of events with a focus on our students; Duncan Wilder Johnson for never missing a meeting with Nita and for his reliability and skill in telling the SIM story in video; Olga Batyuk, Megan Cronin, Darlene Gillan, and Marjorie O’Malley for their consistent support with the SIM department’s Alumni Relations and fundraising; Zayde Buti, Monica Chiang, Naomi Gabizon, and Kara Stokowski for making our Virtual SIMBIG50 celebration feel like the real thing; san shoppell for her memory, editorial suggestions, alumni relations, and SIM loyalty; Nicky Enriquez for helping Nita with the SIM timeline: www.massart.edu/simtimeline; The Massachusetts College of Art and Design Institutional Advancement and Academic Affairs Divisions for additional funding.

Anonymous Dave Armstrong Ros Barron Olga Batyuk Mary Briggs & John Holland Dan Callahan Julie Chen Monica Chiang Miranda Clarke Megan Cronin Murray Dewart Eric Ente Susan Genereux Olga Gerasymiv Darlene Gillan Mary Grant Benjamen Janey Christine Zitso Jaques Dawn Kramer Gina Lindner Genna Lyons & Dave Schlafman Tony Maciag Michael Mittleman Dana Moser Alex Nally Netflix Dyllan Nguyen Abigail Noble & Matt Karl Marjorie O’Malley R. Berred Ouellette Jack Pierson David and Susan Rockefeller Foundation Joel Rubin Jason Salzarulo san shoppell Matty Stevenson Nita Sturiale Sheena Tompkins Gloria Wallace Suzi Walsh Andrea Zampitella

COLOPHON Published by Massachusetts College of Art and Design Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM) 621 Huntington Avenue Boston, MA 02115 www.massartsim.org Curated by Evan F. Smith, Nita Sturiale, and Sam Toabe Written by Kate Redmond and Nita Sturiale with contributions by John Engstrom, Mary K. Grant, Dawn Kramer, Jeff McLaughlin, Dana Moser, Juan Obando, Susan Orlean, Evan F. Smith, Robert Taylor, and Ron Wallace Designed by Mary Y. Yang (Open Rehearsal) Edited by Danielle Weindling Typeset in Trade Gothic and Courier New Printed at GHP in West Haven, CT ISBN: 979-8-218-15492-9 First edition Copyright © 2023 MassArt SIM All texts © 2023 by the individual authors All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher.

Instagram @massartsim @godinegallery @eventworkssim

Thank you to the following for sharing their archive collections with SIM: Dave Armstrong Julie Chen Amy Cotton Antony Flackett Jiro Ghianni Maura Jasper Dawn Kramer Keith Kurman Kit Gildea Lord Mike McKay Laura McKenna Matt Mozzone Tricia Neumyer Kate Trump O’Connor Alison Pilcher Andrea Polivy Polina Protsenko Joel Rubin Dave Schlafman san shoppell Stephen Simon Ben Sisto Nita Sturiale James Williams Gail Wight

THE FIRST BIG SIM SHOW

SIM MAJOR MARK MOREY VIDEO TAPES INTERVIEWS WITH EVERY SIM STUDENT, FACULTY, AND STAFF

GOOD-BYE LONGWOOD BUILDING! / PROFESSOR LEILA DAW JOINS SIM FACULTY

MICHAEL AND JIM MCKAY PRODUCE THE FINAL SPEED SHOW AT THE INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART,

1988

1989

1990

1991

KARNIVAL OF THE KOO KOO FLAY IN THE MASSART COURTYARD, HUNTINGTON AVENUE CAMPUS

EMERGENCY BROADCAST NETWORK PERFORMS IN HIGH VISCOSITY THERMAL BREAKDOWN AT

1993

1994

BLUE LITE SPECIAL AT LANSDOWNE PLAYHOUSE

EVENTWORKS HOSTS THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL CONFERENCE

EVENTWORKS PRESENTS THE SCI-FI LOUNGE WITH DJ SPOOKY, BEN NEIL, AND TONEBURST

HILLARY CLINTON SPEAKS AT MASSART TO KICK OFF RENOVATION OF THE NORTH BUILDING

SIM BROADCAST NETWORK FORESHADOWS SIMTV BY 20 YEARS

LIVE GIRLS CD PUBLISHED

SIM ALUM ELLEN ROTHENBERG RECEIVES MASSART DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARD /

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

SIM STUDENTS KAI KAISER AND MATT KARL ALONG WITH PROFESSOR DANA MOSER CREATE

2003

SIM ALUM CHRISTIAN MARCLAY RECEIVES MASSART DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARD /

2006

2007

GODINE FAMILY GALLERY FOUNDED / DENISE MARIKA BECOMES PROGRAM COORDINATOR OF THE SIM MFA PROGRAM

2005

SIM STUDENTS PRODUCE AND PERFORM AN ACOUSTIC NIGHT AT CURTAINS, A LOCAL BAR IN BRIGHAM CIRCLE

PROFESSOR KIANGA FORD JOINS SIM FACULTY

POZEN CENTER FOR INTERRELATED MEDIA OPENS

2004

THE SIM NAMES AND FACES INTERACTIVE WEBSITE

FUGAZI PERFORMS IN THE MASSART GYM

2002

PROFESSOR NITA STURIALE JOINS SIM FACULTY

My memory is a burnt down mansion and I’m just making snow angels in the ashes.

When that happens, my body forgets that it’s alive, forgets to recognize its breath until

the exhale leaves my lips, tethers itself to the skeletal carcass of a home that ain’t never been there, but I can still feel its warmth.

That’s when I miss it most.

That’s when I grip the sound of my voice like a ghost with a name I’ve forgotten.

Let this last piece of me dance in my insides before leaving my mouth and trembling into air.

Like it was never there.

1995

THE BOSTON CENTER FOR THE ARTS

EVENTWORKS PRESENTS “VISIONPUMP” FILM/VIDEO SCREENING AT THE ICA

1992

BOSTON AT THE 955 BOYLSTON STREET LOCATION — 36 WORKS IN 30 MINUTES

EUGENE CHADBOURNE AND THE BOB JONES EXPERIENCE PERFORM IN THE PALACE ROAD THEATER

1987

MY VOICE

by Lewis Morris (SIM Student)

www.massartsim.org

THISARCHIVE COLLECTS CELEBRATESRE LIVESINSPIRES REVEALSIDENTI FIESDOCUMENTS APPLAUDSPILES FORGETSFADES REMINDSCATA PULTSCATALYZES PROVOKES EMBOLDENS STIMULATES TRANSFORMS 9 798218 154929