Previous Mellon Collaborative Fellowship

STUDIO R-A

Fellows: Bill Brown, Ted Brown
Course: Re-Assemblage- Studio R-A

Fellowship Description

Bill Brown (University of Chicago, Department of English) and architect Ted Brown (Syracuse University, School of Architecture) embark on a collaboration that seeks to explore theoretical, practical and formal dimensions of re-assemblage. To initiate this collaboration, the Brown brothers will co-teach a course that is both seminar and studio based, working with students from diverse backgrounds of study, and bringing in other working artists to offer their insights on various notions of re-assemblage.

Course

Re-Assemblage: Studio R-A
Spring 2018, Wed, 5:30-6:50pm, Fri, 9:30am-12:30pm
Gray Center Lab at Midway Studios
ARTV 38800

Re-Assemblage is a theory/history–design/build studio taught by an architect/artist (Ted Brown) and a cultural theorist (Bill Brown). The course will engage the conceptualization of assemblage across several fields (archaeology, art, performance, poetics, geography, urbanism) and the history of assemblage practices (with a particular focus on the Art of Assemblage show at MoMA in 1961, but addressing recent work as well). This engagement will be coupled with, and prompted by, studio experiments across a range of scales, media and sites, as we collectively explore the material and theoretical problems, paths and projects of re-assemblage. There will be individual and small group projects throughout the course, and the group as a whole will construct a book, a projection, and an installation. Over the course of the quarter visiting scholars, artists, and architects will contribute to the conversation. Students need not have an art, design, or computer background but need to be prepared to develop skills quickly and to learn from one another. The course will meet twice a week, once as a seminar and once as a studio; chances are that we will take one required weekend field trip. Supported by the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, the course is an experiment in the convergence of theory, history, and practice. It is open to both graduate and College students. To express interest in taking the course please contact Zachary Cahill (zcahill@uchicago.edu), curator at the Gray Center.

Fellows

BILL BROWN

Bill Brown’s research focuses on popular literary genres such as science fiction and the Western; on recreational forms such as baseball and kung fu; and on the ways that mass-cultural phenomena from roller coasters to Kodak cameras impress themselves on the literary imagination. He is currently working on the intersection of literary, visual and material cultures, an inquiry that asks how inanimate objects enable human subjects (individually and collectively) to form and transform themselves. Brown teaches on Walt Whitman, “Urban Fiction and American Space, 1880-1910” and on “Modernity and the Sense of Things.” Brown is a fellow of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory and Coeditor of Critical Inquiry.

Bill Brown  is the Karla Scherer Distinguished Service Professor in American Culture, appointed in the Department of English, the Department of Visual Arts, and the College.  He is a principal investigator for The Object Cultures Project within the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, and has been a co-editor of Critical Inquiry since 1993.  Hi is also Senior Adviser to the Provost on Arts and Chair of the Provost’s Arts Steering Committee.

His books include: Other Things (2015), A Sense of Things (2003), The Material Unconscious (1996).

TED BROWN

Ted Brown received a master of architecture degree from Princeton University and a bachelor of science in architecture from the University of Virginia. Prior to joining the faculty he taught at Princeton University and the Oregon School of Design. In 1987 he received the Rome Prize in Architecture and conducted research on early representations of the city. As a Fellow he returned to the American Academy in Rome in 1996 as a visiting architect.

Brown was chair of the graduate programs in the School of Architecture from 2002-2005. He currently teaches graduate and undergraduate design studios and seminars in contemporary theory on issues of architectural and urban form. He has lectured in the US and in Italy where he has served as the director of the Syracuse University Architecture Programs. In 2011 Brown received the Scholar/Teacher of the Year award from Syracuse University.

Brown’s current work with Martin Haettasch includes Berlin Journal: Tempelhof, Alternative Futures and studies on the compound urban block in the American City. In addition, he is partner in the practice, Munly Brown Studio, which conducts design research from the scale of the object to the scale of the city. The firm’s projects include the master plan for the Salt District Neighborhood Food and Health Center in Syracuse and the Childcare Campus for Syracuse University. In collaboration with the office of CLEAR, Brown has worked on two projects for the city of Syracuse addressing the future of Onondaga Creek. His funded research includes design of ‘optical’ concrete, design of a ‘high performance’ house design, and the re-conceptualization of vacant downtown office structures in the US.