DEADLINE EXTENDED TO MARCH 27, 4PM CENTRAL STANDARD TIME

Summer Institute I: June 13 – 29, 2017
Chris Kraus with special guests Natasha Stagg and Robert Dewhurst

Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is honoured to announce Chris Kraus as faculty for our June 2017 Summer Institute. Kraus, a respected writer, critic, artist, and editor, has had lasting influence on how art is perceived and discussed. Kraus is recognized for her lucid, playful and provoking first-person fiction narratives, which frequently blur theory, fiction, autobiography, and criticism. In her writing on contemporary art, Kraus has explored boredom, poetry, privatized prisons, community art, corporate philanthropy, vertically integrated manufacturing, and discarded utopias, revealing the surprising persistence of micro-cultures.

For this session of Summer Institute, Kraus will lead a group of participants in a conversation grounded in writing that will range from everyone’s ongoing work to the city of Winnipeg. Activities will likely include the production of a short video, a dance/movement class, city walks and guest screenings and lectures. As a gathering of relative strangers, the participants will produce individual work influenced by each other’s proximity. The workshop is open to visual artists of all kinds as well as writers, critics and scholars.

Writers Natasha Stagg and Robert Dewhurst will join the session. Natasha Stagg was the editor for V Magazine and has most notably published Surveys a novel with Semiotext(e) in March of 2016. She has written for Texte Zur Kunst, Dis Magazine and Kaleidoscope. She received her MFA from the University of Arizona. Robert Dewhurst is currently based in Los Angles, having received his PHd from SUNY Buffalo in English. He is a poet and the publisher of the chapbook imprint Scary Topiary Press and was the publisher of Wild Orchids Journal.

Chris Kraus’ publications, praised for their intelligence, vulnerability and voracity, include: I Love Dick, Torpor, Aliens and Anorexia, Summer of Hate, Where Art Belongs, Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness, and Kelly Lake Store. Her monograph, “Lost Properties,” was written as part of Semiotexte’s pamphlet series for the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Kraus is the co-director of the acclaimed press Semiotext(e), where in 1990 she launched the imprint Native Agents, which introduced radical forms of writing by women writers. Native Agents has published the work of influential writers such as Penny Arcade, Fanny Howe, Ann Rower and Eileen Myles. She teaches in the Media Studies program at the European Graduate School.

Each session of the Summer Institute invites participants who wish to work independently or collaboratively, based upon their own interests and projects and includes opportunities to work in a collaborative peer-to-peer environment through group activities, planned during the session.

For information on Summer Institute, Session II with Walter Scott and Niki Little, click here

Deadline for Summer Institute I and II: March 27^th, 4pm central time. Please fill out the attached application form for the session you prefer (I or II) and email it along with all supporting materials, including 5-10 images or two writing samples to Sarah Nesbitt at sarah@plugin.org.

Fees: Tuition is $300. Participants are responsible for their accommodation, meals and travel.

Plug In ICA extends our heartfelt gratitude to our generous donors, valued members and dedicated volunteers. You are making a difference.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of our 2016 and 2017 program, as well as Investors Group and Wawanesa Insurance for the direct support of our youth programs.

Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all, and enable us to continue to present excellent programs. Please consider becoming a member of Plug In ICA and a donor at https://plugin.org/support or by contacting Angela Forget: angela@plugin.org

For more information on this and our other education programs, contact Sarah Nesbitt at sarah@plugin.org. For general information please contact: info@plugin.org or call 1.204.942.1043.