UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA CONTINUES SUPPORT FOR ARTS RESEARCH AND PRACTICE
SANTA BARBARA, CA
(July 7, 2009) – The University of California Institute for Research in
the Arts (UCIRA) has been awarded a major 5-year grant from the UC Office of
the President, indicating that the arts are among the top research priorities
for the University of California system.
Following the competitive review of new and existing research programs
and initiatives across the 10-campus system, UCIRA was awarded $2 million over
the next 5 years.
UCIRA was one of
only 27 institutes chosen for funding from more than 135 proposals submitted
for consideration across the state system in categories of Arts and Humanities,
Social and Behavioral, International and Area Studies, Emerging Sciences and
Technology, Biological and Health Sciences and Critical California Issues.
The
UC Institute for Research in the Arts has been housed at UC Santa Barbara since
2005 and will continue to operate from its offices on that campus. Current co-directors Kim Yasuda and
Marko Peljhan are Òextremely pleased that the UC system has made this
commitment to arts research; in particular, those initiatives that have a
broader social agenda, demonstrate public value and promote innovative
interdisciplinary exchange with agencies and individuals from outside the
University of California system.Ó
With more than
1000 artists and arts researchers currently employed across its ten campuses,
the University of California is home to the largest group of nationally
and internationally recognized artists in the world. UC
is also a leader in interdisciplinary
practices that link research in the innovative and
integrative couplings of arts with the sciences,
technology, the environment, and in the public sphere.
UCIRA
will launch three new major initiatives in the coming 5-year period:
Social
Ecologies: California-centric
embedded arts research. With
an eye to richly diverse landscape and challenged relationship between its
natural and developed spaces, UCIRA will provide opportunities for
artists to investigate the
diverse terrains of the State. Embedding
artists within various California institution and field contexts provides
support for arts researchers interested in topics as diverse as agriculture,
land and water use, emergent technologies and new forms of knowledge production
and practice.
Social
Technologies: new models of value exchange. Throughout history,
artists Current economic conditions have precipitated a
re-emergence of forms of artistic collectivism, exchange and ÔanticipatoryÕ
practices, i.e. those that seek to imagine and address possible future economic
and social modalities. UCIRA will establish opportunities for artists from
across the UC system to enter into situated partnerships with artists,
collectives and other agencies/institutions in order to explore new methods of
value and idea exchange.
Integrative
Methodologies: re-negotiating the art/science
paradigm. A/paradigrtists generate Arts research practice
generates unconventional and imaginative knowledge
systems that emerge from aesthetic reflection and risk-taking
processes. Their creative energies
and skills can be used as a catalyst to enhanceto
catalyze, visualize and re-contextualizee,
visualize
and interpret the work of scientists, encouraging out-of-the-box alternative
thinkinginvestigative
methods and leveraging oblique (?)approaches to problem
solving., a skill set that holds
great potential when applied to other fields of investigation. UCIRA will support
aArt/sScience
and aArtist/sScientist
collaborative configurations designed to facilitate new, hybrid, and fusion models of exchange, co-creation and
research practice.
More
information about the arts at UC, and University of California Institute for
Research in the Arts programs and initiatives can be found at www.ucira.ucsb.edu.
Contact: ZouZou
Chapman 805.893.3098
zchapman@ucira.ucsb.edu