ABOUT

CONCEPTUAL ART & TEACHING is an art project initiated to investigate, curate, make, and teach into and from the intersection of conceptualism(s) and education. Stemming from the art and scholarship of artist and professor Jorge Lucero, CA&T tests the pliability of teaching as a conceptual art practice and the emergence of the teacher as a conceptual artist. The project is supported by the Provost and the Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Illinois, as well as the College of Fine and Applied Arts and the School of Art + Design. CA&T will hold one virtual (ZOOM) meeting (Summer, 2020) and two separate spring gatherings (2021 and 2023) on the campus of the University of Illinois, as a means to convene practitioners who can critically speak into—not just consume from—the amassed knowledge coming from the project’s speculations and activities.

At the beginning of this project we have these three parameters (all subject to change over time):

1. COME TOGETHER /// CA&T is primarily a virtual gathering place for the work of creative practitioners (teachers and artists) who recognize their teaching and art practice as simultaneously, and inseparably art AND teaching. Initially these gatherings will look like publications and symposia (in person and web-based). Over time the project’s participants may dictate what “coming together” means and what “it” looks like will inevitably change.

2. MAKE EVERY THING ART ///  The second thing we will do with this project is to— at all times—keep the project an artwork in and of itself. So even in the most administrative or managerial of moments we will aim to make the institution pliable and therefore a means of artistic discovery and pedagogy/expression. CA&T is not just a means by which we talk about how teaching is a creative practice, but rather the project lives and dies as a work of conceptual art so long as we continue to think it that way.

3. CREATIVE PRACTICE IN ACTION ///  As much as CA&T is about contemporary artists understanding and working through the pedagogical aspects of what they do, the project is deliberately committed to the dematerialized work of teachers, particularly (but not limited to) public school teachers. Teaching is understood and investigated as one of the most radical forms of conceptual art practice to ever exist. CA&T—although housed at a University— intentionally grows our relationship with teachers. This starts with the homegrown teachers in of the School of Art + Design at the University of Illinois, but quickly moves to school districts, community sites, museums, and colleges across Illinois, the US, and the world. This includes teachers of the arts thought of more broadly (e.g. theatre, dance, music, writing, cooking, comedy, etc.)