contact information:
iain kerr
54 sherman st. #5
Montclair, NJ
07042
cell: 207.332.6097
skype: iainakerr
Teaching Appointments:
Adjunct Faculty Montclair State University
Visiting Professor Bates College Spring 2011
Associate Professor for Critical Engagement University of Maine
It is both startling and wonderful to realize how far we are from what we imagine ourselves to be. For me this provokes a deep curiosity in thinking and making. How, without the powerful and deeply problematic philosophical constructs of Nature and Culture, Mind and Body, Subject and Object, and the Real and its Representation, do we create new modes of engagement, becoming and being-of-the-world today? This question animates much of my work. I am interested in the design of new conditions to live, act and think differently. This has led into engagements within and across diverse terrains and practices. These forms of practice are experiments to become differently, and this web site is an attempt to present some of these experiments in the hope of beginning a dialog that could have a transformative effect.
“... is it not necessary to make the future formation of a “we” possible by elaborating a question? It seems to me that the “we” must not be prior to the question; it can only be the result...”
Michel Foucault
Recently my work has focused on developing ways of understanding the present at the level of systems and processes. This research has been paired with the question of how does change happens most effectively within our present realities. This work has drawn me into and across the fields of philosophy, architecture, design, biology, art, clothing, labor, new media, food ways, situated technologies and geography. My interest is not in becoming a polymath, rather the transdisciplinary nature of my work comes out of the realization that how we act and think is directly entangled with our embodied habits and worldly practices. In an effort to experimentally rethink our present we need to address our actual lived logics. This includes all aspects of dwelling: embodied habits, eating, clothing, tools and environments. At the core of these diverse interests is an idea of design thinking that I term “Exaptive Design”. It is a conceptual methodology that develops from the realization that we are in, as Stewart Kauffman puts it: a profound partially lawless ceaselessly creative universe -- one that cannot be understood in advance of its open emergence. This quality -- of unknowable innovation (in advance of its actualization) -- is a key focus of my interests. I have an overview of this idea of design thinking here: Exaptive Design.
This rethinking of design has led me to have a strong commitment to experimental practices of teaching and learning -- both within the classroom and at the scale of rethinking educational structures. For many years I have been involved in developing highly inventive models of low residency education that allowed students to be fully part of the world in an experimental manner (rather than sequestered in the cloisters that so many schools have become). Currently I have been working with Leon Johnson at CCS in Detroit to develop a new pedagogy for the 21st century across art and design.
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Research: (1) new logics of distributed agency, (2) ecology after nature, (3) systems and assemblages in design, and (4) how to re-orient teaching in regards to these concepts (especially from an exaptive prospective). You can link to these areas of research directly: Performing, Eating, Clothing, Objects & Tools, Architecture, Diagrams & Drawings, and Writings. I try to divide my time somewhat evenly between research, making, and teaching. Each folds into the other. And these are, in actuality, far from distinct practices. You can link to the teaching and the research directly. But the core of this work/research is in the other pages that you can link to via the top menu. I apologize in advance for their categorization. The real logic is more nebulous and holistic. For the most up to date information please see: news. Or simply avoid all of this and work via Facebook...
Collaboration: As the conceptual direction of this research might suggest collaborations play a fundamental role in my work. Much of the work and research I do is as part of the transdisciplinary collective spurse, of which I am a founding member. You can see this work here. And certainly most of the insights that I might have come from the remarkable quality of the spurse’s research and the deep friendships that it harbors. (Over the years I have collaborated with many other artists including: Bartow+Metzgar, Mark Dion, Leon Johnson, Alison Knowles, Petia Morozov, Cesare Pietriosti , William PopeL., and J. Morgan Puett.)
Ways of Working: I spend quite a bit of time on the road with projects and lectures/workshops. The model of research based projects and teaching that we utilize in spurse offers an exceptional alternative/supplement to the classical ways of framing academic research + teaching and learning. Recently I have been giving lectures and workshops about alternative methods of design education (by design education I am imagining a way of working that is relevant to fields as diverse as ecology, art, design, architecture, urbanism, geography, etc.). This work has allowed me to travel widely: Harvard University, Columbia University, James Madison University, CCA, RISDI, Concordia Montreal, the University of Venice and elsewhere. My work, and especially the work of spurse, has been exhibited internationally (Poland, Italy The Netherlands, New Zealand, France and Canada and across the US). This work has been published in a number of books: Experimental Geography, The Interventionists, The Object of Labor, and The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, etc.. As well as journals: Art News, NY Times, Surface, ID, Elle, Art Journal, Art Forum, NPR, etc.
Writing: Currently I am working on writing about new ways to image art and design education. In addition to the more general and philosophical writing I have written on a number of artists: William PopeL, Mark Dion, Bartow + Metzgar, Amy Yoes, Alison Knowles, Bracha Ettinger, etc. Recent writings and collaborations have appeared in a number of journals including CAA Art News, WhiteWalls, Drain, ARTL!ES, Third Floor, Western Front, and Chain. These writings and many others can be found here.
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I am very interested in evolving ideas and practices via dialog and collaboration. Please do not hesitate to be in contact.
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iain kerr web site
