Isra Rene

This studio course focuses on themes, practices, contexts, and questions undertaken by contemporary artists and designers. Research Studio I is a course that asks students to begin to develop and connect their own work and ideas with a diverse range of artists, designers, and communities. This course engages with cultural institutions including: museums, galleries, libraries and archives as resources of critical engagement.

Students will undertake various types of research activities: a) collecting and classification, b) mapping and diagramming, c) systems of measurement, d) social interaction, e) information search systems, f) recording and representation, and g) drawing and other notational systems.


Assignments in this course are faculty directed, open-media, interdisciplinary and idea based. The projects are designed to help students recognize their work habits, biases, strengths, and weaknesses. Students will experience a wide range of research methods and making strategies. Critique as an evaluative process used in art and design schools, is a focus in this course. Various methods and models of critique are used in order to give students the tools to discuss their own work and the work of others.

To Whisper is a course about the residuals. It is about the murmurs that nurture the cyclical nature of research and delves into the inherent reverberations found in the micro and macro. A whisper is a theoretical framework, a poetic device, a gesture, and a boomerang that ricochets through time and space. It is sentient and inanimate at the same time. In this course, locating the whispers that extend into our practices is the central theme and driving force. We will draw inspiration and guidance from the contributions of Senga Nengudi, Eva Husse, Julius Eastman, Martin Puryear, Aria Dean, Ruth Duckworth, Dawn Lundy Martin, Suzanne Jackson, Emmer Sewell, Tina Campt and many others. Alongside weekly field note recordings and observations, three milestone studio projects will help to chronicle each individuals engagement with their own devised methodology and iteration of ¿whispers¿ in their practice. The goal of the field notes in conjunction with studio projects will challenge the development of students creative practice and to support pathways to form and give shape to how their own research methodologies inform their practice.