Center for Advanced Visual Studies
Artist's Talk: Tue, Mar 17 6:30 PM

The Common Denominator of Existence is Loss
with CAVS graduate affiliate Laurel Braitman and artist Dario Robleto


Exploring the intersection of the artistic and scientific processes in
the contexts of climate change, landscape transformation and
biological extinctions, Dario Robleto and Laurel Braitman will give a
talk about their experiences as artist and conservationist, working
together. Both will address questions of geologic time scales and
evolution, the digging up of bones, the ways in which various scientific
disciplines (and the scientists themselves) deal with the loss of their
subjects.

Dario Robleto is a conceptual artist whose work is a veritable mixtape
of humanity, and sometimes he even makes mixtapes (and a plethora of
other objects) using human bones. It is in the recycling and
recombination of material that Robleto finds real newness and hope for
a civilization still dealing with the devastation (and the amazing
innovations) of the 20th century as it enters the ever uncertain territory of
the 21st. When he remixes materials and histories—much like the hipp-hop DJ
from whom he takes both literal and philosophical cues—his work finds in the
old and forgotten a wellspring for new associations, reflecting back our
own concepts of these old things and giving us new possibilities for
imagining the future. Dario's recent exhibitions include solo shows at the
Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary
Art, San Diego/Downtown; and the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX. He
lives and works in San Antonio.

Laurel Braitman is a PhD candidate in the History, Anthropology and
Science, Technology and Society program at MIT. Her research interests include
the environmental history of the United States and Latin America, as well as
the emergence of psychotherapeutic interventions for non-human animals—such
as the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders, like PTSD in elephants and
chimpanzees, and trauma therapies for parrots and dogs. She has worked as a
biologist studying grizzly bears on the Katmai Peninsula in Alaska and
fisheries management in the Amazon Basin, as well as a conservation professional
with the international conservation organization—Rare. Her written work has
appeared in Orion Magazine and on National Public Radio online. Laurel also
helped organize and develop the traveling contemporary art exhibition
Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet— now at the Museum of
Contemporary Art San Diego.


Center for Advanced Visual Studies
http://cavs.mit.edu
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
265 Massachusetts Ave, Â N52-390,
Cambridge, MA 02139

Attachment: Center-2009-RobletoBraitman.pdf
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