Book Launch by the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts
Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts
presents a book launch with IDSVA alumnae:
Dr. Katherine P. Farrington & Dr. Jessica M. Rodríguez-Colón
With Dr. Keren Moscovitch, moderator
Please RSVP to this in-person event by March 23
IDSVA is pleased to host a special gathering to celebrate the book launch by two PhD graduates, Dr. Kate Farrington and Dr. Jessica M. Rodríguez-Colón, who recently published with Routledge and Bloomsbury. Dr. Keren Moscovitch (IDSVA Alumna 2020) will moderate the discussion.
Dr. Farrington’s Place-As-Medium and New Grounds for Thinking in Contemporary Art (Routledge 2026) presents a broad scope of global contemporary art projects, establishing a new philosophical framework to understand and evaluate the new art practice known as “place-as‑medium.” The book offers a new reading of the work of artists like Alfredo Jaar, Theaster Gates, John Preus, and paradigm-shifting curatorial projects such as Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev’s 2012 international art exhibition dOCUMENTA (13) through the theories of Jacques Rancière, Gianni Vattimo, and Martin Heidegger, among others. It provides a model for ecological thinking in a case study of The Swamp School by Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas.
“Kate Farrington is an artist, art theorist, and philosopher, weaving together the Continental philosophical tradition with some strands of Buddhist practice. The extraordinary range and innovation of her thinking illuminates the artform of place-as medium, which activates “thinking through place.” In her topical and profound meditations, the artistic practice of contemporary artists like the Chilean Alfredo Jaar emerge as poignant and rousing responses to the political and ecological exigencies of our global disorder.” ―Jason M. Wirth, Professor of Philosophy, Seattle University
Dr. Rodríguez-Colón’s Displacement of (M)others in Twenty-First Century U.S. Films: Impact on Maternal Identities of ‘Other’ Subjectivities (Bloomsbury 2026) retraces maternal philosophy by presenting an alternative genealogy and providing a concrete definition of the term (m)other, and the discourses that this concept and these identities highlight, discussing maternal politics and the dispossession of maternal bodies into certain spaces to understand the importance of looking into the performativity of the maternal in both, fictional and non-fictional spaces. The author uses The Gaze Economy to look at the performativity of mothers as much as its aesthetic representation.
“Jessica M. Rodríguez Colón’s meticulously researched and beautifully written book is an important addition to the literature on motherhood, maternity, and visual culture. Rodríguez Colón, not content to reiterate the work of feminist philosophers such as Sara Ruddick or Lisa Baraitser, calls for a consideration of what she has termed (m)others, a group that includes undocumented mothers, LGBTQ mothers, infanticide mothers, imprisoned mothers, mothers of children with disabilities, refugee mothers, diasporic mothers, grieving mothers, and mothers from different ethnic groups whose maternal experiences are situated in the United States of America.” ―Jennie Klein, Professor of Contemporary Art History, Ohio University, USA
Dr. Keren Moscovitch is an artist, philosopher and curator based in Brooklyn, NY and the Shenandoah Valley. Her book Radical Intimacy in Contemporary Art: Abjection, Revolt, and Objecthood (Bloomsbury Academic) explores radical intimacy through psychoanalytic, ontological and ecological lenses. Her work has been exhibited internationally at Penumbra Foundation, Sydney International Film Festival, Experimental Forum and BEAVER the book project. She is an Assistant Professor of Photography at Parsons School of Design at The New School, and serves on the faculty at the School of Visual Arts.
Special thanks to Gallery MC for holding the event.
