WIGA 2011
For the second annual What Is Good Art Competition, artists were asked to meditate on the “sublime” and the “beautiful,” two ideas rooted in aesthetic philosophy. Must art harness the sublime—that sense of discomfort when faced with ideas beyond our comprehension—to convey an ethical message? Can we find beauty in the gruesome?
A distinguished panel of judges, made up of experts from both art and ethics-related disciplines at Duke and beyond, awarded $500, $300, and $100 to the first, second, and third place winners, respectively. During the opening gala on April 11, attendees voted for a fourth Gallery Choice prize as well.
The What is Good Art? Exhibition was open Monday-Friday, 8am-5pm, April 11 through May 15, 2011.
Panel of Judges:
Christopher Bass, Vice President at Oak Hill Capital Partners, L.P.
William Fick, Visiting Assistant Professor of the Practice of Visual Arts
Margaret Mertz, Director, The Kenan Institute for the Arts
Noah Pickus, Director, The Kenan Institute for Ethics
Kimerly Rorschach, Director, Nasher Museum of Art
Suzanne Shanahan, Associate Director, The Kenan Institute for Ethics
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Chauncey Stillman Professor in Practical Ethics in the Department of Philosophy and the Kenan Institute for Ethics
Charles Thompson, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Center for Documentary Studies
The winners of the second annual What is Good Art? Competition were:
Sarah Goetz, “Intermittence” (1st place)
Marissa Bergmann, “Inverse Uni*verse” (2nd place)
Abigail Bucher, “Seal, It’s What’s for Dinner” (3rd place)
Chelsea Pieroni, “Manifest SMOKE” (Gallery Choice)
Below, read the full 2011 exhibition statement:
See the rest of the 2011 What Is Good Art? Exhibition below.
Sarah Goetz, Intermittence
First Place
Watch the entire video here.
"Intermittence" is a film based on Nathaniel Dorsky’s prescription for a “Devotional Cinema.” Attempting to discover the place for cinema in discourses of the sublime, Dorsky discusses the fact that film is “intermittent,” meaning that film contains alternates between blankness and image.
I’ve believed for some time is that this “in between” space is the closest thing to the sublime that we have access to. It is a space where we allow that there cannot be further analysis. The analysis exists as the two images relate to each other, but the moment after seeing the first image and seeing the next is a moment of remembering and anticipation at once.
In this film I tried to recreate the embodied act of remembering, of recalling a memory, doubting it’s veracity, and looking to external sources for reassurance. This piece was the beginning of the work that has become my thesis – an investigation into the ethics of archives.
For more information, contact Christian Ferney.