WIGA 2012
How much truth can art bear? This enigmatic quotation from French philosopher Alain Badiou was the springboard for the third annual What Is Good Art? Competition and Exhibition.
Read a profile of the competition and exhibition in the Duke Chronicle here.
The distinguished panel of judges for the 2012 competition included a mix of people new to the project and a number of returning experts:
Christopher Bass, Vice President at Oak Hill Capital Partners, L.P.
William Fick, Visiting Assistant Professor of the Practice of Visual Arts
Noah Pickus, Director, Kenan Institute for Ethics
Kimerly Rorschach, Director, Nasher Museum of Art
Raquel Salvatella de Prada, Assistant Professor of the Practice of Visual and Media Arts
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Professor in Practical Ethics in the Department of Philosophy and the Kenan Institute for Ethics
Charles Thompson, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Duke Center for Documentary Studies
With a strong field, the judges chose to award two additional Honorable Mention Prizes in addition to First, Second, and Third Prizes.
Competitions winners were:
First Prize: Pinar Yoldas, Speculative Biologies
Second Prize: Nikita Yogeshwarun, Flaw
Third Prize: Rebecca Kuzemchak, Any Given Day
Honorable Mention: Yumian Deng, Musician Underground
Honorable Mention: Hannah Metaferia, Accademia
During the Opening Gala on April 13th, attendees voted for Gallery Choice prize, producing the the first-ever tie. This year’s Gallery Choice Prize co-winners are:
Carrie Arndt, Gollum
Colin Heasley, Gilt
View the Team Kenan’s curation companion guide to the exhibition here:
The full gallery is online below.
Hannah Metaferia, Accademia
Honorable Mention
Still from video. Watch the full video here.
Mainstream media art that we see on the television, at the movie theatre, and on the internet has been traded for sultry, bedazzled, and heady images that indulge in our superficial desires.
But what happens when our taste for these ‘pretty pictures’ isn’t satisfied? That’s when entertainment reflects our lives.
Mainstream media does not challenge us, and instead trains us to register images with a juvenile rationale: to win or lose, to be tempted or be repelled, to fight or surrender, to laugh or cry.
I have filmed and edited Accademia as a dance-for-camera exercise that draws the reader in with its predictable love-triangle romance, which remains unsettled for the sake of extending the viewer some freedom of thought in its conclusion. In practice, it feeds the viewer that sexual attraction that is told through dance, and needs no patience to be drawn in. However, my ending challenges the viewers to insert their own emotions into the three characters. It allows the viewer to think more deeply about the choreography and character's motivations and flaws, and maybe even rewatch the film.
Good motion pictures are a conversation between the film and the viewer, and good art is meant to be interpreted individually. The mass-media has denounced that by spoon-feeding dramatic and bedazzled notions of what life should be like rather than showing what it is.
…So why do we settle for sugary television shows, blockbuster films, and hit songs? Because it’s accessible and undiplomatic.
This short film captures a sultry, double pas de deux—with an unresolved ending—for the viewer to think deeply about what Accademia means through the lens of their own experiences.