David Ryckaert III

Bruce High Quality Foundation, a New York based art collective, has a new project going on.

Bruce High Quality University is a free, unaccredited, alternative art school. Supported by Creative Time, the school opened on September 11, 2009 and will remain up into 2010. Located at 225 West Broadway in Manhattan, the school will host courses and special events. Admission is decided through peer-recommendations while some programs will be open to the public.

From the BHQFU website:

PROLEGMENA TO ANY FUTURE ART SCHOOL

Something’s got to give. The $200,000-debt-model of art education is simply untenable. Further, the education artists are getting for their money is mired in irrelevance, pushing them into critical redundancy on the one hand and professional mediocrity on the other. Blind romanticism and blind professionalism are in a false war alienating artists from their better histories.

At root, it’s a form/content problem. Arts education is divided between the practical problems of form (e.g., money: how to get it, raise it, administer it, and please the powers that control it) and the slippery problems of metaphor (e.g., education: how to learn, what to learn, why to learn).

Artists are the people who spend their time figuring out how best to resolve form and content problems. That’s what we do when we stretch a canvas, edit a video, implement a social space, and develop a history. It is both reasonable and generatively ridiculous to believe that artists ought to be figuring out how arts education should work. This is the premise of BHQFU: that artists can figure this thing out.

BHQFU IS:

A university, a space for higher education and research, a community of scholars; an expansion of the BHQF practice to include more participants (that’s where U come in); and a “fuck you” to the hegemony of critical solemnity and market-mediocre despair.

WORKING PRINCIPLES

We believe in the artistically educational possibilities of collaboration. Collaboration, as we mean it, means a group of concerned people come together to hash out ideas, try to figure out the world around them, and try to take some agency within its future. That’s the why and how of The Bruce High Quality Foundation. BHQFU is an attempt to extend the benefits of this collaborative model to a wider number of people.

We believe that income shouldn’t be a barrier to metaphor. We aren’t interested in providing an economic justification for arts education (which we’ll generally define as an education in metaphor manipulation). There is something far more important at stake: our ability to reason, to resist hegemony and oppression, to participate adeptly, skeptically, humorously in the political minefield of society. So if we aren’t going to justify BHQFU economically, we can’t expect participants to do so either. Let’s not parse the margins; BHQFU will be free to attend.

BHQFU is unaccredited. Let’s just drop the bullshit altogether. Even when they deal with markets, even when they wear suits and go to meetings, even when they act professionally, artists are not professionals. So we aren’t granting degrees or certificates, we aren’t claiming to prepare anyone to become another piece of human capital. It’s simply not a lens on life that needs anymore looking through.

Students are teachers are administrators are staff. We believe in the value of shared creative experience and responsibility. That is why the first class we are implementing is B.Y.O.U. (Build Your Own University), a weekly class to discuss and develop admission procedures, rubrics of success, governance, etc.

HOW TO GET INVOLVED

Classes are organized by participants in the weekly BYOU. If you are interested in participating in a particular class or you’ve got an idea for something new, come talk to us at our Open House events announced periodically on the home page.

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From Too Much Chocolate:

This grant will provide 10 non-represented photographers with the film needed to execute a new or ongoing personal project, to be completed during 2010. This partnership aims to recognize strong project ideas from talented and emerging photographers, allowing them to fully realize a body of work that may not have been achieved otherwise. At the start of 2011, the recipients’ final projects will be brought together and exhibited through a variety of online, magazine, and gallery showcases.

In the spirit of assistance and approachability, and to guarantee that no photographer is priced out of applying for this film grant, the submission fee is $10. The judging panel for the film grant will consist of:

- Marcel Saba, Director of Redux Pictures
- Clinton Cargill, Associate Picture Editor of the New York Times Magazine
- Conor Risch, Features Editor of PDN
- Andy Adams, Editor / Publisher of Flak Photo
- Alison Morley, Chair of ICP’s Documentary Photography and Photojournalism Program
- Audrey Jonckheer, Director of Worldwide Pro Photographer Relations at Kodak
- Jake Stangel, Founder / Editor of Too Much Chocolate

Kodak thrives on supporting as well as promoting talented photographers, and looks forward to developing meaningful and sustainable relationships with the recipients of the too much chocolate + Kodak film grant. Kodak will work with the photographers to promote their  work on web sites, blogs as well as by photography trades. Additionally, a selection of each grant recipient’s work have a chance to be exhibited on Kodak’s Times Square Jumbotron.

In return for providing film, Kodak asks grant recipients to mention Kodak for contributing the film in any media interviews, blogs, gallery shows, books and on their websites with a Kodak logo and a link to Kodak.com. In addition, Kodak will have the option to use 2-3 project images at no cost for a 2-year period for display at trade shows and maybe on the Kodak.com website.

Film grant timeline:
- Sept. 1st – Nov. 1st, 2009: Submission window
- Jan. 1st, 2010: Ten grant recipients announced
- Jan – Dec. 2010: Recipients have one year to shoot and culminate projects
- Early 2011: Completion and showcase of projects

SUBMIT YOUR ENTRIES HERE

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This blog will document my two years at the School of Visual Arts in the Photography, Video & Related Media MFA program. In addition to my experiences in the program, there will be interviews with peers at other schools, professors, gallery owners and working photographers. There will be links to exhibits and work I admire (or don’t…).

In two years, I will hopefully graduate with an MFA and this blog will exist as a resource for those considering graduate school.

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