My work is interdisciplinary and distributed across various sites, physical and virtual. A single project might take place online, in the street and in a gallery, and involve multiple audiences participating in different ways for different reasons. Many of my projects are collaboratively authored - by iKatun, the Institute for Infinitely Small Things, or other people and groups that I have worked with. We develop projects in response to a particular site and temporal context (a public video screen in Harvard Square, a festival that lasts 11 days, an exhibition on eBay, and so on). These contexts are important to understand, or imagine, if you are just looking at the documentation.

I focus on the humorous, imaginative gesture - on taking a performative leap to try to research something in the real world. How many breaths does it take to evacuate Boston? What would the city of Cambridge look like if we could all rename its public places right now? What do the spaces between our words sound like? What does the weather on my body look like? How can you measure fear? I stage encounters between different audiences as a research strategy to answer these questions. The encounters may be small or go unnoticed, but they resonate together in the archives generated by the project. These archives take the form of performances, sculptures, websites, books, maps, audio CDs or videos. Each project reinforces the (perhaps romantic, perhaps true) notion that a small, imaginative gesture can offer up alternative political and aesthetic ways of being together.

2008
Finalist, James & Audrey Foster Prize. Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.
Second place, Best Show in a Public Place. Association of International Art Critics (AICA), New England chapter.

2007
RISD Faculty Professional Development Grant.
LEF Foundation Contemporary Work Fund (to iKatun).

2006
Artist to Watch, Year in Review, Big, Red & Shiny magazine.
Individual Artist Award (to the Institute for Infinitely Small Things), Cambridge Arts Council.
RISD Faculty Professional Development Grant.
RISD Part-time Faculty Professional Development Grant.

2003-5
Academic Scholarship, two years, Maine College of Art MFA Graduate Program.

2003
Winner (iKatun), Turbulence net.art competition.

1999
Rotary Ambassadorial Fellowship for one year of study in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

iKatun is an artist-run organization whose mission is to foster public engagement in the politics of information. iKatun runs experimental curatorial platforms and supports art projects. Our most recent project is Platform2, a series of irregular events designed to facilitate dialogue about art & social engagement.

iKatun was founded in 2000 as a 501(c)3 organization based in Boston, MA. It is run by Co-Directors Catherine D’Ignazio and Savic Rasovic.

See Curatorial for specific projects.

Phone
617.501.2441

IM
kanarinka (Googlechat), kanarinkabot (Yahoo, AOL)

Business Address:

iKatun
144 Moody Street
Building 4, 4th Floor
Waltham, MA, 02453

She is Co-Director of the experimental curatorial group iKatun and a founding member of the Institute for Infinitely Small Things. After spending eight years in educational technology as a java programmer & technical project manager, she now teaches at RISD’s Digital Media Graduate Program and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

kanarinka is the recipient of various awards, including a Rotary Foundation Scholarship for independent study in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a 2003 Turbulence.org networked art competition award and grants from the Cambridge Arts Council, the LEF Foundation, and RISD. She has been on juries and editorial boards for institutions such as Real Art Ways, the Berwick Research Institute, Art Interactive, Cartographica journal, CAA’s Public Art Forum and ShiftSpace.

kanarinka has lectured widely about her collaborative creative practice at venues ranging from conferences (College Art Association, American Association of Geographers) to universities (Harvard University, UNC Chapel Hill) to art spaces (the Tate Modern, The Change you Want to See Gallery, Brooklyn). She has also written articles about geography, (micro)politics and art for publication in various geography journals.

The former Director of Exhibitions and Programs at Art Interactive in Cambridge, MA, kanarinka maintains an experimental curatorial practice through her work with iKatun in organizing the occasional exhibition, festival or screening, and, more recently, the Platform2 event series. kanarinka has a BA in International Relations from Tufts University (Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and an MFA in Studio Art from Maine College of Art. She has lived and worked in Paris, Buenos Aires, and Michigan, and currently resides in Boston, MA.

Courses:

Creative Programming for Artists
(Fall 2007)

DM Continuum (with Daniel Howe, Fall 2007)

Performance (Fall 2007, independent study with three students)

Digital Media & Place (Summer 2007, part of
the Fusion Art Exchange program via RISD’s Office of Public Engagement/US
Dept of State)

Technology Workshop (with Gideon Webster, Spring 2007)

The Real World (Winter 2007)

Performance Art & Feminism (Fall 2006)

2nd Year Thesis Seminar (Fall 2006)

Creative Programming for Artists (Fall 2006)

Public Lecture Series (Spring 2006)

Emergent Digital: Creative Programming (Fall 2005)

Platform2: Art and Social Enagement is a forum for imaginative dialog about creative practice and its intersection with social, political, economic, and cultural issues. Platform2 conversations bring together presenters from diverse disciplines and take place in urban environments both public and private: an artist’s studio, a public park, the Boston transit system. Platform2 creates transdisciplinary, nomadic spaces for reflecting upon ideologies, institutions, and possibilities for creative intervention. Past events include: Art & Activism, The Commons, and Risk. Future Platform2 events will engage topics such as The Future, Slow, Free, and Failure.



Project Website

Art & Activism (April, 2007)

At Jane Marsching’s studio in Boston, MA. Presenters included elin o’Hara slavick, Jane Marsching & Catherine D’Ignazio. During the discussion, guests were invited to write their questions on file tags.

All 45 questions about art & activism.

[Show as slideshow]

The Commons on the Common (June, 2007)

A potluck picnic on the Boston Common where we discussed “the Commons” in relation to the work of invited guests, including Iain Kerr/spurse and policy activist David Bollier of onthecommons.org. Excerpts from Lewis Hyde’s upcoming book on the commons were also read.

[Show as slideshow]

RISK: Race, class, geography & art (September, 2007)

What risks do we take in seeing a place from perspectives other than our own? What risks do we take if we don’t? Geographer Marie Cieri and artist Andi Sutton discussed projects which investigate race, class and the demographics of Boston neighborhoods and bus routes. Participants started at Symphony Hall where Sutton presented and then the group rode the #1 bus to Dudley Square where Marie Cieri presented. One more bus ride took us to Jane Marsching’s studio in the South End where we had a final discussion.

[Show as slideshow]

The $827,500 Boston emergency evacuation system was installed in 2006 to demonstrate the city’s preparedness for evacuating people in snowstorms, hurricanes, infrastructure failures, fires and/or terrorist attacks.

It takes 154,000 breaths to evacuate Boston consists of a series of running performances in public space (2007), a web podcast of breaths (2007), and a gallery installation of the archive of breaths (2008).

Project Website: www.evacuateboston.com

[Show as slideshow]

Courses:

ARC Internship
(Fall 2007)

ARC Internship (Spring 2008)

Professional Practices & Lecture Series, graduate course (Spring 2008)