{"id":7628,"date":"2018-04-06T12:00:16","date_gmt":"2018-04-06T18:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.saic.edu\/cate\/?p=7628"},"modified":"2025-01-09T10:52:59","modified_gmt":"2025-01-09T16:52:59","slug":"april-12-the-nations-finest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/2018\/04\/06\/april-12-the-nations-finest\/","title":{"rendered":"April 12 – The Nation’s Finest"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Tara Mateik, still from Putting the Balls Away, 2008. Image courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

For millennia, sports have been intrinsic to daily life, physical well-being, education, civic identity, and social harmony. Over the past decade, sports have assumed an even larger, more multidimensional place in our culture. The traditional schisms and antagonisms between sports performance and spectatorship, creative production, and scholarly activity (jocks vs nerds, square vs cool), have been blurred. Featuring works by\u00a0Haig Aivazian<\/a>,\u00a0I AM A BOYS CHOIR<\/a>,\u00a0Tara Mateik<\/a>,\u00a0Nam June Paik<\/a>,\u00a0Keith Piper<\/a>,\u00a0Lillian Schwartz<\/a>, and the Internet, this program deconstructs the athlete\u2019s body\u2014how it is used for national, political, and social agendas, and how it is viewed and re-crafted by artists (who are sometimes athletic). For example, Nam June Paik\u2019s\u00a0Lake Placid \u201880<\/em>\u00a0(1980) is an unruly and slyly subversive commission for the Olympic Winter Games whereas Keith Piper\u2019s\u00a0Nation\u2019s Finest<\/em>\u00a0(1990) mimics the look and tone of state propaganda with a silky, biting critique of the way predominantly White countries use Black bodies in the service of national pride while simultaneously disenfranchising their Black residents.\u00a0The Nation\u2019s Finest\u00a0<\/em>is curated by Astria Suparak and Brett Kashmere and organized as part of\u00a0INCITE: Journal of Experimental Media<\/em>\u2019s forthcoming issue, \u201cSports.\u201d<\/p>\n

1971\u20132013, multiple artists, USA\/Lebanon\/United Kingdom\/Hong Kong, multiple formats, ca 71 min + discussion<\/em>
\nIntroduced by curators Astria Suparak and Brett Kashmere.<\/em><\/p>\n

Brett Kashmere<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0is a media artist, historian, and curator. His work explores the intersection of history and (counter-)memory, sports, and popular culture by combining archival research with materialist aesthetics, hybrid forms, and explorations of voice. Kashmere is the founding editor and publisher of\u00a0INCITE: Journal of Experimental Media<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>He has curated projects for the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Strasbourg, France; Cin\u00e9math\u00e8que qu\u00e9becoise, Montr\u00e9al; Light Cone, Paris; Toronto International Film Festival Cin\u00e9math\u00e8que; among others. His writing has appeared in journals, magazines, and anthologies such as\u00a0Moving Image Review & Art Journal<\/em>,\u00a0The Canadian Journal of Film Studies<\/em>,\u00a0Millennium Film Journal<\/em>, and\u00a0A Microcinema Primer: A Brief History of Small Cinemas<\/em>. Kashmere has taught film and video production and exhibition practices at Oberlin College and Concordia University.<\/p>\n

Astria Suparak<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0has curated exhibitions, screenings, live music events, and performances for MoMA PS1, New York; Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City; The Kitchen, New York; Eyebeam, New York; and the Liverpool Biennial, United Kingdom. At Carnegie Mellon University\u2019s Miller Gallery, she curated\u00a0Keep It Slick: Infiltrating Capitalism with The Yes Men<\/em>, the first survey of the culture-jamming group;\u00a0Whatever It Takes: Steelers Fan Collections, Rituals, and Obsessions<\/em>\u00a0with artist Jon Rubin, which explored sports fanaticism as a form of cultural production; and\u00a0Alien She<\/em>\u00a0with Ceci Moss,<\/em>\u00a0a traveling exhibition on the impact of the global punk feminist movement Riot Grrrl. Suparak coproduced the publication\u00a0New Art\/Science Affinities,<\/em>\u00a0and her writing has been published recently by\u00a0The Exhibitionist;\u00a0<\/em>Noisey<\/em>;\u00a0The Iris,\u00a0<\/em>the blog of the J.Paul Getty Trust; and\u00a0Queer Threads: Crafting Identity and Community<\/em>. Her curated videotape,\u00a0Some Kind of Loving,<\/em>\u00a0produced by Joanie 4 Jackie, was acquired by the Getty Research Institute earlier this year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For millennia, sports have been intrinsic to daily life, physical well-being, education, civic identity, and social harmony. Over the past decade, sports have assumed an even larger, more multidimensional place in our culture. The traditional schisms and antagonisms between sports performance and spectatorship, creative production, and scholarly activity (jocks vs nerds, square vs cool), have […]<\/p>\n

Read More… from April 12 – The Nation’s Finest<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":206,"featured_media":7579,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[84,101,254,274,284,331,367,431,559,580],"class_list":["post-7628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-23","tag-astria-suparak","tag-brett-kashmere","tag-haig-aivazian","tag-i-am-a-boys-choir","tag-internet","tag-keith-piper","tag-lillian-schwartz","tag-nam-june-paik","tag-sports","tag-tara-mateik"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7628"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9778,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7628\/revisions\/9778"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}