Art Exhibition | Refamiliarization, Sept 29–Oct 1

Congratulations Justin Berner and Julia Irwin!  They have co-curated the exhibit that will be held on campus at Platform Artspace and the Worth Ryder Gallery from September 29 – October 1. Full details can be found on the exhibition website: https://www.refamiliarization.org/

Exhibition Concept

A century ago, Viktor Shklovsky introduced the concept of “defamiliarization” to describe art’s revolutionary potential. Facing a world beset by habituation, automatism, and alienation, he proclaims that art “exists so that one may recover the sensation of life.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has effected a thoroughgoing sense of defamiliarization—even the most quotidian habits have become strange. It has awakened a reflexivity in our relations to the objects of everyday life, making us more aware of the clothes we wear when leaving the house. Simultaneously, though, the domestic sphere has become the site for further habituation to technologies that imperceptibly extract value from our every utterance and gesture. While some seemingly intractable institutional norms may have been temporarily interrupted, others have been fortified. A sustained moment of emergency, the pandemic obliges us to assess what must be recast and resisted and what, if anything, may be recovered with care.

Refamiliarization brings together works of art—from performances and installations, to videos and sculptures—that unsettle our expectations of what is or could be “familiar.”