Videos by Brandon Sward
Teaching Documents by Brandon Sward
It’s difficult to imagine a world without borders. The borders of a country determine what shall ... more It’s difficult to imagine a world without borders. The borders of a country determine what shall and shall not flow, the borders of a community who does and doesn’t belong, the borders of a language what can and cannot be said. While border studies can be narrowly reduced to geography, this course approaches the border as a metaphor that operates at both political and personal levels. Accordingly, we’ll examine a wide range of material drawn from archeology, aesthetics, psychoanalysis, and literature, a breath which we’ll counterbalance by returning time and again to the most crossed national border on the globe: the one between the US and Mexico.
After discussing the effects of the social taxonomies of Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Michel Foucault, we’ll turn to the tangled history of the Southwest, and the inherent hybridity of this region through writers and filmmakers like Octavio Paz, Gregory Nava, G. Cristina Mora, and Evelyn Nakano Glenn. We’ll then explore how artistic interventions by the collectives Asco and Postcommodity have made visible taken-for-granted assumptions about borders. Turning thereafter to Edgar Allan Poe and Guillermo del Toro, we’ll discuss whether it makes sense to speak of borders between states like terror, horror, and dread. Finally, we’ll survey the intersectional scholars like Cathy Cohen, Gloria Anzaldúa, Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, Kimberlé Crenshaw Williams, and José Esteban Muñoz, to consider what borders obscure. Students will propose and develop projects on a chosen border—perhaps its history, its reputation, its influence, or something else altogether.
Papers by Brandon Sward
Routledge eBooks, Jul 21, 2022
Barker (they/them) in that nonchalant way of a joke that betrays a deep truth, something so heavy... more Barker (they/them) in that nonchalant way of a joke that betrays a deep truth, something so heavy it can only be revealed under the veneer of humor. It is a tension with which I'm very familiar, both as a friend of Barker and having myself survived childhood as a Queer biracial child in Colorado Springs, a city that has been called the "evangelical Vatican." 2 The sentence was a response to a question I asked Barker about whether they consider their current efforts to convert a used, thirty-six-foot recreational vehicle (RV) into an accessible, multifunctional space-a project entitled Moving Parts-as part of their practice. Although many artists have blurry lines between their creative and "gainful" activities, Barker is uniquely ambiguous. Their sculptures, home, activism, modeling, and-yes-selfies all blend into a searing and uncompromising critique of social structures that have for too long forced the disabled to the sidelines of history. 3 Under the pressure of, and resistance to, the neoliberal push toward personal branding and "selling" oneself, there has developed an increasing interest in what art historian Julia Bryan-Wilson has termed "occupational realism"-"in which the realm of waged labor … and the realm of art … collapse, becoming indistinct or intentionally inverted … Here, the job becomes the art and the art becomes the job." 4 In this chapter, I suggest that Barker moves closer to the dissolution of the boundary between art and life than those Bryan-Wilson analyzes, who, for example, have run an antiquarian bookshop, completed compulsory military service, or even sold insurance as an artistic practice. Barker does this by highlighting social inequalities in their work and then addressing, most directly in Moving Parts, how to rehabilitate more RVs to provide more accessible homes and studios for users of mobility devices in Southern California. While artists have long been associated with Leftist movements and new mediums like social practice, which seeks to raise these interventions to the level of "high art," Barker doesn't fit so neatly into these traditions, insofar as their goal is less to create social discourse and more to provide the disabled with the resources to participate in society on their own terms. Indeed, this idea of BK-TandF-CACHIA_9780367775230-220323-Chp19.indd 244 18/05/22 3:34 PM BK-TandF-CACHIA_9780367775230-220323-Chp19.indd 245 18/05/22 3:34 PM
Athanor, Nov 22, 2022
The land, so heavily charged with traces and with past readings, seems very similar to a palimpse... more The land, so heavily charged with traces and with past readings, seems very similar to a palimpsest." 1-André Corboz The term "site-specific" is generally used to describe art self-consciously made to exist in a certain place, which effectively makes the site a static background for the dynamism of art. Some of the most canonical artworks of the 20 th century fall under this rubric, such as Richard Serra's Tilted Arc (1981) in front of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building in Manhattan's Foley Federal Plaza or Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty (1970) constructed out of mud, salt, and basalt on the northeastern shore of Utah's Great Salt Lake near Rozel Point. Why is it that art suddenly became aware of its site? In her monograph on site-specific art entitled One Place after Another, Miwon Kwon suggests, "The mobilization of site-specific art from decades ago, and the nomadism of artists in recent siteoriented practices, can be viewed alike as symptomatic of the dynamics of deterritorialization as theorized in urban spatial discourse." 2 The term "deterritorialization" is not Kwon's, but borrowed from the work of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. In A Thousand Plateaus, they describe deterritorialization as "the movement by which one leaves a territory." 3 In other words, the term signifies a loosening of the ties that connect cultural practices to geographic places. To translate into the language of another European philosopher, the forces of neoliberal capitalism have produced a loss of what Martin Heidegger calls "dwelling" in favor of "building," resulting in an inability to "live poetically." 4 Although it will not be productive to relitigate Heidegger's relationship with National Socialism, it is also difficult to overlook the implied conservatism of such a position. Insofar as dwelling assumes a deep rootedness with a place, it implies a sense of traditional belonging in contradistinction to the destabilizing nomadism that Kwon attributes to "deterritorialization." But even as art ventures outside of the four white walls of gallery and museum, many canonical site
Routledge eBooks, Jul 21, 2022
Barker (they/them) in that nonchalant way of a joke that betrays a deep truth, something so heavy... more Barker (they/them) in that nonchalant way of a joke that betrays a deep truth, something so heavy it can only be revealed under the veneer of humor. It is a tension with which I'm very familiar, both as a friend of Barker and having myself survived childhood as a Queer biracial child in Colorado Springs, a city that has been called the "evangelical Vatican." 2 The sentence was a response to a question I asked Barker about whether they consider their current efforts to convert a used, thirty-six-foot recreational vehicle (RV) into an accessible, multifunctional space-a project entitled Moving Parts-as part of their practice. Although many artists have blurry lines between their creative and "gainful" activities, Barker is uniquely ambiguous. Their sculptures, home, activism, modeling, and-yes-selfies all blend into a searing and uncompromising critique of social structures that have for too long forced the disabled to the sidelines of history. 3 Under the pressure of, and resistance to, the neoliberal push toward personal branding and "selling" oneself, there has developed an increasing interest in what art historian Julia Bryan-Wilson has termed "occupational realism"-"in which the realm of waged labor … and the realm of art … collapse, becoming indistinct or intentionally inverted … Here, the job becomes the art and the art becomes the job." 4 In this chapter, I suggest that Barker moves closer to the dissolution of the boundary between art and life than those Bryan-Wilson analyzes, who, for example, have run an antiquarian bookshop, completed compulsory military service, or even sold insurance as an artistic practice. Barker does this by highlighting social inequalities in their work and then addressing, most directly in Moving Parts, how to rehabilitate more RVs to provide more accessible homes and studios for users of mobility devices in Southern California. While artists have long been associated with Leftist movements and new mediums like social practice, which seeks to raise these interventions to the level of "high art," Barker doesn't fit so neatly into these traditions, insofar as their goal is less to create social discourse and more to provide the disabled with the resources to participate in society on their own terms. Indeed, this idea of BK-TandF-CACHIA_9780367775230-220323-Chp19.indd 244 18/05/22 3:34 PM BK-TandF-CACHIA_9780367775230-220323-Chp19.indd 245 18/05/22 3:34 PM
Athanor
The term “site-specific” is generally used to describe art self-consciously made to exist in a ce... more The term “site-specific” is generally used to describe art self-consciously made to exist in a certain place, effectively making the site a static background for the dynamism of art. If we accept this definition, then how are we to account for the fact that sites themselves have histories? This paper addresses this question by analyzing four performances by the Chicano/a collective Asco: Stations of the Cross, First Supper (After a Major Riot), Walking Mural, and Instant Mural. Whittier Boulevard carries a portion of El Camino Real, which once connected the Catholic missions of Alta California. We know Asco was aware of this fact because a member of Asco once “used the phrase ‘el camino surreal’…to describe Whittier Boulevard as the setting where everyday reality could quickly devolve into absurdist, excessive action.” Contextualizing these performances within the geography of colonial California challenges interpretations of Asco as merely opposing contemporaneous events like the V...
The article reviews the exhibition "To Dig a Hole That Collapses Again," featuring the ... more The article reviews the exhibition "To Dig a Hole That Collapses Again," featuring the work of Nigerian artist Otobong Nkanga, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Illinois, in 2018.
Post45: Contemporaries, 2017
Anima Loci, 2021
The archetype of the American cowboy that is infused in western popular culture is perhaps embodi... more The archetype of the American cowboy that is infused in western popular culture is perhaps embodied by Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Yet, this simple image conceals a multifaceted history that spans cultures, geographies, genders and identities. Artist and researcher, Brandon Sward, muses over the often-overlooked complexity of the image of the cowboy, inspired by the rodeos of Big Timber, Montana.
Art Style, Art & Culture International Magazine, Sep 16, 2021
In this essay, I use the “The Metropolis in Latin America, 1830–1930” exhibition at the Getty Cen... more In this essay, I use the “The Metropolis in Latin America, 1830–1930” exhibition at the Getty Center to think through how and why criollos, Latin Americans who are solely or mostly of Spanish descent, adopted the aesthetics and techniques of Mesoamerican construction methods. I then introduce the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Broad Museum in downtown Los Angeles to explore the resonances between Euro-American postmodernism and colonial urban planning, especially with regard to the clean lines and rational geometry of the Royal Ordinances through which the Spanish king wielded his authority in the faraway New World. In this way, I propose a revisionist history of modernism which suggest that Indigeneity played an important role in these developments as a source which was at once appropriated and disavowed. Far from being a specifically Latin American phenomenon, I argue that colonial architecture was strongly taken up in Anglo America, particularly in the Southwest (which of course only became part of the US as a result of the Mexican Cession). I argue that aspiring modernists turned to these traditions in their search for a uniquely “American” style to distinguish itself from its European inheritances, resulting in a predilection for movements such the Mission and Pueblo Revivals. I conclude with some reflections as to the potential implications of this argument as to what an anti-colonial architecture might entail, with a focus on museum display practices and what these imply about how they envision their purpose and relationships with their publics.
Uploads
Videos by Brandon Sward
Las Vegas, NV
March 21–22, 2022
https://www.aabss.net/
Cities Under Stress: Urban Discourses of Crisis, Resilience, Resistance, and Renewal
Association for Literary Urban Studies
Santa Barbara, CA
February 18, 2022
https://blogs.helsinki.fi/hlc-n/alus-conferences/2022-conference/
October 27, 2020
Nasher Prize Dialogues: Graduate Symposium Student Presentations
https://www.nashersculpturecenter.org/programs-events/event/id/1746/nasher-prize-dialogues
September 14, 2020
Anthropology and Geography: Dialogues Past, Present and Future
Royal Anthropological Institute
https://www.therai.org.uk/conferences/anthropology-and-geography
Teaching Documents by Brandon Sward
After discussing the effects of the social taxonomies of Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Michel Foucault, we’ll turn to the tangled history of the Southwest, and the inherent hybridity of this region through writers and filmmakers like Octavio Paz, Gregory Nava, G. Cristina Mora, and Evelyn Nakano Glenn. We’ll then explore how artistic interventions by the collectives Asco and Postcommodity have made visible taken-for-granted assumptions about borders. Turning thereafter to Edgar Allan Poe and Guillermo del Toro, we’ll discuss whether it makes sense to speak of borders between states like terror, horror, and dread. Finally, we’ll survey the intersectional scholars like Cathy Cohen, Gloria Anzaldúa, Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, Kimberlé Crenshaw Williams, and José Esteban Muñoz, to consider what borders obscure. Students will propose and develop projects on a chosen border—perhaps its history, its reputation, its influence, or something else altogether.
Papers by Brandon Sward
Las Vegas, NV
March 21–22, 2022
https://www.aabss.net/
Cities Under Stress: Urban Discourses of Crisis, Resilience, Resistance, and Renewal
Association for Literary Urban Studies
Santa Barbara, CA
February 18, 2022
https://blogs.helsinki.fi/hlc-n/alus-conferences/2022-conference/
October 27, 2020
Nasher Prize Dialogues: Graduate Symposium Student Presentations
https://www.nashersculpturecenter.org/programs-events/event/id/1746/nasher-prize-dialogues
September 14, 2020
Anthropology and Geography: Dialogues Past, Present and Future
Royal Anthropological Institute
https://www.therai.org.uk/conferences/anthropology-and-geography
After discussing the effects of the social taxonomies of Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Michel Foucault, we’ll turn to the tangled history of the Southwest, and the inherent hybridity of this region through writers and filmmakers like Octavio Paz, Gregory Nava, G. Cristina Mora, and Evelyn Nakano Glenn. We’ll then explore how artistic interventions by the collectives Asco and Postcommodity have made visible taken-for-granted assumptions about borders. Turning thereafter to Edgar Allan Poe and Guillermo del Toro, we’ll discuss whether it makes sense to speak of borders between states like terror, horror, and dread. Finally, we’ll survey the intersectional scholars like Cathy Cohen, Gloria Anzaldúa, Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, Kimberlé Crenshaw Williams, and José Esteban Muñoz, to consider what borders obscure. Students will propose and develop projects on a chosen border—perhaps its history, its reputation, its influence, or something else altogether.