Art + Tech Seminar

The evening with media experimentalist Leslie Thornton will include a screening of a selection of her film works followed by a Q&A. Thornton has been selected as the first artist-in-residence in Caltech's new visual culture program, and she is expected on campus for the spring 2019 term to teach and organize other activities aimed at engaging undergraduate students.

Leslie Thornton (b. Oak Ridge, Tennessee) is considered a pioneer of contemporary media aesthetics, working at the borders and limits of cinema, video and digital forms. Such seminal works as the 33 year serial Peggy and Fred in Hell occupy a unique place in media history, cited as a masterwork of contemporary film and video art. In 2018 she was an Artist in Residence at CERN, and she will return for a second residency in 2019. Her work focuses on the effects of technology as it marks the traversal of time and as it shapes the imaginary space of the spectator. A Guggenheim Fellow, and the recipient of several Rockefeller Fellowships, she has exhibited widely at venues such as dOCUMENTA, MoMA, Centre Pompidou, Vienna Secession, the Whitney Biennial, and in the New York, Rotterdam, and Flaherty film festivals.

Her recent focus has been on the question: "What is an event?" — a line of inquiry initiated during her CERN residency. She will continue to explore this topic when she arrives at Caltech in April 2019.

This series is part of Caltech's visual culture program, which is funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and based in the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS). The visual culture program features new undergraduate course offerings, guest lecturers, and other programming to foster conversations not only among humanists but also between humanists and scientists. It is organized by HSS and other Caltech faculty in collaboration with scholars at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.