Medium Rare is the result of a course at Skidmore College called Creative Research and Multimedia Expression, and showcases individual student projects from the fall 2020 semester.
Creative Research explores the shared fabric uniting the practices of research and creative making, and how these two workflows, when combined, can produce unknown mixtures of multidisciplinary or multi-modal projects. The course runs on parallel, complimentary tracks: each student pursues and develops one self-guided project over the course of the semester, while the class collectively surveys the work of professional researchers and makers across a variety of disciplines. The goal, for me, is to steer them away from goal-oriented knowledge-production and towards a cyclical ecology of practice.
I didn’t know what to expect this semester. It was unclear whether “achieving” anything (like this exhibition) was the right approach at a time of such great insecurity and precarity. It seemed more useful to create forms of connection and co-habitation and build community and trust, in the hopes that real inquirycould take place. That alone is difficult to achieve, especially over video, but I was deeply impressed with the ways the students were able to step into the “space” and hold it with and for one another.
So while these projects are specific to each student, they reflect the vulnerability, honesty and support they all were able to share. The title of the show emerged from a collective brainstorming session (referencing the hand gesture used to compare temperatures of cooked meat), the logo was made by one of the students, the collective zine project emerged naturally, and so many other aspects of this semester were the result of collective engagement, discussion and agreement.
There is, however, something truly inspiring about the specificity and perspective inherent to solo journeys, which are represented here. In this time of rampant unilateral statements, it was wonderfully recharging to see these inquiries take shape, because the pathways are divergent (though, somehow, always overlapping), the needs are unique, and, as a professor, I get to see the personal development of emerging writers, researchers, artists, scientists, anthropologists, and ______ists. They have all expanded their skills, changed their perspectives, gotten more in touch with broad issues, focused their interests, and produced inventive work that responds to their particular contexts.
I remain deeply grateful for this group and their labor, both collectively and individually.
This online showing (usually a site-specific installation in Skidmore’s Schick Gallery) is part of that endless cycle of finding and showing, finding and showing, and the work will continue beyond this exhibition. Your experience of it, dear reader, is part of the cycle of this course. I hope that something here aligns with some part of your inquiry, sparking a spiral of your own. As a reflection of the cyclical nature of “the work,” I’m including a collective bibliography of every single student’s research here, to add to the endless braid.
Special thanks to Jesse O’Connell and Jennifer Schmid-Fareed for building and administering this website, and to Adam Tinkle for believing that public-facing work can be an integral part of the learning process.
– Angus McCullough
