Categories and order systems : Claude Parent and the Serving Library. Intersections of architecture, art and editorial design

This paper discusses the work of Claude Parent and The Serving Library, considering the critiques generated by their intersecting of architecture, art and editorial design. Through focus on the ways in which hosting environment, architecture and forms of expanded publishing can serve to dissolve disciplinary boundaries and activities of production, spectatorship and reception, it draws on the lineage of 1960s/70s Conceptual Art in considering these practices as a means through which to escape medium specificity and spatial confinement. Relationships between actual and virtual space are then read against this broadening of aesthetic ideas and the theory of critical modernity

As radical, as mother, as salad, as shelter : What should art institutions do now?

"In light of recent political shifts across the globe, have you sensed a change in the position of the art institution vis-à-vis political activism? Can an art institution go from being an object of critique to a site for organizing? How? Should the art institution play this kind of role? What other roles can or should it play? What other institutions, curators, or publics do you look to in formulating your own institution’s position? Recent controversies over curatorial choices have foregrounded the different ways in which institutions envision their audience(s). In your experience, is this process changing? How should it proceed? How can an institution address the dichotomy between art as cultural entertainment and art as political inquiry? What is the role of the curator in mediating this? How does this compare to the artist’s role? How can art institutions be better?" -- Back cover of document

Obedience as a Function of Experimenter Competence

The purpose of this study was to investigate obedience to an E’s commands as a function of E competency. Based upon Orne’s (1962, 1969) discussion of the demand characteristics inherent in the typical aggression study, it was hypothesized that E incompetence would decrease S obedience. Competence was manipulated by: (1) presenting some Ss with a nervous and inexperienced E, and (2)“accidentally” killing the victim (a rat) midway through the experiment. Thirty-two undergraduate female Ss participated in the experiment—supposedly a study on the physiological effects of stress. Obedi6nce was operationalized as the difference, in simple reaction time, between trials on which Ss were told that their response might result in shock to the rat and trials on which they were told that their response might save the rat from shock. Significant differences in obedience were obtained between competent and incompetent E conditions, and a significant “kill” effect was found in the competent E conditidn. The results of this study suggested that the extreme acts of obedience observed in the laboratory (e.g., Milgram, 1963) occur only when E is perceived as competent. This finding imposes limits on the generalizability of laboratory studies of obedience