Newly appointed in both the Department of Art & Archaeology and the Lewis Center for the Arts, professor Tina Campt concluded a spring 2023 semester that was as dynamic and inspiring as it was full. In addition to teaching an undergraduate course and a graduate seminar, Campt hosted two artist residencies, held three events, and launched the Princeton Collaboratorium for Radical Aesthetics.
“It was amazing to watch both the eagerness and openness of students to embrace new ways of thinking and making, and I learned immensely from the ways they work.”
— Tina Campt
The graduate seminar “Frequencies of Black life” — taught as an inter-institutional collaboration between the Princeton Collaboratorium and the Brown Arts Initiative — examined frequency as a lens through which to understand Black life across fields and media. The undergraduate course, “Radical Composition,” aimed to reframe collaboration “as more than a dynamic of participation and coordination, and to recognize it as a generative methodology for producing critical scholarly and creative work,” noted Campt. Sound Images: Visual Frequency and the Black Imaginary, was a culminating exhibition from the course that featured five collaborative artworks displayed in the Forum of the Lewis Arts complex.
In addition to leading those courses, Campt hosted Collaborators-in-Residence Dionne Brand and Christina Sharpe through the newly launched Collaboratorium. Three related events kicked off the initiative, including Think from Black: A Lexicon at the University of Johannesburg (RGC) in January; Ekphrasis: A Collaborative Experiment in Art, Writing and Thinking with Campt, Brand, Sharpe, Tokwase Dyson, and Canisia Lubrin at the Lewis Center in April; and Thinking from Black Part II — The Practicing Refusal Collective continued conversations from January’s event, also held at the Lewis Center in April.
Infused with collaborative working, making, and thinking, the spring semester both impacted and inspired participants. “It was a rollercoaster of excitement and challenges,” said visual arts student Max Diallo Jakobsen ’24, “but the lessons I have learned about the immense potential of collaboration have left me forever transformed.”
As collaborator as well as instructor, Campt confirmed that “It was amazing to watch both the eagerness and openness of students to embrace new ways of thinking and making, and I learned immensely from the ways they work.”
Read the full story by Kirstin Ohrt on the Department of Art & Archaeology’s website.
