CARC (Kingston University)

Contemporary Art Research Centre is a Research Centre within Kingston University. The directors are Louis Nixon and Elizabeth Price. The stated ethos of the centre specifically refers to the research of André Breton:

[We aim] to build and provide an intellectual and creative milieu for innovation in contemporary fine art. Taking its identity from Andre Breton's articulation of the imagination it [The Centre] draws on the legacy of surrealism to imagine and enact possibilities of contemporary art in contingency with social politics, technology, models of knowledge and modes of experience. In the essay Once Upon a Time [Il était une fois] Breton argues for the transformative power of the imagination, that it may be applied instrumentally to change circumstances yet is also excessive to utility, absurd and radically profane. The Centre aims to house this rich range of useful/less imaginative invention. Conceits of newness do not distract us, but resourceful adaptations, hybrids, mutations, and détournement, as well as attention to the realm of the overlooked, the scatological and absurd promise of stuff, recognised through play—these things are cultivated here.^[1]

Artists involved with research at the Centre

• Charlotte Cullinan
• Jeanine Richards
• Alice Maude-Roxby
• Andrew Bick
• Henry Bond
• Louis Nixon
• Roman Vasseur
• Bridget Smith
• Dean Kenning
• Sarah Jones
• Frank Millward

Recent symposia

• The Document : The Proof – 9 March 2010

References

1. ^ Louis Nixon and Elizabeth Price, CARC webpage, accessed on 16 February, 2010