What is InterArts?
InterArts is both a program of study and the guiding mode of inquiry within the Department of Art and Visual Technology at George Mason University.
InterArts embraces the visual arts with an inclusive vision, providing a platform to study and generate art that is consciously informed by the art and culture around us. These informing ideas incorporate not only the
traditional concerns of sculpture, painting, drawing, and printmaking, but also include social activism and performance art, dance and music, hip hop and graffiti, comic books and cyberpunk, opera and vaudeville, film and digital arts, and folk and traditional art and performance, among a myriad of others.
Drawing on all the disciplines represented within the AVT Department, InterArts courses and projects emphasize the leading edge of contemporary practice, and are engaged with both creative and intellectual inquiry. Often, this work exists at the interstices of artforms.
Course of Study
The InterArts course of study includes undergraduate and graduate classes in art theory, cultural history, aesthetics, and writing, as well as studio classes in performance and time-based art, multi-disciplinary artmaking, text and image, art as social action, and installation.
In InterArts coursework, emerging artists concentrate on articulating the concerns and context of their practice and on situating their artwork within the vernacular of the art world. The goal is to help students experience theory not just as a mode of explanation but also as an inherent part of the creative process.
InterArts coursework complements students’ training in art history. In art history classes, students concentrate on broadening their vocabulary of artists and styles and on the genetic and generic relationships among works of art; in InterArts classes the focus is on the work of art in its sociocultural context and in the context of evolving art practice, creative strategies, and critical approaches. Both disciplines encourage students to develop their abilities to speak and write about art.
InterArts Faculty
Members of the InterArts faculty are practitioners of interdisciplinarity
both within and beyond the visual arts. Their specialties include the art
of social action and activism, writing and publishing, visual culture, performance and time-based art, multimedia performance, African diasporic culture, film and new media, and perceptual and creative processes.
By enfolding within its vision the diverse backgrounds of the InterArts faculty, whose professional training encompasses the disciplines of dance, music, theater, anthropology, cultural studies, performance studies, literature, ethnomusicology and history, as well as studio and digital arts, AVT sets itself apart among art departments and helps link students’ knowledge gained in general education courses outside the department to the core of their evolving artistic practice.
InterArts Projects and Collaborations
Students in InterArts classes have created a number of public works and performances that have included a Day of the Dead parade; exhibitions of treated and altered books; multimedia and gallery performances; art that
combines traditional concerns of both fashion and sculpture; digital projections and video; and exhibitions of artwork focusing on social action. Through their work, InterArts students engage in conversation with other artists, writers, and musicians.
InterArts also is a site for collaboration within AVT, within CVPA, and within the larger George Mason University community. InterArts courses have been cross-listed with Theater, Dance, African American Studies, Women’s Studies, Cultural Studies, and New Century College, and InterArts projects have been co-sponsored with the College of Arts and Sciences, the English Department, African American Studies, and New Century College.
New for 2005-2006: Thematic Study
InterArts also sponsors a thematic approach to study across the department, with a topic woven through AVT courses and grounded in InterArts practice. Historical and theoretical research and inquiry supports the creation of artwork informed by these thematic concerns. In 2005-6, this theme is “The Working Poor.”
Click to link to Special Topics in Art & Visual Technology web site.
