As part of the Nitobe Memorial Garden Concepts and Prospects symposium, the research curators of the Collective for the Advanced and Unified Studies in the Visual Arts (CAUSA) present, Nitobe Memorial Garden: Vast Ocean, Vast Heaven, a multi-site exhibition at UBC from December 3, 2015 to January 31, 2016. Locations include:
- Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (Level 2, Main Foyer art gallery)
- Rare Books and Special Collections (IKBLC level 1)
- Asian Centre and Library
Developing from affiliations with the Free International University for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research (as initiated by Joseph Beuys and Heinrich Böll), CAUSA – Collective for Advanced and Unified Studies in the Visual Arts – aims to develop autonomous scholarly analysis and interpretation of visual culture (including problems of intelligibility) within specific historical contexts. CAUSA functions in association with a ‘global village’ network of independent and institutional scholars – in tandem with a pluralistic community of socially engaged contemporary artists.
In its affiliation with the University of Manitoba Asian Studies Centre, CAUSA sustains a continuative process of philosophical reflection by connecting its programme of research to an expansive glimmering that was first formulated by Marshall McLuhan. He advises us, assuredly: “We may be drowning. But if so, the flood of experience in which we are drowning is very much a part of the culture we have created. The flood is not something outside our culture. It is a self-invasion of privacy. And so it is not catastrophic. We can turn it off if we choose, if we wake up to the fact that the faucets of change are inside the ark of society, not outside.”
For more information, visit http://www.ikebarberlearningcentre.ubc.ca/nitobe/ or email causa.research@gmail.com.