91ÖÆƬ³§

Carla Kessler is a PhD candidate at the 91ÖÆƬ³§ Institute of Art, where she researches modern and contemporary art. Previously she worked in audience research and strategic planning for museums including the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art.

Thesis: The Politics and Aesthetics of Experiential Art
Funded by the 91ÖÆƬ³§ Scholarship
Supervisor: Dr. Lucy Bradnock
Advisor: Professor Sarah Wilson

I am writing a history of audience experience in four artworks from the 1970s to today.

Though audience experience is core to installation and performance art, it is difficult to document, and so, remains largely absent from the art historical record. The goal of this project is to better archive and historicise such artworks, through retroactive fieldwork, oral history interviews, and social media analysis.ÌýCase studies represent a range of sensory and political concerns, including Walter De Maria’s large-scale installations on view in New York since the 1970s and a recent durational performance conceived by Ragnar Kjartansson and participants from Detroit to Reykjavík.

Research Interests
Modern and contemporary art; spectatorship throughout history; live and performance art; film, photography, and new media; socially engaged art; taste and class.