Michael Stipe Is Teaching Art Classes

“NEW SIGHTS, NEW NOISE” is the name of an exhibit at the 80 WSE Gallery at NYU Steinhardt Department of Art and Art Professions. The “evolving exhibition project” was put together by Michael Stipe, who currently has a residence at the school as an artist and teacher (via R.E.M.’s website). 

The gallery space will be utilized by Stipe as a “studio, classroom, and laboratory”. Every week for the six weeks that the exhibition is open, Stipe and a guest artist/cultural figure will give a class of 18 students a prompt. “In response, each student along with Stipe and the guest will generate 100 images and gifs, both found and made, all of which will be uploaded to a private class website,” reads the description. These images and gifs will be projected across the gallery as part of the exhibition.

After Stipe is finished utilizing the gallery as a studio, visitors will get to see what’s left behind from his work sessions. Stipe wrote about the project:

The title NEW SIGHTS, NEW NOISE refers directly to the glut and onslaught of information made available by the internet, often without context or authorship; the disproportionate and impulsive reactions that it provokes, and the reckless cynicism of a 24hour news cycle…, my desire would be to question how we can process all this and then employ, alter, or move beyond it altogether. I see our work in class as an extended exercise in cutting through the muck and getting to the real thing: the students themselves, their passions, interests, and most importantly, how they process all of this, and create a contributing voice that is unique to them and to these times. I want to encourage individualism within a group context; and more than anything encourage trusting in and acting upon one’s instinct.

Find more information about the exhibition and Stipe’s residency here and here.

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