SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- The CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts introduces the Wattis Library (wattis.org/library), a free online platform for videos, lectures, and essays that provides in-depth access and proximity to many of the artists and thinkers of our time, including Abbas Akhavan, Vincent Fecteau, Joan Jonas, Akosua Adoma Owusu, Cinthia Marcelle, and Rosha Yaghmai, among others.
Produced and edited by curatorial fellows, gallery assistants, and interns, the Wattis Library was created with one of the central questions that drive the Wattis Institute’s work in mind: What can we learn from artists? The Library—which will continue to expand with new dynamic content related to the Wattis Institute’s future exhibitions, events, and research seasons—runs alongside past exhibitions and events and gives visitors direct access to many of the artists featured at the Wattis from 2014–2020.
While CCA Wattis exhibitions are temporarily closed and its programming is postponed due to the COVID–19 pandemic, visitors can explore the Wattis Library to continue to learn from these artists and scholars, engage with a diverse range of artistic practices, and connect to in-depth research. The Library also provides a useful resource to educators for online learning, in which students can listen directly to artists and curators discussing their work and explore reading lists and exhibition essays from the past six years.
“What feels so important about the Wattis Library is the access it provides to such a diverse range of voices,” says Wattis Director and Chief Curator Anthony Huberman. “Our exhibitions and events provide a platform to artists, curators, and thinkers to share perspectives and to introduce new ways of thinking about the art of our moment, and the Wattis Library is a tool that gives all visitors, anytime, anywhere, far greater access to those voices and perspectives.”
Artists and curators featured in the first edition of video interviews include many of the Wattis’ exhibiting artists from the past year, such as Abbas Akhavan; Huberman on Vincent Fecteau’s exhibition; and artists Akosua Adoma Owusu, Cinthia Marcelle, and Rosha Yaghmai discussing their respective exhibitions. The Library also provides an opportunity for audiences to revisit lectures, performances, and artist talks from the Wattis Institute’s event history, including a recent performance by sound artist Laetitia Sonami; a conversation between filmmakers Trinh T. Minh-ha and Isaac Julien; artist Lydia Ourahmane in conversation with Huberman; a talk by NTU CCA Singapore’s Founding Director Ute Meta Bauer; and an artist talk with sculptors Vincent Fecteau and Kathy Butterly.
The Library also highlights programs from the Wattis’ research seasons and exhibitions. They include professor and scholar Jack Halberstam’s 2019 lecture on “nothing,” which traversed literature, politics, and how to become ungovernable. In 2017, the writer and theorist Fred Moten gave a presentation, intercut with audio and video samples, on the nature of invisibility in the work of David Hammons and Ralph Ellison. And from 2014, the Library includes a lecture by the pioneering performance artist Joan Jonas on poetry and politics.
