2021 Visiting Artist Lecture Series: David Kelley

2021 Visiting Artist Lecture Series: David Kelley with a response by Bill Maurer

The Department of Art presents the Visiting Artist Lecture Series (VALS). The series is presented in a colloquium setting (this year via Zoom), where students engage in in-depth discussions with the visiting artists and scholars.

David Kelley works with photography, video, and installation. His recent projects draw attention to the effects of global capitalism, resource extraction, and shifting physical and political landscapes. Influenced by a range of visual traditions, Kelley draws upon elements of experimental documentary, ethnography, performance, and avant-garde cinema. By working at the intersection of these strategies, he encourages an understanding of his subjects that is simultaneously direct and speculative. His recent exhibitions include the Louvre in Paris, Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. Other exhibitions include Commonwealth and Council in Los Angeles, The Bank in Shanghai, the de Cordova Biennial in Boston, BAK in Utrecht, MAAP space in Australia, and the Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok. Kelley received a Master of Fine Art from the University of California, Irvine, and was a 2010 -11 resident at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. He is currently Associate Professor of the Practice of Fine Arts at University of Southern California, and was named a Cultural Trailblazer 2020-2021 by the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

Bill Maurer is a cultural anthropologist and sociolegal scholar whose most recent research looks at how professional communities conceptualize and build financial technology or “fintech,” and how consumers use and experience it. More broadly, his work explores the technological infrastructures and social relations of exchange and payment, from cowries to credit cards and cryptocurrencies. As an anthropologist, he is interested in the broad range of technologies people have used throughout history and across cultures to figure value and conduct transactions and has particular expertise in alternative and experimental forms of money and finance, payment technologies, and their legal implications. He is the Director of the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion (www.imtfi.uci.edu), and his numerous curatorial work includes an ongoing exhibit on the past, present and future of money at the British Museum. Prof. Maurer is a fellow of the American Association of the Advancement of Science and Dean of the School of Social Sciences at UC Irvine.