Phil Collins: A Learning Site
A constellation of curatorial and academic programs serving as the means to exhibit, experience, and study the work of artist Phil Collins.
Curated by James Voorhies
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
March 2–April 21, 2016
Made possible with funding and staff of Harvard University's Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, the Film Study Center at Harvard University, Harvard Film Archive, Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, and the Provost Fund for the Arts and Humanities; realized within my responsibilities as Director and Curator of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
Phil Collins has consistently pushed the boundaries of art and documentary filmmaking from filming teenagers in Bogotá, Jakarta, and Istanbul singing an entire album of songs by The Smiths; to working with young anti-fascist skinheads in Malaysia; to employing a cast of actors, porn workers, and musicians to host an alternative shopping channel broadcast live on German television; to making a cinematic love letter to the city of Glasgow. He thoughtfully conceives frameworks or situations that weave our shared realities and everyday life together with fiction and uncertainty. Viewers are reminded of the persuasive force of popular culture on seemingly disparate peoples and places, while questioning global dispersion of Western images, fashion, music, media, and advertising.
Phil Collins: A Learning Site featured a series of public seminars, screenings, and a video installation, and concludes with a weeklong residency and public talk by the artist. Organized in conjunction with a course in Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard taught by James Voorhies, the John R. and Barbara Robinson Director of the Carpenter Center, Phil Collins: A Learning Site merged the public sphere of the exhibition model with the intimacy, intellectual rigor, social engagement, and critical reflection of an academic seminar. The aim was to focus on and think through as a community the impact of this singular artist within the context of recent art history and contemporary culture.
Learning Site Modules
Video Installation
Mar 2–April 21: the meaning of style (2011). 4 min. 50 sec.
2 Open Seminars
Mar 24, 7–8:30 p.m.
Mar 21, 6–7:30 p.m.
2 Screenings
Mar 24, 5:30 p.m.: the world won’t listen (2004–07). 56 min.
Mar 31, 6 p.m.: This Unfortunate Thing Between Us (2011). 120 min.
Screening + Artist Talk
Apr 7, 6 p.m.: Tomorrow Is Always Too Long (2014). 82 min.
Sert Practitioner Residency
April 3–9, 2016
How to Rule Others: Phil Collins & Siniša Mitrović Select
at the Harvard Film Archive
April 8, 7 p.m.
Power (Vlatko Gilić, 1974) 34 min.
Tito Among the Serbs For the Second Time (Želimir Žilnik, 1993) 45 min.
April 8, 9 p.m.
The Psychic Parrot (Derek Lamb, 1977) 20 min.
Television: The Enchanted Mirror (Julene Bair, George Csicsery, 1981) 28 min.
The War Game (Peter Watkins, 1966) 49 min.
Evidence (Godfrey Reggio, 1995) 8 min.
Harvard University Undergraduate Course
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