The Crit Lab: Rethinking Critique

cri·tique /kriˈtēk/

noun: a detailed analysis and assessment of something, especially a literary, philosophical, or political theory.

synonyms: analysis, evaluation, assessment, appraisal, appreciation, criticism, review, study, commentary, exposition, exegesis

verb: evaluate (a theory or practice) in a detailed and analytical way.

The Crit Lab is graduate-level critique seminars with rigorous structured pedagogy, and critical, supportive feedback in small ongoing artist groups. The Lab is for artists at any level in their practice, starting out or exhibiting for many years, who are ready for feedback that will push the work in a focused manner. Labs offer the intense dialogue and feedback of an MFA program, without the academic tuition. The Crit Lab is ideal for those who who don’t need the piece of paper yet crave a more academic critical discourse, or would love to go back to school for an advanced degree but career, home life or cost make it prohibitive.

Art-making is a solitary pursuit. If you are looking for a community of artists seriously engaged in discussion around their work, The Crit Lab is for you.

The Crit Lab was founded by artist, curator and educator Patricia Miranda, with a structured pedagogy designed to focus and deepen discussion beyond common subjective reactions.

The Crit Lab uses an ethical lens and sees art as situated in a social space. This is true whether the work takes on political subjects directly, or stakes a claim for beauty as a necessary force in the world. Art is always in conversation with art, past and present, and engaged in the discourses of culture- present, past, and into the future. Art-making is an inherently political act.

The Crit Lab addresses the work as a set of ideas- a verb, an action, an autonomous organism with its own internal logic, syntax, and grammar. We meet this "being" on its terms, as opposed to measuring it against external ideas of success or failure, or subjective ideas of working/not working, like/don't like. This process of "opening up a radical space of uncertainty and vulnerability"* brings us into a productive dialogue with the work, rather than a space of judgment and conclusion. We engage in intentional conversation with the work and with one another, and create structures for individualized, supportive, inclusive dialogue.

Gathering in a room together, in dialogue and community, is more urgent than ever. Attention to language is crucial for brave, safe, discussion that fosters real change. We share our work, our vision, our process, and our dreams in an outwardly focused action, and bring an intersectional, ethical stance to our work and to our micro/macro-society.

Artists are a constituency. Together we can envision and create thriving, sustainable, ethical, artistic communities, that can even change the world.

*Leslie Dick

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