Subject Studies
Subject Studies is an annual program series offering practical and non-practical public engagements. Each year, a focus theme is developed by MAK Center and an invited collaborator in order to expand on the pressing concerns of the moment. The multi-day program brings together a cohort of practitioners and theoreticians from across Los Angeles to collectively consider a focus theme that animate their thought and practice.
The term “equity” conjures two understandings. In finance, equity is defined as the stakes of ownership in any given property after the elimination of debt and liabilities. In social justice, equity is a definition of fairness which allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome. The 2024—2025 topic and related programs explore these incongruencies, asking how can equity be made more equitable?
IN DEVELOPMENT
Equity
2024—2025
Subject Studies’ inaugural 2022 theme, Reorientations, developed by MAK Center Director Jia Yi Gu and Rosario Talevi, directs perspectives and questions towards MAK Center’s own institutional habits, routines and practices. With the backdrop of the roof restoration of Schindler House, Subject Studies: Reorientations seeks opportunities to reorient our own institution through perspectives of care, repair and transformation.
About Subject Studies
Subject Studies brings together artists, architects, students, cultural and public leaders to exchange dialogue on social values, methods and thought relevant to contemporary issues in art and architecture. The term “subject” implies a topic or field of knowledge studied or taught in traditional educational settings such as schools, colleges, or universities; it also implies a personhood situated in systems of power, whether institutional, economic, or material, and a consciousness of experience. Subject Studies embraces this possibility of multiple definitions, asking how knowledge, institutions and personhood intersect and are negotiated.
Each year, a focus theme is developed by MAK Center and an invited collaborator in order to expand on the pressing concerns of the moment across multiple formats: workshops, interviews, excursions, publications, reading sessions, and dialogue. The multi-day program brings together a cohort of practitioners and theoreticians from across Los Angeles to collectively consider a focus theme that animate their thought and practice. Each program is punctuated by guest interlocutors, national, and international, who can speak to different dimensions of the theme at hand. Subject Studies takes place across MAK Center’s three sites, combining public programs and site-specific activities.
After each session, a publication is envisioned by the group which gathers visual, textual, and transcribed content produced during those encounters. Understanding the editorial process as a possibility to further reflection and guest contributions, the publication presents itself as both archive and inquiry.