Tacit Knowledge

Tacit Knowledge provides an insight into the complex artistic and educational practices that characterized the first decade of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). There is a special focus on the conceptual and feminist strategies developed in and from John Baldessari’s Post Studio class as well as Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro’s Feminist Art Program, which was initiated in 1970 and brought to the newly founded art school in 1971. As Post Studio and feminist practices at CalArts are often characterized by the specific entanglement of cognitive and (habitual) bodily forms of knowledge, the idea of tacit knowledge, and thus learning through social and performative contexts of action, functions as an overarching principle linking all the contributions in the book. Combining short introductions with in-depth case studies and a broad range of documental and photographic material, the experimental publication takes the form of a magazine, allowing a diverse and lively approach to the ideas shaping the early years of CalArts.

metaLAB researched and designed two forms of tacit knowledge for the publication. First, two data visualizations: discovering the disparity between the online networked historical recognition of CalArts and the viewpoint of this publication. And second, a knowledge spatialization of one of the hallmarks of early feminist art, the Womanhouse.