The Crazy Pineapple: an Essay on Power (and Pineapples) by Nick Tobier
Nick Tobier’s essay and drawings, the result of a collaboration with La Pina Loca in Ann Arbor, has been commissioned and published by University of Oregon’s Center for Art Research. The Center for Art Research (CFAR) is a collaborative, artist-run platform for experimentation and exchange rooted in art practice, which responds to the dynamic conditions and experiences of contemporary life. Since launching in 2018, we have experimented with a range of ways that practice-based inquiry manifests in research, discourse, exhibition, and publication. Much of these endeavors have led to the facilitation of activities related to socio-cultural issues, and ways that the practices of creatives can benefit from and extend this work.
This year, CFAR is focusing its programmatic efforts on the examination of “power” from different perspectives through public and private discourse, the related work of affiliates and resident creatives, and Dismantling the House: A Series of Programs on Power organized by CFAR’s 2020 – 21 curator-in-residence Yaelle S. Amir. We are also presenting “Papers on Power”, a series of commissioned essays for which artists, writers, activists, and cultural producers are asked to respond to the question “What is power?” in whatever form best relates to their work and thinking. Each piece will first be released through our website and then assembled into a printed book in the fall of 2021. This culminating publication will be available in digital form on our website and the book itself will be distributed for free to individuals and institutions around the world. In this way, we hope that the occasion of making each piece serves each author, and through open access and mass distribution this project resonates publicly as a seed for further inquiry and exchange related to “power”.
The Crazy Pineapple /// Nick Tobier | University of Oregon Center for Art Research