BICA School Lab | 30 Essex Street
Open to All | Free to Join | No Registration Required

Join us at BICA School for a casual, come-as-you-are reading group that welcomes everyone—whether you’ve read the text cover to cover or just want to hear what others have to say. We’ll explore critical and curious texts together in a space that values open conversation, listening, and learning.

Read ahead if you can, but there’s no pressure to be an expert— bring your thoughts, questions, and curiosity.

→ Krauss, Rosalind. "The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism." In The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985.

What does photography have to do with Surrealism — and what does Surrealism have to do with us?

Rosalind Krauss argues that photography isn't just a medium Surrealists happened to use — it's structurally central to what Surrealism was doing. The uncanny, the double, the sense that reality has slipped slightly out of joint: Krauss finds these not in subject matter but in the photograph itself. A sharp and rewarding essay for anyone who has ever felt that a picture was showing them something they couldn't quite name.