CMA Artists in Residence were treated to a a studio visit with artist Devin Kenny, who graciously shared with us his reading list and abbreviated syllabus.

Devin Kenny is an artist, writer, and musician, and dPhil Candidate in Fine Art at the University of Oxford. Born on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, Kenny relocated to New York City as a teenager. Kenny went on to receive a Master of Fine Arts from University of California, Los Angeles, in addition to attending the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York. Kenny has participated in residencies at the Rauschenberg Foundation, SOMA Mexico, Bemis Center, MFAH Core, Shandaken Projects, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Kenny has exhibited, performed, and lectured across the United States and in galleries and institutions abroad. Select venues include MoMA PS1, The Kitchen, Performance Space, REDCAT, Queens Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, and the IMT Gallery in London, among others. Kenny (as Devin KKenny) has a first official release “NY Lottery/CBD Kratom”, out now from PTP, a New York-based audio collective focused on sound art, noise, HipHop and more. Follow him on Instagram @crashingwavy

In Kenny’s words, “These selections are ones meant to widen and challenge some of the most common understandings of contemporary culture and the activity of art. They are meant to offer questions about what it might mean to pursue the activity of creating cultural products in the present, and also different ways of thinking about what we may want to create together and individually — what we may want to share as artists, as teachers, and as people in society.”

1. Society of the Spectacle (1967) by Guy Debord

2. How to Make a Happening (1966) by Allan Kaprow

3. Teaching to Transgress (1994) by bell hooks

4. Chromophobia (2000) by David Batchelor

5. Glitch Feminism (2020) by Legacy Russell

6.The Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto (2013) by Martine Syms

7. Dada Manifesto (1918) by Tristan Tzara