Hot off the presses: Check out the beta site of The Art | Crime Archive. It's still in very preliminary stages in terms of interface - I'm talking version 0.1 - but we are getting tons of visitors, which has resulted in a lot of meaningful participation. The Art | Crime Archive is a web-based platform devoted to the study of the spaces where art and crime overlap as ‘criminal art’ and ‘creative crime’. Users can post and comment on visual, audio, and text artifacts that illuminate the cultural similarities between transgressive art and criminal behaviors. The goal is to encourage a dialectical interpretation of art, culture, and crime. This is a collaborative endeavor between Dan Salmonsen, Paul Kaplan, and myself. We imagine the end work product to be a dynamic archive which can be configured and re-configured for a multiplicity of contexts—art exhibitions, academic presentations, community awareness panels, etc.
We just returned from speaking about the project in Chicago at the American Society of Criminology conference, and in February we will be speaking about it in Berkeley at the Western Society of Criminology conference. In the Spring, Paul and I will co-teach a related course called The Cultural Lives of Art & Crime in the Honors Program at San Diego State University. We are thankful for all the feedback and support. Special thanks go out to Stuart Henry and Mounah Abdel Samad.