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MMXII AN INTRODUCTION Catherine Taft May 23, 2012 Value Judgment
Subject to Chance
Appreciate the Process
Post Trope
Theoretically Competent
Hero System
Primary Spectacle
30 Miles North
How Will I Know
Run Don't Walk
Waiting for the Earthquake
I Like What You're Saying
Structurally Yours
Magical Discourse
Please Say Yes
When faced with the task of constructing a collec- of narrative, and one that is probably closer to an tive narrative, even the catchiest of labels can “authentic” picture of the MFA class than any single fail to represent the distinctiveness of a storys phrase could achieve. They are punning and clever, substance. But we nevertheless name things, full of inside jokes and shared anxieties. They are bestowing tidy monikers on our otherwise unwie- discrete chapters to one epic saga. ldy accounts and selective memories. The above But alas, we are hostage to our tidy phrases represent the failed attempts at naming monikers, and a single title for this project was one such narrative: the self-generated, collective eventually agreed upon: MMXII—a simple, elegant chronicle of the 2012 CalArts MFA class. marking of the year, a shared signifier of this Developed entirely by the graduate stu- particular moment, and a reminder of the tidy dent body, these titles (only a partial list) were systems of ancient Rome. Perhaps it is most fitting debated, refined, reviewed, and systematically that this group situates itself, its narrative, in the rejected for failing to sum up the group and its continuum of history. As this volume makes clear, complex characteristics. When the students we are all subject to the social and theoretical reached their first impasse at naming, I was asked processes of time, and the contributors herein to select a title from the list, a choice that was examine this condition from eloquently considered ultimately thrown out. When the students reached perspectives. their second impasse, I was asked to give three Michael Ned Holte offers an earnest alternate choices, which were also shot-down. reflection on the necessity of change, the conAlthough each individual title seemed a failure, struction of institutional identity, and the legacies read together, they construct an alternate sort said identity produces in our shifting recent his-