SMFA President Chris Bratton and alumna Joan Jonas ('58–'61) will participate in the second session of The Great Bare Mat Exchange: A Carpet for Conversations, a four-part series of 'exchanges' commissioned as part of the Raqs Media Collective exhibition The Great Bare Mat & Constellation at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum September 20, 2012–January 7, 2013.

The conversations, moderated by Artists-in-Residence Raqs Media Collective, each involve four speakers and reflect on themes Raqs has chosen in response to their time spent in the Museum—nostalgia, intelligence, music and accumulation. On Thursday, October 25, this second 'exchange' will engage with questions about intelligence—its capacity, its many forms, its threats, its beauty, and more. Bratton and Jonas will discuss the theme with Arani Bose, MD, Entrepreneur and Co-Founder of Bose Pacia Gallery, New York, and Valentine Talland, Objects Conservator for the Gardner Museum.

The Great Bare Mat & Constellation is comprised of new works displayed in two distinct gallery installations. The first serves as the platform for the Exchange series and features a carpet, a surface for the staging of conversations, displayed at the feet of The Vinegar Tasters, a two-fold 17th-century Japanese screen from the Gardner Museum's collection. Woven by a team of expert Bulgarian weavers, The Great Bare Mat features a repeated motif that indexes the constellation of the Great Bear against a background of signals, essays, and conversations between three personal computers of the Raqs Media Collective. The second installation is a silent, looped video projection that transforms, through a series of subtle alterations, the many photographs and film stills the artists recorded while in residence at the Gardner Museum in 2010.

Visit the Gardner's website for ticket information and more details.

Image: Courtesy Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum