Boris Oicherman, he/him/his boris@umn.edu http://www.oicherman.art Online mentor BIO I am an artist, a museum curator and an engineer - but I've always had hard time answering the "what kind" questions about what I do. What's your field of engineering? (Color Science..?) What art medium? (Conditional art..?) What kind of curating? (Curator for Collaboration..?) Answering a "simple" question with a conversation seemed the only way. It took me some years to realise that what I'm having hard time with is the very idea of a "kind of": disciplines, media, professions, the ways we break down and demarcate our practices, cultures and ways of knowing to make them manageable, controllable, digestible. I have also had a hunch that, of all Western professions, artists are the only ones who can attach their work to any other practice, absorb themselves into any other discipline. The reverse is also true: today, any practice can become art. So, I thought, we can as well use this incredible freedom of art to catalyze connections between disciplines, and perhaps - one day - do away with disciplines altogether. I am lucky as hell having a full-time job figuring out just how to do that. TEACHING PHILOSOPHY & MENTORSHIP I am interested in mentoring as an open process where we know where we begin, and the general direction we move to, but not the exact destination. The artists I mentor will have to be independent, prepared to be challenged, and prepared to challenge me back. "I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it."