Campus Directory

Division Arts Division

Department/ College/ Unit Arts Division

Title Lecturer

Affiliation Faculty

Other UCSC Campus Affiliation History of Art/Visual Culture

Areas of Expertise Art
Art Criticism
Anthropology
Documentary Film
Experimental Film
Experimental Music
Environmental Art
Ethnomusicology
Linguistic Anthropology
Middle East Studies

Web Site

Office Hours for Students/ Office Hours Mondays, 3-5pm

Mail Stop Art Department

Biography, Education and Training

Brian Karl has worked as a writer, educator, curator, arts administrator, and media producer. As curator and administrator he has worked at organizations including Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Harvestworks Media Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, Art-in-General, Creative Time, and the Kitchen. His writing on art has been published in A Blade of Grass, Apollo, Art in America, Art & Education, art-agenda, Artforum, Artillery, ArtReview, The Brooklyn Rail, e-flux, Flash Art, Frieze, Hyperallergic, KQED Arts, Momus, Observer Arts, Terremoto, Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Open Space online magazine, among others. His writing on anthropology has been published in Cultural Anthropology, Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Journal of North African Studies, Technology and Culture and Migration Studies. Recent publications also include an essay for HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory on intersections of experimental media and ethnographic work.He has a BA in English Literature from UCLA, and an MA and PnD in Ethnomusicology from Columbia University.

Selected Exhibitions

Video documentaries and art installations by Brian Karl have been commissioned, screened and exhibited at the Jewish Museum (New York) and Contemporary Jewish Museum (San Francisco), Kadist Foundation, SALT Istanbul, UC Berkeley Experimental Ethnography Lab, the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Experimental Ethnography, the Whitney Biennial, and the New York and San Francisco Film Festivals. Among collaborative works include Painted Devil (2005; Tirtza Even, co-director) and Death/Fast (2017; Özge Serin, co-director, based on Serin’s doctoral research). His screenplay, Cybersyn: The Computer and the Revolutionary, was an official selection of the 2021 Oaxaca International Film Festival and the 2020 Rome Independent Prisma Awards.

Selected Publications

BRIAN KARL SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
2026    

•”The Color of Honey: Joseph Beuys and Teaching Social Sculpture,” e-flux education (forthcoming).

•”Urban Ecological Legacies of Bonnie Ora Sherk,” Hyperallergic (forthcoming).

•”Surrealism’s Fellow-Travelers - Dynaton: Convocation of Radiant Beings,” Artillery, (forthcoming).

•”Several Eternities in a Day: Form in the Age of Living Materials,” (exhibition review), Hyperallergic.

•”Karla Knight’s Cosmic Conspiracies” (exhibition review), Hyperallergic.

•”Aztec Stories in Modern Mexico: Paintings by Inocencio Jiménez Chino,” (exhibition review), KQED.

•”John Giorno at the Marciano Foundation,” (exhibition review), Artillery Magazine.

•”Martin Wong’s Brick Monument to Popeye,” (exhibition review), Hyperallergic.

•”Analytic Projector: The Nervous Systems of Ken Jacobs,” The Brooklyn Rail.

•Sky Hopinka, Sonic Transmissions (exhibition review), SlashArtSF, Frieze.

•”Adapting to Our Ruins,” essay on Naomi Rincón Gallardo’s Convulsiones Planetarias, for Terremoto.

2025

•Between the Lines: Prison Art exhibition review, Museum of International Folk Art, Hyperallergic.

•Site Santa Fe International, exhibition review, Observer Arts.

•Kunié Sugiura, PhotoPainting, SFMOMA, ArtReview.

•Ruth Asawa Retrospective, SFMOMA exhibition review, Observer Arts.

•“What the land knows: the Radical Art ▽ Ecology Lab near Los Alamos,” e-flux Art & Education.     

•“Dreams Being Real,” EDELO, Institute of Arts/Sciences, UCSanta Cruz, MOMUS. 

•“The Slouching Beast of Southern California,” Doug Aitken’s Lightscape, Hyperallergic.

•Cate White, Men. SmallworksSF, exhibition review, Observer Arts.

•Leonora Carrington, ”Mythopoesis,” exhibition review, KQED Arts.

•Hayv Kahraman, Look Me in the Eyes at Frye Museum, exhibition review, Observer Arts.

•Rodrigo Valenzuela, “Peripheral Gestures,” exhibition review, Artforum.

•Nicholas Galanin, “Exist in the Width of a Knife’s Edge,” exhibition review, Artforum.

2024        

•Mary Jane Peters, the edge becomes the center, exhibition review, Hyperallergic. 

•”Teresita Fernández / Robert Smithson,” review in Frieze.
 •David Bayus, Performance Anxiety at Telematic; exhibition review, Hyperallergic. 

•Mirroring Mirrors: Mimetic Responses to Schneider’s Expanded Visions,  essay on 

experimental ethnographic cinema, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory.

2023        

•Bruce Nauman: His Mark, at Site Santa Fe, Critic Pick in Artforum.

•”Richard Mosse’s Take on Amazonian Plight Delivers Spectacle,” Review, Frieze.

•“Beverly Buchanan: Northern Walls and Southern Yards,” Critic Pick for Artforum.

•”The Lichen Museum,” review of book/conceptual art project by A. Laurie Palmer, e-flux.

2022         

•“Location Elegy: On Place and Indigeneity” for Wattis Art Institute Reader.

•”Can the World Mend In this Body?” art exhibition Review, art-agenda.2020             

•”The Uncanny Valley: Being Human in the Age of AI,” exhibition review, Art in America.

•“Tonight the World,” Review of Daria Martin exhibition at Jewish Museum, art-agenda.

•”Negotiating Crisis on Campus: The Institute of Arts + Sciences at UC Santa Cruz,” Art & Education.

2019        

•“Inheritance: Recent Video Art from Africa at Fowler Museum,” Critics Pick, Artforum.

•”Creative Responses, Collective Solutions to Incarceration in FutureIDs project,” A Blade of Grass.

•“Violence, Voyeurism and the Place of Art: Segura’s Pyre in Context,” Art Practical.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS (continued)

2018        

•“Poverty of Sensibility: Art Pedagogy in the 21st Century Symposium,” Art & Education

•“Sonja Gerdes: Pie as Trouble. Breathe. Let’s Hang,” Artforum.

•“Collective Enterprise: Futurefarmers Show Off Creative Collaboration,” Frieze.

•“A Welcome Reappraisal,” Peter Hujar exhibition at Berkeley Art Museum for Apollo.

•“In and Out of the Dark with Extreme Duration: Film Documentary of Wang Bing as Art,” Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art.

2016         

•“Ralph Eugene Meatyard: American Mystic,” Fraenkel Gallery, SF, CA, Art-Agenda.             

                  •“In and Out of the Dark with Extreme Duration: Film Documentary of Wang Bing as Art,” Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art.

                 •“How Chinese Is It? Global Reception of Contemporary Chinese Media Art,” Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art.

•“Pattern Repetition Predictability” exhibition review in Arts Quarterly Online.

•“(Epic) Words Fail,” San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Open Space Online.

•“Enrique Chagoya: Mindful Savage’s Guide to Reverse Modernism,”, Art Practical.

•“From Here to There,” kurimanzutto at Jessica Silverman Gallery, SF, CA, Flash Art.

•Review of “Peter Hujar, 21 Pictures,” Fraenkel Gallery, SF, CA, Frieze Magazine.

2015         

•“Playing Nice,” column for San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Open Space Online.

                  •“Landscape: the virtual, actual, possible,” Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art.

•Review of “China Boo,” Barry McGee at Ratio 3, San Francisco, CA, for Frieze Magazine.


                  •Review of “Nacht und Träume,” Altman-Siegel Gallery, San •Francisco, CA for Artforum.


•“Numbers Games in the Arts,” San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Open Space Online.


                  •“Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art,” Art Practical.


                  •“Beverly Buchanan, “You Might Find Yourself...” Andrew Edlin Gallery, Daily Serving..


                 •“Elad Lassry,” review of exhibition at David Kordansky Gallery, Daily Serving.

                 •“Wakeup Sauce: Notes on Developing Culture from All Over,” SFMOMA Open Space.


•“3 Contemporary Japanese Ceramicists, exhibition curated by Murakami,”Arts Quarterly.


•“Richard Misrach, ‘Being(s)’” review of exhibition at Fraenkel Gallery, Hyperallergic.


•“Painting is Forbidden,” Martin Wong at Wattis Institute, SF, CA; Hyperallergic.


•“Turn,” Janine Antoni at Anthony Meier Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Art Practical.

•“Autonomy Cube,” work by Trevor Paglen at Altman/Siegel, CA; Hyperallergic.


•“Songbook,” Alec Soth at Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Hyperallergic.


2014         

•“Across a Divide: Cosmopolitanism, Genre, and Crossover among
Immigrant Moroccan Musicians in Contemporary Andalusia,” Migration Studies.

•“The Coming of Americans: Popular Music as Influence in Morocco,” Journal of North Africa Studies.

•Review of Recreating First Contact: Expeditions, Anthropology, and Popular Culture (Joshua Bell

et al, ed.), Social Anthropology.

2012         

•“Technology in Moroccan Music,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies.

2011         

•Review Adventure of the Real: Jean Rouch and The Craft of Ethnographic Cinema (by Paul Henley), Cultural Anthropology.

2010         

•“Underpaid Labor at the Art Show” review of Whitney Biennial for Hyperallergic.