Cassie Thornton
CV
cassie.thornton@gmail.com

Current/Recent Projects

Application to the London School of Economics
My masters thesis is available on Lulu, or I can send you a pdf. A research inquiry into the relationship between art students, faculty and administration with student debt. Done over 3 months at California College of the Arts as national student debt reached $1 Trillion dollars, this wild exploration sets the stage for further research.

Poets' Securitization Force
A series of workshops for poets in search for securityas a concept and an experience. The result is a Securitization Manual and a roving irrational security force.

Fedora Archive
Fedor is a Masters Fine Arts candidate at California College of the Arts, graduating in 2012. She is suffering because she is painfully aware of the amount of debt that forms the construction of education, and that manifests in art school as debt by-products. She will appear at the MFA thesis show on May 10.

Wealth of Debt
A debt-backed currencybased on the processing of receipts for transactions made using student loans from December 1-31, 2011. The final product will be appraised by a wide variety of market representatives, from art, to securities, to antiques, to pawn shops and mineral experts and used as capital to purchase toxic student debt and pay back taxes.

Psychoanalytic SORRY!
This adaptation of the familiar board game is dealt by a certified psychoanalyst who questions player behavior on the game board to reveal unconscious personal pathologies that block sincere apology and forgiveness. To be plated at On Apology at the Wattis Institute.

Dirt on our Hands
I am going places with my friends, and we are washing our hands first. We are going places like banks, financial aid offices, and the Federal Reserve, and we are touching things, looking for dirt. At the end we wipe our hands off on paper and look at it.

<--- Why isn't anyone crying at the art fair?
First: shrieks of laughter, fits of consternation, the elation of love, and eyes red from tears (either from laughing or crying too hard, it feels the same once your stomach gets sore). Followed by: malaise, and a couple drinks. A professional will be on-site to ensure everyone's safety in this pool.

<--- is a working group oriented around the deliverance/dismantling of affect-economies. However, it won’t sing and dance another coherent performative song of participation or celebrated false-democracy. In a state of economic and political precarity, <--- has been rigorously trained in unfortunate and emancipatory breakdowns, thrills, and crises.

Debt-Material
Over 50 transcripts of visualizations by MFA students at California College of the Arts where they imagine their debt as a material form. Soon to be released as a yearbook to celebrate the labor of the graduating 2012 class.

Visionary Design Protest
A course taught at Tradeschool, NYC, with the aim to bring together occupiers, scientists, artists, activists, and researchers, to apply new ideas and approaches to significant challenges faced by the Occupy movement.

Social Craft
A framework and a method of valuing and studying the minutia of every day experiences. A course taught at Srishti College in Bangalore India, a book, a house built on the roof of a school under construction, observations of a crafted reality and the study of social implications of craft.

Teaching Artist Union
The Teaching Artist Union is composed of NYC artists
who teach as a part of their creative practice.
With this union, we aim to define the role of the teaching artist through developing a supportive community,
celebrating and exhibiting the work produced in teaching situations, and advocating for the rights and needs of the teaching artist.
We work in many different kinds of environments: for non profit arts organizations, schools, museums, and other agencies. Because we believe that art can invigorate, agitate,
and reorient stale institutional habits, we want to develop a lasting structure to support the happiness and health of every manifestationof Teaching Artist.

Temporary Art Beauty Services
Collaboration with Maya Erdelyi-Perez to bring back beauty and service to the art scene.

Infinite Museum
A nearly invisible addition to the side of Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art with an education outreach department.