JOERILEY.WORK




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Photo: Natalie Conn

  Joe Riley is an artist, historian, and Ph.D. candidate at UC San Diego Visual Arts in a joint environmental research program with Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation. 

  Joe’s research has recently been supported by the Getty Scholars Program, a UCSD Rita L. Atkinson Fellowship, and the UC Humanities Research Institute. His dissertation, Fixing the Sea: Case Studies Toward A Critical Environmental History of Ocean Art and Science since 1970, foregrounds and critically examines histories and practices of interaction between artists, oceanographers, and marine life situated within California’s university-military-research complex.

  From 2020–2025 Joe has been a participating artist and co-curator for the Pacific Standard Time exhibition Embodied Pacific, featuring projects by thirty artists working with researchers in laboratories, field sites, and archives in Southern California and the Pacific Islands. 

  Previously, he was an Ocean Fellow with TBA21-Academy and participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program. Joe holds a BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art and has taught at UC San Diego, Cal State San Marcos, Stevens Institute of Technology, and The Cooper Union.

Recreating Hegemonies
2013
Banner, rope, wooden cricket bat, New York Times, lead softball, audio recording 
The bundle of fabric and rope is the "Free Education To All" banner that was flown from the 8th floor of the Cooper Union Foundation building during the December 2012 student lock-in in protest of the Cooper Union board and administration's decision to charge tuition and attempt to end over 150 years of free education at the institution.

Atop the banner is a a solid, cast-lead softball, and a copy of the April 23, 2013 New York Times, which ran the front page article,"College Ends Free Tuition, and an Era" supposing an end to the struggle against tuition at Cooper Union. A month later, the NYT was covering the student occupation of Cooper Union President, Jamshed Bharucha's office, which held for 65 days. The occupation ended following a negotiation several of the school's board members. The agreement that emerged from the negotiation included direct student representation on the school's board, and the formation of a Working Group comprised of students, faculty, staff, and trustees charged with developing a plan to keep the school tuition free. In December of 2013, the Working Group presented its report to the trustees, and Cooper Union blinked on tuition...The struggle continues.

The bat included in the piece was a prototype for a cricket bat that was presented to Jamshed Bharucha upon his inauguration as President of Cooper Union in October of 2011. The prototype bat now reads "This Ain't NYU".

The headphones play an audio loop of Free Cooper Union's November 24, 2013 performance at e-flux of the 41-page trustee meeting transcript first leaked to the Village Voice on May 23, 2012.