Les Joynes (b. Santa Barbara, CA, 1963) is an American intermedia artist working in New York. He has exhibited at The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Museu Brasileiro de Escultura, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Maejima Art Center, Japan; Art & Culture Foundation, Seoul; Museum of Modern Art, Wales; AIT Tactical Museum, Tokyo; Norimatsu Museum, Japan; Michael Steinberg Fine Art, New York (solo); Sandra Bürgel Gallery, Berlin; Mizuma Gallery, Tokyo.
Education: MA Fine Art, Goldsmiths, University; MA Sculpture, Musashino Art University, Tokyo; PhD, Leeds Metropolitan University; BA (Hons) Fine Art, Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London; and B.A. (cum laude) in History and M.Sc from Boston University.
Fellowships and Scholarships: Japan Ministry of Culture Scholar (MEXT), Tokyo (1997-2001); NKD Fellow, Nordic Artists Centre, Norway (2008); Edwin Austin Abbey Fellow, National Academy Museum, New York (2009); Artist Fellow on the Bauhaus Foundation’s Cities of Tomorrow Program CIAM Urbanisme X, Dessau, Germany (2008-2009) and Erasmus Scholar, Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-arts de Paris (1995); 2008-2010 Visiting Scholar in the School of the Arts, Columbia University; 2011-2012 Visiting Scholar researching contemporary art and philosophy at Columbia University Department of Philosophy and Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain.
Joynes has been a guest lecturer at Kookmin University, Seoul; Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds; University of California, Santa Barbara; Otis College of Art, Los Angeles; Lasalle School of Art, Singapore; Nanyang Academy of Art/National University of Singapore and Musashino Art University, Tokyo.
An interview with Joynes is currently published in Octopus, the Journal of Visual Studies at University of California, Riverside.
Dear Les Joynes,
This is Mohsen Kazemi, an MA student of Iranian history at Payam Nour University (PNU). I am currently working on my thesis with the title of “Assessment of Oral History Studies in Iranian Universities”. To this effect, I need to learn about the views of credited oral history scholars from renowned universities and higher education centers, so I will be able to draw a contrastive analysis of oral history studies between Iranian academic centers and their foreign opposite numbers.
Please take some minutes of your precious time to answer the following questions. Naturally, your answers will be referred to during the thesis and will be mentioned in the reference section of the project.
1. What is your field of study? Please, mention the name of your center.
2. What targets, prospects, and horizons, regarding oral history studies, are envisaged by your university/faculty or center?
3. How are research and educational priorities set in your university/center?
4. What are oral history curricula being followed in your university/study center?
5. What obstacles have you ever encountered by implementation of your oral history studies?
6. What role can oral history studies play in the interactions between different universities and study centers across the world?
7. Can oral history findings bolster interdisciplinary studies and academic research projects?
8. How do you think historical studies, including oral history, must be pursued in foundations other than universities and higher education centers?
9. Do you have an impression of oral history activities in Iran?
Yours sincerely,
Mohsen Kazemi
MA Student of Iranian History
Payam Nour University