In conjunction with the exhibition This Brush for Hire: Norm Laich & Many Other Artists, ICA LA returns with a second iteration of Boxing Philosophical on the topic of authorship and artistic agency. For more than three decades, artist Norm Laich has straddled two distinct roles—as masterful “brush for hire” for other artists and as an artist in his own right. How do we attribute authorship when it is split between execution and idea? The debate will explore the questions and issues provoked by the example of Laich, as the panelists share interpretations of authorship, originality, and authenticity.

Rossen Ventzislasov is a philosopher and cultural critic focusing on aesthetics, architectural theory, literature, popular music, and performance art. His work has appeared in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Deleuze Studies, Contemporary Aesthetics, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies. He is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at Woodbury University.

Judith Rodenbeck is a cultural historian and theorist whose work addresses both the long sweep of 19th-21st century vanguard practices in the arts as well as the fine epistemological grain of embodied tuning. She is the author of Radical Prototypes: Allan Kaprow and the Invention of Happenings and a contributor to numerous journals in the arts, including October, Grey Room, Texte Zur Kunst, and LA’s own X-TRA.

Patricia A. Morton (moderator) is the author of Hybrid Modernities: Architecture and Representation at the 1931 International Colonial Exposition in Paris (MIT Press, 2000; Japanese edition, Brücke, 2002). She is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Getty Research Institute, the Fulbright Program, the University of California Humanities Research Institute, and the National Endowment for the Arts, among other institutions. She has lectured and published widely on architectural history and race, gender and identity. Her current book project, Paying for the Public Life, focuses on work by architect Charles W. Moore. She is past editor of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians and Vice President-elect of the Society of Architectural Historians.