THE NEW SCHOOL PRESENTS THE BLACK FACTORY BY WILLIAM POPE.L

Saturday, July 22, 12 p.m.�5 p.m. at the Union Square Farmers' Market

WHAT:	The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School presents a performance of The Black Factory by artist William Pope.L. Performing what Pope.L terms “a mobile service experiment,” The Black Factory and its cast travels around the country by truck to promote discussions on race, difference, and community, combining rehearsed skits with improvisation that relies heavily on audience participation. Three “factory workers” ask audience members to provide objects that represent blackness to them and then the workers use those objects to start an open conversation. According to Pope.L, “The Black Factory does not make blackness, it makes opportunity; the chance to imagine the color of a future we want instead of one imposed on us. The Factory is action art on wheels. It’s a place for folks to get together to make things happen, open their hearts, minds, and mouths, laugh, get silly, talk freely, get real, and disagree in order to create a brand new fresh ‘us’ of possibility.” The performance is one of the last stops on The Black Factory’s national tour. For more information, visit www.theblackfactory.com.  The Black Factory is made possible with support from the Union Square Partnership, to benefit the Food Bank For New York City.
WHEN:	Saturday, July 22, 12 p.m.–5 p.m.
WHERE:	Union Square Farmers’ Market 14th Street and University Place, New York City
TICKET INFO:	Free admission; for more information call 212.229.5353.

William Pope.L is a multi-disciplinary installation performance artist and educator. He participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial in 2002, and has garnered recent acclaim because of his three-year traveling retrospective “eRacism” and the accompanying monograph “The Friendliest Black Artist in America,” which is also the title of a book about his work. Pope.L is a 2005 Guggenheim fellow and is currently the featured American artist at the Dakar Biennial 2006.

The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School is dedicated to serving as a catalyst for the discourse on the role of the arts in society and their relationship to the sociopolitical climate in which they are created. It seeks to achieve this through the organization of public programs and forums that respond to the pressing social and political issues of our time as they are being articulated by visual and performing artists. The center serves as a resource for the university and brings together scholars and students, the people of New York, and national and international audiences in an exploration of new possibilities for civic engagement. For more information, visit www.vlc.newschool.edu.