During the year 2004-05, many of the Vera List Center’s programs are dedicated to an interdisciplinary exploration of the theme of “Homeland.” Topics of inquiry include the effects of the war in Iraq on American political life; the history of the concept of Homeland Security; the émigré experience and the state of being between two “homes”; contemporary and traditional perspectives on homeland in a Native American context; and the debate surrounding what constitutes a country.
View events from Fall 2004 or Spring 2005.
B4B during the Republican
National Convention in
New York, 2004
* Billionaires for Bush
August 18, 2004 - 7:00 p.m.
This performance and book launching for the political performers Billionaires for Bush on the occasion of their new publication, Billionaires for Bush: How to Rule the World for Fun and Profit, will feature brief readings by the writers and editors who assembled this audacious primer for the privileged, a showing of the latest video footage of the Billionaires in action, and live entertainment by the K-Ching Singers.
* This event is presented as part of the Vera List Center’s program cycle on “Homeland.”
Imagine Festival of Arts, Issues, and Ideas
August 29 to September 2, 2004
The Imagine Festival, which coincides with the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, is hosting over 125 citywide events that mix artistic and educational activities through a series of concerts, performances, screenings, forums, town meetings and other extraordinary cultural happenings. The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School and the Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy, New School University present the following Imagine Forum Series and Film Screenings. Complete schedule of citywide events at: www.imagine04.org.
Community - Impacting our Communities
August 29, 2004 - 4:30 p.m.
Asif Ullah presents an excerpt from his film Military Myths, focusing on the aggressive military recruitment of minority youth and its impact on inner-city communities. Panelists will discuss the needs and realities of diverse New York communities. Panel will include: Asif Ullah, organizer/ media-maker; Betty Shamieh, author of Roar; and Clyde Valentin, Executive Director, Hip-Hop Theater Festival. Moderator: Bryan Pu-Folkes, Executive Director, New Immigrant Committee for Empowerment (NICE).
Prosperity - Sharing our Wealth and Resources
September 1, 2004 - 6:00 p.m.
Do we share our wealth and resources? Could we do better? The health and well-being of our economy demands that we establish priorities in the allocation of resources. How do we, as a society, define, and implement, these choices? Playwright Marty Pottenger reads from her play “Abundance;” and joins Laura Flanders, journalist and host of the radio program Working Assets Radio; Aida Rodriguez, Faculty and Chair Nonprofit Management, Milano Graduate School; and Lewis Cullman, entrepreneur and philanthropist. Moderator: Martin Fisher, Writer / Filmmaker of the documentary On Borrowed Money.
Future - Imagining the Future of Democracy, Politics and Human Development
September 2, 2004 - 12:00 p.m.
In order to bring about a better future, we must first imagine what it could be. Painter Alexis Rockman shares images of his work on global warming, biotechnology, and the environment. He joins Andrea Valeria, Mexican astrologist; Margarita Gutman, Urban historian, architect, and Executive Committee member of New York 2050. Moderator: Andrew Zolli, Futurist at American Demographics and Popular Science.
Imagine Festival Film Screenings at The New School
“About Baghdad”
InCounter Productions, 2004, 90 minutes
August 30, 2004 - 7:30 p.m.
In July 2003, Sinan Antoon, an exiled Iraqi writer and poet, returned to Baghdad to see what has become of his city after wars, sanctions, decades of oppression and violence, and now occupation. For more information, visit www.aboutbaghdad.com.
“Baghdad in No Particular Order”
Paul Chan, 2003, 51 minutes
August 31, 2004 - 7:30 p.m.
“Baghdad in No Particular Order” is an ambient video essay of life in Baghdad before the invasion and occupation. The filmmaker will be present to introduce film and lead Q&A after the screening with Kathy Kelly of Voices in the Wilderness.
* Hot Enough?
Art, Activism and Wireless Technology During the Republican National Convention
September 27, 2004 - 7:00 p.m.
The Republican National Convention in late August will give rise to a wave of artistic projects employing wireless technology to make specific political statements. Unexpectedly, the RNC thus provides a common focus and purpose to diverse and divergent initiatives and, in hindsight, enables us to assess the efficiency of the new technology as a tool for political activism. This panel examines how artists employ wireless technology to reach unprecedented masses, to recast the concept of “collaboration,” to redefine and politicize the urban environment, and to achieve unparalleled levels of immediacy.
Moderator:
Jonah Peretti, Eyebeam
Panelists:
Yury Gitman (The Magic Bike)
Natalie Jeremijenko, The Bureau of Inverse Technology, and onetrees.org
Joshua Kinberg (Bikes Against Bush)
neurotransmitter
Tad Hirsch
* This event is presented as part of the Vera List Center’s program cycle on “Homeland.”
* Whose America? Scenes from the Road
September 28, 2004 - 7:00 p.m.
The panel considers the road tradition in American films, literature, photography and art, and how the traveler views from the road affects the way Americans view themselves.
Moderator:
Philip Gefter, Photo Editor, Arts & Leisure, the New York Times
Panelists:
Stephen Shore, photographer
John Baldessari, artist
Robert Benton, film director, writer of “Bonnie & Clyde”
This panel is part of the Aperture Foundation Lectures: “Confounding Expectations: Photography and the Arts,” and is presented in collaboration with the Aperture Foundation, The New School Photography Department, Parsons School of Design and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.
* This event is presented as part of the Vera List Center’s program cycle on “Homeland.”
* Firewalls: The Individual in a Maximum Security Society
October 4, 2004 - 6:30 p.m.
Security is no longer a global issue exclusively. It’s now local. What does this imply? What are the technologies of detection and deterrence, what are the implications of risk-profiling and prediction? In this panel discussion, we will explore the permissibility of firewalls, the manufacturing of a homeland (both abroad and in the U.S.), information flows, power bunkers, and the erotics of surveillance technology
Moderator:
Antoine Picon, Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, author of forthcoming book on digital culture and its urban and architectural aspects.
Panelists:
Timothy Druckrey, independent curator and critic, writer on media history, representation and ideologies of technology
Andrew Hultkrans, former editor-in-chief of BookForum; author of a forthcoming book on surveillance in America
Leora Maltz, Ph.D. candidate in contemporary art at Harvard, dissertation on concepts of home in post-apartheid South Africa
Julia Scher, multimedia artist
* This event is presented as part of the Vera List Center’s program cycle on “Homeland.”
* Fear This: Bringing the Iraqi War Home
October 20, 2004 - 7:00 p.m.
Anthony Suau won the Pulitzer Prize for his photographs of the famine in Ethiopia, and the Robert Capa Gold Medal for his coverage of the war in Chechnya. Now he brings his camera home to America for an unsettling account of how the war in Iraq has affected this nation, in a conversation with John Darnton, The New York Times, and cultural critic David Levi Strauss.
This lecture is part of the Aperture Foundation Lectures: “Confounding Expectations: Photography and the Arts,” and is presented in collaboration with the Aperture Foundation, The New School Photography Department, Parsons School of Design and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.
* This event is presented as part of the Vera List Center’s program cycle on “Homeland.”
Vanguard or Figurehead? How the Arts Have Helped Shape Election Politics
October 22, 2004 - 6:30 p.m.
There has been much discussion lately regarding the leadership role that the arts have taken at this time of political instability. Many advocacy groups and grass root efforts are being organized to address voter registration and political awareness‑‑and the arts and cultural institutions seem to be the venue of choice for getting the word out.
Artists and arts organizations are being tapped for new initiatives that mobilize and engage the public. Many nonpartisan (and partisan) campaigns from recently founded groups have used the arts (whether it be Hip Hop, the literary or the visual arts) as a link to their communities, to help galvanize these constituencies and, in turn, to make them more politically aware.
Now that we have engaged these constituencies through the arts and arts venues, how can we make this same community aware of the political issues surrounding the arts and culture.
Moderator:
Nina Ozlu, Vice President, Government and Public Affairs, Americans for the Arts
Panelists:
Frayda Feldman, co-director, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, and co-founder ArtsPac;
Nina Felshin, curator, critic, member of steering committee of Artists Network of Refuse and Resist!, and initiator of the Not in Our Name Statement of Conscience;
Bronwyn Keenan, member of steering committee, Downtown for Democracy;
Chris Wangro, Co-Executive Producer, Imagine Festival
This panel is presented in collaboration with Americans for the Arts, ArtTable, and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.
(top) neuroTransmitter, "The Low Power to High
Power Broadcast Media Tour."
(bottom) Installation view of room 406.
One-day Exhibition
* Identify! or Studies on the Political Subject
Curated by Andrea Geyer
October 23, 2004
Exhibition - 12:00am to 6:00 p.m.
Reception and informal artists’ talk - 4:00 p.m.
“Identify! or Studies on the Political Subject” is a one day-long installation of projected images and sound — slides, videos, 16mm film and FM radio — that investigates the relationship between individuals and the state. In a political environment with systems of inclusion and exclusion (on the level of community, government as well as history) that have been polemically simplified and emotionally charged, these works engage the political subject in its complex and multilayered existences, as discourse, as experience, as claim, as trace, as action and non-action.
With works by Yael Bartana (Netherlands/Israel), Sabine Bitter/Helmut Weber (Vancouver/Vienna), Matthew Buckingham (Berlin/New York), Andrea Geyer (New York), Sharon Hayes (New York), Ashley Hunt (Los Angeles), Lana Lin (New York), neuroTransmitter (New York), Jesal Kapadia (New York), Katya Sander (Copenhagen), Klaus Weber (Berlin) and Florian Wüst (Berlin/Rotterdam)
* This event is presented as part of the Vera List Center’s program cycle on “Homeland.”
Inconvenient Evidence: Iraqi Prison Photographs from Abu Ghraib
November 9, 2004 - 7:00 p.m.
Presented in conjunction with the ICP exhibition “Inconvenient Evidence: Iraqi Prison Photographs from Abu Ghraib,” this panel discussion brings together writers and critics who address the role that photography has played in the international debate on the events of the past year, and will speak to a range of ethical and political issues, the function of electronic media, and photography's role in documenting truth.
Moderator:
Brian Wallis, ICP Director of Exhibitions and Chief Curator
Panelists:
Seymour Hersh, writer and author, most recently of Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib
David Levi Strauss, writer and critic and author, most recently of Between the Eyes, Essays on Photography and Politics
Luc Sante, Visiting Professor of Writing and Photography, Bard College;
This panel is presented in collaboration with International Center of Photography, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School. The exhibition will be on view at the International Center of Photography through November 28, 2004.
Public Talks/Private Thoughts: Scholars Respond to Creating Their Own Images
November 11, 2004 - 4:30 p.m.
A panel discussion on the art and image of Black women, presented in conjunction with the exhibition "Creating Their Own Image."
The exhibition features paintings, sculpture, photographs, and mixed-media work by 25 contemporary African-American women artists, including nine selections from the New School University's art collection. Among them are works by Emma Amos, Chakaia Booker, Elizabeth Catlett, Renée Cox, Pamela Jennings, Adrian Piper, Faith Ringgold, Lorna Simpson, Kara Walker, and Carrie Mae Weems. On view at the Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries, 66 Fifth Avenue, New York, until February 1, 2005.
Moderator:
Richard Green, Assistant Chair of Critical Studies, Parsons School of Design
Panelists:
Lisa E. Farrington, Core Faculty, Critical Studies, Parsons School of Design, and exhibition curator
Wendy Walters, Assistant Professor of English, the Rhode Island School of Design
Margo Humphrey, Associate Professor of Printmaking and Drawing, the University of Maryland, and artist included in the exhibition
This panel is presented in collaboration with Parsons School of Design, Parsons Department of Critical Studies, and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.
A Conversation Between Peter Jennings and Ed Ruscha
November 20, 2004 - 12:00 p.m.
This event is presented in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the Coalition for the Homeless’s Artwalk NY.
Breaking Rules: A Conversation with Willis E. Hartshorn
November 29, 2004 - 6:30 p.m.
When Cornell Capa founded the first and groundbreaking Center of Photography in New York City thirty years ago, he steered clear of the quagmire that had divided photography into either art or journalism. Under his stewardship, photography was defined in terms of both paradigms, and thus began to yield immense popularity and influence. The medium has since re-positioned its dual parent institutions--the museum and the press-room--and has turned popular arts, like film and video, into high art while making high art popular. Today, photography sits at the apex of all visual expression. How did it acquire its current status and power, and where is it going? Willis E. Hartshorn, Director of the International Center of Photography, discusses these and other questions as inheritor of the institution that propelled the revolution. Interviewed by Judith Mara Gutman, lecturer and author of “Passion Unlimited: The Story of Dorothy Norman and Alfred Stieglitz, Mixing Art and Politics” (forthcoming).
* Seeing Double: Exile Artists Interpret Their Homelands
December 8, 2004 - 7:00 p.m.
The late Edward Said described the inner state of the émigré as beset with a nagging awareness of two homes. This contrapuntal awareness has provoked remarkable bodies of works, particularly among artists who return home, however briefly, to measure their new American-bred sensibilities against the realities of their histories.
Moderator:
Amei Wallach, critic and writer
Panelists:
Shirin Neshat, American film installation artist (originally from Iran)
Sylvia Plachy, American photographer and author of Self Portrait With Cows Going Home about exile from Hungary (Aperture Foundation, fall 2004)
Walid Raad (The Atlas Group), American multimedia artist (originally from Lebanon); Vera List Center 2004-2005 Fellow
This lecture is part of the Aperture Foundation Lectures: “Confounding Expectations: Photography and the Arts,” and is presented in collaboration with the Aperture Foundation, The New School Photography Department, Parsons School of Design and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.
* This event is presented as part of the Vera List Center’s program cycle on “Homeland.”
New York Premiere
“This Day”
Akram Zaatari (France/Lebanon), 2003, 86 min, DV-Cam
January 22, 2005 - 6:00 p.m.
In a thoughtful, dreamlike montage, the Beirut-based video artist and New School graduate Akram Zaatari examines archival photos, from portraits of Bedouins in the desert to the bomb-rent sky over the Lebanese capital. The imagery moves from an idyllic rural past, when the central conflict was between camel and car, to the strife-ridden present of propaganda and urban alienation. From his perch at the editing station, where he assembles these layers of history, Zaatari wonders what truths are ultimately captured in these photographs. In Arabic and English with English subtitles.
Post-screening panel discussion with filmmaker Akram Zaatari and Walid Raad (Cooper Union/Vera List Center Fellow). Zaatari and Raad’s project “Mapping Sitting: On Portraiture and Photography” is concurrently on view at Grey Art Gallery, New York University.
This event is part of the 2005 Cinema East film series and is presented in collaboration with ArteEast, the Department of Middle East Studies at New York University, and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.
White: A Film Festival
February 18 - Sunday, February 22, 2005
The first film festival to deal with the issue of race and whiteness, White: A Film Festival examines how whiteness as a racial concept has been represented in American films over the past half-century. It will look at white attitudes, sensibilities, and behavior in relation to such issues as racial purity, interracial love, economic class, masculinity, power, and racial prejudice. The festival will serve as a pendant to White: Whiteness and Race in Contemporary Art, an exhibition organized by Maurice Berger for the Center for Art & Visual Culture at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. The exhibition will be on view at the International Center of Photography in New York from 10 December 2004-27 February 2005. Films will include: Imitation of Life (1959), To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), The Watermelon Man (1970), White Dog (1982), Hairspray (1989), Bamboozled (2000), and Far From Heaven (2002).
Organized by Maurice Berger, Senior Fellow, The Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School, and Curator, Center for Art and Visual Culture, University of Maryland Baltimore County.
This event is presented in collaboration with the Center for Art and Visual Culture, The University of Maryland Baltimore County, The Wolfson Center for National Affairs at The New School, and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.
Falling Through the Cracks: Photography by Great “Unknowns”
February 23, 2005 - 7:00 p.m.
Webcast
As photography has only been accepted as art in recent decades, the pantheon of seminal photographers is relatively limited. Yet curators, writers, dealers, and collectors are constantly discovering (or "rediscovering") wonderful, innovative work that somehow never reached a broad audience or was noticed and subsequently forgotten. Our panelists will each show the work of one such artist whom they feel deserves serious attention and acknowledgement. This will be followed by a discussion of why and how artists can (still) fall through the cracks.
Moderator:
Melissa Harris, Editor in Chief, Aperture magazine
Panelists:
Bonnie Yochelson, independent scholar, photography of Esther Bubley
Julie Saul, Julie Saul Gallery, photography of Luigi Ghirri
Daniel Wolff, founder Light Gallery, photography of Jerry Shore
This panel is part of the Aperture Foundation Lectures: “Confounding Expectations: Photography and the Arts,” and is presented in collaboration with the Aperture Foundation, The New School Photography Department, Parsons School of Design and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.
Log Cabin
February 26, 2005 - 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Webcast
Presented on occasion of the exhibition at Artists Space entitled "Log Cabin" that features diverse artistic strategies that examine the impact of neo-conservatism on queer representations in America. Through explorations of alienation and social ghettoization, to neo-conservative tendencies within the queer community, Log Cabin stimulates dialogue about the shift in queer vernaculars provoked by the current political climate.
Moderator:
Jeffrey Uslip, curator of Log Cabin
Panelists:
Christian Rattemeyer, curator of Artists Space
Richard Meyer, art historian, University of Southern California
Allison Smith
Matt Keegan
Scott Stuart, member, Log Cabin Republicans
This event is presented in collaboration with Artists Space.
Dancing on the Battlements: Choreography in the Age of Insecurity
March 7, 2005 - 6:30 p.m.
Formerly a nation that welcomed immigrants, the United States has become fortified against “aliens”. In this panel, choreographers from abroad who have chosen to work in the U.S. and choreographers from the U.S. who have chosen to work abroad will investigate the effects of the advent of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act and address the multiplicity of new challenges immigrants now face—legally, politically, and emotionally—as borders tighten, visas get more difficult to obtain, and the cultural and funding climates becomes more hostile to the unknown.
Moderator:
Elise Bernhardt, consultant and former director of The Kitchen, New York
Panelists:
Olga Garay, program director for the arts, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and funder, Arts International
Patricia Hoffbauer, performer (originally from Brazil)
Ibrahim Quraishi, performer (originally from Pakistan)
Joseph V. Melillo, executive producer, the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
The Public Art Fund
“Tuesday Night Talks” with Sarah Morris
March 8, 2005 - 6:30 p.m.
Now in its 10th year, “Tuesday Night Talks” is an ongoing series of presentations and discussions by some of today's most influential artists, critics, and curators, produced by The Public Art Fund. Former talks have featured curators such as Lynne Cooke, Catherine David, Okwui Enwezor, Kasper Koenig, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, and artists such as Francis Alys, Matthew Barney, Janet Cardiff, Pierre Huyghe, Takashi Murakami, Gabriel Orozco, Pipilotti Rist, and Rachel Whiteread.
This event is presented by the Public Art Fund in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.
The Mind of the Photo Editor: What the Choices Mean
March 9, 2005 - 7:00 p.m.
Webcast
Photo editors choose what they print from thousands of images. Their choices affect how big stories such as elections, wars, social upheavals, and crimes are perceived and interpreted. How do they make those choices? What do they leave out? What are the pressures upon them? How do they differ in their approaches? A photography critic discusses the implications with two photo editors and a photo-journalist.
Moderator:
Vicki Goldberg, author, photography critic, New York Times
Panelists:
Kathy Ryan, photo editor, New York Times Magazine
Christopher Morris, contract photographer, Time magazine
The panel is part of the Aperture Foundation Lectures: “Confounding Expectations: Photography and the Arts,” and is presented in collaboration with the Aperture Foundation, The New School Photography Department, Parsons School of Design and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.
A Roundtable Discussion on How Acts of Unprecedented Violence Tear a City's Fabric
Artists and Extreme Events: March ‘92 Bombay / September ‘01 New York
March 14, 2005 - 6:00 p.m.
"Progress and catastrophe are the opposite faces of the same coin." -- Hannah Arendt
Cities have been the focus of societal upheavals since the dawn of human history, and the twentieth century was no exception. Urban catastrophes in this bloodiest of centuries disrupted and destroyed their conviviality, their security as places of dwelling and commerce. Cities continue to be the object and subject of extreme events—bomb blasts, forced mass movements of minorities and the poor, and catastrophic accidents resulting from careless juxtaposition of residential and industrial structures, such as petrochemical and nuclear plants or waste management facilities. Chernobyl, Bhopal and Toulouse are such cities. As these urban catastrophes get repeated in ever-changing variations, how are we to understand these patterns?
This roundtable discussion draws on the recent experiences of two metropolises, Mumbai (formerly Bombay) and New York. In March of 1992, Mumbai suffered bomb blasts after the demolition of a mosque by militant Hindus in northern India. On September 11th, 2001, New York City experienced the destruction of the World Trade Center Towers and the death of thousands.
Mumbai- and New York-based artists reflect on these urban catastrophes and the ways they impinge on their work.
Session I: 6:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.
“Cracks in Mondrian”
Artist Atul Dodiya in conversation with anthropologist Vyjayanthi Rao (New School University)
Session II: 7:00 p.m. - 7:15 p.m.
“The Cities Blotted into Wilderness: Adrienne Rich After Ghalib”
Presentation by artist Zarina Hashmi
Session III: 7:15 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
Artist Julian LaVerdiere, co-creator of the “Towers of Light” that illuminated the WTC site post 9/11, in conversation with Tom Finkelpearl, Director, Queens Museum of Art
The panel is co-sponsored by The South Asia Forum and The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.
A Roundtable on the Historization of Art of the Lower East Side
March 18, 2005 - 6:30 p.m.
Raising questions about how the history of the Lower East Side is represented, this roundtable discussion among scholars and artists will examine the activist art of this period, recalling the antagonism in the bohemian district between artists and dominant political culture. In considering the art and experience of this fervid period in New York City history, panelists will look at the motifs of East Village art and its relationship to art history.
This roundtable discussion is done in conjunction with "East Village USA" at the New Museum, the first historical exhibition in the United States to consider the downtown New York cultural scene of the late 20th century.
Panelists:
Alan Moore, scholar and writer
Al Orensanz, scholar and writer
Yasmin Ramirez, curator
Sarah Schulman, scholar and writer
Gregory Sholette, scholar and writer
Jonathan Weinberg artist and art historian
Walid Raad and Janet Kaplan: On Art, History and Critical Interventions
March 28, 2005 - 6:30 p.m.
A conversation between Walid Raad, artist and Vera List Center Fellow, and Janet Kaplan, Professor of Art, Moore College of Art and Design, and author of an essay on Walid Raad/The Atlas Group recently published in Art in America.
This event is co-sponsored by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School; The Kevorkian Center and the Center for Media, Culture and History at NYU, and Grey Art Gallery. For information, call 212.998.6780.
The Public Art Fund
“Tuesday Night Talks” with Olafur Eliasson
March 29, 2005 - 6:30 p.m.
Now in its 10th year, “Tuesday Night Talks” is an ongoing series of presentations and discussions by some of today's most influential artists, critics, and curators, produced by The Public Art Fund. Former talks have featured curators such as Lynne Cooke, Catherine David, Okwui Enwezor, Kasper Koenig, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, and artists such as Francis Alys, Matthew Barney, Janet Cardiff, Pierre Huyghe, Takashi Murakami, Gabriel Orozco, Pipilotti Rist, and Rachel Whiteread.
Eliasson is a Danish artist currently living in Berlin. His recent projects include “The Weather Project” (2003) at the Tate Modern in London, and the 2003 Venice Biennale where he represented Denmark with “he Blind Pavilion.”
This event is presented by the Public Art Fund in association with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.
* Homeland Insecurity
Contemporary Israeli/Palestinian Documentary Film
March 31, 2005 - 4:00 p.m.
On the occasion of a film festival of contemporary, Israeli-produced documentaries, a discussion will be presented featuring some of the filmmakers and the festival coordinator, Jim Browne. Excerpts of some of the films will also be screened. The festival, "Homeland Insecurity," brings together twenty documentaries by Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers, all produced by the New Israeli Foundation for Cinema and Television, and presented at the Two Boots Pioneer Theater from March 30 to April 12. This discussion is sponsored by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.
Moderator:
Merav Ronen, editor, Yedioth USA magazine
Panelists:
Suha Arraf, director of “Good Morning Jerusalem” (2004)
David Fisher, director, The New Israeli Foundation for Cinema and Television
Anat Halachmi, director of “Channels of Rage” (2003)
Ada Ushpiz, director of “Blood Engagement” (2004)
* This event is presented as part of the Vera List Center’s program cycle on “Homeland.”
The Public Art Fund
“Tuesday Night Talks” with Keith Edmier
April 5, 2005 - 6:30 p.m.
With Keith Edmier, sculptor, based in New York. His exhibitions include “Keith Edmier and Farrah Fawcett,” The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA (2003), and the Whitney Biennial in Central Park (2002). Now in its tenth year, the Public Art Fund has produced “Tuesday Night Talks,” an ongoing series of presentations and discussions by some of today’s most influential artists, critics, and curators, including Takashi Murakami, Jeff Koons, Rachel Whiteread, Matthew Barney, Gabriel Orozco, Pipilotti Rist, Tony Oursler, Catherine David, Kasper Konig, Okwui Enwezor, and Lynne Cook. For more information, please call the Public Art Fund at (212) 980-3942. Presented by the Public Art Fund in association with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.
Now in its 10th year, “Tuesday Night Talks” is an ongoing series of presentations and discussions by some of today's most influential artists, critics, and curators, produced by The Public Art Fund. Former talks have featured curators such as Lynne Cooke, Catherine David, Okwui Enwezor, Kasper Koenig, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, and artists such as Francis Alys, Matthew Barney, Janet Cardiff, Pierre Huyghe, Takashi Murakami, Gabriel Orozco, Pipilotti Rist, and Rachel Whiteread.
Keith Edmier is a New York-based sculptor whose work was recently presented at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh PA (2003). In 2002, he contributed several sculptures to the Whitney Biennial in Central Park.
This event is presented by the Public Art Fund in association with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.
Stephanie Barron “Degenerate Art”: The John McDonald Moore Lecture
April 18, 2005 - 6:30 p.m.
The third John McDonald Moore Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Stephanie Barron, Senior Curator of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Named after one of the university’s most influential art history teachers, the lectures in the past have been given by Michael Brenson and Linda Nochlin. John McDonald Moore taught art history and criticism at The New School from 1968 until his death in 1999. Not unlike a museum curator, he brought to his students the vision of an artist who is also a scholar, and his classes were famously popular. His students, family, and friends established this lecture series to honor John McDonald Moore’s contribution to the university’s intellectual life.
"Degenerate Art" and the Consequences for Post-War German Art
The infamous 1937 “Degenerate Art” show in Nazi Germany was the culmination of the fascist movement against modern art. The show had consequences that lasted well beyond the failure of the Third Reich in 1945. Contemporary art practices in Germany after the war were haunted by the specters of racism, nationalism, internationalism, communism, Expressionism, and abstraction. The polemics and the intransigence surrounding this discussion only increased during the Cold War, and it is only possible to begin to reexamine these issues in a post-Wall era. In the years following the war in a divided Germany, discussions revealed the diverse aspirations for the power and role of art in a political society. With an understanding of the circumstances that led to the “Degenerate Art” show and an examination of its purpose and results, we can begin to frame questions about German art after 1945.
The Zionist Ventriloquist—Alter Egos as Political Strategy
Artist Roee Rosen in Conversation
April 27, 2005 - 6:30 p.m.
The Zionist Ventriloquist Postcard
We tend to tell the stories of our political history through what we assume is the objective—a single, imposing narrative that relays the “truth.” This way of passing down history is risky; in claiming a neutral position, it becomes increasingly difficult to grasp the complexities of the events that make up our past.
Roee Rosen is one of a growing number of artists dealing with the political who break down this superstructure narrative by exploring the ambiguous and often contradictory nature of our constructions of self. This provocation towards the indefinite and the unresolved acts as an essential reminder of how our personal identifications and concepts of self both inhibit and inform our perception of the world around us. This program explores personal simulation, disguises, and alter egos as political acts, revealing the complexity with which we construct our sense of the self and our sense of the other.
Born in Israel in 1963, Roee Rosen has been pursuing fake personae, multiple voices, and provocative shifts in identity throughout his career. Through multi-media installations, Rosen’s work engages the political by providing a way to acknowledge the multi-faceted subjective experience. The introduction by Roee Rosen (as artist!), will be followed by the screenings of three of his video works, and will conclude with a discussion between Rosen, art historian Roger Rothman (Bucknell University) and (invited) Ariella Azoulay, photo historian and author of “Death’s Showcase: The Power of Image in Contemporary Democracy” (MIT Press, 2003).
Video works:
Doctor Cross, 1994, English, 12 minutes
Two Women and A Man: Joanna-Fuhrer-Ha'sfari on Justine Frank, 2005,
Hebrew with English subtitles, 15 minutes
Excerpts from The Zionist Ventriloquist, 2004, Hebrew with English subtitles, approximately 35 minutes
* * *
Roee Rosen was born in Israel in 1963. After initial studies in philosophy and comparative literature at Tel Aviv University, he turned to the visual arts and, in 1989, graduated from The School of Visual Arts in New York. After further studies at Hunter College, he returned to Israel in 1991, and has been teaching at Hamidrasha College for Visual Arts since. His work has appeared in numerous group exhibitions in the Middle East and Europe, and was included in the exhibition “The Gift” that traveled in the United States from 2002 to 2004.
VIEWING ACTS: A Panel and Discussion on Contemporary Art and Audience Relations featuring Claire Bishop, Coco Fusco, Alan Gilbert, Grant Kester, and Walid Raad
May 5, 2005 - 6:30 p.m.
The past decade has seen artists, critics, and scholars significantly rethink interactive relationships between artworks and audiences. One prominent version of this interactivity is known as “relational aesthetics,” a theory attributed to French curator and critic Nicolas Bourriaud. The phrase has come to designate a particular connection between the form, experience, and meaning of the work of art and its intended or imagined audience. Other critics have described this type of relationship as dialogical. Understood as collaborative, reciprocating, frequently site-specific, and usually transient, relational and dialogical art practices take as their conceptual horizon the realms of exchange between artist, artwork, and audience.
This panel will address current dominant approaches to an aesthetics and politics of relation. Featuring presentations by Claire Bishop, Coco Fusco, and Grant Kester, followed by a conversation with Alan Gilbert and 2004/05 Vera List Fellow Walid Raad, the panel will focus on topics such as the limits and possibilities of interactive relations, and the various institutional and cultural contexts for these relations. Consisting of important scholars and artists writing and thinking about contemporary cultural production, the panel aims to provide a timely and needed contribution to practices subsumed by ideas of relational and dialogical aesthetics.
Photography After Film: The Shock of the New Technology
May 11, 2005 - 7:00 p.m.
Webcast
Each new advance in technology brings with it gains and losses. What have new digital technologies meant to the ways in which photographers frame their vision? When the subject is war or the depiction of modern life, does film or digital manipulation better interpret reality? Photographers who continue to stand by the superiority of film talk with photographers and artists whose form is determined by the new digital possibilities.
Moderator:
Amei Wallach, critic and author
Panelists:
Duane Michals, poet, and photographer
Susan Meiselas, documentary photographer and essayist, filmmaker
Eleanor Antin, performer, photographer and filmmaker
This panel is part of the Aperture Foundation Lectures: “Confounding Expectations: Photography and the Arts,” and is presented in collaboration with the Aperture Foundation, The New School Photography Department, Parsons School of Design and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.
* Homeland Security Since 1492
Mohawk Land, Sovereignty, and Identity
May 12, 2005 - 7:00 p.m.
POSTPONED
In the wake of 9/11, a historic photograph of four Apache warriors armed with rifles circulated through the Native American community. Its caption read: “Homeland Security, Fighting Terrorism Since 1492”. How does the newly-coined expression “Homeland Security” resonate throughout American history? What does the notion of homeland signify, particularly in a Native American context?
This panel is made up of four Mohawks who approach the notion of homeland from a range of contemporary and traditional perspectives, including cultural theory, aboriginal law, art, education, and spirituality. The Mohawk people have been one of the Iroquois Six Nations, or Haudenosaunee (People of the Longhouse), for countless generations. While retaining fragments of their original territory in what is now upstate New York, the Haudenosaunee now reside in multiple reserves in several states and provinces in the US and Canada.
Moderator:
Gerald McMaster, Ph.D., Cree artist, writer, curator and Deputy Assistant Director for Cultural Resources, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, editor of Native Universe: Voices of Indian America, National Geographic Press 2004
Panelists:
Audra Simpson, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology and the American Indian Program, Cornell University
Kathleen N. Lickers, partner, Maurice Law, Barristers and Solicitors
Alan Michelson, artist and adjunct professor, Rhode Island School of Design
Tom Porter, Mohawk elder, educator, founder and chief spiritual leader of the Mohawk community of Kanatsiohareke in Fonda, New York
* This event is presented as part of the Vera List Center’s program cycle on “Homeland.”
* THE SUMMIT
A General Assembly with Representatives of Real and Possible Countries
June 23, 2005 - 5:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Leaders, diplomats, and spokespersons from both internationally recognized and self-declared countries will gather at the conclusion of the Vera List Center’s “Homeland” cycle to consider, propose, and debate what constitutes a country.
Moderator:
Sina Najafi, editor-in-chief, Cabinet magazine
Panelists:
Jonathan Bach, Associate Professor of International Affairs, The New School
Eames Demetrios, artist and geographer-at-large, Kymaerica
Gregory Green, artist and citizen, The New Free State of Caroline
Ambassador Raymond Loretan, Consul General of Switzerland in New York
George Pendle, cultural critic and author of "Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of
Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons” (Harcourt Brace)
(top) Announcement card for The Summit
(bottom) Reception in honor of various real
and imaginary ambassadors in The Orozco Room
In recent years, a number of new countries have been created, from East Timor to Macedonia. Prompted by such real-world events (and just as often preceding them), many artists have also created countries that problematize the phantasms and fictions at the center of all nation-states. Building on a long literary and philosophical tradition going back to Sir Thomas More’s Utopia and Voltaire’s Candide, self-declared countries such as the dual kingdom of Elgaland-Vargaland, the State-in-Time, and the New Free Republic of Carolina appropriate the insignia and rituals of homeland to propose new models of citizenship and community.
The conference will be introduced by Jonathan Bach, Professor of International Affairs at New School University who will talk about sovereignty, and the historical, political and philosophical underpinnings of the modern nation state. His presentation will be followed by a historical overview by cultural critic George Pendle of utopian (and often failed) attempts to create new countries.
After this theoretical and historical foundation, the conference will feature presentations by Ambassador Raymond Loretan, Consul General of Switzerland in New York, artist Gregory Greene (citizen of The New Free State of Caroline) and artist Eames Demetrios (Geographer-at-Large, Kymaerica). Each will speak about their country as a political, social and emotional institution, and the rituals, objects, and symbolism associated with that. The personal will frame the discussion of some of these contemporary notions of nationhood.
The evening will culminate with a citizenship drive during which leaders from self-declared countries will orate on the virtues of their respective homelands and invite guests to abandon their involuntary national affiliations and instead choose the citizenship of a country whose values they consciously endorse. Merchandise and citizenship forms from various countries will be available.
* This event is co-presented as part of the Vera List Center’s program cycle on “Homeland” and by Cabinet magazine to launch its Summer 2005 “Fictional States” issue.