The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights & the Arts is pleased to announce the thesis exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts, Class of 2025. The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3–7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard College. The exhibition features installations, films, and written […]
First-year MA students at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts present works in progress developed in class, led by artists Robin Frohardt and Oscar Gardea. These works reflect their exploration of the potential of everyday objects and materials, with emphasis on repurposing discarded items and utilizing unconventional materials. Material Storytelling, led by Robin […]
An ‘expert witness geomancer mystic’ unites the forensic, spatial, and mystical elements of a place, giving testimony to concealed histories while constructing profound truths. They go beyond interpreting land to co-create spaces that are independent, sacred, and ecologically aligned, protecting and restoring places as active sites of continuity and renewal. In this talk, Hawai'i artist […]
How do artists, comedians, and performers respond to crises? What tools and opportunities do comedy and laughter offer political and social movements in their confrontations with fascism and supremacy? Comedian and performance artist Morgan Bassichis, a longtime member of Jewish Voice for Peace, shares their experience at the intersection of comedy and political organizing. […]
Ecotono: revoluciones silenciosas (Ecotone: Silent Revolutions) is an editorial and research project that compiles the reflections of the curatorial project Ecotone: Chagras, Payaos, Camellones, as part of Common Ground, the 2022–23 edition of the Fisher Center LAB at Bard College. Through diverse voices and territories, different food technologies in Colombia and their uses as alternative […]
Amar Kanwar's films and multi-media works explore the politics of power, violence, and justice. His multi-layered installations originate in narratives often drawn from zones of conflict and are characterized by a unique poetic approach to the personal, social, and political. In this talk, Kanwar will present his learnings, doubts, and inadequacies in dealing with evidence […]
CHRA presents Elegies, a microfestival of artwork created by the first-year M.A. students in Human Rights & the Arts, as part of The Politics of Interactive Art course taught by Tania El Khoury. The two-day microfestival on December 10th and 11th takes place throughout the campus and includes interactive installations, performances, and sound work. Schedule […]
Film by Lorena Luciano and Filippo Piscopo. Set against the backdrop of the worst European migrant crisis since WWII, It Will Be Chaos unfolds between Italy and the Balkan corridor. Five years in the making, the film features two refugee stories of human strength while capturing in real time the escalating tension between newcomers and locals. The cinema vérité […]
CHRA’s collaboration with Alarm Phone (AP) through the Activism in Process program has culminated in a book by AP activists, marking ten years of the network’s life-saving work. The publication offers intimate reflections on AP’s activism across diverse geographical contexts. Ranging in visual and written expressions from collages to illustrations and photographs, the multilingual publication […]
Land dispossession in settler colonies was rooted in the assertion of colonial sovereignty, which empowered settlers to re-territorialize Indigenous lands and create a regime of private ownership. This talk explores the land law doctrine of pre-emption, which was a key modality of Indigenous land dispossession in British Columbia and throughout North America. It examines the […]
Online Panel by Tareq Baconi, Aslı Ü. Bâli, and Shay Hazkani Moderated by Ziad Abu-Rish This panel explores how the Hamas-led attack on October 7 and the Israeli war on Gaza have changed and intensified specific dynamics shaping Palestinian, Israeli, and regional/international politics. Taking seriously that history did not begin on October 7, and that […]
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay invites the audience to stay at the threshold of the museum in order to recognize the impossibility of decolonizing museums without decolonizing the world. Refusing to study what was plundered as mere objects as museums command us to do, but rather as evidence of a destroyed world, Azoulay decenters the category of […]
Unlearning Imperial Plunder I Un-Documented is a film essay on the strong connection between the plundered objects in European museums and the calls of asylum seekers trying to enter the countries of their former European colonizers. The film treats these two subjects as ones of twinned migrations. The rights of the “undocumented” are inscribed in […]
Alarm Phone (AF) is an activist network operating in Europe and Northern Africa, running a self-organized hotline for refugees and migrants in distress in the Mediterranean Sea since 2014. AF's primary goal is to give people on the move who are in distress an additional SOS option. AF alerts government authorities to SOS calls and […]
The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights & the Arts is pleased to announce Material As Witness, the thesis exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts, Class of 2024. Material As Witness is taking place April 19–28 at Massena Campus, with one installation performance at Blithewood Lawn. The exhibition features […]
First-year MA students at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts present works in progress developed in their core requirement in art making, co-taught by artist Robin Frohardt and artist and CHRA alum Oscar Gardea. These works engage with the expressive potential of everyday objects, transforming found materials such as waste into artworks. Using […]
Unsettled is a lecture performance by scholar and filmmaker Argyro Nicolaou that explores the fast-changing landscapes of an island under occupation and her attempts to reconstruct her mother’s past. The town of Varosha on the eastern coast of Cyprus, where Nicolaou’s mother is from, was fenced off by the occupying Turkish military for 46 years. […]
Molemo Moiloa discusses the notion of becoming ungovernable in an effort to tap into our capacities to form new worlds in times of collapse. She shares her interdisciplinary contemporary practice, which centers on land justice and heritage restitution, anchored in South Africa’s histories of resistance and world-building. The talk discusses developing strategies for collective and […]
In Magic of the Mundane, artist Robin Frohardt traces the development of her multidisciplinary practices. From puppet shows to short films and immersive theater, Frohardt discusses how she uses mundane concepts and discarded materials to formulate complex ideas, imbuing the trappings of late-capitalism with playfulness and magic. She also shares the role of humor in […]
While streets around the world remain sites of mobilization and solidarity for Palestine, many cultural institutions have chosen to reproduce colonial politics of repression. They employ intimidation, using the cancellation or disruption of large and small exhibitions, film festivals, and biennials that showcase Palestinian and pro-Palestinian artists to suppress critical dialogue. In response to this […]
CHRA presents Un/Besieged, a microfestival of artwork created by the first-year M.A. students in Human Rights & the Arts, as part of The Politics of Interactive Art course taught by Tania El Khoury. The two-day microfestival on December 11th and 12th takes place throughout the campus, and includes interactive installations, performances, and sound work. Schedule […]
CHRA presents Un/Besieged, a microfestival of artwork created by the first-year M.A. students in Human Rights & the Arts, as part of The Politics of Interactive Art course taught by Tania El Khoury. The two-day microfestival on December 11th and 12th takes place throughout the campus, and includes interactive installations, performances, and sound work. Schedule […]
Juliana Steiner is an independent curator and researcher from Bogotá interested in interdisciplinary practices in contemporary art that incorporate social sciences, pedagogy, architecture and long-term projects with communities. Her research focuses on more-than-human species, environmental justice and the transformations of landscapes. She is the co-founder and artistic director of La Reserva Guatoc, a multidisciplinary residency […]
Co-presented with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School, Fehras Publishing Practices will present an online lecture performance, performed by Sami Rustom and Nancy Nasr Al Deen, in collaboration with Sina Ahmadi. Fehras Publishing Practices will share their research into the history and presence of publishing and its entanglement in […]
Sex, Cancer & Other Things My Mother Wishes I Never Had is a talk, performance, analysis and meditation on 20+ years living in a body which had cancer, healed from cancer, remained scarred from cancer, kept being questioned about cancer, worked with cancer, lost colleagues to cancer, a body which made cancer friends, lost cancer […]
New Red Order (NRO) is a public secret society facilitated by core contributors, artists and filmmakers Jackson Polys, Adam Khalil ‘11, and Zack Khalil ‘14. Their work has appeared at Artists Space, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, Kunstverein in Hamburg, Lincoln Center, Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, New York Film […]
Guadalupe Maravilla is a transdisciplinary visual artist, choreographer, and healer. At the age of eight, Maravilla was part of the first wave of unaccompanied, undocumented children to arrive at the United States border in the 1980s as a result of the Salvadoran Civil War. Maravilla grounds his practice in the historical and contemporary contexts belonging […]
Alluvial is a microfestival of artwork created by the first year M.A. students in the Human Rights & the Arts program at Bard College. The microfestival takes place at various times and locations on campus and in Tivoli on Tuesday, May 9 and Friday, May 12, and includes multidisciplinary works, installations, performances, live art, interactive work, […]
Alluvial is a microfestival of artwork created by the first year M.A. students in the Human Rights & the Arts program at Bard College. The microfestival takes place at various times and locations on campus and in Tivoli on Tuesday, May 9 and Friday, May 12, and includes multidisciplinary works, installations, performances, live art, interactive work, […]
The MA Program at the OSUN Center for Human Rights & the Arts is pleased to announce its inaugural MA thesis exhibition, featuring the capstone projects of the Class of 2023. Tracing Apparitions is taking place from April 27 through May 7 across the Bard College campus as well as off-campus sites in Tivoli and Barrytown. The […]
A film script is an unfinished work, a ghost that seeks to inhabit a form. Where do the characters that are conceived for years, but that fail to find their bodies in an image, reside? In December 1999, a recent film school graduate moves from Los Angeles to New York City. With a fiction film […]
After capturing the city of Mosul in December 2014, the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) burned the university library destroying hundreds of thousands of books and manuscripts. The collections included Qur’ans, one of which was from the ninth century. Like other episodes of our times, this performance reflects a certain engagement with […]
CHRA is hosting a screening and discussion on Monday, April 3, 5pm, at Weis Cinema, as part of Archival Collective Counter–Imagination, a two-part program curated by art historian and current CHRA Fellow Lara Fresko Madra. The event will include a screening of Set Off by Mustafa Emin Büyükcoşkun of The Material Aesthetic Research Collective , […]
CHRA is co-sponsoring a reading of Our Red Book, a collection of essays, oral histories, and artworks about periods across all stages of life, gathered by the New York Times best-selling author Rachel Kauder Nalebuff. The event is co-presented by CHRA, Fisher Center, Bard Theater and Performance Department and Written Arts. Our Red Book takes […]
CHRA is co-sponsoring a screening of the film Boycott (2021), with director Julia Bacha in-person on Tuesday, March 28, at Weis Cinema, 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm. Over the past six years, unbeknownst to most Americans, 34 states passed laws intending to silence boycott and other nonviolent measures aimed at pressuring Israel on its human […]
CHRA is hosting a screening and discussion on Monday, March 27, 5pm, at Weis Cinema, as part of Archival Collective Counter–Imagination, a two-part program curated by art historian and current CHRA Fellow Lara Fresko Madra. The event will include a screening of The Lonely Trees by the Rojava Film Commune , with an introduction and discussion […]
As the destruction continues to unfold, please join us on Tuesday, March 14th, 3:30–4:30pm in Olin 102 for a teach-in to take stock of the earthquake(s) and their devastation in various parts of Turkey and Syria. Panelists will include Ziad Abu-Rish (CHRA & Middle Eastern Studies), Lara Fresko Madra (CHRA), and Pinar Kemerli (Political Studies). […]
CHRA will be screening Miguel's War (2021, 128 min) at Upstate Films, with director Eliane Raheb in person. The film will be introduced and discussed by CHRA Fellow and filmmaker Sabine El Chamaa. Eliane Raheb’s hybrid documentary follows Miguel, a gay man exiled in Spain who returns to Lebanon after 37 years to reflect on […]
Olive trees have been a major part of Baha's practice as an educator and community organizer. His talk will focus on the significance, history, and place of olive trees in Palestine, as well as the different methods used by the state of Israel to destroy this ancestral staple and tradition. Baha will share his project […]
This talk examines how the contemporary timber industry reproduces plantation power. It explores the “remote control” of land — such as absentee land ownership, Black family land grabs, new markets for energy, and legal regimes designed to “devalue” common property in favor of individual ownership and profit. Multi-generation Black homeplaces and communities, rooted in alternative […]
Tender Edges is a microfestival of live art projects created by the first year M.A. students in Human Rights & the Arts at Bard College. These works-in-progress are part of The Politics of Interactive Live Art course taught by Tania El Khoury. The microfestival takes place at various times and locations on campus on Saturday […]
Culture is rooted in connection to land; like land, culture cannot be contained. I am inspired by generations of Lingít & Unangax̂ creative production and knowledge connected to the land I belong to. From this perspective I engage across cultures with contemporary conditions. My process of creation is a constant pursuit of freedom and vision […]
In her talk, Jumana Manna will speak about her dual practice as a sculptor and a filmmaker, and her ongoing inquiries into the contradictions of preservation and ruination. Manna will focus on her recent film, Foragers, which depicts the criminalization of Palestinian plant foraging traditions. The film challenges the logic of extinction debates under settler-colonial […]
A talk about hosts, ghosts, hospitality, hostility, and the complicated nature of a good time. In this lecture, Rakowitz will discuss (g)hosting, a term he uses to explore the intersection of hospitality and hostility in his work, as well as the recuperation of disappeared objects, smells, tastes, customs, and relationships through reactivations and substitutes.
This talk will focus on the work of Ecotone: Chagras, Payaos, Camellones, a program curated by Juliana Steiner as part of the as part of Common Ground, an international festival on the politics of land and food. By investigating and honoring food sovereignty and distinct foodways, Ecotone explores some examples of restorative and regenerative agricultural […]
Governments in South Africa and beyond are working to ratify new laws that limit and criminalize seed access and use. In response, a local and global resistance movement is working to keep seeds free and accessible. The idea of freedom is inherent to a seed, its very purpose is to share itself as widely as […]
CHRA will be screening Erased, ___Ascent of the Invisible (1976) by Lebanese filmmaker Ghassan Halwani at 4pm on Thursday, 29 September at Upstate Films in Rhinebeck. The event is free and open to the public. The film screening is organized by CHRA's 2022-2023 Fellow Sabine El Chamaa. A Q&A between Ghassan and Sabine will follow. […]
This event will take place on Wednesday, 7 September, 5:30pm ET at Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation (RKC) 103 at Bard College. "Each day we are sold different versions of yesterday, but rarely offered a different tomorrow. The apocalypse streams into every household at a flat rate. In an era of dystopian […]
This event on Tuesday, September 6 at 5:30pm ET at Weis Cinema, Bard College, brings together in person three esteemed writers—Nuruddin Farah, Ilija Trojanow, and Aleksandar Hemon—to read from and discuss their work. As suggested by the titles North of Dawn (Farah) and Nowhere Man (Hemon), all three writers are concerned in their work with questions […]
World premiere of a CHRA digital commission, featuring a Q&A with artist Ama Josephine Budge and writer Dr. Chelsea M. Frazier, moderated by Dr. J.T. Roane (Arizona State University). Putting the Cooker on Low explores the daily rituals that allow Black women, femmes and non-binary folk to keep creating in the midst of spiritual, emotional, […]
