The program’s second microfestival featured an array of works-in-progress responding to the politics of land and food. The microfestival included performances, installations, and visual art created by our first cohort of MA students in the second half of Collaborations and Community-based Art (HRA 504), a core course offered by Dr. Tania El Khoury in the second semester of the program.
A live seminar performance in which the participants are invited to experience watching a film and listening to a text while discussing the intersections of animal, nature, and land with the political, collective and universal. Food is available for the whole duration of the seminar, while the audience moves between watching, listening, discussing and digesting thoughts.
Holy Grain is a mural and accompanying zine that explores the history of bread, specifically the contemporary cultural practices that are shaped by the economic and symbolic capital of bread in Jordan and neighboring countries.
Alone Time invites the audience to experience a different rendition of a familiar routine: eating takeout while consuming media through a screen. Created as a response to the romanticized communal dinners of the art world, this piece is positioned between the real and ideal of dining experiences. It explores the comfort and familiarity of this private indulgence while introducing an unfamiliar spectatorship to the space. The physical and aural presence of other bodies interrupts the ritualistic alone time, which may compound feelings of alienation or replace them with a communal experience altogether.
Fatal Morgana is a bonfire picnic performance examining subversive community structures and alternative organizing methods that center on agricultural traditions in Palestine. Drawing its aesthetics from outdoor picnics and camping, the performance will host a 5-course meal inspired by 5 agricultural and permacultural contemporary projects across Palestine: Riwaq, Om Sleiman Farm, Bustana, Manbata, Sakiya.
A housewife from the past and an alchemist from the future (Xenia Adjoubei) invite you to a conversation on a lawn, exploring its critical and political spatial references. While lying on the grass, hanging out with friends or during a romantic picnic, we might appreciate the softness of a well-manicured lawn. Perhaps we may momentarily wonder how much water is needed to grow such grass and why it doesn’t flower. Does this soft carpet feel natural? What does it say about our society? We might feel that we are lying on an outdated American Dream, on “law and order” propaganda, on a status symbol of sexism and racism, that in times of climate change becomes symbolic of ecological destruction.
After the death of RUFIAN, the invocation of its undead presence and the demise of the fifth sun, the initiatory rite of the black sun, births the invisible made visible, the rumbling ground, the enemy, the mirror of smoke, shadow jaguar, the faceless Cerebro. Live Music by CEREBRO : A.K.A. RUFIAN, Acid Sludge, Post Industrial genre from the Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Subterranean Scene, Soundtrack to the Urban Warfare. The set will consist of material written, composed and produced in New York as well as unreleased material marking the rise of CEREBRO : . after the initiation and death of RUFIAN.
Welcome to an authentic cacao ceremony. Let’s share the gifts of Mother Earth and the healing of the sacred cocoa surrounded by music, dance, and meditation. This special ceremony is designed uniquely for you (below the regular price), but donations are encouraged. We only offer genuine ceremonial cacao powder bought from Guatemala. *Disclaimer: The organizers are not responsible if you experience any psychic response.
Skins of Nature is an endurance performance piece that takes place in the open fields of the Hudson Valley on Bard College, the unceded lands of the Munsee and the Mohican people. The performer worked with multiple square bales of hay, using her body to transform them and move them through the landscape producing a trace in time and space, creating an altar for all those who perished in anonymity. This intervention honors the spirits of the ones who died here under the whip of the white man.
Bruce, the American Lobster leads the audience through a lecture-performance that traces the changing cultural perception of lobsters throughout time—from overabundant marine protein to pauper’s food, and from luxury commodity to sentient being. Market Price explores the politics of seafood, class, immigration, geography, technology, and animal perception.
The Patapsco Inn is a re-creation of a found vintage menu and an accompanying sound piece, experienced in person and online. The piece explores the experience of growing up in a family-owned restaurant-bar in Catonsville, Maryland in the 1950s. This work is a collaboration with the artist’s mother and grandmother. The Patapsco Inn explores restaurants and bars as gathering spaces, as well as the functionality of familial memory and legacy.
Queer Kurultai offers a queer perspective on Kyrgyzstani traditions, socio-political relations, and the place of LGBTQ+ community. During a dinner gathering featuring Kyrgyzstani national dishes, the guests will hear snippets of stories and reflect on them together. This piece is inspired by the debate on gender standards and roles in Kyrgyzstan society, and their implication in the growing political homophobia in the country and beyond.