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We begin 2024 with the recognition that we live in a world of great injustice and we remain in awe of those that persevere and struggle in order to exist and challenge the hierarchies of this world.
This year brings with it new developments at the OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College (CHRA). We would like to welcome our newest staff members, Grace Crummett and Adam HajYahia (HRA ‘22) to the team. Grace is our new Operations Manager. Adam is the Studio Manager and Assistant Curator; his position is underwritten in part by a grant from the Mellon Foundation to support CHRA Director Tania El Khoury’s artistic and curatorial practice. We would also like to express our appreciation and best wishes to Michelle Song and Polina Malikin, both of whom have taken up new opportunities.
SPRING PUBLIC PROGRAM
Tuesday, February 13, 5:30pm
In Our Thousands in Our Millions: Cultural Censorship and Anti-Colonial Solidarity with Palestine
Featuring panelists Samia Halaby, Wanda Nanibush, & John Halaka
Co-hosted with Forge Project
Bard College, RKC, 103
Monday, February 26, 6pm
Magic of the Mundane, artist talk by Robin Frohardt
Co-hosted by the Theatre & Performance Program
Bard College, Fisher Center, Resnick Studio
Friday, March 8, 12pm
Becoming Ungovernable, webinar talk by Molemo Moiloa
Tuesday, March 26, 6pm
Unsettled, lecture-performance by CHRA resident fellow, Argyro Nicolau
Bard College, Weis Cinema
Friday, April 5, 10am-1pm
First-Year M.A. Students’ Open Studios
Bard College, Massena Campus
Friday, April 19—Sunday, April 28
M.A. Thesis Exhibition
Bard College, various locations
All events are listed as Eastern Standard Time. Our public programs are always free to attend.
NETWORK COLLABORATION
Ziad Abu-Rish and Thomas Keenan joined OSUN colleagues from Al-Quds Bard, Bard College Berlin, and the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek in September 2023 to plan the next iteration of our network collaborative course on Human Rights Advocacy. The course, which offers students the chance to study the history of human rights advocacy while also creating an advocacy project in support of imprisoned scholars, is a centerpiece of the OSUN certificate in Human Rights. The gathering included a bracing panel discussion with Bishkek-based human rights advocates on the current situation in Central Asia. Abu-Rish and Keenan also offered an info session to AUCA faculty, staff, and students about the opportunities at CHRA for OSUN members.
In January 2024, CHRA co-sponsored a two-day workshop on children’s drawings as evidence. The workshop took place at Luma Westbau, the Zurich space of our OSUN partners the Luma Foundation, and included participants from Bard, SOAS, Luma, and OSUN’s Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative, as well as artists and activists. In 2007, the prosecutor’s office at the International Criminal Court accepted a submission of several hundred drawings by children in Sudan as “contextual evidence” of violence in Darfur. Across a range of cases (i.e., Canada, Kosovo, Kurdistan, Syria, Ukraine) the workshop explored the history, ethics, politics of the emergence of children as witnesses, and the special status of their drawings as a form of evidence.
MA PROGRAM
Our MA in Human Rights and the Arts continues to grow as we enter the admission phase of our fourth cohort (incoming Fall 2024). We are offering our students several new elective this spring: Documentary Arts: Practices of Fact and Fiction, History and Politics (Argyro Nicolau); Race and Real Estate (Peter L’Official); Music and Rights (Maria Sonevytsky); Water-Bodies: Confluences, Deltas, Gulfs (Juliana Steiner); and Writing about Images (Adam Shatz). We eagerly anticipate our second M.A. Thesis Exhibition, which will highlight the graduating class’s research-based exhibitions, installations, performances, and more this April 19–28.
FACULTY AND STUDENT NEWS
Several of our M.A. students secured travel and research grants as part of different opportunities provided by the Open Society University Network (OSUN). While some utilized these funds for a final research push on their thesis projects, others used them to support long-existing engagements in localized struggles for human rights and knowledge production about them.
Congratulations to CHRA fellow Argyro Nicolau, for winning two awards at Connecting Cottbus for her feature film in development, Excavators; our director Tania El Khoury for presenting her work Cultural Exchange Rate in Under The Radar Festival at The Invisible Dog Art Center in Brooklyn and our MA Coordinator; and Adrienne Truscott for presenting Masterclass at The Sydney Opera House.
FORTHCOMING BOOK: The Lawlessness of Rights: Talks on Human Rights & the Arts 2
We are currently working on the second volume in our publication series, Talks on Human Rights & the Arts. Our first volume Through the Ruins: Talks on Human Rights & the Arts 1, released last spring, is available on our website, where you can also find information about purchasing print copies.
Our second volume, The Lawlessness of Rights, will be published at the end of this semester. It contains talks from CHRA’s second year of public programming, including scholars Kendall Thomas and Sayak Valencia; artists Bhenji Ra and Lawrence Abu Hamdan, as well as writers Githa Hariharan, Layli Long Soldier, and Mohammed El-Kurd.
ABOUT CHRA
The Open Society University Network’s Center for Human Rights & the Arts at Bard College is an artist-led center that researches and supports art and activist practices globally.
Image Credits:
Graphic Design by Haitham Haddad
Juliana Steiner’s Talk, Writing as Sowing, Reading as Eating. Photo by Tania El Khoury.
In Time of War, Children Testify, Edited by Mona Saudi, Beirut 1970.
Last Seen 23 June 1611 by Leil Zahra Mortada, Un/Besieged Student Microfestival. Photo by Aya Rebai.