Jumana Manna: When A Goat Eats the Scene
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 […]
Nicholas Galanin: Unshadowed Land
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 […]
Michael Rakowitz: (G)hosting
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 […]
Juliana Steiner: Flood the river, grow the food: embodying food systems
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 […]
Zayaan Khan: From Seed-as-Object to Seed-as-Relation in South Africa
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 […]
Layli Long Soldier: My Art is a Being: Building a Relationship to Art through Agreement, Ethics, and Pleasure
By understanding our art as a being with whom we create a relationship, Layli Long Soldier explores the ways in which we can make commitments and agreements with our writing […]
Mohammed El-Kurd: “Bombs, women, children, etc”: Humanization, Victimhood, and the Politics of Appeal
For decades, well-meaning journalists and cultural workers used a humanizing framework in their representation of oppressed people, in hopes of countering the traditional portrayal of the Palestinian as a “terrorist.” […]
Kendall Thomas: Taking (A)part: Human Rights, Human Rites, “Human Writes”
In Taking (A)part: Human Rights, Human Rites and “Human Writes,” Kendall Thomas revisits “Human Writes,” a 2005 performance-installation about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on which he collaborated with […]
Bhenji Ra: Everything at Once: Permaculture, abolition, and trans love
How do we exist in complexity and contradiction? Can we mourn and celebrate all at once? In a world focused on binaries, where do we find power on the edges? […]
Sayak Valencia: The Livestreaming Regime: From Gore Capitalism to Contemporary Snuff Politics
What is “gore capitalism” and how does it turn into “snuff politics” in the borderlands between Tijuana and San Diego? In answering those questions, Sayak Valencia discusses examples of audiovisual […]
Githa Hariharan: The Writer in Search of Citizenship
How does a writer find her voice? And how does she locate herself among the power structures that operate in the world around her? Drawing on her own work, Githa […]
Lawrence Abu Hamdan: Natq: Impossible Speech
Lawrence Abu Hamdan presents ‘Natq’, a live audiovisual essay on the politics and possibilities of reincarnation. Through listening closely to “xenoglossy” (the impossible speech of reincarnated subjects), this performance explores […]
Coco Fusco: The Right to Have Rights: Cuban Artists Confront the State
Fusco will discuss the recent efforts by “artivists” in Cuba to advocate for expanded expressive freedoms and civil rights. She will focus primarily on the activities of the 27N group […]
Hamed Sinno: Queerness in/as Metaphor
An analysis of several musical and literary texts by Mashrou Leila, as sites for negotiating the discursive boundaries of gender construction in the public sphere, and an attempt to frame […]
Mark Sealy: Photography, Race, Rights, and Representation
The photographers discussed share a forensic dialogue with photography’s past and offer navigational tools for its future possibilities in the making of new identities and histories. We need to keep […]
Ashmina Ranjit: Politics of Being
Just because we’re born with a vagina, why accept that our family, society, and state continue treating us as unequal ‘beings’? Why sexual violence, unequal rights, and inequities persist? Why […]
Forensic Oceanography: Border Forensics
In this presentation, Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani will discuss the nature of contemporary borders and the ever-shifting modalities of border violence. Drawing on their work within the Forensic Oceanography […]
Emily Johnson: Land and An Architecture of the Overflow
Emily hosts monthly ceremonial fires on Mannahatta in partnership with Abrons Arts Center and Karyn Recollet. She was a co-compiler of the document, Creating New Futures: Guidelines for Ethics and […]
Cassils: The Struggle For/ The Struggle Against
In a time of lockdown and quarantines, of fascism and propaganda, we need reason and action to be supported by visions of change. Cassils discusses artistic and performative tactics uniquely […]
Faustin Linyekula: Of Ruins And Responsibility
This lecture will be (again) a dialogue with the ruins I inherited from my fathers, guided by the poet’s voice:
I would come to that country, my country, and I would say to it:
“Kiss me without fear… And if I do not know what to say, it is still for you that I speak. “
The White Pube: [ideas for a new art world]
The ~cultural sector~ has been resistant to change, it has held on to antiquated balances of power like no other area of society, and that rigidity has affected the way […]