Saturday Night — 04.26.03 — Panel — "Their Plan vs. Our Plan"
Comments Off on Saturday Night — 04.26.03 — Panel — "Their Plan vs. Our Plan"Saturday Night — 04.26.03 — Panel — “Their Plan vs. Our Plan”
Contents:
1. Basic Info
2. Description
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1. Basic Info
What: Panel
When: 6:30pm – 9:00pm
Where: 56 Walker Street, Between Broadway and Church
Who: Martha Rosler, Nina Felshin, Bill Talen, AKA Reverend Billy, C.
Clark Kissinger, Stephen Duncombe, moderated by Ayreen Anastas & Rene
Gabri
Abstract: What plans/strategies are needed to counter the current
political tides? What is the role of cultural workers in
addressing/responding to the current crisis in politics?
Immediately following the panel, everyone is invited to an opening up
the street “Art During Wartime” at 21 Mercer, 3rd Floor
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2. Description
Although within the media, the wars seem to borrow a narrative structure
of a beginning, middle, and end, one can also relate to the latest
events in Iraq, the ongoing events unfolding in Afghanistan, the
continuous policy of targetting and violating civil liberties, etc., as
a part of a larger plan, with a more expansive timeline, a more distant
horizon.
Thus, the recent bombing and incursions into Iraq can be seen, more
within the framework of a plan, sometimes more, sometimes less visible,
more or less represented, with greater or lesser instensities, with more
or less overt motivations, goals. We can say this plan is open or
closed, we can link it to one organization like the goals laid out by
the Project for the New American Century (see
http://www.newamericancentury.org/ ) or we can be open to the
possibility of multiple, overlapping plans, agendas, working with and
against one another.
The question, our question comes back to this idea of plans, strategies
with long term implications, goals. Must the Left, or the opposition
also formulate its own plan? How is culture implicated within their
plan? How will it be implicated within our?s? How can or are small
?pockets of resistance? forming a cohesive front?
Panelists:
Martha Rosler works in video, photo-text, installation, and performance,
and writes criticism. She has lectured extensively nationally and
internationally. Her work in the public sphere ranges from everyday life
? often with an eye to women’s experience ? and the media to
architecture and the built environment.
She has published several books of photographs, texts, and commentary on
public space, ranging from airports and roads to housing and
homelessness. Her work has been seen in the “Documenta” exhibition in
Kassel, Germany; several Whitney biennials; the Institute of
Contemporary Art in London; the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the
Dia Center for the Arts in New York; and many other international
venues.
Nina Felshin is a longtime activist in the art world. Through her many
writings and exhibitions, she has argued that thinking about things
visual and developing an ethical and moral stance in social and
political life are not just compatible but necessary.
Felshin’s past exhibitions include Embedded Metaphor, Black and Blue:
Examining Police Violence, Beyond Glory: Re-Presenting Terrorism and
Good Morning, America, an exhibition that examines the threat of endless
war and domestic repression. Her most recent work, now on view at
Wesleyan, is Tainted Landscapes and exhibition exploring the impact of
culture on the natural environment. She is the editor of But Is It Art?:
The Spirit of Art as Activism and the author of numerous articles and
catalog essays. She also teaches a course on contemporary art in the art
and art history department at Wesleyan.
Reverend Billy, a k a Bill Talen, minister of the Church of Stop
Shopping, was born in Minnesota in 1950, he was brought up in a Dutch
Calvinist tradition that he rejected at 16. After graduating from
Franconia College in New Hampshire and occasionally taking part in
antiwar and civil rights protests, he moved to San Francisco and became
a performer, employing storytelling routines that incorporated music and
poetry.
In 1997, Mr. Talen began preaching on the sidewalk outside the Times
Square Disney Store, eventually conducting “preach-ins” and political
“actions” inside the store, which led to several arrests. (The store
closed earlier this month for construction of an office tower on the
site.) He has also been preaching 90-second sermons on National Public
Radio’s “Morning Edition” program and performing solo plays, directed by
Tony Torn, David Ford and Vanessa Klimek, at various small theaters
around town.
During the last year, however, he has become something of a lightning
rod for the creative and political aspirations of a growing number of
other theater artists and community groups.
As National Secretary of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Clark
Kissinger was the principal organizer of the first March on Washington
against the War on Vietnam in April of 1965. His antiwar activities have
continued down to today where he was a co-author of the Not In Our Name
statement of conscience against war and repression. Clark is a
contributing writer to the Revolutionary Worker newspaper, and is a
member of the Executive Committee of Refuse & Resist! Clark’s
commentaries on Bush’s “war on the world” policy have been widely read.
Stephen Duncombe teaches the history and politics of media and culture
at the Gallatin School of New York University. A former regular
contributor to The Baffler, he is the author of Notes from Underground:
Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture and the editor of the
Cultural Resistance Reader, both from Verso. Duncombe is also a
life-long political activist, most recently with the Lower East Side
Collective, Reclaim the
Streets/NYC, and Mobilize-NY.