Conversations on Acts of Art and Rebuttal

Friday, October 5, 2018, 1–6pm 
Lang Recital Hall, Hunter College North Building, 4th Floor
Entrance on the south side of 69th Street
between Park Ave. and Lexington Ave.

PROGRAM SCHEDULE

1pm | Welcome by Howard Singerman, Phyllis and Joseph Caroff Chair of the Department of Art and Art History, Hunter College

1:15pm | 1971 Art Students League: Richard Mayhew and Oakley N. Holmes, Jr. in conversation with Lisa Farrington

1:45pm | Statement by Cliff Joseph, read by LeRonn P. Brooks 

2pm | Weusi Artist Collective: Dindga McCannon and Ademola Olugebefola in conversation with LeRonn P. Brooks

2:30 pm | Betty Blayton-Taylor discussing her work, from a film by Oakley N. Holmes, Jr., 1975

2:45pm | Abstraction: Richard Mayhew and Frank Wimberley in conversation with Lisa Corinne Davis 

3:15pm | Vivian Browne discussing her work, from a film by Oakley N. Holmes, Jr., 1975

3:45pm | Where We At: Black Women Artists: Dindga McCannon in conversation with Lisa Farrington and Lisa Corinne Davis

4:15pm | Nigel Jackson and Acts of Art Gallery: James Denmark and Frank Wimberley in conversation with LeRonn P. Brooks

4:45pm | “Once in a While” by Benny Andrews, read by Tom Sleigh, Distinguished Professor in the Graduate Program in Creative Writing, Hunter College

5pm | Round table discussion: Rebuttal to the Whitney Museum Exhibition: Black Artists in Rebuttal 

5:45pm | Audience Q&A

6pm | Closing remarks by Sarah Watson, Chief Curator, Hunter College Art Galleries

6:15-8pm | Reception at the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery, 132 E. 68th Street

For more information on "Acts of Art and Rebuttal in 1971" 
please visit: https://www.leubsdorfgallery.org/calendar/rebuttal

AXIS MUNDO: QUEER NETWORKS IN CHICANO LA
An exhibition of work by a collaborative network of over 50 LA-based queer Chicanx artists produced through the 1960s to 1990s

Curated by C. Ondine Chavoya and David Evans Frantz

Hunter College Art Galleries: 205 Hudson Gallery & Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery
June 22–August 19, 2018

Kick Off Reception for Axis Mundo
Thursday, June 21, 2018 from 3:00–4:30 PM
The Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery
132 E 68th Street, New York, NY 10065

Please note that the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery will close at 5 PM on June 21, 2018. Please join us for the opening reception at 205 Hudson Gallery from 6–9 PM on June 21, 2018.

Being Alone, Sharing: Conversations on Survival
Saturday, April 28, 1–7:30pm 

Organized by Sarah Watson and Dylan Gauthier with Alida Jekabson

Presented in conjunction with the exhibition The School of Survival: Learning with Juan Downey, curated by Javier Rivero Ramos and Sarah Watson, on view through May 6, 2018

Drafted in his sketchbook, the phrase “school of survival” echoes Juan Downey’s belief that educators and artists have a responsibility to work towards societal change. Addressing the urgencies of the material realities of the 1970s, Downey’s work foreshadows the ever-evolving crisis we find ourselves in today. Considering our current ecological and political moment, this conversation series invites artists, educators, and activists to share how their creative process, approach to education, and daily life respond to and define survival. 

SCHEDULE:

1–1:30pm Introduction by Sarah Watson and talk on Juan Downey by Javier Rivero Ramos

1:30-2:45pm Conversation with Stephanie Alvarado, Brooke Singer, and Dior St. Hillaire, moderated by Alida Jekabson

2:45-3:45pm Conversation with smudge studio (Elizabeth Ellsworth and Jamie Kruse) and Tattfoo Tan, moderated by Dylan Gauthier

3:45-4pm Coffee Break

4-5:15pm Conversation with School of Apocalypse (Tal Beery, Catherine Despont, Eugenia Manwelyan and Adam Stennett) and Pili X, moderated by Sarah Watson

5:30-6pm Reading by Lila Zemborain and Mónica de la Torre, organized by Jocelyn Spaar

6-6:30pm Intro and performance demo of Datagarden’s MIDI sprout

6:30-7:30pm Wine and cheese reception

PARTICIPANTS:

STEPHANIE ALVARADO is a queer Afro-Indigena Latina feminista born and raised in the Bronx, NY by way of Guayaquil, Ecuador. She is a multidisciplinary artist, poet, and reproductive justice scholar and activist. Alvarado is currently the Director of Advocacy and Partnerships at 596 Acres, NYC's only community land access advocacy organization.

Founded in 2011 by Joe Pattucci and Alex Tyson, DATAGARDEN is an arts organization and zero waste record label. DataGarden builds community and connection to nature through experiences that extend human perception using sound, including releasing downloads on plantable artwork; producing installations and events; and using plants to play electronic music with their bio-sonification MIDI Sprout device.

DYLAN GAUTHIER is an artist and educator who creates platforms and social infrastructure around ecology, community, landscape, and social change. Gauthier is a founder of the boat-building and publishing collective Mare Liberum and of the Sunview Luncheonette, a co-op for art, politics, and poetics in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. He teaches in the Film and Media Department at Hunter College.

ALIDA JEKABSON is a M.A. candidate in the Art History program at Hunter College and is the spring Gund Curatorial Programming Fellow for the Hunter College Art Galleries. Alida's research interests include public art and museum history with a focus on modern and contemporary art from the Americas.

JAVIER RIVERO RAMOS, co-curator of the exhibition The School of Survival: Learning with Juan Downey, is a second year PhD student at Princeton University’s Department of Art and Archeology studying modern and contemporary art with a specific focus on Latin America. His research interests include international networks of artistic exchange, art under duress, and Pan-Americanism. He has worked in the curatorial departments of Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, MX; Museo Jumex, Mexico City, MX, and the Hunter East Harlem Gallery, New York.

SCHOOL OF APOCALYPSE––founded in 2015 by Tal Beery, Catherine Despont, Eugenia Manwelyan and Adam Stennett––is a radical learning community organized around a notion of school broadly defined as a framework and container for the emergence of shared knowledge. The school invites a range of thinkers, artists, and scientists to present programming on themes connecting creative practice and notions of survival. Subjects of study are theoretical as well as hands on, and emphasize the integration of observational and material practices found in mystical traditions, creative modalities and scientific field work.

BROOKE SINGER engages technoscience as an artist, educator, nonspecialist and collaborator. Her work lives “on” and “off” line in the form of websites, workshops, photographs, maps, installations, public art and performances that often involves participation in pursuit of social change.

JOCELYN SPAAR is a poet, translator, and artist, living in New York and working at the Hunter College Art Galleries.  She is the poetry editor of STILL magazine, based in Berlin and New York.

SMUDGE STUDIO is a collaboration between Elizabeth Ellsworth and Jamie Kruse that started in 2005. smudge studio designs and cultivates embodied practices that support humans in paying nuanced attention to the fast and intense material realities that are now emerging on a planetary scale.

DIOR ST. HILLAIRE is the owner of GREENFEEN, an environmental consulting firm that uses Hip-Hop to teach sustainability as a lifestyle through green technology and compost education. Through exclusive partnerships, zero waste events, and organics collection, GreenFeen uses this triple bottom line theory to teach a holistic lifestyle.

TATTFOO TAN is an artist who collaborates with the public on issues relating to ecology, sustainability and healthy living. His work is project-based, ephemeral and educational in nature.

MÓNICA DE LA TORRE is the author, most recently, of The Happy End/All Welcome. She teaches in the Literary Arts program at Brown University. Her translation of Defensa del ídolo, the sole book of poetry by the Chilean modernist Omar Cáceres, is forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse this summer.

PILI X is a multidisciplinary artist, radical urban planner, and Director of Community Partnerships at the North Philly Peace Park. His work focuses on community development and place-making using ecology, design, education, and art as a vehicle to implement radical change. He was named one “12 People Of Color Leading The Social Impact Charge In Philadelphia” in 2017 by Generocity.

SARAH WATSON is Director of Exhibitions & Chief Curator of the Hunter College Art Galleries and is co-curator of the exhibition The School of Survival: Learning with Juan Downey. Her curatorial interest is in creating experimental sites for education, collaboration, and action, with a focus on time-based works including film, sound, video, new media, performance, poetry and literature. In addition to organizing exhibitions and programming, Watson oversees the gallery component of the Advanced Certificate in Curatorial Studies at Hunter College.    

Poet and critic LILA ZEMBORAIN (Argentina) is the author of eight poetry collections including Guardianes del secreto (2002), translated into English as Guardians of the Secret (2009); Malvas orquídeas del mar (2004), translated into English as Mauve Sea-orchids (2007); Rasgado (2006), translated into French as Déchiré (2013).  From 2009 to 2012 she directed the NYU MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish, where she continues to teach.