At the New Museum July 10: Projects for a Revolution in New York

Projects for a Revolution in New York
Experiments in Collective Research and Action: Some Proposals
Saturday, July 10, 2010
At the New Museum, 235 Bowery NYC
FREE, starts at 12:30 pm – I’ll be speaking between 3:30 and 4:30 pm

Organized by Programs for Research and Outreach (PRO) as part of the exhibition “Museum as Hub: In and Out of Context REDUX,” this event shifts between elements of a seminar, performance, screening, lecture, discussion, spoken-word event, conversation, and encounter. Those involved include Ayreen Anastas, Emily Forman, Dara Greenwald, Jesal Kapadia, Rene Gabri, Benj Gerdes, Karen Hakobian, and Harout Simonian, along with their collaborators and guests. The event migrates around issues such as immigration and work, political suppression and political prisoners, homelessness and housing, sex and transgender politics, and issues of political agency, autonomy, and education in contemporary New York.

Specific contributions include the following:

Dara Greenwald explores questions concerning political repression in New York by looking at the activity of militant care as expressed through writing, visiting, and advocating for political prisoners. Through discussions on the links between the repression of today with the repression of the movements of the ’60s and ’70s, Greenwald examines its influence on current feelings of fear surrounding political speech and action.

Karen Hakobian and Harout Simonian attempt to challenge the boundaries of revolution and the revolutionary, both as process and as practice of/on a collective and individual level. What does it mean making revolution for oneself, being that revolution, changing the world inside and outside of oneself, taking that responsibility of the change and the changer? What comes after it? For this they have invited Ignacio Rivera, transgender activist and sex educator; Peppermint, famous drag queen; Audacia Ray, sex worker and activist; and Edgar Rivera, anthropologist at Columbia University.

Jesal Kapadia has together with her students Amin Hussain and Nitasha Dhillon developed a project based on the topic of translation, migration, and immigrant workers’ rights in New York City.

Benj Gerdes’s presentation addresses questions of immigration in light of the Lower East Side’s history and present anti-immigration legislation. Emily Forman attempts to gather together and discuss her work with saving the Starlight Lounge and her collaboration with Picture the Homeless.

Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri invite a series of guests to intervene between each session and involve the public in narrating and thinking through our present.