The James Gallery Events – Check Them Out!

Capture Practice: Arkadi Zaides Exhibition and Opening Reception Thu, Feb 4, 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm | The James Gallery Arkadi Zaides in collaboration with Daniel Landau, Dana Shalev, Effi Weiss & Amir Borenstein How do individuals take on the bodily affect of the dominant structure? What are the range of choices of haptic responses, and what forms do these take, in individuals and en masse? Arkadi Zaides asks how this choreography becomes embedded subconsciously beyond judgment, and how it is replicated, sometimes even involuntarily, by individuals to make meaning in society. The James Gallery presents choreographer Arkadi Zaides’ first solo exhibition in New York, which encompasses his recent collaborations. The exhibition includes the two-channel video installation Capture Practice (2014) made with Effi Weiss and Amir Borenstein; the world-premiere of The Protest (2016) made in collaboration with documentary filmmaker Dana Shalev; and the multidisciplinary artist Daniel Landau’s 360-degree video Time-Motion Study (2016). The video installation Capture Practice results from Arkadi Zaides’ research in the archives of B’Tselem – the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights In The Occupied Territories. In making selections from the Camera Project archives, which contains thousands of hours of footage documented by Palestinian volunteers, Zaides chose to focus solely on the Israelis captured on video, on their bodies and the way they respond to various situations in the West Bank. The choreographer was then filmed in a studio as he appropriated the gestures from the selected footage. The Protest documents a gathering of protesters in front of the offices of the Ministry of Culture and Sports in Tel Aviv on October 30th, 2014. They assembled to voice their objection to the Ministry’s support of Zaides’ video installation Capture Practice and performance Archive. Time-Motion Study by Daniel Landau documents in 360-degree video his experience of moving between Palestine and Israel at Kalandia Crossing, a major border crossing for Ramallah residents working in Israel. Over 10,000 Palestinians cross the border daily. Arkadi Zaides will perform Archive on February 9 and 10 at 7:30pm as part of New York Live Arts’ Live Ideas Festival: MENA/Future. The exhibition will be open through Mar 19th, 2016. Click here for related programming and more information. Control: A Conversation Fri, Feb 5, 6:30 pm | The James Gallery Patricia Clough, Seb Franklin, Jasbir Puar Join us for a lively interdisciplinary discussion of the new book, Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic (MIT Press, 2015), written by Graduate Center alum Seb Franklin. Drawing on media theory and history, economic practices, management techniques, and aesthetic works, the book examines the ways in which control functions as a logic of capitalism and an episteme of power with socioeconomic implications that manifest before and beyond technical processes of digitization. Each of the participants will discuss this topic in relation to their ongoing scholarship in different disciplines in the humanities. Click here for more information. Shift Screenings: Steffani Jemison Wed, Feb 10, 6:30 pm | The James Gallery Andrianna Campbell, Steffani Jemison, Wilson Sherwin Recent oppositional movements such as Occupy and Black Lives Matter have demonstrated how acts of cultural-political resistance and commemoration are closely linked to questions of space and public access. Steffani Jemison will present her videos Meaning of Various Photographs to Tyrand Needham (2010) and Escaped Lunatic (2010-2011), which engage with the urban environment and the performative body moving through space. The screenings will be followed by a discussion. These screenings, discussions and the conference will explore how an image, an art object, and/or performance can not only refer to some past occurrence, but can also perform and project its agency into a world beyond its initial presentation. How does one’s position vis-à-vis such struggles enable or obstruct our ability to see, read, or understand art? How does alterity intersect and illuminate challenges to frameworks of power, or reconfigure our approaches to pictorial, choreographic, and/or physical space? These questions have been at the fore of national and international politics and are relevant to artists across media ranging from painting to performance. Click here for more information. Discussing “Capture Practice”   Thu, Feb 11, 5:00 PM – Thu, Mar 10, 2016, 06:00 PM | The James Gallery Whitney Rose Graham On select days in February and March, the James Gallery will offer interactive exhibition tours and discussions for members of the public and the Graduate Center community. We welcome you to stop by on your way in or out of the Graduate Center, or when passing by the gallery on 5th Avenue. Sessions will investigate topics of choreography and movement as well as presence and absence that are highlighted in the exhibition. All tours will be led by Whitney Graham, art educator and Graduate Center PhD student in Art History. Exhibition Tours: Thu, Feb 11, 5pm Wed, Mar 2, 5pm Thu, Mar 10, 5pm  Click here for more information. Shift Screenings: Lance Wakeling   Wed, Feb 17, 6:30 pm | The Skylight Room (9100) Andrianna Campbell, Wilson Sherwin, Lance Wakeling Recent oppositional movements such as Occupy and Black Lives Matter have demonstrated how acts of cultural-political resistance and commemoration are closely linked to questions of space and public access. Lance Wakeling’s Field Visits for Chelsea Manning, (2014) is a first-person travelogue maps the surrounding areas where former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning was held in Kuwait, Virginia, Kansas, and Maryland. The screening will be followed by a discussion. These screenings, discussions and the conference will explore how an image, an art object, and/or performance can not only refer to some past occurrence, but can also perform and project its agency into a world beyond its initial presentation. How does one’s position vis-à-vis such struggles enable or obstruct our ability to see, read, or understand art? How does alterity intersect and illuminate challenges to frameworks of power, or reconfigure our approaches to pictorial, choreographic, and/or physical space? These questions have been at the fore of national and international politics and are relevant to artists across media ranging from painting to performance. Click here for more information. Palestine: Nothing Makes Sense Why Should I?: A Book Performance by Suad Amiry   Thu, Feb 18, 6:30 pm | The James Gallery Suad Amiry, Ulku Tekten Palestinian writer, conservation architect, and political/social activist Suad Amiry performs from her internationally acclaimed memoir Sharon and My Mother in Law: Ramallah Diaries (Random House, 2005). Based on the diaries and correspondence Amiry kept from 1981 to 2004, the text uses humor and irony eloquently to describe the reality, absurdity, and cruelty of living in the Occupied Territories under a prolonged Israeli Occupation. The event will be followed by a discussion and Q&A session. Click here for more information. Sovereign Selves? Choreography and Human Rights in the Archive   Fri, Feb 19, 6:30 pm | Martin E. Segal Theatre Katherine Carl, Eda Cufer, Deen Sharp, Aleksandra Wagner, Arkadi Zaides Through discussion between choreographers, dramaturgs and performance scholars, psychoanalysts, Middle East studies scholars, this panel aims to find the resonances between problems in the realm of artmaking, urban studies, and politics. Through presentations and conversation the evening will investigate problems of performance and imagery of embodied experience of cycles of violence, meaning of quotidian gestures and their reproduction, over-identification with dominant power structures, or on the other hand, unwitting participation in such cycles, the question of self-sovereignty, and the spatial and temporal territory of the archive. This panel discussion is planned in tandem with the exhibition “Capture Practice: Arkadi Zaides” on view in the James Gallery. Arkadi Zaides’ ARCHIVE (the live counterpart to Capture Practice) will be presented from February 9-10, 2016 at 7:30pm as part of New York Live Arts’ Live Ideas Festival: MENA/Future. Click here for more information. Hope in a Time of Extinction   Wed, Feb 24, 6:30 pm | The James Gallery Ashley Dawson, Eben Kirksey, Julie Livingston, Anne McClintock, Rob Nixon, Jovana Stokic As other species are snuffed out, possible futures for humans look bleak. Can ongoing ecological catastrophes be stemmed – or reversed – within the present capitalist culture? Can radical political transformation bring an end to the sixth mass extinction event? As some charismatic creatures are being saved in zoos, captive breeding facilities, and cryogenic banks, a multitude of others are disappearing as they are disregarded or actively targeted for destruction. How should we love in a time of extinction? What practices of care can keep those who we love in the world? Organic intellectuals are sifting through the wreckage of catastrophic disasters, finding creatures that have been orphaned by their ecosystems in landscapes that have been blasted by capitalism and militarism. Rather than remain anxiously focused on possible losses, this discussion will probe imaginative horizons to illuminate concrete sites of biocultural hope. Our conversation will orbit around two freshly published books: Extinction: A Radical History by Ashley Dawson and Emergent Ecologies by Eben Kirksey. Click here for more information. Shift Screenings: Iman Issa   Thu, Feb 25, 6:30 pm | The James Gallery Andrianna Campbell, Iman Issa, Wilson Sherwin Recent oppositional movements such as Occupy and Black Lives Matter have demonstrated how acts of cultural-political resistance and commemoration are closely linked to questions of space and public access. Iman Issa’s Proposal for an Iraq War Memorial, (2007) was made as a response to an exhibition call from the ICA London. Issa’s video presents an anti-monumental and destructive view of the war. Issa also plans on showing a previously unexhibited work. The screening will be followed by a discussion. These screenings, discussions and the conference will explore how an image, an art object, and/or performance can not only refer to some past occurrence, but can also perform and project its agency into a world beyond its initial presentation. How does one’s position vis-à-vis such struggles enable or obstruct our ability to see, read, or understand art? How does alterity intersect and illuminate challenges to frameworks of power, or reconfigure our approaches to pictorial, choreographic, and/or physical space? These questions have been at the fore of national and international politics and are relevant to artists across media ranging from painting to performance. Click here for more information. Shift Screenings: Andrea Geyer   Wed, Mar 9, 6:30 pm | The James Gallery Andrianna Campbell, Andrea Geyer, Wilson Sherwin Recent oppositional movements such as Occupy and Black Lives Matter have demonstrated how acts of cultural-political resistance and commemoration are closely linked to questions of space and public access. Andrea Geyer’s Insistence, (2013) shows the hand of the artist stacking black and white photographs of women, who were radically involved in socio-political movements, cultural producers and founders of major institutions of art. The video inserts a narrative about women and modernism that has been lost in the art history of period. The screening will be followed by a discussion. These screenings, discussions and the conference will explore how an image, an art object, and/or performance can not only refer to some past occurrence, but can also perform and project its agency into a world beyond its initial presentation. How does one’s position vis-à-vis such struggles enable or obstruct our ability to see, read, or understand art? How does alterity intersect and illuminate challenges to frameworks of power, or reconfigure our approaches to pictorial, choreographic, and/or physical space? These questions have been at the fore of national and international politics and are relevant to artists across media ranging from painting to performance. Click here for more information. Archive of Gestures   Mon, Mar 14, 11:00 am | The James Gallery Katherine Carl, Farah Saleh Since 2014, dancer and choreographer Farah Saleh has undertaken long-term research on Palestinian gestures in order to investigate how artists can contribute to change through exploring and problematizing social and political memories. She archives an array of bodily gestures, movements and alternative narratives through reenacting, transforming, analyzing and commenting on the movements and stories. Indeed, this project is an attempt to collect fragments of a gestural collective identity, and reconstruct an archive that the dominant Palestinian nationalist and non-Palestinian narratives have ignored. Please join Farah Saleh and James Gallery Curator Katherine Carl for a lively discussion of this research and its artistic and cultural impact. Click here for more information. A Flag of No Nation   Wed, Mar 16, 6:30 pm | The James Gallery Tom Haviv, Ulku Tekten The second of KAF’s gatherings in the James Gallery is Tom Haviv’s A Flag of No Nation, a series of performances and installations revolving around a nationless flag and a series of poems based on the writing of Sol LeWitt. This evening’s performance will be a collaborative engagement with the text and flag that will include readings and dance. KAF is a reading & performance series that bridges poetry with other genres and mediums. KAF means “palm” in Arabic, Cuneiform, Farsi, Hebrew, Phoenician, Urdu, and many other languages. Kaf is the letter K in each. It signifies touch, vulnerability, intimacy. It shares its name with mount Qaf, the fabled goal of the Hoopoe and its followers in the sufi poem “The Conference of the Birds.” It is half of Kafka, the Czech author of empirical impasse, cruel absurdity. Like the Hoopoe and Kafka’s K, we travel by wandering, without preconceived destination. Tom Haviv is a student in the MFA Program in writing at Brooklyn College and will be joined with other members of KAF, including Ulku Tekten, student in the Ph.D. Program in English at The Graduate Center, for discussion following the performance. Click here for more information. Shift: Space, Alterity, Art   Thu, Mar 17, 9:30 am – 8:00 pm | Martin E. Segal Theatre & Elebash Recital Hall Claire Bishop, Tania Bruguera, Darby English, Iman Issa, David Joselit Recent oppositional movements such as Occupy and Black Lives Matter have demonstrated how acts of cultural-political resistance and commemoration are closely linked to questions of space and public access. This conference explores how an image, an art object, and/or performance can not only refer to some past occurrence, but can also perform and project its agency into a world beyond its initial presentation. How does one’s position vis-à-vis such struggles enable or obstruct our ability to see, read, or understand art? How does alterity intersect and illuminate challenges to frameworks of power, or reconfigure our approaches to pictorial, choreographic, and/or physical space? These questions have been at the fore of national and international politics and are relevant to artists across media ranging from painting to performance. 11:00am-6:15pm – Conference Presentations in Martin E. Segal Theatre 6:30pm-7:45pm – Keynote by Tania Bruguera followed by conversation with Claire Bishop in Elebash Recital Hall Click here for more information.