Interdisciplinary Workshop on Ethical Considerations in Project Art and Collaborative Anthropologies: November 11

Please join artist Ben Kinmont and former Draper Program Art Worlds Faculty Fellow Laurel George at NYU’s Fales Library on November 11, 2011 for an Interdisciplinary Workshop on Ethical Considerations in Project Art and Collaborative Anthropologies

What:

In conjunction with his current Fales Library show "Prospectus: New York," Ben Kinmont, along with cultural anthropologist Laurel George, will conduct a workshop on ethical considerations in interactional art practices, a mode that Kinmont has been working in for over two decades.

During the workshop, Kinmont and George will work with faculty and students to generate cross-disciplinary conversations on the ethics and aesthetics of project art, ethnographic fieldwork, and other forms of collaborative cultural production. The version of the text written at the workshop will be distributed and discussed at a larger public forum to take place on November 18th as part of Performa 2011.

Who:

The workshop is open to NYU students and faculty interested in thinking critically and creatively about the ethical dimensions of making collaborative and/or public art works as well as those engaged in anthropological fieldwork.

When and Where:

The day-long workshop will take place at Fales Library (Bobst 3rd floor) on Friday, November 11 from 10-4 p.m.

There will be brief reading and writing assignments and students will have the opportunity to be involved in the Performa event, but that is not a requirement of workshop participation.

How to get involved:

For more information or to sign up, contact Laurel George at lbg2@nyu.edu.

To read the press release for Prospectus: New York, follow this link:

http://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2011/09/06/nyus-fales-library-presents-prospectus-new-york-an-exhibition-of-the-project-archives-of-ben-kinmont-september-15-through-november-15-2011.html

This workshop is possible due to the support of Kunstverein, New York, and the Fales Library.

The NYC Rare Book & Manuscript Workshop

Free Events, Limited Space: RSVP!

Spring 2011 Schedule

The NYC Rare Book and Manuscript Workshop is a multi-institutional, hands-on workshop that provides students with a rare opportunity to learn about the collections at libraries and institutions throughout the New York area, and to meet with nationally recognized curators and librarians. Students can attend individual sessions or the entire series. The workshop is free of charge, but space is extremely limited and reservations will be required. To sign up, email nyrarebook@gmail.com. Further details about signing up for these events can be found below.

Session 7: February 21, 2010, 4-6pm, at NYPL

Isaac Gewirtz, Curator, Berg Collection, NYPL

Modern Literary Manuscripts Workshop

Isaac Gewirtz will lead a session on Modern Literary Manuscripts, drawing on examples fromthe

Berg Collection, to instruct students in understanding the inception and evolution of literary texts from their earliest manifestations in author correspondence, diaries, and notebooks, through rough drafts, typescripts, galleys, and various printed editions. Authors included will be Virginia Woolf, TS Eliot, Jack Kerouac, and Saul Bellow.

Session 8: February 28, 2011, 4-6pm, at the Morgan Library

Declan Kiely, Robert H. Taylor Curator & Clara Drummond, Assistant Curator, Morgan Library

Using Modern Literary Archives

Declan Kiely & Clara Drummond will conduct a session on using manuscripts and letters by modern writers, instructing students on the arrangement and description of archival collections and effective methods of archival research. The focus of this session will be the Morgan Library’s PARIS REVIEW ARCHIVE, which contains correspondence, manuscripts and typescripts (interviews, fiction, and poetry), revised galley and page proofs, photographs, and audio recordings. The Archive also includes records relating to editorial, production, and business matters, and other records of the international literary journal from its founding in 1953 through 2003. The Archive documents author submissions, the collaboration between interviewer and interviewee that lies behind the journal’s renowned Art of Fiction/Art of Poetry interviews, and the decisions made in producing each issue, as well as the careers of its staff and many of the most important twentieth-century writers and artists who contributed to the Paris Review.

Session 9: March 14, 2011, 4:00-6:00pm, Fales Special Collections Library, NYU

Marvin J. Taylor, Director, Fales Library and Special Collection and founding curator of the

Downtown New York Collection at New York University

“Who’s Scene Is It, Anyway?”: Curators, Scholars, and the Fields of Cultural Production.

In 1994, Taylor began to document the artistic movements that exploded all over downtown NYC during the 1970s and 1980s. This scene gave birth to punk rock, performance art, installation art, postmodern dance, experimental literature, video art, No Wave film, New Wave, and a host of other experiments in art and life. The downtown collection at Fales comprises over 12,000 linear feet of archives, 15,000 printed items, 28,000 video recordings, 30,000 audio recordings, and 8,000 film elements. Some collections include the papers of Richard Hell, David Wojnarowicz, Lynne Tillman, Gary Indiana, Richard Foreman, Martha Wilson, and the archives of Group Material, The Judson Memorial Church, A.I.R. Gallery, Creative Time, Artists Space, Paper Tiger Television. Taylor will discuss how to do research into a “scene” using archives and other sources, including interviews and oral histories. He will address questions such as: how do scenes develop? Who “owns” them? Why do they disappear? How and/or can they be archived? What is the relationship curators and scholars to a scene? Useful texts to consult before the workshop are The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974-1984 (Princeton UP, 2006) and Pierre Bourdieu’s The Field of Cultural Production.

Session 10: March 28, 2010, 2:30-4:30pm, The New York Historical Society

Henry Raine, Director of Digital Programs, New-York Historical Society

Ephemera as Primary Sources for Scholarship

This session will provide an overview of the different types of ephemera and discuss their potential research value in the broader context of the New-York Historical Society’s collections of books, pamphlets, manuscripts, newspapers, maps, prints, photographs, and architectural materials relating to the history of New York and the United States. Highlights will be shown from the library’s collections of broadsides, song sheets, hotel and apartment files, menus, almanacs, and business and advertising ephemera, providing an overview of the institution’s vast and varied collections of ephemera. Also covered will be the challenges of managing ephemera collections in libraries, and strategies that researchers can use to identify and access ephemera holdings at other institutions.

Session 11, April 18, 2011, 4-6pm, The Grolier Club

Eric Holzenberg, Director, and J. Fernando Pena, Librarian, the Grolier Club of New York

Book Collecting and the Antiquarian Book Trade in Support of Scholarship

Drawing on the Grolier Club’s holdings of books, manuscripts and archives relating to private collecting and the antiquarian book trade, the session will explore the significant dual roles of the bibliophile and the book dealer over time in the development of institutional libraries and the support of scholarship generally. The session will cover book catalogues of all types, their history and evolving use; the agency of the private collector from the 15th century to the present in defining and shaping fields of research; and the development of the antiquarian book dealer as a partner in that endeavor.

To sign up: Send an e-mail to nyrarebook@gmail.com letting us know which event or events you'd like to attend. Sign up for as many sessions as you like. Because of the limited space, we ask that you only sign up for events that you are actually prepared to attend. A waiting list will be maintained.

Please feel free to contact one of the NYU coordinators with any questions at nyrarebook@gmail.com. We look forward to seeing you at the workshop!

Wojnarowicz Screening & Panel, Co-Organized by Draper Student: Feb. 1

(David Wojnarowicz Photographed by Peter Hujar)

Draper student Emily Colucci has co-organized an upcoming event with Performance Studies, which will include a screening of David Wojnarowicz's film "A Fire in My Belly" and a panel discussion. Draper students are invited to attend the event and the following reception. More details are below.

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Performance Studies Lecture Series in conjunction with the Draper Program Presents

A Fire in Our Belly: Film Screening and Panel Discussion

Tuesday February 1st, 7-9pm

721 Broadway, 6th Floor, Room 612 With Marvin Taylor, Thomas Crow, Karen Finley and Leon Hilton

Artist David Wojnarowicz’s archives are housed at Fales Library and Special Collections on the third floor of Bobst Library at NYU, and the film ‘A Fire in My Belly,’ an edited version of which the National Portrait Gallery removed from its exhibition ‘Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,’ was on loan from Fales.

This event brings together members of the NYU community to address the myriad and ongoing issues raised by the censoring of this important work.

Reception to follow

Please visit our Facebook event listing to RSVP:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=183963461625645

Message from Draper Student Emily Colucci Re: David Wojnarowicz and NYU

Draper student Emily Colucci has shared the following email with us in response to the recent censorship of David Wojnarowicz's piece "A Fire in My Belly" at the National Portrait Gallery. Emily would like to see this situation addressed directly within the NYU community (the artist's papers are housed in the Fales Collection in Bobst) and is seeking suggestions and feedback from the Draper community. Any suggestions and/or comments should be sent to Emily directly at esc255[at]nyu[dot]edu. Her message is below.

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“To place an object or writing that contains what it invisible because of legislation or social taboo into an environment outside myself makes me feel not so alone; it keeps me company by virtue of its existence. It is kind of like a ventriloquist’s dummy—the only difference is that the work can speak for itself or act like that ‘magnet’ to attract others who carried this enforced silence. It also could act as a magnet for those with opposing frames of reference…”—David Wojnarowicz

On the night before World AIDS Day, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. removed a video entitled “A Fire in My Belly” by New York artist David Wojnarowicz from their exhibition “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” an exhibition on sexual difference in modern America, after pressure from the Catholic League and House Republicans John Boehner and Eric Cantor. The Catholic League and the House members took offense to an 11 second clip in the video, which depicts a small crucifix being crawled on by ants. Catholic League president William Donohue called the video “hate speech” and Rep. John Boehner decried it as a misuse of taxpayer money. Bowing to these criticisms and the threatening of their taxpayer funds, the National Portrait Gallery removed the film from their exhibition, closely mirroring the Robert Mapplethorpe controversy in 1989.

David Wojnarowicz created “A Fire in My Belly” in 1987 in response to his lover and artistic mentor Peter Hujar’s death from AIDS-related illnesses and his own rage at the silence surrounding the AIDS crisis. Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS-related illnesses five years later in 1992, often worked with difficult or challenging images as a means to articulate his invisibility and the invisibility of other people with AIDS during the late 1980s and 1990s.

David Wojnarowicz’s archives are housed at Fales Library and Special Collections on the Third floor of Bobst Library at NYU and the full-length video, which the National Portrait Gallery cut for exhibition was on loan from Fales. With this connection to NYU and the issues it raises for queer politics, art history and other fields, I feel that something should be done at NYU to address these issues whether it be a reading of Wojnarowicz’s work, a lecture or a discussion about the issues such as freedom of expression, hate speech, and the memory and history of the AIDS crisis, raised by the censoring of this video.

Please let me know any suggestions you may have. I know it is a bad time coming at the end of the Fall semester but with the issues raised by this controversy, a discussion of David Wojnarowicz’s artistic and literary output seems necessary.

Some important links on the Wojnarowicz/National Portrait Gallery controversy:

-PPOW Gallery holds Wojnarowicz’s Estate and has provided the uncut “A Fire in My Belly” film:

http://vimeo.com/17457052

http://www.ppowgallery.com/index.php

-Articles on the National Portrait Gallery’s removal of “A Fire in My Belly”:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/30/AR2010113006801.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/arts/design/02portrait.html

-Support Hide/Seek, a Facebook group with frequent updates and news about responses to this controversy:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/support.hide.seek

-David Wojnarowicz himself discussing art funding:

http://vimeo.com/14279625

Thanks and I look forward to hearing your suggestions.

Best,

Emily Colucci

esc255[at]nyu[dot]edu

A Sanctuary for the Arts: Fales Exhibition and Performance

A SANCTUARY FOR THE ARTS

JUDSON MEMORIAL CHURCH AND THE AVANT-GARDE 1954-1977

EXHIBITION AT FALES LIBRARY, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY *

OCTOBER 28, 2010 TO JANUARY 7, 2011

DO NOT MISS THE OPENING OF THIS EXCITING EXHIBITION THAT WILL EXPLORE THE SYNERGIES BETWEEN THE ARTISTS WHO PERFORMED AT JUDSON MEMORIAL CHURCH IN THE 1960S AND 70S AND THE CHURCH MINISTRY AND CONGREGATION.

O P E N I N G N I G H T :

THURSDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 28, 2010 (Free Admission)

Roundtable Discussion: 6:30 pm at Judson moderated by Deborah Jowitt.

Participants will include Essie Borden, Malcolm Goldstein, Carolee Schneemann, and Yvonne Rainer.

Reception Immediately Following At Fales Library (around 7:45 pm, 2 blocks east of Judson at the NYU Library)

FRIDAY AND SATURDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 29 & 30, 2010 **

Two Performances IN HONOR OF JUDSON with work by Toby ARMOUR, Arthur AVILES, Remy CHARLIP, Malcolm GOLDSTEIN, Aileen PASSLOFF, Yvonne RAINER, Carolee SCHNEEMANN, EmmaGrace SKOVE-EPES, and Elaine SUMMERS

8:00 PM AT JUDSON, TICKETS $20 (students/seniors $10)

RESERVE TICKETS: www.judson.org or (917) 727-0431

Judson Memorial Church
55 Washington Square S.
New York City
www.judson.org

Fales Library and Special Collections
Bobst Library, 3rd Floor
Tracey/Barry Gallery

New York University
70 Washington Square South
New York City

Exhibition hours at Fales Library are:
Monday - Thursday: 10:00 - 5:45
Friday: 10:00 - 4:45
Closed on weekends

The exhibition at Fales will remain open until 8:00 pm on Friday evening before the performance.

Yvonne Rainer’s Terrain. William Davis, Albert Reid, Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton (missing Judith Dunn). Lighting by Robert Rauschenberg. Performed in An Evening of Dance. Photograph by Al Giese, 1963. *Curator, Joanna Steinberg. **Artistic Director, Aileen Passloff; produced by Nicole and Michael Bloom.

Fales Lecture (3/11): Continental Philosophy & American Culture

Dear Students:

Please see below for information on a celebratory lecture on Semiotext(e), the publishing group that is credited with bringing French Theory to the US. The event was brought to our attention by Draper student Christine Woody, who works as a graduate assistant at Fales and has been processing the recently acquired Sylvere Lotringer Papers and Semiotext(e) archive for the past year.

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Continental Philosophy and American Culture: Semiotext(e) between Theory, Art, and Politics – A Celebration

Thursday, March 11, 2010, 6:30 pm
Fales Library, NYU

The 2010 Fales Lecture will celebrate the acquisition of the Sylvere Lotringer Papers and Semiotext(e) Archive.

Panelists:

Sylvere Lotringer, co-founder of Semiotext(e), professor emeritus, Columbia University.
Bruce Benderson, writer and critic.
Gregg Bordowitz, Associate Professor, Film, Video, and New Media, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Tim Griffin, Editor, Artforum.
Avital Ronell, Professor of German, Comparative Literature, and English at NYU.

Emily Apter, Professor of Comparative Literature and French at NYU, (moderator).
Denis Hollier, Chair, and Professor of French Literature at NYU, (respondent).

RSVP to 212-992-9018 or rsvp.bobst@nyu.edu