Carlos Motta Carin Kuoni, and Susan Meiselas: April 11

Carlos Motta, Carin Kuoni, and Susan Meiselas
Saturday, April 11, 4-6pm
Smack Mellon Gallery
92 Plymouth Street, Brooklyn

Carin Kuoni will moderate as the panel examines the "documentary" aspect of The Good Life, in particular: the methodology/techniques Carlos Motta employed to construct multiple layers of public discourse; the projects relationship to journalism and how news organizations do and don’t fashion reality (and public opinion) through documentary; the piece’s usefulness and validity as an ethnographic tool; and the projects place as a sociological investigation of world cultures both in relation to one another and to the United States and the kind of knowledge such an investigation produces from within an art discourse.

One of the major goals in organizing the panel is to involve audiences in critical thinking and discussion about the piece and how both the artistic techniques and appropriation of other forms not often used in traditional art making impact the work, audience reaction to the work and the potential long term effects of the piece on public discourse around issues of democracy, leadership, etc.

The panel will also explore the way the piece may or may not be an archive of histories and stories reflecting US foreign policy and its influence on the peoples living in the southern hemisphere. Ultimately, given the current transition in United States, where we seem to be redefining our foreign policy, is the piece a looking glass moving forward or looking backward? Can and do artistic projects count as a fair record of history?

http://smackmellon.org/theGoodLife.html