Anthony McCall: April 30

Anthony McCall
Thursday, April 30, 7pm
Whitney Museum

A hybrid of performance, sculpture, and experimental cinema, Anthony McCall’s “solid light” film projections occupy a room through the interplay of light, fog, mist, and shadows. His installations engage viewers as active participants while challenging our perceptions of volume, space, and objecthood. In tonight's program, McCall addresses how his interactive cinematic environments transform the physical and conceptual space between film and its audiences. $6/8

http://www.whitney.org/www/educational_programs/public_programs.jsp#seminars

Jonathan Torgovnik: April 29

Jonathan Torgovnik
Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape
Panel Discussion: April 29, 6:30 pm
Aperture Gallery, 547 West 27th Street, 4th floor

Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape brings together Jonathan Torgovnik’s powerful documentation of the accounts of women who were subjected to massive sexual violence by members of Hutu militia groups during the 1994 genocide. An estimated twenty thousand children were born as a result of rapes that occurred during the Rwandan genocide and fifteen years later, the mothers of these children still face enormous challenges. Aperture Foundation presents a panel discussion on this topic, coinciding with the exhibition now on view at Aperture Gallery, and the release of the accompanying book. This event will feature a reading of the testimonies by Rwandan women, as well as multimedia interviews produced by MediaStorm with the women portrayed in the exhibition and a discussion with Melissa Robinson, director of Educational Programming of the non-profit organization Kids for Tomorrow, Carl Auerbach, Professor of Psychology at Yeshiva University and the photographer Jonathan Torgovnik, who is also co-founder of Foundation Rwanda.

http://www.aperture.org/gallery/

Christian Jankowski: April 29

Christian Jankowski
Wednesday, April 29, 6:30pm
The New School
John Tishman Auditorium
66 West 12th Street

German artist Christian Jankowski works in a variety of media including video, installation, performance, photography and sculpture, often confounding reality and fiction, while typically engaging the subjects of his works in the creative process. Throughout his career, he has collaborated with a diverse variety of characters, often humorous, all of whom have appeared in his work. In 1997, Jankowski consulted a therapist about his "creative block", and produced a video piece from the ensuing therapy sessions called Desperately Seeking Artwork. His piece Telemistica was created for the Venice Biennale in 1999 when Jankowski called Italian fortunetellers on their live television shows and asked them questions about his artwork. Their responses and prophesies were video-taped and became the content of the work of art. In these two cases, as in others, the artist's work ends up being about its own creation. Currently, Public Art Fund is presenting Jankowski's Living Sculptures at Doris C. Freedman Plaza in Central Park; a trio of life-sized, bronze figures modeled after three professional street performers the artist observed and selected in Barcelona who regularly present themselves as the likenesses of a Roman legionnaire referred to as "Caesar", the revolutionary leader Che Guevara, and an enigmatic woman inspired by Salvador Dali's figure known as "The Anthropomorphic Cabinet Woman." The human scale and figurative representation of the sculptures beckon viewers to come closer, consider whether they are real street performers or statues, pose next to them for photos, and perhaps even leave a few coins in appreciation.

http://www.publicartfund.org/pafweb/talks/talks_current.htm

Julieta Aranda: April 29

Julieta Aranda
Wednesday, April 29, 6:30 pm
Guggenheim

Within her multimedia oeuvre, Julieta Aranda (b. 1975, Mexico City) has frequently focused on the dissemination of information and the agency of the individual in contemporary society, reinventing existing systems of commerce and circulation to generate “alternative transactions of cultural capital.” Aranda inaugurates Intervals, a new experimental program devoted to the work of emerging artists, with a site-specific installation that activates unlikely spaces within the museum’s rotunda.

http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/education/adult-and-academic-programs/public-programs

Thomas Y. Levin: April 29

Thomas Y. Levin
Wednesday, April 29, 3:15-5:15
Parsons, 66 Fifth Ave. Kellen Auditorium

Thomas Y. Levin is a Professor in the Department of German at Princeton University. He specializes in media and cultural theory, the Frankfurt School, art history, acoustics and technics. Levin was chosen by the Dutch Ministry of Culture to be "artist-in-residence" at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. He has curated "CTRL [SPACE]: Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother," a major international exhibition which was on view at the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) in Karlsruhe. In November 2005, he organized a one-day conference at the Louvre Museum in Paris entitled "Photographie, Prison, Pouvoir: Politiques de l'Image Carcérale" which re-examined the history of the "carceral image" in the wake of Abu Ghraib. Levin is currently writing a book about the film-theoretical cinema of Guy Debord and the Situationist International.

http://www.parsons.newschool.edu/events/event_detail.aspx?eID=1039

Islands and Ghettos: April 28

Islands and Ghettos
Tuesday, April 28, 6:30pm
Studio-X, 180 Varick Street, Suite 1610

With the extreme examples of Caracas and Dubai as a starting point, ISLAND + GHETTOS examines phenomena of territorial segregation in a global context. Currently on display at Berlin's NGBK Gallery, the work featured within this exhibition and accompanying publication will be discussed at Studio-X by:

Frederic Levrat , Columbia University GSAPP
Alfredo Brillembourg, Urban Think Tank, Columbia University GSAPP
Hubert Klumpner, Urban Think Tank, Columbia University GSAPP

Response by Pedro Rivera

Alongside three simultaneous slide shows of islands, ghettos, enclaves and global polar extremes. Free and open to the public. RSVP: gdb2106@columbia.edu

Scrapbooks and Self Works: April 28

Scrapbooks and Self Works: Jessica Helfand and Rebecca Melvin
Tuesday, April 28, 6:30pm
Cooper Hewitt

Combining pictures, words and a wealth of personal ephemera, scrapbook makers preserve on the pages of their books a moment, a day, or a lifetime. Join Jessica Helfand, graphic designer, co-editor of Design Observer, and author of Scrapbooks: An American History, and Rebecca Melvin, manuscripts librarian and curator of Self Works: Diaries, Scrapbooks, and Other Autobiographical Efforts, for a presentation and conversation about this lively art and its history. $15/10

http://events.cooperhewitt.org/?date=2009-04

Conceptual Writing + The Flarf Collective: April 17

An Evening of Contemporary Poetry:
Conceptual Writing and The Flarf Collective
Friday, April 17, 7 pm
Whitney Museum

Conceived and organized by poet Kenneth Goldsmith on the occasion of the exhibition Jenny Holzer: PROTECT PROTECT

This reading presents eight writers associated with two cutting-edge movements in contemporary poetry: Conceptual Writing and The Flarf Collective. The followers of both movements employ technology to write their works, often using strategies familiar to the visual arts: appropriation, falsification, insincerity, and plagiarism. Fusing the avant-garde impulses of the last century with the technologies of the present, these strategies propose an expanded field for twenty-first century poetry. This new writing is not bound exclusively between the pages of a book and it continually morphs from the printed page to the webpage, from the gallery space to the science lab, from the social space of the poetry reading to social space of the blog. It is a poetics of flux, one that celebrates instability and uncertainty.

Featured poets: Christian Bök, Nada Gordon, Kenneth Goldsmith, Sharon Mesmer, K. Silem Mohammad, Kim Rosenfield, Gary Sullivan, Darren Wershler

This event is free with Museum Admission, which is pay-what-you-wish during Whitney After Hours on Fridays from 6-9 pm. Advance reservations are recommended, as space is limited. Tickets may be reserved at the Museum Admissions desk or online at whitney.org. Inquiries: public_programs@whitney.org or (212) 570-7715.

http://www.whitney.org/www/educational_programs/public_programs.jsp#seminars

Art Mag Night: April 15

Art Mag Night
Wednesday, April 15, 7-10pm
Book Court
163 Court St, Brooklyn

A party, readings, and presentation featuring writers from Bidoun, Cabinet, Pin-Up and Paper Monument! Naomi Fry, Jessica Slaven, and Roger White of Paper Monument will be reading to the people! Come and see! And hear!

http://www.bookcourt.org/?cat=1/

Thomas Demand: April 15

Thomas Demand
Fiction, Fact & Fabrication
Wednesday, April 15, 6:30- 8:30
Columbia University GSAPP
Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall

http://beta.arch.columbia.edu/event/gsapp-event/fiction-fact-fabrication