The · Vera · List · Center · for · Art · and · Politics
The Unofficial Blog of Events
 | |
|
Please add Vera List Center to your friends to receive information regarding New School events right on your friends page. The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School, founded in 1992 with the generous support of philanthropist Vera List, is the University's vehicle for debate, discussion, research and reflection concerning the complex and vital relationship between politics and the arts. Committed to insuring the future of democratic culture, the Center serves as a forum for those seeking an open analysis of relevant issues in order to fully inform all aspects of art-related decision-making (e.g., federal and local policy making, art education curricula, museum practices, arts-related media coverage). More information regarding VLC can be found on our official website. To be receive updates via e-mail, please send mail to VLCintern@newschool.edu with your full name and the word "add" in the subject line or click here. |
|
| |
|
* Film Screening and Discussion The Prison Industry: Artistic Approaches to Activism Friday, April 7, 2006, 6:30PM The New School, Theresa Lang Community and Student Center 55 West 13th Street Admission: $10, free for students and alumni with valid ID One of the primary rationales in the punishment of crime has been the assumption that the prisoner can be rehabilitated. Today, however, the role of the prison as a place for rehabilitation, growth, and personal advancement appears obsolete. Since the privatization of the United States prison system in the 1980’s, the system has become a vast $40 billion-a-year industry, the most elaborate in the world. At a time when the U.S. has achieved the highest rate of imprisonment per capita in the history of the world—in which, for instance, one in four African American men are under correctional supervision—the American public is slowly awakening to an unprecedented crisis of mass incarceration. Investigating notions of punishment and imprisonment, repentance and acquittal, this discussion addresses the prison industry, focusing on artistic approaches to activism and reform. The evening’s program will begin with a screening of "I Won't Drown on that Levee and You Ain't Gonna' Break My Back" (USA, 2005) by Ashley Hunt which uses the New Orleans prison crisis as a case study and a point of departure for a larger crisis in incarceration and rehabilitation. * This event is a part of the “Forgiveness” Cycle. Participants: Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Director, Program in American Studies & Ethnicity, Associate Professor of ASE and Geography, University of Southern California Ashley Hunt, artist and activist Trevor Paglen, artist, writer, and experimental geographer working out of the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley Temporary Services, artist collaborative, represented by Salem Collo-Julin |
|
| |
|
Film Screening and Discussion The Last Supper Monday, April 3, 2006, 6:30 PM The New School, Theresa Lang Community and Student Center 55 West 13th Street Admission: $10, free for students and alumni with valid ID and Cabinet subscribers “The Last Supper” (2005, in English, 66 mins), a film documenting some of the rituals, histories and cultural parameters for the global custom of last meals offered to prisoners before execution, will be presented on occasion of the Vera List Center’s year-long cycle on “Considering Forgiveness.” The two Swedish filmmakers, Mats Bigert and Lars Bergstrom, will be joined in a discussion of the creation of the film and its political implications by Brian Price, the protagonist of the film and chef of 218 “last suppers” served in U.S. prisons, and Terri Gordon, assistant professor in comparative literature at The New School. The conversation will touch on the difference between killing and letting die as elaborated on by French philosopher Michel Foucault. Foucault talks about the shift in power from the centralized monarch to decentralized modern society, a shift from the monarch’s right to kill (symbolized by the sword) to a system of bio-politics where the state instead has the ability to let live or die. * This event is a part of the “Forgiveness” Cycle. Panelists: Mats Bigert, filmmaker and contributing editor, Cabinet magazine Terri Gordon, Assistant Professor in Comparative Literature, with join appointment at The New School for General Studies and University Humanities Brian Price, author (“Meals to Die For,” 2005) and co-host of “Here Comes the Light,” a Christian prison outreach radio program in Texas. Price is the principal protagonist in the film. Organized by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School, in collaboration with Cabinet magazine. |
|