Film screening and moderated discussion
Thursday April 26 5:00 – 6:30 pm
Maine College of Art
522 Congress Street • Portland, Maine 04101
Free and Open to the Public
How do artists respond to a world in flux? In what ways do artists act as agents of change, and what kinds of aesthetic choices do they make to express it? This episode features artists who bear witness, through their work, to transformation—cultural, material, and aesthetic—and actively engage communities as collaborators and subjects.
AIC will sponsor a preview screening of the first episode of Art 21 Season Six: Change. The first hour of Season 6 features artists who bear witness, through their work, to transformation—cultural, material, and aesthetic—and actively engage communities as collaborators and subjects. The artists profiled are Ai Weiwei, El Anatsui, and Catherine Opie.
Following the screening, a discussion on the art of change will be moderated by Chris Thompson, Associate Professor of Art History at the Maine College of Art.
Chris Thompson is President of Parallax Partners, Inc., a company committed to sustainable building and development. He is Associate Professor of Art History at the Maine College of Art, and Associate Professor of Independent Research at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. His writings have appeared in Performance Research, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, Radical Philosophy, Adbusters, Print, Tate International Arts and Culture, the Portland Phoenix, Art New England, The Bollard, and others. From 2005-2009 he served as contributing editor for PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art. He is author of Felt: Fluxus, Joseph Beuys, and the Dalai Lama (forthcoming, University of Minnesota Press, winter 2011).