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Past Events Archive

Past AIC events

Past Featured Related Events

 

From Artists in Context:


The Border Crossed Us: Tour the US-Mexico Border in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts

Saturday, April 23
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Tours start at 11 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.

What happens when we divide a territory that the community imagines as contiguous? How does the international border in Arizona, seemingly remote from a college campus in New England, touch all of our lives here?

"The Border Crossed Us" is a temporary public art installation by the Institute for Infinitely Small Things. From April 20 to May 1, the UMass Amherst campus will be divided along its North-South boundary by a to-scale photographic replica of the vehicle fence that runs along the international boundary in southern Arizona. The particular stretch of fence being represented was erected in 2007 by Homeland Security and now divides the Tohono O'odham Nation and the second largest Native American reservation in the US into two parts.

On Saturday, April 23, Artists in Context, in collaboration with the Institute for Infinitely Small Things and the University Museum of Contemporary Art, is organizing two virtual tours of the fence. Ofelia Rivas and Flora Marietta of the Tohono O'odham Nation and Catherine D'Ignazio of the Institute for Infinitely Small Things will lead these tours of the US-Mexico border, using the artwork, The Border Crossed Us, as a platform for storytelling and reflection. Visitors will walk the length of the fence installation and learn about the challenges faced by an indigenous community whose territory has been bisected by the international boundary.


 

Temporary Services: a conversation with collective member Salem Collo-Julin

Monday, April 18th at 7 p.m.
Design Studio for Social Intervention, 1946 Washington Street 2nd Floor, Boston

Temporary_Services_Art_Work

AIC, in conjunction with DS4SI, is proud to host an evening with Temporary Services, a Chicago/Copenhagen based collective for whom "the distinctionbetween art practice and other creative human endeavors is irrelevant." Member Salem Collo-Julin will talk about the importance of artists and activists thinking and working together about social change in ways that both blur and respect the qualities of both practices.

Temporary Services develops their practice for sustaining art as something directly relevant to daily life. The name Temporary Services is an expression of their role providing art as a service. "It is a way for us to pay attention to the social context in which art is produced and received." They invent infrastructure or borrow it when necessary, and when they find something that works they share it with the community. They support a world of artistic makers, collaborating instead of competing, "harnessing the ideas and energies of people who may have never participated in an art project before, or who may feel excluded from the art community."

This event is a great opportunity to learn more about this prolific group, and get an inside look at the projects, methods, achievements and challenges behind the way Temporary Services makes art work.

You can find more information about the collective at the Temporary Services website.

This event is co-sponsored by Artists in Context, The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Design Studio for Social Intervention.


Coastal Healthy Communities Coalition Fundred Dollar Bill Project

Saturday, April 16, Project Kickoff 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Northern York County YMCA, 3 Pomerleau Street, Biddeford, ME

Maine_Fundred

Coastal Healthy Communities Coalition (CHCC) will use the resources and materials from the Fundred Dollar Bill Project (initiated nationwide by artist Mel Chin and coordinated in New England by AIC) to educate children and their parents on the risks of lead poisoning. (For more information about the Fundred Dollar Bill Project and its presence in New England, go to the AIC Past Events webpage.)

Maine has some of the oldest housing stock in the nation, and most lead exposure comes from lead paint dust. Just five communities in Maine account for 40% of all newly discovered harmful levels of lead in the state: Biddeford/Saco, Lewiston/Auburn, Portland, Sanford and Bangor.

The project kick-off will occur on April 16 as part of "Healthy Kids Day" at the Northern York County YMCA. Kids will have the opportunity to create Fundred Dollar Bills, and parents will be provided educational information and resources to address lead paint in their homes.

During the month of May, CHCC will work with all elementary and middle schools to encourage participation in the Fundred Dollar Bill Project. During the summer, CHCC will work with the Biddeford and Saco Recreation Departments to incorporate the project into their summer camp programs.

More info at the University Museum Website.

 


 

2011 Museums and the World: Whose Story Is It?

Thursday, April 14, 5-7pm
Cabral Student Center, 40 Leon Street, West Village F, Boston, MA

This panel discussion will consider how museums, along with other cultural and educational institutions, create and preserve ideas and objects in the global, digital age. What are the challenges of globalization and what are the opportunities? What, especially, are the challenges that the global profit motive poses for institutions that hold, exhibit, and help create our cultural DNA? The panel will bring together four museum professionals, from Mexico, Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington, D.C., in conversation with leading philosophers and artists.

The discussion is produced by a national partnership between Northeastern University's Humanities Center and the University of Southern California's International Museum Institute.

Panelists include:

Elliot Bostwick Davis, John Moors Cabot Chair, "Art of the Americas," Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Selma Holo, Professor of Art History at the University of Southern California, Director of the Fisher Museum of Art, Founding Director of University of Southern California's Museum Studies Program

Richard Koshalek, Director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian

Graciela de la Torre, Director of the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporaneo, National Autonomous University of Mexico

Fred Wilson, Artist, McArthur Genius Grant Recipient, Whitney Museum Trustee

Roger W. Bowen, Director of the Woodrow Wilson Fellows Program, Former Director of the Public Museum of Milwaukee, Former Secretary General of the American Association of University Professors

Louisa McCall, Co-Director, "Artists in Context"

For more information visit the Northeastern Humanities Center website.




Who Made Us Creative?: People, Place, and Power in Providence

An AIC Pre-Conference Event
Thursday, April 7, 2011 7-9PM
New Urban Arts 743 Westminster St, Providence, RI

Over the last ten years, the work of artists, activists and scholars in Providence has been incorporated into a rhetoric of “creative city building.” Join a conversation with founders and current leaders from AS220, New Urban Arts, Community MusicWorks, and the Steel Yard about what it means to start and sustain organizations which support creative practice in Providence.

In the fall of 2010, arts managers Micah Salkind, Susan Sakash, Emmy Bright, and Jori Ketten initiated an investigation into the ways changing arts investment strategies have had an impact on the founding and flourishing of nonprofit arts organizations over the last twenty years in Providence. The group’s research began began with historical case studies of AS220, New Urban Arts, Community MusicWorks, and the Steel Yard, which were presented at the Imagining America conference in Seattle, WA in the fall of 2010.

The Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, awarded Salkind, Sakash, Bright, and Ketten a mini-grant in October 2010 to continue exploring the relationships between these organizations and the city. As a result of conversations with various stakeholders, they have seen more clearly how power and privilege impact the arts in Providence, and how these various organizations have related to each other over the years. “Who Made Us Creative?: People, Place, and Power in Providence” is a public forum designed to both share and build on the group’s research.

As part of the New Urban Arts Creative Conversation Series, “Who Made Us Creative?” will convene founders and current leaders from AS220, New Urban Arts, Community MusicWorks, and the Steel Yard for a “fishbowl” conversation in front of a public audience. The conversation, which will begin as a moderated discussion among these leaders before opening up into a larger conversation with attendees, will address questions of origin, place, resources, relationship to powerful institutions (such as city government and universities), and vision. “Who Made Us Creative?” is open to the public but designed with young people invested in the future of these and similar organizations in mind.

Presented by AS220, New Urban Arts, Community MusicWorks, the Steel Yard, and Artists in Context


March-April OneBook Features Session with Brian Rotman, Author of Becoming Beside Ourselves

An AIC Pre-Conference Event
First session: Sunday, March 13, 2 to 4 pm
Second session: Sunday, April 3, 4 to 6 pm (Brian Rotman will be present)
Both sessions to be held in Cambridge, MA, at locations to be announced

If you want to join this OneBook, contact AIC Co-Director Marie Cieri ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) for further details.

For the first time, an AIC OneBook Book Club will welcome the author whose book we will be reading: Brian Rotman, renowned cultural theorist, mathematician and Distinguished Professor of Humanities at The Ohio State University. On April 3, Rotman will join us for an informal discussion of his much-acclaimed 2008 book, Becoming Beside Ourselves: The Alphabet, Ghosts and Distributed Human Being as well as its relationship to a 1977 essay chosen by Rotman: "Disposition of the Voice" by French arts writer Regis Durand (download the essay here).

At the first session of this OneBook on March 13, we will consider the introductory and final chapters of Becoming Beside Ourselves. Present to facilitate our discussion that afternoon will be two scholars who are well versed in Rotman's work: Vincent Lepinay, Assistant Professor of Science and Technology Studies at MIT; and Peggy Reynolds, Ph.D. Candidate in Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University. For the second session on April 3, we will read Durand's essay as well as finish Rotman's book.

Brian Rotman's exciting new text not only adds to his previous work on signifying technology (zero, infinity), it expands his study of abstraction to encompass the construction of subjectivity itself. Becoming Beside Ourselves will open up all kinds of unexplored terrains, from grammatology to psychoanalysis, from the history of technology to the study of culture and religion. -- Sociologist Fredric Jameson

Becoming Beside Ourselves is a bold, provocative and highly original argument....In a brilliant synthesis, [Rotman] mixes evolutionary theory with a Deleuzian view of agent-as-assemblage, arguing that computational media both reveal and perform distributed cognition as a crucial aspect of human being-in-the-world. Essential reading for anyone interested in the interrelations between computational media, contemporary subjectivity, and human evolution. -- Social and Literary Critic N. Katherine Hayles

NOTE:
This OneBook Book Club is organized in conjunction with Brian Rotman's keynote address for the Harvard Humanities Center's Intangibles Conference April 1 at the Harvard Barker Center in Boston. His keynote address, which will be free and open to the public, is a Featured Related Event of Artists in Context.

 


 

Bringing Down the Walls!

An AIC Pre-Conference Event
Saturday, March 26, 2011 @ 6pm
Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston Street, Copley Square, Boston, MA 02116

Art as Resistance - Doves

A night of music & art to honor political prisoners and prisoners of war!

 

In collaboration with community organizers Evan Greer and Laila Murad, Artist in Context invites you to an evening exploring the role of art by and in solidarity with political prisoners and prisoners of war. Join us for a night of Revolutionary Music, Reflection Wall, Food, Socializing and REMEMBERANCE!


 

This educational and entertaining evening features brand new written statements from Mumia Abu Jamaal, Imam Jamil Al-Amin, and other political prisoners. We will hear updates from our people behind bars, and their thoughts on the role of art and music in the movement. We will also be displaying incredible artwork drawn in solitary confinement by Muslim political prisoner Tarek Mehanna.

 

Revolutionary musical performances by some of the region's best underground artists!

 

Taina Asili y La Banda Rebelde - Latin / Afro-Caribbean world-rock for liberation
Evan Greer & Friends - Queer 'n catchy riot-folk with a full band, last show before tour!
spiritchild - hip-hop freedom singer from the Bronx by way of Brooklyn
Born In A Cent - melodic feminist indie punk rock for justice, on tour from NYC
Plus local youth talent Danniela and Jalen!


$5-15 sliding scale donation


Sponsored by the Tarek Mehanna Support Committee, Jericho Boston, Movement in Motion, and Artists in Context.

www.freetarek.com | www.jerichoboston.org | www.movementinmotion.org | www.communitychurchofboston.org


Bureau for Open Culture: Making New Learning Sites 

March 21, 7pm
Room 240, Studio Arts Building, UMass, Amherst

Operated by the curator and art historian James Voorhies, Bureau for Open Culture works to reimagine the art exhibition as a new kind of learning site, exploring the social, economic and political conditions specific to the locations in which it occurs.  As a nomadic institution for contemporary art, Bureau for Open Culture, works to intentionally re-imagine the art exhibition as a new kind of learning site by initiating and cultivating collaborations with art and academic institutions. Voorhies will talk about past, current and future work and ways of operating within a space of uncertainty to form new engagement with art and its institutions.
 
Bureau for Open Culture comes to the University Museum of Contemporary Art at UMass Amherst (operating for the evening from Room 240 in the Studio Arts Building), through the collaborative efforts of Artists in Context, UCMA, and C3 (creative community collective.)

Learn more about the organizations involved:
www.bureauforopenculture.org
www.c3northampton.org
www.umass.edu/fac/umca/

This event is free and open to the public


Creative Economy Summit 2 "To Do List: Make Art, Pay Bills" 

March 18th and 19th, Shelburne Falls, MA
Registration deadline is March 11, 2011 and costs $25 for one or both days

A two-day conference for artists in Pioneer Valley.  The Creative Economy Summit 2 is a time to celebrate what makes this region unique and inspiring, gain insights into our collective needs and visions, get practical skills find new professional partners and know what you are part of a creative community.

AIC will host a lunch event on Saturday for networking and learning.

Sponsored by the Fostering Art and Culture Project
Website: www.fosteringartandculture.org


Artists+Researchers: Redux - Radical Reference Librarians Offer Research Assistance in Jamaica Plain

An AIC Pre-Conference Event
Friday, March 18 Axiom Gallery,141 Green St,. Jamaica Plain, MA
7:30 pm: snack and socialize; 8 p.m., presentation followed by discussion 

Co-presented by Artists in Context and Boston Radical Reference Collective, this event is Free and Open to the Public

Calling all artists, activists and other engaged practitioners. Overwhelmed by the amount of information on the internet? Unable to find the data you know is out there? Confused about the ethics of research? Boston Radical Reference Collective (BRRC) can help! Radical Reference is a collective of volunteer library workers who believe in social justice and equality. They provide professional research support, education and access to information.  Join us for our second Researchers+Artists conversation and walk away ready to find and use the wealth of information available.Sketchbook 7th February to 12th March 201046

BRRC members Alana Kumbier and Heather McCann will discuss freely-available online research resources and ways the BRRC can provide local assistance. After the presentation, we will open up the conversation for questions and discussion of ongoing (or potential) projects.

For artists: This event will be especially relevant to artists those whose work and creative practice engages specific social issues, is in some way community- or locally-oriented, or just requires access to information, data, or research resources beyond one's area of expertise.

For researchers: You don't have to be a librarian, or a member of Radical Reference, to participate! We're hoping to create a space in which all kinds of researchers -- librarians, data and GIS specialists, journalists, government document sleuths, grad students and intellectually-curious intrepid investigators -- can meet local artists, and each other, and instigate collaborations. 

Artists+Researchers: Redux is hosted by Axiom gallery, a non-profit center with a mission to support and nurture cutting-edge contemporary art practice through exhibitions, events, education and collaboration. In 2010, Axiom merged with Boston Cyberarts the organizers of the renowned biennial festival coming April 22 - May 8. Visit http://bostoncyberarts.org/festival/

 


Make it Better: A Symposium on Art, Design, and the Future of Healthcare

Friday March 11 - Saturday March 12
RISD Auditorium, 17 Canal Street, Providence RI

Organized by RISD, and amplified by Artists in Context, Make It Better will look at how artists and designers - both at RISD and elsewhere - engage with issues of health and wellness in innovative and unexpected ways.  It will focus on the role of these visually astute critical thinkers and problem solvers in helping to improve  healthcare delivery, public health and everyday wellness.  Designed to stimulate ongoing conversations among participants and the larger fields they represent, the symposium will explore how to bring more creativity to the realm of healthcare by expanding, collaborating on and developing new, more integrative models for art and design research.  The challenge is to create spaces, products, systems, policies and messages that offer fresh, effective and humane approaches to maintaining health and delivering healthcare.

Bringing a festive close to the symposium, AIC will sponsor an Artists Cafe with food and a cash bar for participants to share with one another the discoveries and inspirations, and build connections with others who are moved to action. More details on this to follow - so check back soon!


Special Event: Tactical Design and Ecology

Artists in Context and the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) have jointly organized a return to Boston for renowned artist, engineer and activist Natalie Jeremijenko to speak on her work addressing a core challenge behind the climate crisis: a crisis of agency. We also are proud to present local artist, activist and animal lover Matthew Mazzotta (an ACT alum), who will speak about his work engaging people with their environment, their pets and with one another in energetic new ways!

The event is being held in conjunction with the MIT Course "Advanced Seminar in Network Cultures and Participatory Media: Tactical Design for Cooperative Agency and Disruption" led by Prof. Nitin Sawhney at ACT. This event is funded by a Director's Grant from the Council for the Arts at MIT.

XSpecies Tasting Workshop: Molecular Gastronomy and Urban Agriculture

Natalie Jeremijenko and chef/molecular gastronomist Mihir Desai will conduct a "Gastronomy and Urban Agriculture Workshop," including edible flowers, water tastings, soil recipes, and food that can be grown in an AgBag: a low-cost vertical urban farming container.

Mihir Desai is the chef of the xSpecies Adventure Club, a roving supper club which explores themes of biodiversity, sustainability and urban agriculture through molecular cuisine. He consults internationally with restaurants keen to expand their experimental kitchens. Presently, Mihir is also a doctoral candidate in political philosophy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Wrestling rhinoceros beetles, racing snails, farming both your lower intestines... and other cross(x)species adventures in service of redesigning our relationship to natural systems.

What can one do in the face of shared, uncertain threat? The Climate crisis has revealed a more insidious and widespread crisis: the crisis of agency. A challenge to our political agency, our cultural imagination and our scientific and economic understanding, this talk asks if we might respond not only with appropriate research and legislative measures, but also with new ways of turning our pleasures and fascinations into a force of social and environmental transformation at an urban scale.

About the Artist: Natalie Jeremijenko

Named one of the inaugural top young innovators by MIT Technology Review, Natalie Jeremijenko directs NYU's Environmental Health Clinic, is an Associate Professor in NYU's Visual Arts Department and is affiliated with the school's Computer Science Department and Environmental Studies Program.

The Park Spark project: Introducing new infrastructure to a city

parksparkproject.com

The Park Spark project - bringing an old technology to a new context... a dogpark! Anaerobic digesters have been used for years in places like India, China and South America, passively collecting methane from cow manure and using this gas as a fuel to cook meals and light spaces. As the debate around climate change has gone on, this same methane gas has been identified as being one of the most potent greenhouse gasses. The good news is that, in the process of burning methane, its impact on the environment is reduced dramatically.

The Park Spark project brings this technology into a public park in Cambridge and uses dog waste as its raw material to generate fuel to power public art.

About the Artist: Matthew Mazzotta

Matthew completed his SMVis degree from ACT in 2010. His work evolves from an interest in exploring the relationship between people and their environments and each other. His conceptual practice manifests as participatory public interventions that bring criticality and a sense of openness to the places we live. The objects, situations and spaces he creates as community projects ask us to relate to ourselves and each other in unfamiliar ways in hopes of finding new perspectives on how we see ourselves in this world.

Also see the Tactical Design Collective post on this event: http://tacticaldesign.mit.edu/archives/173


Artists + Researchers: Radical Reference Librarians Offered Research Assistance November 19


Friday, November 19; 7:30 pm meet and greet and snacks; 8 p.m. presentation by RR librarians, followed by discussion

sprout & co., 339R Summer St., Somerville, MA

Radical Reference is a collective of volunteer library workers who believe in social justice and equality. Artists, activists and others interested in accessing the services of the Boston Radical Reference Collective (BRRC) -- professional research support, education and access to information -- are invited to join us at a presentation and discussion led by Boston Radical Reference Collective (BRRC) members Alana Kumbier and Heather McCann at sprout & co. (near Davis Square in Somerville), our other event co-organizer.
 RRimage

Alana and Heather will discuss freely-available research resources that can be useful for a variety of projects, and how the BRRC can provide local assistance. We'll also have time for artists to talk about projects for which they'd like to collaborate with researchers, not solely defined as librarians but also data & GIS specialists, journalists, government document sleuths, grad students and intellectually-curious intrepid investigators -- all are invited to attend to meet one another and to instigate future collaborations!

For artists: This event will be especially relevant to artists those whose work & creative practice engages specific social issues, is in some way community- or locally-oriented, or just requires access to information, data, or research resources beyond one's area of expertise.

For researchers: You don't have to be a librarian, or a member of Radical Reference, to participate! We're hoping to create a space in which all kinds of researchers -- librarians, data & GIS specialists, journalists, government document sleuths, grad students, and intellectually-curious intrepid investigators -- can meet local artists, and each other, and instigate future collaborations.

Please email Alana Kumbier ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) if you have questions.


Two Ganoderma Lucidum Lyceum Events in Boston and Concord in Collaboration with Mildred's Lane Renovating Walden


Philosopher's Walk in Boston's Urban Nature
Thursday, November 11, 10 a.m. to noon;MLRW_6

Starting Point: United Neighbors Community Garden, Warwick St., and Windsor St. just north of Melnea Cass Blvd., Roxbury


Additional event collaborator: Design Studio for Social Intervention

AIC transposed the shape and length of one of Thoreau's many walks at Walden Pond onto the Boston landscape, thereby setting the stage for a philosophers' walk through urban nature. Artist J. Morgan Puett, architect/community gardening researcher Ben Peterson and history and philosophy of science scholar Peggy Reynolds made presentations as we walked, thought and talked about the relationship between town and country, society and nature.

 

OneBook Picnic NEW LOCATION:
Administration Building, Concord Museum
53 Cambridge Turnpike, Concord, MA,
t
o discuss
"Created Commons" by Lewis Hyde

Thursday, November 4, 5:30 - 7:30 p.m.

Please bring your own picnic, although some supplementary delicacies will be provided.

The Concord Museum Administation Building is a brown, barn-like structure; parking is available in the lot. Thank you David Wood and the Concord Museum for sheltering us from today's storm!

AIC is joining Mildred's Lane Renovating Walden artist J. Morgan Puett to host an evening picnic on Monument Square to discuss Lewis Hyde's assertion that "despite his fabled independence, we would not have his [Thoreau's] work were it not for the remarkably rich community and communal institutions that surrounded him in Concord."

"Created Commons," can be downloaded HERE.


The Mildred's Lane Renovating Walden installation, spearheaded by noted American artists J. Morgan Puett and Mark Dion and curated by curatorsquared (Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox), is on view at Tufts University Art Gallery through November 14 and is an AIC Featured Related Event. These two Ganoderma Lucidum Lyceum events have been organized by J. Morgan Puett and Artists in Context.


Ilana Halperin: Performative Lecture on Physical Geology October 6


06_PhysicalGeology
Wednesday, October 6, 6:30-8 p.m.
Earthwatch, 114 Western Ave., Allston, MA
Admission free

Artists in Context and Earthwatch Institute were pleased to present this event featuring artist Ilana Halperin, whose creative work asks the question,   "How can artworks be produced in relation to geological time?" Halperin delivered a performative lecture on her recently published book, Physical Geology (New Landmass in Three Forms), which was accompanied by archival footage of the Eldfell volcanic eruption on the Icelandic island of Heimaey, filmed by an early Earthwatch field crew in 1973.

Physical Geology is an artist's book exploring the creative and cultural intersection between body stones and geology. In the book, Halperin investigates the development of stones (calculi and choleliths) within the body, focusing on the concept of the "generation of new landmass." Created from the convergence of biological and artistic disciplines, the book offers comparative material that includes classic medical illustrations, geological artifacts, images of animal petrification and historical body stones. Created by Halperin, the book is a collaboration of the Berliner Medizinhistoriches Museum der Charite and Edinburgh College of Art.

Halperin lives and works in Glasgow and New York and has had solo exhibitions at Artists Space (NYC); the Manchester (England) Museum; and doggerfisher (Edinburgh). Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including Volcano (the first comprehensive retrospective of the history of volcanoes in art) at Compton Verney in Warwickshire. Among the awards she has received are a Creative Scotland Artist Award, a British Council Darwin Now Award and an Alchemy Fellowship at the Manchester Museum. She has worked with Earthwatch in the past on its Mammoth Cave (KY) expedition and in conjunction with the Eldfell eruption.


Artist/Engineer Natalie Jeremijenko Introduced Her Environmental Health Clinic to New England


Natalie_Jeremijenko

"Introduction to the Environmental Health Clinic"
Lecture by Natalie Jeremijenko, followed by discussion
Thursday, September 30, 7-9 p.m.
Presented by Artists in Context
New Auditorium, Main Branch of the Cambridge Public Library
449 Broadway, Cambridge, MA

(Parking is available under the library)

Artists in Context thanks the Cambridge Arts Council for facilitating this event location.

Come hear what the Environmental Health Clinic (EHC) is all about and contribute your ideas to formation of a Clinic Field Office in the Boston area!

Lecture by Natalie Jeremijenko, followed by discussion
Friday, October 1, 7-8:30 p.m.

Hunter Lab, Brown University
89 Waterman St., Providence
Presented by Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University


In a recent New York Times profile, Jeremijenko explained her thinking behind the Clinic: "People know how to ring up and make an appointment at their health clinic. But they don't really know what to do about toxins in the air and global warming, right? So the whole thing is how do we translate the tremendous amount of anxiety and interest in addressing major environmental issues into something concrete that people can do whose effect is measurable and significant?" During her September 30 lecture, she presented an array of projects developed on this premise at her Environmental Health Clinic in New York City. Additionally, she posed a series of creative ideas that could be implemented to improve environmental conditions and overall health in our own New England communities.

Toward that end, Artists in Context will work with Jeremijenko, artists, designers, environmentalists, scientists, educators, public health experts, activists, business leaders, policy makers and interested community members to establish a Field Office of the Environmental Health Clinic in the Boston area in Spring 2011. This Field Office will focus on interdisciplinary, environmental and health-focused projects addressing local and regional issues of concern with global implications. If you are interested in contributing to this endeavor, please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it


Report on FUNDRED in New England


The FUNDRED Sous Terre Armored Truck was in New England April 30 – May 7, collecting Fundreds created by people in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. Making stops in places like the Wake Up the Earth Festival in Jamaica Plain, MA, The Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, the State Capital in Augusta, ME, and the New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester, NH, Tory Tepp, FUNDRED truck driver, collected almost 10,000 Fundred Dollar Bills handmade in New England. That adds up to nearly $1 million worth of Fundreds toward the nationwide project's $300 million goal.

 

PVDButterflyandMaker


Please see the full FUNDRED Report here!


New England Fundreds - Samples from Cassidy and Coastal Ridge Elementary Schools in Maine

Hall_Cassidy_frontHall_Cassidy_back

Coastal_Ridge_ES_Bradburn_front

To see more Fundreds
from around New England click here!


Ocean Voices by Halsey Burgund and Wallace J. Nichols

Performances at 1 and 6 p.m., Friday, July 30
Museum of Science, 1 Science Park, Boston
Admission: Free after paying Museum entry fee


Ocean Voices is a collaboration between sound artist Halsey Burgund and marine biologist Wallace J. Nichols and features spoken-voice recordings from people around the world woven into a musical score for acoustic and electronic instruments performed by Burgund and his group Aesthetic Evidence. The voices have been collected via in-person interviews; an interactive website (oceanvoices.org); and an iPhone application. Initially performed on June 3 at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco in honor of World Oceans Day and the 100th anniversary of Jacques Cousteau's birth, this work aims to "open minds and expand awareness" about the world's oceans.  Ocean Voices is being presented by Artists in Context and the Museum of Science at 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. on Friday, July 30, in conjunction with the Museum's current exhibition WHALES|TOHORA.

Halsey Burgund works as a musician and sound artist living on the outskirts of Boston. Both his installations and musical performances make extensive use of spoken human voice recordings as musical elements alongside traditional and electronic instruments. Wallace J. Nichols is a scientist at the California Academy of Sciences and the founder/co-director of Ocean Revolution, "a program that inspires, involves and mentors the next generation of ocean conservation leaders," in Davenport, CA.

 



Documenting Mythologies Film/Video/Radio Event
Sunday, July 11, 4 - 6:30 p.m.; Reception 6:30 - 8 p.m.
Harvard Film Archive Lecture Hall, Carpenter Center, Harvard University, Cambridge
Co-sponsored by the Harvard University's Sensory Ethnography Lab
Free Admission
DM_TracksDocumenting Mythologies is a work-in-progress investigation of myth in contemporary society as created by the 2009-2010 UnionDocs Collaborative. The story follows 11 non-fiction media artists on a trip from Brooklyn, NY, through New England to rural Maine, a kind of ritual escape from the city on a holiday weekend. Their simple journey becomes the frame for a series of complex short works in film, video and radio. Diverse aesthetic approaches to documentary are used to develop the theme, which is inspired in part by the 1957 collection of essays by French author Roland Barthes titled Mythologies. For Barthes, myths aren't only the traditional stories we tell; there are myths everywhere within our everyday lives. They are the meanings that we take for granted, "the falsely obvious," a confusion of nature and history, and a site of significant ideological abuse.

Artists in Context and the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University presented a work-in-progress screening and discussion of  Documenting Mythologies on Sunday, July 11, as a final documented stop for the Collaborative's trip. Highlights from the project were shown, including rushes from the New England production, and conversation was structured around issues of myth, collaboration and documentary arts practice. All participants in the UnionDocs Collaborative were present, and the event was recorded for incorporation as a scene in the final project.

An article in The Brooklyn Rail about the Union Docs Collaborative:
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2010/04/local/uniondocs-brings-auteurs-together


Foreign Parts has won two major awards at this year's Locarno International Film Festival: Best First Feature and Special CINE CINEMA Jury Prize!

Foreign_Parts_Screen_shot
Foreign Parts
Rough-Cut Screening Saturday May 8


Foreign Parts (rough cut, 2010)
by Verena Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki
Saturday, May 8, 2010: 6 p.m. reception, 7 p.m. screening
At Aladdin Auto Service, 162 Alewife Brook Parkway

Informal discussion with filmmaker Verena Paravel followed the screening.

Foreign Parts is a feature-length film documenting the changing daily life of a New York City junkyard as the threat of demolition looms. A refuge for the homeless, runaways and hundreds of illegal immigrants, the junkyard conceals a vibrant community that will likely disappear soon due to a city plan to redevelop the area. The film portrays the dying world of an immigrant small-business community; the affective fabric of ties people there have to "their" land; and the body of political, economic and environmental issues that impact their lives.

Raised in North and West Africa and the South of France, Verena Paravel is an anthropologist as well as filmmaker. J.P. Sniadecki is a non-fiction filmmaker who is completing his doctorate in social anthropology at Harvard.

Production of Foreign Parts was supported by the LEF Moving Image Fund and the Film Study Center at Harvard University. This Artists in Context screening was made possible by funding from an anonymous donor and the generous in-kind contributions of Mahmood Rezaei-Kamalabad, owner of Aladdin Auto Service, and Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab.


FUNDRED at the Finish Line!


PVDButterflyandMaker
The FUNDRED Truck was in New England from April 30 - May 7, collecting thousands of Fundreds created in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine.  Here's a list of the events:

Friday, April 30 @ Tropical Foods, Dudley Square, Roxbury, MA
After partaking of the wide array of Carribean, Latino and African fare sold at the Tropical Foods market, residents of the Dudley Square neighborhood lent a creative hand to help clean up the soil of New Orleans.

Saturday, May 1 @ Wake Up the Earth Festival, Jamaica Plain, MA
In the Southwest Corridor Park at Stony Brook and at Urbano Projects
Hundreds of people joined us in the park to make a Fundred and enjoy the art, food and performances of the 23rd annual Wake Up the Earth Festival. The FUNDRED Project's armored truck participated in the parade, and artwork by Columbian artist Rafik Neme's "Money Laundering" series was on view in the Urbano Gallery.

Sunday, May 2  @ MayFair, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA
This annual festival celebrates the spring and the eclectic atmosphere of Harvard Square. Thousands of people turned out on a beautiful Sunday to create some Fundreds and enjoy the festivities. 

Monday, May 3 BOSTON PICK-UP PARTY @ Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, MA
Located at 621 Huntington Avenue, this event included authentic New Orleans-style jambalaya, music provided by the Sociedad Latina Youth and others, a speech from Davida Andelman of the Lead Action Cooperative and a Fundred-making table. 

Tuesday, May 4 @ Beverly High School , Beverly, MA
In the front foyer of the school, with a Fundred-making table, light refreshments, music and a presentation of Fundreds to the armored vehicle guard. All were welcome!

Wednesday, May 5 @ State Capitol, Augusta,  Maine
Hundreds of Maine residents joined dignitaries, school children, band members and others on the lawn between the State Capitol and the Cross Office Building. Tory Tepp, FUNDRED truck driver, was greeted by the First Lady of the State of Maine, Commissioners of Conservation and Environmental Protection, a representive of the Department of Agriculture and the Director of the Maine Arts Commission.

Friday, May 7 @ New Hampshire Institute of Art, Manchester, N.H.
Students of the New Hampshire Institute of Art created an artistic installation of the Fundred dollar bills at the French Building, 148 Concord Street.


The FUNDRED Project in New England


Many individuals and organizations have contributed to the FUNDRED initiative in New England by coordinating and planning various Fundred-making events.  We'd like to thank all those listed below as well as all the people who contributed their time and creativity by making a Fundred.

  • FUNDRED Kick-Off Event at Urbano Projects Saturday, February 20sidebar-route

  • FUNDRED Presentation at Sprouts Wednesday, March 17
  • Fundred-Making Event @ Samsøn Projects in Boston on Friday, April 2
  • Fundreds at Teen Night at the ICA in Boston on Friday, April 9
  • Fundreds for Earth Day at The Rose Kennedy Greenwayat and the The Boston Children's Museum in Boston, Thursday, April 22
  • Fundred-making event at Community Works Rhode Island's "South Side Shines Community Cleanup Celebration" in Providence on Saturday, April 24


The School of the Museum of Fine Arts Graduate Colloquium Co-Sponsored by Artists in Context

 

Reimagining Home: A Site for Personal and Social Transformationclip_image002Monday, April 12, 10am-4pm
Remis Auditorium, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

This colloquium was centered around the subject of home as a site for personal and societal transformation.  Over the last several years in response to growing environmental degradation and increased social isolation and discontent, artists, writers, academics and people from all disciplines have started to re-evaluate the way we live and to think about new sustainable forms of living.  Home and domesticity have been at the center of many of these investigations.  Continuing the ideas of “the personal is political” and “think global, act local” the participating artists and thinkers regard the home as a locale where personal and societal change can take shape.  As we move forward into the future these issues will only increase in importance.

The colloquium featured presentations and a panel discussion by artists Mark Dion, J. Morgan Puett, and Fritz Haeg; curator Stephanie Smith; scholar Rebecca Kneale Gould; and architect J.B. Clancy.


AIC's  RESOURCE GUIDE ON HAITI by Radical Reference Librarian Alana Kumbier

An AIC Benefit for Haiti took place on Wednesday, January 27 at the Somerville Public Library.

200px-The_agronomist_movie_posterFeaturing a screening of acclaimed filmmaker Jonathan Demme’s The Agronomist (2003), a documentary about the life of Haitian human rights activist and radio journalist Jean Dominique.

For this benefit, we highlighted the Matènwa Community Learning Center (MCLC) on the Haitian island of La Gonâve, located approximately 40 km from Port-au-Prince As MCLC says on its website: “The world will be contributing to the major rescue organizations and as usual the people in the bay, on La Gonave, will be forgotten and suffering without the media to send out their call.” 

Donations to Beyond Borders/MCLC can be made online at http://www.matenwaclc.org  


OneBook Book Clubs
The focus of AIC's most recent OneBook BookClub was At Home in Nature: Modern Homesteading and Spiritual Practice in America, by Rebecca Kneale Gould, Associate Professor of Religion and Affiliate in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College.  Rebecca was a speaker at the April 12 colloquium, Reimagining Home. At this OneBook, a diverse group of artists, architects, urban homesteaders and others discussed issues ranging from the application of homesteading in contemporary times to the spiritual implications of living off the land.

If you would like to hear about this OneBook, please contact coordinator Lisa Gross: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it


Launch of Artists in Context and the Artists' Prospectus for the Nation

Check out the video documentation of AIC's Oct. 9 launch event at WGBH's Forum Network: Speakers / Panel Discussion


Artists in Context and Artists’ Prospectus for the Nation Launch Event:
New Conversations, Ideas and Projects
Date: Friday 9 October 2009
Location: Arthur M. Sackler Museum Lecture Hall, Harvard University, 485 Broadway, Cambridge, MA
Speakers included:

Barbara Schaffer Bacon
Co-director, Animating Democracy, Americans for the Arts, Washington, DC

Mel Chin
Artist

Ann Hamilton
Artist and Professor of Art at The Ohio State University

Jeremy Liu
Artist and Executive Director, Asian Community Development Corporation, Boston

Dava Newman
Director, MIT Technology and Policy Program and Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems

Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Session Moderator
Assistant Professor of History and Architecture and of Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University

The Artists in Context Launch event was a forum for the presentation and discussion of the expanded field of contemporary culture and the evolving nature of art practices in the context of pressing social issues. The event was free and open to the public.


Past Featured Related Events:

Film Screening: "Foreign Parts"

Friday, April 22, 7pm
Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA 02138

Screenshot from Foreign Parts

Last May, AIC organized a work-in-progress screening of "Foreign Parts" by Véréna Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki at Aladdin Auto Service in Cambridge, MA. Come see the completed film, which has since won numerous international awards, at the Harvard Film Archive.

Foreign Parts is a feature-length film documenting the changing daily life of a New York City junkyard as the threat of demolition looms. A refuge for the homeless, runaways and hundreds of illegal immigrants, the junkyard conceals a vibrant community that will likely disappear soon due to a city plan to redevelop the area.· According to the filmmakers “the junkyards of Willets Point form a small universe of contradictions: violence and tenderness, bittersweet happiness, orderly chaos, beauty and disgust, damaged lives and automobile parts."

Foreign Parts won the Punto de Vista award for Best Film. Judges described it as "...a subtle and sensitive record of an urban ecosystem that is surprisingly resilient, even in the face of governmental indifference and greed. Foreign Parts also won the Best Film award at DocsBarcelona Film Festival and played for a week at MoMA, New York, March 10-16.

For more information about the screening, please call the Harvard Film Archive at 617-495-4700.

Tickets are $12

 


The Boston Tree Party Inauguration

Sunday, April 10th 1:00-3:30pm
The Rose Kennedy Greenway (at the intersection of High St. and Atlantic Ave.)

btp-seal-transparent-900The Boston Tree Party Inauguration will be the ceremonial planting of the first pair of trees in this new city-wide, collaborative campaign to plant 100 pairs of heirloom apple trees in publicly used spaces across Greater Boston. The event, open to the general public, will also feature a celebratory rally with a live marching band, delectable apple treats, Central Asian barbecue, and opportunities to learn more about this campaign for Civic Fruit. Boston Tree Party staff will be on hand to help new communities sign up to become Tree Planting Delegations -- a diverse range of institutions, organizations, and businesses who have signed on to plant and care for pairs of apple trees in their communities.

Like the Boston Tea Party, the Boston Tree Party is a symbolic political act. The project takes a stand for universal access to fresh, healthy food; for greening our cities; cleaning our air and waterways; reducing our city’s carbon footprint; creating habitat for urban wildlife; and for protecting the biodiversity and heritage of our food.  Collectively, the 200 apple trees will become a decentralized public urban orchard that crosses social, economic, political, and geographic boundaries.

The apple has a long and deep connection to the history of Boston. The first apple orchard in the American Colonies was planted by William Blackstone on Beacon Hill in 1623.  The oldest named variety of apple originating in the United States, the Roxbury Russet, was developed in Roxbury in the 1630s. The Boston Tree Party will celebrate and recontextualize this history and reintroduce Boston as a city of apples once again.

The goal for the Boston Tree Party is to catalyze a movement—a movement that works across boundaries to make healthy, fresh food accessible to all; a movement to green our cities; a movement that plants fruit trees in public spaces all over the country; and a movement that comes together to care for these trees and the well-being of all citizens. As an urban agriculture project, the campaign will create vital gathering places, build community connections, and improve community health.  As a conceptual art project, the Boston Tree Party engages with metaphor and symbolism, and playfully reimagines patriotic and political language, imagery, and forms of association.

The Boston Tree Party is a project of Hybrid Vigor Projects.

PARTNERS: Boston Collaborative for Food and Fitness, Boston Natural Areas Network, City Sprouts, Groundwork Somerville, Northeast Organic Farming Association/Mass, YouthBuild Boston.

For more information about this event, or to become an official tree planting delegation, visit the Boston Tree Party Website (www.bostontreeparty.org)


"Intangibles: Immaterial Vectors, Agents and Effects"

April 1, 2011 - 4:30pm
April 2, 2011 - 9 am
Thompson Room, Barker Center, Harvard, 12 Quincy Street , Boston MA

Brian Rotman, featured guest author of AIC's OneBook Book Club, will be delivering the Keynote address "Auras, Digital Ghosts, The Virtual".


Other participants include:
Jose Bellido, Birkbeck College, London
Mario Biagioli, University of Californiia, Davis
Jimena Canales, Harvard University
Tom Conley, Harvard University
Rosemary Coombe, York University, Toronto
Michael Fischer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Stefan Helmreich, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Vincent Lépinay, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Alain Pottage, London School of Economics
Paolo Quattrone Instituto de Empresa, Business School, Madrid
William Rankin, Harvard University
Hans-Joerg Rheinberger, Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
Randolph Starn, University of Californiia, Berkeley
Madhavi Sunder, University of Californiia, Davis
Christopher Wood, Yale University

Cosponsored by the Humanities Center at Harvard, the Center for Science and Innovation at the University of California, Davis, and the Department of Law, London School of Economics.

For more information check the Humanities Center Conferences and Events website



 

Museums Without Walls -- A series of public art projects at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA

Museum Without Walls has a two-fold goal: not only to consider new directions in public art, but equally to focus on an expanded concept of an experimental university gallery. Museum Without Walls is a proposition for a new paradigm based on the definition of a teaching museum as an evocative space, stretching beyond the confines of its given architecture, to incite dialogue and new terms of exchange between artists, scholars, and the larger arts communities.

Current Projects:

Moveable Feast -- a collaborative project between the University Gallery (UMass Amherst), Nuestras Raices Inc. of Holyoke, and Joseph Krupczynski (art activist, designer and UMass professor) -- transforms a traditional mobile food cart into a visual and culinary feast, circulating to locations throughout our community. It is a vehicle (both literally and metaphorically) that advocates for building a healthier local food system. Meals and discussions about healthy community-based food practicesare transformed into “artworks” through the framework of this public art project. The truck will be owned by Nuestras Raices, a grass-roots organization that promotes economic, human and community development through projects relating to food, agriculture, and the environment. Movable Feast is inspired by the idea that art can expand conventional notions of people, place and the art-making process.

Movable Feast Schedule, Fall 2010

Thursday 9/23   4:30 - 7:00  PM 
UMass Amherst  /  Haigis Mall 
University Gallery Opening Event

Saturday 9/25    12:00 – 6:00 PM Holyoke  /  La Finca: Harvest Festival 
24 Jones Ferry Road

 

Tuesday 9/28    1:30 – 6:30 PM
Northampton  /  Tuesday Farmers Market 
Next to Downtown Parking Garage

Sunday 10/3    1:30 – 3:00 PM & 4:00 – 5:30 PM 
Holyoke  /  Toepfert Apartments, North Summer Street & 
Beaudoin Village, Leary Drive

Tuesday 10/5    4:30 – 7:00 PM
Amherst  /  Food for Thought Books  /  Panel Discussion
106 North Pleasant Street

Saturday 10/9    10:00 – 2:00 PM
Springfield  /  Mason Square Farmers Market 
11 Wilbraham Road

Tuesday 10/12   3:00 – 5:00 PM
Holyoke  /  El Arco Iris   
561 South Canal Street

ALL DATES AND LOCATIONS SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Check out http://www.movablefeastproject.org/ for updates.


Just A Rumor -
- A new public art work by nationally acclaimed artist Anna Schuleit on the UMass Amherst campus. Painted on the concrete façade of the Fine Arts Center, Just a Rumor is Schuleit's three-story-high, upside-down portrait of a face. When the portrait's reflection is viewed on the surface of the adjacent campus pond, the image is inverted, producing a double-portrait: the upside-down original and the right side up reflection. Just a Rumor is a new work that enables Schuleit to connect her ongoing studio practice with her experience in large, site-specific art in an idiosyncratic way, by enabling a low-tech "projection" of the painted face to be generated by nature alone - without the use of electronic devices or screens.

Just A Rumor Opening Reception, Campus Pond: Friday, September 10, 2010, 5 - 7PM 
On view through November 2010


SchuleitWIP




Mildred's Lane / Renovating Walden September 9 - November 14, 2010

MildredsLane

 

The Tufts University Art Gallery presents Mildredʼs Lane | Renovating Walden, an art project and participatory installation spearheaded by noted American artists J. Morgan Puett and Mark Dion and guest curator curator squared (Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox) for Tufts University and on view at the Tufts University Art Gallery September 9 through November 14, 2010. A public opening reception will take place on September 16 from 5:30 to 8 pm.

Renovating Walden is an extensive, participatory installation that animates the readings and mis-readings of Henry David Thoreauʼs 1854 book Walden; or, Life in the Woods, while “renovating” Thoreauʼs ideas about the complex and fraught relationship between nature and culture in provocative and interdisciplinary ways. The installation was developed at Mildredʼs Lane,
an artistsʼ complex co-founded and directed by artists Puett and Dion. In their community home in Northeastern Pennsylvania, Puett and Dion led a group of artists and art students from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in emulating Thoreau's philosophy of intentional living.

The session at Mildredʼs Lane and the culminating installation focus on the relationship between the city and the countryside by investigating how the rural world occupies the projections, fantasies, economy, and antagonism of the cosmopolitan set. The exhibition celebrates and parodies the inherent contradictions in our new attempts at Bohemian life and the history of these attempts. An extensive series of public salon-style conversations and open class sessions in the galleries is planned in which an array of Tufts faculty from across the School of Arts & Sciences will participate with their students. Visitors are also encouraged to return to the Gallery throughout the course of the exhibition to view its physical transformations and participate in the varied and numerous public conversations and lectures.



PUBLIC EVENTS:

Opening Reception:
Thursday, September 16, 5:30 to 8pm

Closing Reception and Book Launch:
Friday, November 12, 6 to 8pm

Keynote Lecture: “Drawing Rooms and Disturbed Consciences: Parlor Politics on the Anti-Slavery Home Front”, Radiclani Clytus
Friday, October 22, 11am to 12noon

Exhibition Tours with a Mildredʼs Lane Fellow:
Saturday, October 2, 2 to 3pm
Saturday, November 13, 2 to 3pm

Lycea: (Early evening open forum lecture/discussions):

  • "Simplicity, simplicity,...Complexity?" Jonathan Kenny, Department of Chemistry, Thursday, September 30, 7 to 8:30pm
  • “Architecture and Thoreauʼs House at Walden Pond” Danny Abramson, Department of Art & Art History; David Wood, Curator, Concord Museum; and Becky Hutchinson, Architect, Thursday, October 14, 6 to 8pm
  • “The philosophical significance of Thoreauʼs Walden” Avner Baz, Department of Philosophy, Thursday, October 28, 6 to 8pm

Salons: (Lunch hour open forum lecture/discussions):

  • “Artists as Researchers” Monica McTighe, Department of Art and Art History, Tuesday, September 21, 12:10 to 1:20pm
  • “What does Thoreau teach us about sustainability?” Gilbert Metcalf, Department of Economics, Tuesday, October 5, 12:10 to 1:20pm
  • “Out in front (a little to the left)” The Tufts Dance Ensemble, under the direction of Daniel McCusker, Tuesday, November 2, 12:10 to 1:20pm

 


Jammin for Justice 2010: Celebrating for Environmental Justice!


Wednesday, May 26, 6-9pmace-jammin-2010-1-530
Hibernian Hall | Roxbury Center for the Arts
184 Dudley Street | Roxbury | MA | 02119
food | live performances | DJ | silent auction

We'll be encouraging donations of all sizes at the event. Childcare available on-site.

Join hundreds of your fellow ACE supporters to celebrate environmental justice, raise funds and present awards to great people and organizations!

Please RSVP by Friday, May 21 and include childcare needs.

To RSVP / for more info, email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call (617) 442-3343 x235.

Organizations and businesses are encouraged to show their support by sponsoring the event. For more info, email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call (617) 442-3343 x231.


Two-Day Festival: "Women Without Men: Iran Through the Lens of Shirin Neshat and the Words of Four Leading Iranian Fiction Writers"

WWM12-150x150


April 22 - 23
Brown University, Providence, RI

Iranian filmmaker Shirin Neshat made a rare appearance in Providence, speaking to audiences in advance of the Rhode Island premiere of her Venice Film Festival Silver Lion Award-winning film, “Women Without Men.”

More information about Neshat’s film is available at www.womenwithoutmenfilm.com

Neshat’s film, part-allegory, part historical drama, chronicles the lives of five women living in Tehran during the British- and American-backed coup of the democratically elected government in 1953.  It is based on the novel of the same title by Iranian writer Shahrnush Parsipur.

Along with the author of "Women Without Men" Shahrnush Parsipur, acclaimed Iranian authors Shahriar Mandanipour, and Moniro Ravanipour also participated in this two day event.  Mandanipour, Parsipur and Ravanipour are all past International Writers Project Fellows at Brown.  The IWP Fellowship provides institutional, intellectual and artistic support to writers who face personal danger, oppression, and/or threats to their livelihood in nations throughout the world.  Each academic year, the fellowship is granted to one writer who is unable to practice free expression in his or her homeland.  Deeply practical in nature and intention, the academic-year fellowship covers the costs of relocation and the writer’s living expenses in the U.S., and also provides an office on the campus of Brown University for ten months.

The International Writers Project,  developed in collaboration by Brown’s Program in Literary Arts and Watson Institute for International Studies, is the sponsor of the "Women Without Men" festival

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