We are thrilled to begin 2017 with a series of public programs and screenings that highlight urgent art and urgent conversations resonating with contemporary life. Join us to explore ideas at the intersection as we consider history/memory poetry/nanotechnology, sewing/equity, protest/performance and more.
OPENING DAY:
Kader Attia: Reflecting Memory
Saturday, January 21, 2:00pm
Join us for the opening of a newly commissioned exhibition by internationally renowned artist Kader Attia, informed by his research in the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies. Attia will be joined in conversation by Caroline Bledsoe and Peter Locke, faculty in Anthropology and Global Health Studies. The panel will be moderated by Antawan I. Byrd, Art History PhD candidate, and preceded by presentation by Block curators Kathleen Bickford Berzock and Janet Dees.
OPENING DAY:
If You Remember, I’ll Remember
Saturday, February 4
Sewing Kick-Off, 10:00am–12:00pm
The exhibition If You Remember, I’ll Remember is an invitation to think about the present while reflecting on the past. Drop in for a first look at the exhibition and to join artist Marie Watt in a sewing circle.
Artist Conversation 2:00pm
The contemporary artists in the exhibition use poetic strategies to address issues of war, racism, and xenophobia in American history. Exhibition curator Janet Dees and participating artists Kristine Aono, Samantha Hill, Dario Robleto, and Marie Watt will take part in a presentation and panel discussion on the show’s crucial themes.
DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY ELIZABETH AND TODD WARNOCK LECTURE:
Purchased by L. Sickman in Peking: A Conversation with Marsha Haufler
Wednesday, January 18, 5:00pm
In the early 1930s, Laurence Sickman, acting on behalf of the Nelson Gallery in Kansas City, acquired an impressive array of objects that became the foundation for one of the most highly regarded collections of Chinese art in America. Marsha Haufler, Professor of Art History at the University of Kansas, will introduce Sickman’s acquisitions and use them to illuminate the trade in Asian objects and their reception in American art museums.
ON SCREEN
“The Gay Left”: Homosexuality in the Era of Late Socialism
Friday, February 3, 7:00pm
Friday, February 10, 7:00pm
Friday, February 24, 7:00pm
Friday, March 3, 7:00pm
In an East Berlin gay bar in 1989, an old man explains his commitment to the communist party’s project of equality after World War II: “We stopped mankind’s exploitation by mankind. Now it does not matter if the person you work with is a Jew or whatever. Except gays. They were forgotten somehow.” The only official film from the German Democratic Republic dealing with homosexuality, Coming Out, by Heiner Carow, ends with these lines. This film series asks how the ideologies of communism, socialism, and capitalism address sexual minorities. Including work from both sides of the Iron Curtain, “The Gay Left” brings multiple perspectives and \ historical moments into conversation in order to fight against forgetting.
PARTICIPATORY EVENT
Equity Sewing Circle with Artist Marie Watt
Wednesday, February 8, 6:00pm
Building Blankets, one of the primary materials used by Seneca artist Marie Watt, are everyday objects that can carry extraordinary histories. Many of Watt’s larger blanket works are made in community, notably in “sewing circles,” bringing people together in conversation and making. Join us for hands-on participation in one of Watt’s works while taking part in conversation on equity.
ON SCREEN
History and Memory
Thursday, February 9, 7:00pm
Presented as a cinematic complement to the Art Institute of Chicago’s contemporaneous exhibition, Provoke: Photography in Japan between Protest and Performance,
1960–1975, these three screenings provide an opportunity to explore the historical intersection of experimental filmmaking with documentary cinema traditions in a period of radical social and political change. Scholar and curator Hirasawa Gō, and director Masanori Oe, will be present for a discussion moderated by Professor Patrick Noonan.
ART + ENGINEERING
Jen Bervin: Silk Poems
Monday, February 13, 4:00pm
Ford Engineering Design Center, ITW Room
Jen Bervin is an interdisciplinary artist and poet whose works weaves together art, writing, science, and her own life. Bervin will discuss her project Silk Poems, poems written in nanoscale in the form of a silk biosensor. Consulting nanotechnology and biomedical labs, she fabricated a silk film with poems written in a six-character chain that corresponds to human DNA.
ON SCREEN
Japanese Experimental Cinema—Between Protest and Performance, 1960–1975
Thursday, February 16, 7:00pm
Friday, February 17, 5:00pm & 7:00pm
Presented as a cinematic complement to the Art Institute of Chicago’s contemporaneous exhibition, Provoke: Photography in Japan between Protest and Performance,
1960–1975, these three screenings provide an opportunity to explore the historical intersection of experimental filmmaking with documentary cinema traditions in a period of radical social and political change. Scholar and curator Hirasawa Gō, and director Masanori Oe, will be present for a discussion moderated by Professor Patrick Noonan.
PARTICIPATORY EVENT
Day of Remembrance 75th Anniversary
Saturday, February 18, 2:00pm
February 19, 2017, marks the 75th anniversary of the signing of the executive order which called for the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Join us to commemorate this historic occasion through an interactive, intergenerational program held around the work of Sansei artist Kristine Aono. The afternoon will be spent sharing stories of internment, and commemorating this historic anniversary.
VISUAL VANGUARD SERIES:
GLOBAL LEADERS AT THE BLOCK
Abdellah Karroum
Director, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art
Thursday, February 23, 6:00pm
The Visual Vanguard series offers conversations with a new generation of innovative arts leaders working internationally and transforming how we experience art today. Abdellah Karroum will discuss his work at Mathaf in Qatar and at L’appartement 22, an experimental collaborative space for exhibitions and artists’ residencies in Rabat, Morocco. Followed by conversation with S. Hollis Clayson, Professor of Art History and Bergun Evans Professor in the Humanities, and Brian Edwards, Crown Professor in Middle East Studies.
ON SCREEN
Dreams Are Colder Than Death
February 28, 5:30pm
Founded in 2012 to cultivate an interdisciplinary approach to the presentation of black arts on campus, the Black Arts Initiative has programmed a yearlong series of films that provoke difficult conversations around race and identity. This winter’s screening, Arthur Jafa and Kahlil Joseph’s 2014 documentary, Dreams Are Colder Than Death, explores the question of what it means to be black in America through a series of interviews with individuals including visual artist Kara Walker, author Hortense Spillers, filmmaker Charles Burnett, and ex–Black Panther Kathleen Cleaver. Followed by discussion.
BEHIND THE SCENES CONVERSATION
The Artist in The Archive: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Kader Attia in the Herskovits Library
Thursday, March 2, 5:00pm
Northwestern University Library
The scope of Northwestern’s renowned Herskovits library is as wide and diverse as the continent of Africa itself. Join its curator, Esmeralda Kale for a look at objects in the collection that inspired Kader Attia’s research. Members of AfriSem, a consortium of graduate students focused on African Studies, will also explore intertwined areas of Attia’s research—architecture, psychopathology, and prosthetics—taking materials from the Library as a point of departure.
GALLERY TOUR
Mining Pictures: Stories from Above and Below Ground
Tuesday, March 7, 4:00pm
Join Block Fellow Talia Shabtay, for a closer look at her exhibition Mining Pictures, examining images of the mining industry and the cultural construction of visual stories depicting workers and labor.
BOOK RELEASE
Bearden’s Odyssey: Poets Respond to the Art of Romare Bearden
Friday, March 31, 6:00pm
Bearden’s Odyssey: Poets Respond to the Art of Romare Bearden (Northwestern University Press/TriQuarterly Books) gathers, for the first time, poems from 35 of the most revered African diaspora poets in the United States. Join award-winning editors and contributors Kwame Dawes, Matthew Shenoda, Chris Abani for a reading and discussion of Romare Bearden’s power and influence on contemporary artists. Book signing to follow.
