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Visual & Media Cultures Colloquium - Adelita Husni-Bey

A practice of gathering
Adelita Husni-Bey, CHIRON, 2018 (still), 4K, 18:13 min.
Wed Nov 18, 2020, 4:00pm to 6:00pm
online event
Presented by: 
Arts Division
Film & Digital Media
History of Art & Visual Culture

VIA ZOOM, PLEASE RSVP TO RECEIVE THE LINK

A practice of gathering

Focusing on forms of quarantine historically imposed by neoliberalism through widespread "organized abandonment" and negating access—a cordon sanitaire which institutes everyday life in-separation and in-competition for survival—the talk will ask: How do protocols which dictate our separation deploy our capacity for "being together"? Addressing conditions that flourish under isolation as primary forces of social transformation—such as debility, delay, and separation—this presentation will highlight artwork that formulates gathering under these and pre-pandemic conditions as a socially transformative, dynamic pedagogical process.

Adelita Husni-Bey is an artist and pedagogue interested in anarcho-collectivism, theater, law, and urban studies. She organizes gatherings, produces workshops, and exhibition work focused on using non-competitive pedagogical models through the framework of contemporary art. Working with activists, architects, jurists, schoolchildren, spoken word poets, actors, urbanists, physical therapists, athletes, teachers, and students across different backgrounds, the work focuses on articulating the complexity of collectivity under capitalism. Solo exhibitions include: MaktspillBergen Kunsthall, 2020; Chiron, New Museum, 2019; A Wave in the Well, Sursock Museum, 2016; and Playing Truant, Gasworks, 2012. She has participated in Citizenship: A Practice of Society, MCA Denver, 2020; Being: New Photography, MoMA, 2018; Dreamlands, Whitney Museum, 2016; and The Eighth Climate, 11th Gwangju Biennale, 2015. She has held workshops and lectures at CalArts, 2020, The New School, 2019, Sussex University, 2011, Sandberg Institute, 2015, amongst other spaces. She is a 2012 Whitney Independent Study Program fellow, a 2020-2022 Vera List Center fellow, and has represented Italy at the Venice Biennale of Art, 2017, with a video installation rooted in anti-extractivist struggles.

The annual Visual and Media Cultures Colloquia (VMCC) at UCSC are a collaboration between the graduate programs in Film and Digital Media Department and Visual Studies in the History of Art and Visual Culture Department. The series brings an array of cutting-edge scholars to speak on a broad spectrum of subjects. Talks are free and open to the public.