Arts + Design Mondays @ BAMPFA

Arts + Design Mondays @ BAMPFA

Join us every Monday evening to explore cutting-edge thinking and making on topics of current interest to UC Berkeley’s creative faculty. Whether we are exploring new immersive art technologies, the future of cultural criticism, or the role of the arts in social justice, expect an exciting array of ideas and people. All lectures will commence at 6:30pm in the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) Theater. Co-curated by the Arts, Technology and Culture Colloquium; The Black Room; the Arts Research Center; Berkeley Center for New Media; the Townsend Center for Humanities; Art Practice Department; Digital Humanities; English; and Art of Writing. Arts + Design Mondays @ BAMPFA is supported by the Arts + Design Initiative at UC Berkeley.

Monday, January 30, 2017:

Gender, Identity, Memoir | Judith Butler and Maggie Nelson in Conversation

This event is part of The Future of Cultural Criticism, a series featuring some of the most innovative and incisive commentators on culture, with a focus on the expansion of cultural criticism into new media, genres, and approaches.

Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley. Her work has been influential in a variety of disciplines including critical theory and gender studies. She has received many of the highest honors in the humanities, including the Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award.

Maggie Nelson, a 2016 MacArthur Fellow, is the author of numerous works of nonfiction and poetry, including The Argonauts, an autobiography that explores complex issues of gender, sexuality, and love, and which received the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. Nelson directs the creative writing program at California Institute of the Arts.

The Future of Cultural Criticism is sponsored by the Townsend Center for the Humanities, the Arts + Design Initiative, the Arts Research Center, Digital Humanities, and Art of Writing.

Monday, February 6, 2017:

Collecting the Uncollectible: Pamela & Richard Kramlich in conversation with Lawrence Rinder

Berkeley’s Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium is an internationally recognized forum for presenting new ideas that challenge conventional wisdom about art, technology, and culture. This year’s theme focuses on Digital Immersions, and will present artists, writers, curators, and scholars who consider contemporary issues at the intersection of aesthetic expression, emerging technologies, and cultural history, from a critical perspective.

Pamela & Richard Kramlich began building their collection in 1992, a time when collecting primarily time-based works was unprecedented and considered an unlikely pursuit. Since then, they have expanded their collection to include some 300 works by more than 60 international artists. In 1997, the Kramlichs established the New Art Trust to advance the media arts through the support of research and scholarship in the field.

Lawrence Rinder has been director of BAMPFA since 2008. His previous positions include Dean of California College of the Arts, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator of Contemporary Art at the Whitney Museum, founding director at CCA Wattis, and Assistant Director and Curator for Twentieth Century Art at BAMPFA.

Collecting the Uncollectible is part of the Art, Technology, & Culture Colloquium, sponsored by the Berkeley Center for New Media, the Arts + Design Initiative, and the Arts Research Center.

Monday, February 13, 2017:

Body, Intellect, Resistance | Mark Greif and Linda Williams in Conversation

Mark Greif covers popular culture and political thought for the journal n+1, which he co-founded. His books include the essay collection Against Everything, and a study of mid-20th century American literature and thought, The Age of the Crisis of Man. He is associate professor of literary studies at the New School for Social Research.

Linda Williams is professor emeritus of Rhetoric and Film & Media at UC Berkeley. Her works of feminist film scholarship include Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible, which analyzes film pornography as a genre and specific cinematic form. Her most recent book is On The Wire, a study of the HBO television series.

The Future of Cultural Criticism is sponsored by the Townsend Center for the Humanities, the Arts + Design Initiative, the Arts Research Center, Digital Humanities, and Art of Writing.

Monday, February 27, 2017:

Technology, Race, Popular Culture | Jenna Wortham and Nadia Ellis in Conversation

Jenna Wortham writes about technology and culture for the New York Times. Her criticism—which also engages with issues of race and sexuality in music, film, and other forms of popular media—has appeared in the Awl, Bust, Vogue, and other publications.

Nadia Ellis, associate professor of English at UC Berkeley, specializes in African diasporic, Caribbean, and postcolonial literatures and cultures. She is the author of Territories of the Soul: Queered Belonging in the Black Diaspora, and has published essays on popular culture, performance, and music.

The Future of Cultural Criticism is sponsored by the Townsend Center for the Humanities, the Arts + Design Initiative, the Arts Research Center, Digital Humanities, and Art of Writing.

Monday, March 6, 2017:

Black Sun: Reflections on Otto Piene and Aldo Tambellini with Tanya Zimbardo

Tanya Zimbardo is a contemporary art curator based in San Francisco. As the assistant curator of media arts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Zimbardo is currently curating the exhibitions Runa Islam: Verso and New Work: Kerry Tribe and co-curating Nam June Paik and Soundtracks. Zimbardo has organized and co-organized exhibitions and select screening programs at SFMOMA. Current and recent guest curatorial projects in the Bay Area include Organic Logic, 500 Capp Street; Equilibrium: A Paul Kos Survey, di Rosa; Public Works: Artists’ Interventions 1970s-Now, Mills College Art Museum; and Versions: Kristin Lucas and Judy Malloy, Krowswork. Zimbardo has guest organized screenings at Artists’ Television Access, CCA Wattis Institute of Contemporary Arts; University of California, Berkeley, and for SF Cinematheque. Her projects and writing are primarily centered on the history of exhibitions and site-specific works, performance-based experimental media, online projects, and conceptual art. Zimbardo is participating in the 2017 researcher-in-residence program at Signal Culture, New York.

Black Sun is part of the Art, Technology, & Culture Colloquium, sponsored by the Berkeley Center for New Media, the Arts + Design Initiative, and the Arts Research Center.

Monday, March 13, 2017:

jackie sumell: Art, Activism, and Freedom in the American Carceral State

Reflecting on her service with prisoners indefinitely held in solitary confinement, most notably, Herman Wallace, a political prisoner with whom sumell collaborated for 12 years, jackie sumell will ask us to confront our unconscious desire for revenge and our addiction to the narrative of victory. Drawing from the teachings of Black Panthers, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, sumell will challenge us to consider how our thoughts/words/actions cast onto the status quo’s treacherous practice of othering — and subsequently how our greatest power is found at the intersection of awareness and despair.

jackie sumell: is a New Orleans-based multidisciplinary artist and activist whose work interrogates the abuses of the American criminal justice system. She is best known for her collaborative project with Angola 3 member Herman Wallace entitled Herman’s House/The House that Herman Built (2006-present) a multifaceted project that includes architectural drawings, digital and built models, text, photographs, correspondence, and lectures that explores the practice of solitary confinement in US prisons. She has produced numerous public installations engaging questions of social justice, community, and race including her most recent Solitary Gardens project. She is a recipient of numerous fellowships and awards including, in 2013, the Soros Justice Fellowship and, in 2016, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Artist as Activist Award.

jackie sumell: Art, Activism, and Freedom in the American Carceral State is sponsored by Wiesenfeld Visiting Artist Lecture Series, The Black Room, the English Department, and the Townsend Center for the Humanities.

Monday, March 20, 2017:

Designing Spatiality for New Media Art with Andrew & Deborah Rappaport

Andrew & Deborah Rappaport founded the Minnesota Street Project in 2015, which offers affordable and economically sustainable spaces for art galleries, artists and related nonprofits. The project, inspired by the couple’s belief that philanthropic support for the arts today requires an alternate model—one suited to the innovative nature of Silicon Valley and the region as a whole.

Designing Spatiality for New Media Art is part of the Art, Technology, & Culture Colloquium, sponsored by the Berkeley Center for New Media, the Arts + Design Initiative, and the Arts Research Center.

Monday, April 17, 2017:

Cultural Criticism in the Age of YouTube | Tiffany Shlain, Rolla Selbak, and George Strompolos, moderated by Shannon Jackson

Emmy-nominated filmmaker Tiffany Shlain is founder of the Webby Awards, the leading international prize for excellence on the internet. She co-founded the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.

Rolla Selbak is a filmmaker whose credits include the acclaimed feature film Three Veils, which examines arranged marriage, homosexuality, and love within Muslim-American culture. She is also creator of the virally popular Web series Kiss Her I’m Famous.

George Strompolos is founder and CEO of the pioneering digital media company Fullscreen. Prior to founding Fullscreen, George co-created the YouTube Partner Program while working for Google.

The Future of Cultural Criticism is sponsored by the Townsend Center for the Humanities, the Arts + Design Initiative, the Arts Research Center, Digital Humanities, and Art of Writing.

Monday, April 24, 2017:

Radio, Podcast, and Contemporary Cultural Criticism | John Horn, Glynn Washington, and Chloe Veltman

John Horn is host of KPCC’s The Frame, a daily arts and entertainment program. He has covered culture for nearly 30 years, including serving for over a decade at the Los Angeles Times as lead writer on the film industry.

Glynn Washington is host and executive producer of Snap Judgment on National Public Radio. The show’s podcasts have received widespread acclaim, with the episode “Unforgiven” named by the Atlantic as one of the 50 best podcast episodes of 2015.

Award-winning culture reporter, critic, broadcaster, and educator Chloe Veltman currently serves as senior arts and culture editor at KQED, a major public media organization based in San Francisco. A former John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford and New York Times Bay Area culture correspondent, Chloe is also a guest lecturer at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and a Creative in Residence at The Battery, a club in downtown San Francisco.

The Future of Cultural Criticism is sponsored by the Townsend Center for the Humanities, the Arts + Design Initiative, the Arts Research Center, Digital Humanities, and Art of Writing.

Monday, May 1, 2017:

The Future of Media in the Trump Era with Dave Pell, moderated by Deirdre English

Dave Pell is a writer, angel investor, and founder of Next Draft, based in the Bay Area. He has degrees from both UC Berkeley and Harvard University and has written for numerous media sites, including Wired, NPR, Medium, and Forbes.

Deirdre English is the former Editor-in-Chief of Mother Jones magazine where she worked for eight years, ending in 1986. She has written and edited work on a wide array of subjects related to investigative reporting, cultural politics, gender studies, and public policy. English is faculty in the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

The Future of Cultural Criticism is sponsored by the Townsend Center for the Humanities, the Arts + Design Initiative, the Arts Research Center, Digital Humanities, and Art of Writing.

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