News

Northwestern University’s Shanya Silverstein came to campus on February 19 to present a specific component of her current research: the traditional dance of dabke and its relationship to the contemporary political turmoil surrounding the Syrian civil war. This form of performance, which is deeply tied to individual localities within and across Syria, has in recent years emerged more and more frequently through video footage posted to social media sites such as Facebook.

Syria’s Fraught Balance: Movement, Politics, and Dabke Performance

With Shayna Silverstein, followed by a conversation with Deena Chalabi

Wednesday, February 19, 2020 | 5:00-7:00pm
Dwinelle Annex, Room 126, UC Berkeley

Watch the recording here!

Co-sponsored by Arts Research Center, the Music Department, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and the Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies Department

Poetry & the Senses has launched! | Our celebration of the launch of Poetry & the Senses was a joyous combination of indulgence in the arts and critical concern for this year’s theme. Participating readers—Indira Allegra, Chiyuma Elliot, and Lyn Hejinian—were introduced by our director Julia Bryan-Wilson, and further lauded by the director of the Arts + Design department on campus, Anthony Cascardi, Dean of Arts & Humanities.

Poetry and the Senses Launch and Conversation

With Indira Allegra, Chiyuma Elliott, and Lyn Hejinian

Tuesday, February 4, 2020
5:30 – 7:00pm: Readings + Conversation
7:00 – 7:30pm: Reception + Celebration
Morrison Library, UC Berkeley

Watch the recording here!

Co-sponsored by Arts Research Center and Engaging the Senses Foundation

Poetry and the Senses has launched! This program has been in development since October of 2019 following the most generous grant in ARC’s history, courtesy of the Engaging the Senses Foundation. The two-year initiative kicked off this January and will continue throughout the year. 

On November 12 of this past year, ARC celebrated the completion of the upcoming issue of Third Text, a journal of critical perspectives on contemporary art and culture, guest edited in part by our director Julia Bryan-Wilson. We hosted a small get-together at the Beta Lounge in Berkeley to collect our community around the concept of amateurism, and its many intrigues and merits.

December 1st is World AIDS Day, dedicated to a crisis which is still in its deepest throes. ARC co-sponsored a special film screening to commemorate the day with the California College of the Arts—this being the 30th Annual Day With(out) Arts film “Still Beginning.” Composed of seven contemporary short films solicited by the film’s producer, Visual AIDS, “Still Beginning” screened in over 115 venues on that same day all over the world.

Thursday, November 7th of 2019 was marked by a conversation between Mark Godfrey and Kenyatta Hinkle, hosted by ARC at the David Brower Center. The two—Godfrey of the Tate Modern and Hinkle of UC Berkeley’s Art Practice Department—came together to discuss the opening of Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power at the de Young Museum the night prior. By the time the collection reached the de Young it had travelled to five different locations throughout the United States.

STILL BEGINNING: The 30th Annual Day With(out) Art

Visual AIDS Screening

Tuesday, December 3, 2019
Screening starts at 7:15pm
Nahl Hall | California College of the Arts, Oakland campus

Watch the videos here!

Co-sponsored by the Arts Research Center and the California College of the Arts

Launch of “Amateurism” | Third Text Special Issue

With remarks by Abigail De Kosnik and Anneka Lenssen

Tuesday, November 12, 2019
5:00-7:00pm
Beta Lounge (rsvp to lauren.pearson@berkeley.edu)

On “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power”

Curator Mark Godfrey, Tate Modern, in conversation with Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle

Friday, November 8, 2019 
4:00-6:00pm
David Brower Center, 2150 Allston Way, Downtown Berkeley

Watch the recording here!

Please note, this event is free and open to the public. Seating is first come, first served (no tickets). Co-sponsored by The Arts Research Center and the Department of Art Practice.

Arts Research Center Partners with Engaging the Senses Foundation

to Fund Poetry Program at UC Berkeley

AW: Claudia La Rocco’s And What’s More is the third installment of her science-fiction Olivia Trilogy, a literary, performance, art, and sound project that plays with traditional audience/maker/doer relationships. I was one of four artists commissioned by La Rocco to “read” And What’s More in and through their respective art forms.

When we talk of the reproduction of sound, or of music, we usually mean either a musical score–perhaps in the Western script of five-line staffs, clefs and bars–or a sound recording, whether analogue (on an external support like a disc, cylinder, tape) or digital recording. We don’t usually consider sound “reproduction” in relation to biological reproduction–the sort involving, for example, sex, embryos, mothers, fathers, to say nothing of the asexual reproduction of cells, bacteria, and viruses.

ARC Fellows: The Archaeologist and the Replica: 3D printing at Aidonia (Greece)

Submitted by our 2019 ARC Fellow Team:

Kim Shelton (Classics/Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology) and David Wheeler (Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology)

Critique/De-coloniality/Diaspora

Nadia Yala Kisukidi | How to Philosophize in a Dominated Country
Rocío Zambrana | Pasarse políticamente: Hopeful Acts of Protest in Puerto Rico

Monday, May 6, 2019
5:00-7:00pm
470 Stephens Hall, UC Berkeley

Watch the recording here!