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May 1, 2019

If We Must Die: Conversations about Grieving, Social Justice, Healing & Creating is a proposal initiated by Department of Art Practice faculty Kenyatta A.C Hinkle and Ree Botts an African Diaspora PhD student researching Black feminist spatial imaginaries and artistic curation as praxis in terms of self and communal care.

On the 12th of February, 2019, Kevin Kelly – the editor of WIRED Magazine – published an article called “Mirrorworld”. The piece, revolving around the future of the Augmented Reality technologies, describes a constructed reality of contextualized objects, images mediated by machines and pure information overload – where everything has its own virtual double and immersion is achieved through the merging of the physical with the digital. “The mirror world does not yet fully exist, but it is coming” he writes.

April 25, 2019

“Curating Dirty Looks and Presenting the Queer Cinematic Avant-Garde”

curator talk and screening by Bradford Nordeen

Thursday, April 25, 2019
5:00-7:00pm
Dwinelle Hall, Room 142/Nestrick Room, UC Berkeley 

Listen here!


April 24, 2019

Les Blank Lecture: Susana de Sousa Dias

Wednesday, April 24, 2019
7:00pm Luz obscura (film screening)
Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive 

Co-sponsored by BAMPFA, the Arts Research Center, and UCHRI.


March 1, 2019

Art as Critique Conference

Friday, March 1, 2019
9:00am-6:30pm
Geballe Room, Townsend Center for the Humanities

The Art as Critique Conference that took place on Friday, March 1st 2019, arose out of a series of collaborative discussions on the project of maintaining, claiming, and mobilizing art as political critique, as something wrapped up with ongoing global struggle and crisis. The day long symposium was concluded by a joint lecture and discussion with Koyo Kouoh, co-founder of the Senegalese RAW Material Company and recently appointed director of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, and Vìctor Albarracin, Artistic Director of lugar a dudas.

February 20, 2019

Artist & Curator Silvia Gruner in conversation with Tarek Elhaik

Wednesday, February 20, 2019
5:30-7:30pm
Dwinelle Annex, Room 126

Watch the recording here or listen here!

Co-sponsors: Arts Research Center and UCHRI.


 

 

January 31, 2019

“We are not worried in the least"

Jasmina Metwaly, filmmaker, artist, and founder of the Mosireen Collective
In conversation with Anneka Lenssen

Thursday, January 31, 2019
5:00-7:00pm
Dwinelle Hall, Room 142/Nestrick Room

Watch the recording here!

December 1, 2018

The ARC Fellows Program advances interdisciplinary research in the arts at UC Berkeley by supporting self-nominated pairs of graduate students and faculty members as they pursue semester-long collaborative projects of their own design.

The goals of this program are:

  • to encourage collaboration across disciplines, departments, and colleges;

  • to cultivate a community of artists and arts scholars with interdisciplinary interests;

November 7, 2018

How do we address the divided histories that define who we are?

“Kinetic Contemplation: Raqs Media Collective in Medias Res”

Shuddhabrata Sengupta in conversation with Professors Natalia Brizuela & Poulomi Saha

Wednesday, November 7, 2018
5:00-7:00pm
Maude Fife Room, Wheeler Hall, Room 315

October 11, 2018

Escritura, Trama Y Deseo (Writing, Plot And Desire)

Diamela Eltit in conversation with Natalia Brizuela and Francine Masiello

Thursday, October 11, 2018
5:30-7:30pm
Geballe Room, Townsend Center for the Humanities

Watch the recording here or listen here

September 21, 2018

After completing her masters and Ph.D in art history at New York University Aruna D’Souza began what would become an acclaimed career as a writer. In conversation with Allan deSouza the two talked about Aruna’s thoughts on art historical practice and where it has led her as a writer. “I didn’t want to write in footnotes” D’Souza said, “I wanted my intuitions to coalesce into thinking”. D’Souza spoke of feeling confined by art historical practice, and frustrated when she was unable follow her own trajectory of thinking using art history’s typical methodology.

Aruna D’Souza in Conversation with Al-An deSouza

Friday, September 21, 2018
5:00-7:00pm
Maude Fife Room, Room 315, Wheeler Hall

Watch the recording here or listen here!

September 13, 2018

The Politics & Poetics of Imagination in the Black Mediterranean with SA Smythe

Thursday September 13, 2018
5:30-7:30pm
Dwinelle Annex, Room 126

Watch the recording here or listen here!


Co-sponsored by the Arts Research Center and the University of California Humanities Research Institute


Concerned with the way in which a white epistemology breeds a racial, capitalist consciousness, SA Smythe — writer, translator, performer, and scholar — began their presentation with a performance of their poems “Some Call it a Comeback” and “Languish”, a small selection of their greater body of poetic works that speaks to the Black diaspora, Black Mediterranean epistemology, cultural memory, and trans embodiment.

September 10, 2018

Susan Meiselas’ latest exhibition Mediations, on display at SFMOMA until October 31st, is a summation of her most important work from the past several decades. In conversation with Natalia Brizuela, Interim Director of the Arts Research Center, and Leigh Raiford, associate professor and chair of the African American Studies department, Meiselas discussed the curation of her exhibition, revealing the importance of her artistic hand in constructing transitional narratives.

Mediations & Collaborations: A Conversation with Susan Meiselas

Monday, September 10, 2018
12:00-1:30pm
Geballe Room, Townsend Center for the Humanities

Listen to the recording here!

Read the news post here!


May 1, 2018

The oldest surviving comprehensive Greek botanical work was written by Dioscorides around the first century AD. Other technical authors from around the same time were Galen on medicine, Ptolemy on the mathematical sciences, and Artemidorus on dream interpretation. All four emphasize that their writings incorporate both received tradition and experience acquired through practical application. All four were extremely successful in communicating technical knowledge, as their wide medieval reception in Greek, Latin, and Arabic proves.

Biosensory data, and the data-driven categorizations it supports, are increasingly present in daily life, measuring our behavior, physiology, and the environment. Data-driven categorizations of safe/criminal, healthy/unhealthy, or normal/pathological often masquerade as scientific and objective, and biosensing technologies often promote a particular normative vision of the good life. Biosensing tracks not only individuals but also cities, with smart city sensing promising efficiency, safety, and happiness–but for whom and by what norms?