Activism

Artist Talk with Julia Keefe

October 17, 2024
Read more about Julia Keefe and the Indigenous Big Band here

Douglas Crimp

American Art Historian, Critic, Curator, AIDS activist
Douglas Crimp gave a Visiting Artist Lecture at the Arts Research Center on October 26, 2016.

Douglas Crimp (1944-2019) was the Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Art History at the University of Rochester and the author of On the Museum's Ruins (1993), Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics (2002), "Our Kind of Movie": The Films of Andy Warhol (2012), and Before Pictures (2016). He died in July 2019, as reported by ...

Michael Pollan

Journalist and Professor of Non-Fiction at Harvard University
Michael Pollan gave a Visiting Writer Lecture at the Arts Research Center on April 24, 2009.

For more than thirty years, Michael Pollan has been writing books and articles about the places where the human and natural worlds intersect: on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in our minds. Pollan is the author of eight books, six of which have been New York Times bestsellers; three of them (including his latest, How to Change Your Mind) were immediate #1 New York Times bestsellers. Previous books include Cooked (2013), Food Rules (2009), In Defense of Food: An Eater’s...

Beatriz da Costa

Interdisciplinary Artist, Tactical Media Practitioner
Beatriz da Costa was a Visiting Artist Panel Participant at the Continuous Bodies Conference at the Arts Research Center on October 12, 2007.

Beatriz da Costa (1974 – 2012) was an interdisciplinary artist and tactical media practitioner working at the intersection of contemporary art, science, engineering, and politics. Her work takes the form of public participatory interventions, locative media, conceptual tool building, and critical writing. Issues addressed in her work include the use of emergent technologies to investigate context-specific configurations of...

Kim Anno

Painter, Photographer, Film/Video Artist, and Professor in the Painting and Drawing Program at CCA
Kim Anno was a Visiting Curator Panel Participant at the "ART/CITY" Symposium at the Arts Research Center on March 16, 2012.

Kim Anno is a painter, photographer, and film/video artist whose work has been collected and exhibited by museums nationally and internationally. Born in Los Angeles, Anno has had exhibitions and screenings at the University of Suffolk, England, 14th Annual New Media Festival, Seoul, Korea, Kala Art Institute,Berkeley, Goethe Institute in Johannesburg, the Durban Municipal Gallery, South Africa in the "Don't Panic Exhibition", Flux Projects, Atlanta...

Jenna Wortham

Journalist
Jenna Wortham gave a Visiting Lecturer Talk at the Arts Research Center on February 27, 2017.

Jenna Wortham (they/them), also known as J Wortham, is a sound healer, reiki practitioner, herbalist, and community care worker oriented towards healing justice and liberation.

J is also a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, and co-host of the...

Nellie Wong

Poet, Socialist Feminist Activist
Nellie Wong gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2022, part of the Spring 2022 Flash Reading Series.

The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Nellie Wong was born in Oakland, California, on September 12, 1934. As a teenager she worked in her parents’ Chinese restaurant, and after graduating high school, she took a job as a secretary for Bethlehem Steel Corporation, where she worked until 1982. In her mid-thirties, she began studying creative writing at San Francisco State University.

Wong published her first book of poetry, Dreams in...

Cecelia Vicuña

Poet, Artist, Activist, Filmmaker
Cecilia Vicuña gave a Visiting Artist Lecture at the Arts Research Center on March 15, 2013.

Cecilia Vicuña is a poet, artist, activist and filmmaker whose work addresses pressing concerns of the modern world, including ecological destruction, human rights, and cultural homogenization. Born and raised in Santiago de Chile, she has been in exile since the early 1970s, after the military coup against the president Salvador Allende. In London, she was a co-founder of Artists for Democracy in l974.

She coined the term “Arte Precario” in the mid-1960s in Chile, as a new...

Tourmaline

Artist, Filmmaker, Activist, Editor, and Writer
Tourmaline gave a Visiting Artist Lecture at the Arts Research Center on March 5, 2020.

Tourmaline is an artist, filmmaker, writer, and activist whose practice highlights the experiences of Black, queer, and trans communities and their capacity to impact the world. Her films and photographs rewrite mainstream narratives and cultural histories to initiate a paradigm shift and imagine a more pleasure-filled future. Tourmaline’s practice invites us to fundamentally reshape our beliefs about what is possible.

Tourmaline lives and works in...

The Yes Men

Activist Duo
The Yes Men gave a Visiting Artist Performance at the Arts Research Center on March 2, 2016.

The Yes Men are a culture jamming activist duo and network of supporters created by Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos Through various actions, the Yes Men primarily aim to raise awareness about problematic social and political issues. To date, the duo have produced three films: The Yes Men (2003), The Yes Men Fix the World (2009), and The Yes Men Are Revolting (2014). In these films, they...