Perspective on the Arts in Society Series

Moustafa Bayoumi, associate professor of English, Brooklyn College, City University of new York (CUNY).
Disco Infernos: Music and Tortute in the "war on terror"
  Moustafa Bayoumi is an associate professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York (CUNY). He is the co-editor of The Edward Said Reader (Vintage) and has published articles in The Nation, The London Review of Books, The Village Voice, Transition, The Yale Journal of Criticism, Souls, Arab Studies Quarterly, and many other periodicals. He also serves on the editorial committee of Middle East Report and is a columnist for the Progressive Media Project, an initiative of the Progressive magazine through which his op-eds regularly appear nationwide. His book, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in Brooklyn, New York, is forthcoming from The Penguin Press. His talk, entitled “Disco Infernos: Music and Torture in the ‘war on terror,’” explored the implications of the use of music as a means of torture.

f295 Symposium on Lensless, Alternative and Adaptive Photographic Processes
  This event assembled several of the world's foremost artists, photographers, writers and researchers to engage in discussion and debate regarding the rising use of alternative photographic methods in an age of increasingly sophisticated technological means. This multi-day event offered public lectures, round-table discussions and question-answer sessions, and hands-on workshops held in conjunction with local Pittsburgh area arts organizations.
  The Center for the Arts in Society hosted two round-table discussions on Friday, focusing on contemporary artists using lensless imaging techniques, the "DIY aesthetic," and the use of "alt-process" techniques. Artists included Barbara Ess, Jo Babcock, Eric Renner and Nancy Spenser, and presenters include Alan Greene, author of "Primitive Photography," Terry King, FRPS Chairman of the Historical Group of the Royal Photographic Society, and Patricia Katchur, Director of the Center for Alternative and Historical Processes.
   Symposium partners include f295, Society for Contemporary Craft, The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh Filmmakers, The Center for Alternative and Historic Processes, and The Daguerrian Society

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You're Not the Boss of Me! Copyright & Transgression Festival
  Do current US copyright laws favor powerful entertainment corporations? Is a highly restrictive copyright environment a protection of creative work or a muzzle? Are things really that bad? Are there alternatives?
   Answers to these questions and more were found at this (mostly) FREE 2-day festival on performances, screenings and lectures based around Carnegie Mellon University's landmark College of Fine Arts Building.
   Artists, critics, lawyers and filmmakers discussed copyright, criminality, fair use and transgression in contemporary American culture as they relate to issues of cultural ownership and cultural heritage in an informal and open forum.
   Featuring: a Keynote lecture by James Boyle, a performance by Girl Talk, presentations by Jacob Ciocci, Martha Colburn, Brody Condon, a discussion led by Kathy M. Newman and Melissa Ragona, a performance by CMU's Contemporary Ensemble, a selection of films curated by Thomas Beard, and a multi-media closing party VJ'd by Suzie Silver.
   Organized by Carnegie Mellon's School of Art.

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Presentations by CAS Fellows

Carl DiSalvo
Constructed Publics in Contemporary Design
  Over the past several years trends such as "participatory media" and practices such as "critical design" have problematized common notions of "the user" and "the audience." One effect of these trends and practices has been to question the possible relationships between design and public.
   Exploring the possible relationships between design and the public has been the focus of DiSalvo's work over the past year at the Center for the Arts in Society and Studio for Creative Inquiry. In this talk he presented one foray into this topic: using the work of John Dewey he puts forward the notion of constructed publics and traces the possible roles of design in bringing publics into form and providing the means for action.

Soyang Park
Trauma, the Avant-garde, and nativism in South Korea: The Forgotten Legacy of the Minjung Art Movement of the 1980s
and '90s
  Minjung art is an avant-garde art movement that emerged in South Korea during the popular anti-authoritarian democratization struggle of the 1980s and early 90s. Some of the leading Minjung artists actively explored a vernacular aesthetic as part of their visualization and communication strategy in order to represent the trauma and wounds of the under-represented people in society. This talk introduces the theme of han (a long unsolved grievance) that is believed to be at the centre of the ethos of the Minjung movement which arose to counter oppressive authority.

Susan Somers-Willett
  Somers-Willett read from her book, Roam, which was selcted for the Crab Orchard Award Series, published in 2006.

Poetry in Public: Consumerism and the Public Poetry Project in America
  American poetry's growing presence in public places and across a variety of media begs the question: How exactly are public poetry projects reaching their audiences? Turning a critical eye toward initiatives that figure their audeinces not as critically engaged citizens, but as consumers of print, Somers-Willett discussed the merits and faults of the contemporary poetry project, exploring how some projects positively engage audiences through new technologies and performance media.

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BYOBrain Brown Bag Series
   Four Carnegie Mellon faculty shared their artistic and research projects funded by Center for the Arts in Society faculty grants.

Suzie Silver, Associate Professor of Art
1968 (Remix)
   1968 (Remix) is a live audio-visual performance collage using sounds and images from 1968 to explore the inherent contradictions of this tumultuous year that produced global rebellions, 2001: A Space Odyssey and People Got to be Free, as well as Twiggy, Barbarella and Yummy, Yummy, Yummy. Using computers and software and traditional video hardware (DVD players and a video mixer), this performance results in live, dynamically cut and mixed video projections. The premiere performance took place at (1968) A Symposium at the Roy H. Park School of Communications, Ithaca College. Other performances are taking place in Pittsburgh, New York, and other cities.

Robert Cavalier, Teaching Professor, Department of Philosophy
A Campus Deliberative Poll about "Public Art on Campus"
  Like civil society at large, the campus community forms its own society. This project seeks to create the conditions for the campus to reflect upon the role of the arts at Carnegie Mellon and to develop informed opinions on the relevance and importance of the arts within the campus community. Using the protocols of deliberative polling, there will be a "Campus Conversation" examining, for instance, the role of arts and performers on this campus, the impact of the arts on Carnegie Mellon — including the impact of controversial displays or performances — and the future prospects for supporting the arts at Carnegie Mellon.

Clayton Merrell, Associate Professor of Art
Oaxaca, Oaxaca 
  In two interrelated projects which explore the dynamics of cultural exchange between the U.S. and Mexico, Clayton Merrell travels to Oaxaca, Mexico to meet with local artists and cultural organizations. First, he extends the photographic project titled Chiapas through the Obsidian Mirror, photographing reflections on the surface of an
obsidian disk to create dark and distorted panoramas that are, essentially, pictures of the problems of seeing while traveling. Second, he lays the groundwork for an exchange project between graduate students in the Carnegie Mellon School of Art and young Mexican artists from Oaxaca. This project culminates in collaborative
exhibitions in Pittsburgh and Oaxaca.

Kenya Dworkin y Mendez, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies
Casa Cuentos (Story House): A Video Project for Capturing the Future of an Old-New Community — West Tampa, Florida
   Casa Cuentos is aimed at documenting, through images — moving and still — and through vibrant voices — young and old — a community's efforts to learn about its past, assess its present and have agency in planning its future. The final product, a series of short, 20-minute videos, will be aired through public and community television channel educational programming, at community events, and made available for educational and community purposes. Materials from the project will also be donated to local Tampa museums and cultural/historical societies, for interactive kiosk
(casitas-little houses) exhibits and integrated into one or more websites.

Jeannie Pool—Documentary Film Screening / Discussion
"Peggy Gilbert and Her All-Girl Band"
Co-sponsored with Pittsburgh Filmmakers
   Opening the Arts in Society series is Jeannie Pool, a musicologist, composer, and now filmmaker, presented her recently completed feature-length documentary narrated by Lily Tomlin, “Peggy Gilbert & Her All-Girl Band.” The film, about Peggy Gilbert, who just turned 100, is "an inspiring, delightful and heartwarming portrait of an indomitable and ageless woman who broke through stereotypes and pioneered the way for women musicians everywhere."

Homecoming Campus Art Crawl
   The recent installation of new objects of art on the CMU campus has been a catalyst for some spirited debates. Professor Doug Cooper led a tour of public art on campus, followed by an informal discussion of the role of arts on campus and in our daily lives.

Patricia Smith, Slam Poet
Co-sponsored by Carnegie Mellon's Humanities Scholars Program, Creative Writing Program, and the Center for African American Urban Studies and the Economy (CAUSE).
   Patricia Smith, a four-time National Poetry Slam Champion, performed her poetry and signed copies of her fourth book of poetry, Teahouse of the Almighty, a winner of the 2005 National Poetry Series published this year with Coffee House Press.

"From Intolerance to Understanding" - Photography Exhibition
Co-sponsored by the Center for the Arts in Society Student Affiliates (CASSA),
Pittsburgh Filmmakers, and Carnegie Mellon's Office of Student Affairs
   An exhibition of photographs by Lynn Johnson, a nationally recognized photojournalist, which can help build a context for people to learn and respond to our society's continuing aspirations for tolerance. "From Intolerance to Understanding," explains Johnson, "will bring [people] together...to catalyze the conversation on hate crimes through a series of thoughtful [photos]." The exhibit ran for four weeks.

Image & Action
   An open discussion of the "From Intolerance to Understanding" exhibit.

Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga--Artist Lecture
Co-sponsored with Carnegie Mellon's School of Art
   Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga (MFA Art '99) approaches art as a social practice that seeks to establish dialogue in public spaces. Having been born of immigrant parents and grown up between Nicaragua and San Francisco, a strong awareness of inequality and discrimination was established at an early age. Themes such as immigration, discrimination, gentrification and the effects of globalization extend from highly subjective experiences and observations into works that tactfully engage others through populist metaphors while maintaining critical perspectives.

BYOBrain Brown Bag Series
   Three Carnegie Mellon faculty shared their artistic and research projects funded by Center for the Arts in Society faculty grants.

Nathan Martin, Fellow, STUDIO for Creative Inquiry
MapHub
   MapHub is a web-based, multi-user, group map. The purpose of MapHub is to explore the introduction of a geographic and historical data sharing application in an urban landscape. MapHub is a peoples' map - a map of an urban geography determined not by traditional methodology but instead by the members who participate and contribute everyday in the experience of urban life. The MapHub system will create both a public installation and a phone/web accessible database to monitor public transit timetables.

Anne Mundell, Associate Professor, School of Drama
Growing Theater
   Growing Theater engages students and mentors in the development of a collaborative theater experience. Through Mentor Role Modeling, Growing Theater uses drama as a medium to expose students to a supportive learning environment that is shared, creative, confident, patient and respectful. Growing Theater mentors will broaden middle school students' personal and professional outlooks by guiding them through this theatrical process.

Kim Beck, Assistant Professor, School of Art
Growth
   Growth explores the development and spread of a mass-produced utilitarian architecture on the American landscape - namely, the storage shed. Kim Beck has begun the preparation for a larger sculptural project based on this form. Specifically, the grant has enabled her to create a set of CAD (Computer Aided Design) drawings and build an architectural model for the project. Exploring issues of place, displacement, movement and the built environment, the project is situated at the crossroads of art and architecture. An explicit exploration of sculptural form, this project will offer an implicit, and necessary, socio-political critique of a pervasive structure marking the American landscape.

Bill Anthes
Red Earth, Flat World: The Global Currency of Native American Art
   This presentation discussed contemporary Native American art and cultural heritage in global context -- including the international market for Native American art, the global manufacture of counterfeit Indian "kitsch," and efforts at cultural protectionism by Native American communities; Native American artists at major international contemporary art exhibitions and collaborations between Native American artists and other indigenous and postcolonial populations.

Alexander Vari
Salzburg, Szeged, Edinburgh, Avignon: Comparing the History of Four Summer Festivals in Europe in the Twentieth-Century
   This presentation discussed the role of summer festivals in Europe from the perspective of the interactions between high and low cultural forms, political and artistic ideologies, state officials, creative artsists and festival organizers as they emerged within the context of the summer festivals that were established in Salzburg, Austria (started in 1920), Szeged, Hungary (launched in 1931), Edinburgh, UK and Avignon, France (both founded in 1947).

The Aesthetics Out of Bounds Lecture Series provided a framework for a new course offered at Carnegie Mellon in the 2005-06 academic year, Aesthetics Out of Bounds: History and Art Outside the Frame. The lecture series brought top scholars in the arts, humanities and sciences to campus to speak on their specialty and to lead one complementary seminar of faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students. List of speakers.

(Im)permanence: Cultures In/Out of Time
   The Center for the Arts in Society hosted its first conference October 13-16, 2005. The interdisciplinary conference featured national and international scholars and presented world-class exhibitions, music, and keynote speaker Alan Lightman. Conference Program (pdf). 

The Aesthetics Out of Bounds Lecture Series provided a framework for a new course offered at Carnegie Mellon in the 2005-06 academic year, Aesthetics Out of Bounds: History and Art Outside the Frame. The lecture series brought top scholars in the arts, humanities and sciences to campus to speak on their specialty and to lead one complementary seminar of faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students. List of speakers.

Madelaine Hron
Picturing Immigration: Classical Art, Media Images and Refugee Therapy.
   This presentation explored the inflections of immigration and exile in visual images, in examples ranging from classical art, media representations, to refugee art therapy.

We Might Blow Up, but We Won't Go Pop!
   Panel Discussion on the Business of Hip Hop

Terry Smith
Modernity and Contemporaneity: Antimonies of Art and Culture After the 20th Century: Exploring the Outcomes of Last Year's Symposium
   During 2001-2002 he was a Getty Scholar at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.

Michael Peterson
Las Vegas Culture
   The illicit, the edgy, and the illusory are all part of Las Vegas, and this talk examined the Las Vegas experience from the viewpoint of performance studies: how do audiences interpret Cirque du Soleil or Blue Man Group performance one evening and a celebrity tribute act the following afternoon? How does the Strip act as a stage? How is gambling a theatrical act?

   In contrast with popular media representations of Vegas tourists as uncultured, tourists of the city actively and expertly construct their own experiences from the vast array of choices that the location offers. Culture is no longer an excuse to gamble or a way to take a break from the gaming tables: the city has become a vast cultural playground, and its participants all help create Las Vegas Culture.

Yolanda Lopez
Portrait of the Artist
   Influenced by Feminism, the Civil Rights Movement and her Mexican-American heritage, Yolanda Lopez is a distinguished American artist and activist in the Chicano Art Movement. Her work deconstructs stereotypes of Chicanos and the instituations that propogate them. Earning her MFA from the University of California in an era of performance, conceptual art and the rise of women artists' interest and the development of body art, she discussed how these movements affected her work.

Arshiya Sethi
Poetic Quotient in the Performance Arts
   In the long tradition of performing arts of India, the mother art form is believed to be poetics. It is from poetry that song, enactment, dance, and theater emanate, making the poetic impulse the epicenter of the integrative art of theater. Using examples from varied performance forms, and drawing on the language and process of Abhinaya, the enactment employing body, mind and soul, this talk advocated how the richness of the poetic quotient is directly proportionate to the persuasive power of Bhava, and the experience of Rasa.
Arshiya Sethi, presently Creative Head of Programs at India Habitat Center, one of India's most significant showcases for performing arts, has been a dance critic for the Times of India for several years. both a practitioner and a scholar of dance, she has been concerned with issues of preservation, presentation and progression of art forms, as well as the dynamics around traditional dancers working in situations of social transformation.

Richard Howells
The Fabric of Utopia: Bloch, Form and Navajo Visual Culture

Terrance Hayes
Expanding the Creative in Writing: How to Be a Dope MC

Hip Hop 101
Featuring NYC Hip Hop Artist, Little Egypt

Shannon McMullen
Post-Industrial Landscape: A Comparison of Pittsburgh and the Ruhr District, Germany
   Shannon McMullen completed her PhD in Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. Her dissertation is, "Re/Visions: The Politics of Culture in the Ruhr River Region of Germany, 1989-1999." Her talk extended the inquiry into post-industrial landscapes to Pittsburgh, with a comparison of the policies and perceptions of declining industrial sites in the United States and Germany.

Valentin Lustig
   In September, Romanian-born Swiss artist Valentin Lustig spoke at Carnegie Mellon University, Hoka-Néni: Seven Paintings by Valentin Lustig, in connection with an exhibit of his work at the the Frick Art & Historical Center in Pittsburgh's Point Breeze neighborhood. The exhibit was curated by Edith Balas, a professor of art history at Carnegie Mellon. The seven paintings depict scenes from the life of Lustig's aunt, who, along with her four children, perished in the Holocaust.

Orthodoxies Panel
   The Center for the Arts in Society at Carnegie Mellon University hosted Orthodoxies in Culture, a panel discussion about the role of orthodox beliefs in culture, in October. The four panelists focused their discussion on the perceptions of orthodox beliefs, from the perspective of outsiders as well as those who hold such beliefs. The panelists were: Snjezana Buzov, lecturer in history at the University of Pittsburgh; James Ault, independent filmmaker and sociologist; Dalia Mogahed, outreach coordinator at the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh; and Marshall Alcorn, professor of English at George Washington University. Moderating the panel was Jeanne Pearlman, a senior program officer with The Pittsburgh Foundation. Buzov and Mogahed discussed Islam, including the history of the religion as well as Islamic law and how the faith is portrayed in the media. Ault, director of the acclaimed 1987 documentary "Born Again: Life in a Fundamentalist Baptist Church," discussed Christian fundamentalism and the challenges of making a film that fairly represents a controversial position. Alcorn, a scholar of Freudian and other psychoanalytic movements, spoke about the perceptions of psychoanalytic theories in culture.

Michael Chemers
   Step right up! The bizarre and obscure history of freak shows was the subject of 'A Prurient Curiosity': The Freak in American Cultural History, a lecture by Michael Chemers, a postdoctoral fellow with the Center, presented in November. Chemers cast a critical eye on historical research into freak shows and their performers. Too often, books about freak shows have been sensational affairs that offer thoughtless condemnation or misplaced nostalgia and that often rehash well-worn carnival-world tales. Chemers noted that a serious consideration of freaks and their performances not only illuminates cultural values and theatrical standards, but also raises important questions about the naturalization of concepts of normal and abnormal in American society and societies around the world.

Mady Schutzman
In Praise of Ambiguity: a Stand-up Lecture on Humor and Resistance was presented by    Distinguished Visiting Faculty member, Mady Schutzman. The lecture focused on the Ganser syndrome -- a strange medical condition in which patients give approximate answers to simple questions -- as the starting point for exploring how paradox and trickery can be employed as modes of resistance more generally. The behavior of those with the syndrome are likened to comedy routines/vaudeville styles that employ punning, clownery, and ambiguity to challenge the more privileged cultural values of clarity, literalness, and precision.

Jessica Sternfeld
Everything is Showbiz: The Broadway Musical's Response to Political and Social Crises was presented by Center Fellow Jessica Sternfeld. Her talk examined Broadway musicals after 9.11 as part of a broad inquiry into the response of theatre to tragic events.

James Turrell
   James Turrell, called "one of the most significant contemporary artists on the international scene" by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, appeared at Carnegie Mellon on March 12, 2003. Turrell spoke on Plato's Cave and the Light Within, describing and illustrating his own creative process. The talk was co-presented by the Mattress Factory, The Center for the Arts in Society and Carnegie Mellon's School of Art. The talk was a culmination of Turrell’s residency at the Mattress Factory, during which time the museum exhibited the largest variety of Turrell's work since his 1976 show at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. "Into the Light" featured eight new installations created by Turrell, and explored his investigation of light, space and perception.

Lorin Hollander
   World renowned concert pianist Lorin Hollander presented an evening talk, The Hero's Journey, confronting the role of music in the training, treating, and life-trajectories of non-musicians, including patients, prisoners, children, the ill, and the aging. His arguments concerned the ability of music to transform an individual’s experience and participation in a social world.

Los Cybrids
   Presented and acted in by Center Fellow John Jota Leanos, Los Cybrids was performed in the Regina Miller Gallery in April. El World Brain Disorder: surveillance.control.pendejismo is Los Cybrids' hyper-speed, multi-media, interactive, hi-fi/lo-brow performance where Mexican comic Cantinflas meets the French space-head Paul Virilio to confront the God-Machine of technology. This apocalyptic performance explores the often-hilarious, dysfunctional convergence between surveillance technologies, military-industrial complexes, and the nation state.

Arts, Community, and Activism: A Meditation Inspired by the Events of September 11
Carnegie Mellon University's Center for the Arts in Society and its STUDIO for Creative Inquiry sponsored a lecture and a panel on Sept. 11, 2002, featuring art historian and activist Robert Atkins. Both events were designed to explore and examine artistic commemoration of the attacks on America. Atkins’ lecture, "The Arts, Community and Activism: A Meditation Inspired by the Events of 9-11," focused on the role of artists in crises in general and on media representations of September 11 in particular. The panel, in town meeting format, featured discussions of the range of responses, artistic and otherwise, to the attacks on America the previous year.

Jasmine Alinder
   Anthropologist Jasmine Alinder gave a lecture on photographs depicting the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War. Her talk explored the role of photography in political events and in histories of those events.

Paradise Now
   Biotechnology and genetic research are redefining life, as four arts events and lectures at Carnegie Mellon University pointed out. New research and discoveries and their impact on everyday human existence spark debates about the creation of a brave new world. A panel sponsored by the Center drew together perspectives from artists (whose work was on display in the Miller Gallery), curators, biologists, scientists, and ethicists.

Bill Ferris
   Center for the Arts in Society welcomed Blues Hall of Famer, Former NEH Director Bill Ferris. In his talk, Humanities, the Arts, and the American Experience, Ferris covered topics, ranging from the need to archive valuable regional resources to the importance of blues music in American culture. Somewhat uncharacteristically for an academic speaker, Ferris also accompanied himself on the guitar.