BFA Visual &amp; Critical Studies presents Sean McCann, author and professor of English at Wesleyan University, discussing urban childhood and adolescence in 1940s New York City, the political and historical issues behind urban policy of the time and why artists became fascinated with stories and images of children in the city.

A Theater and a Battleground: Professions of Childhood in the Arts and Public Policy of 1940s New York 

Deniz Beyazit

BFA Visual &amp; Critical Studies presents Deniz Beyazit, curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art, discussing the museum's upcoming exhibition "The Great Age of the Seljuqs." The exhibition highlights the history of medieval art in Anatolia and Iran from the 11th through the 13th centuries, including glazed ceramics, fine metalwork, woodwork, glass and the rise of a market for luxury goods. Moderated by department faculty Peter Hristoff, with a Q&amp;A to follow.

The Great Age of the Seljuqs: A Conversation with Deniz Beyazit

Sara Magenheimer

Spanning sculpture, collage, installation, video, sound, and performance, Sara Magenheimer’s practice engages the way language performs as physical material; vibrating the air as sound, moving on a screen as text or on a page as graphic image. Her works highlight the slippage between the cognitive content language carries (as a vessel) and its form (the shape and weight of the vessel itself). Magenheimer enacts how material performs as language; she arranges elements and manipulates objects in space syntactically and semantically, inviting her sculptures and installations to be read like expanded sentences.Whether working with text, an actor, a set, or a song, the artist treats symbolic elements as independent objects. Her work disrupts the coherence of narrative experience, opening up spaces of humor, absurdity, and poetry while destabilizing relationships between supposedly fixed forms. For example, Seven Signs that Mean Silence (2013) is a video work based on a script written by Magenheimer that employs modes of “voice” from found texts, spoken through a text–to–speech website, using intentionally “broken” language, and even total nonsense at times to re–infuse language with new meaning and a sense of play. Her work is in conversation the Situationists, punk, Dada, and other historic artistic contexts that employ absurdist detournement.She has had solo exhibitions at JOAN in Los Angeles, Recess in New York, Interstate Projects in Brooklyn, and DOCUMENT in Chicago. Her work has been exhibited in group exhibitions or screened at institutions such as The New York Film Festival, The Kitchen in New York, Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Cave in Detroit, SiteWork in Chapel Hill, Portland’s MOMA, The Living Art Museum in Reykjavik, and Meet Factory in Prague, Czech Republic. She has performed at MOMA P.S.1, Issue Project Room, Canada Gallery, and the Performa 13 Biennial. She is a recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant.

Spanning sculpture, collage, installation, video, sound, and performance, Sara Magenheimer’s practice engages the way language performs as physical material; vibrating the air as sound, moving on a screen as text or on a page as graphic image. Her works highlight the slippage between the cognitive content language carries (as a vessel) and its form (the shape and weight of the vessel itself). Magenheimer enacts how material performs as language; she arranges elements and manipulates objects in space syntactically and semantically, inviting her sculptures and installations to be read like expanded sentences.<br><br>Whether working with text, an actor, a set, or a song, the artist treats symbolic elements as independent objects. Her work disrupts the coherence of narrative experience, opening up spaces of humor, absurdity, and poetry while destabilizing relationships between supposedly fixed forms. For example, Seven Signs that Mean Silence (2013) is a video work based on a script written by Magenheimer that employs modes of “voice” from found texts, spoken through a text–to–speech website, using intentionally “broken” language, and even total nonsense at times to re–infuse language with new meaning and a sense of play. Her work is in conversation the Situationists, punk, Dada, and other historic artistic contexts that employ absurdist detournement.<br><br>She has had solo exhibitions at JOAN in Los Angeles, Recess in New York, Interstate Projects in Brooklyn, and DOCUMENT in Chicago. Her work has been exhibited in group exhibitions or screened at institutions such as The New York Film Festival, The Kitchen in New York, Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Cave in Detroit, SiteWork in Chapel Hill, Portland’s MOMA, The Living Art Museum in Reykjavik, and Meet Factory in Prague, Czech Republic. She has performed at MOMA P.S.1, Issue Project Room, Canada Gallery, and the Performa 13 Biennial. She is a recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant.

BFA Visual &amp; Critical Studies presents faculty member Liz Magic Laser discussing her recent work that examines the techniques of news production and the gestures of world leaders. Her performances and videos intervene in semi-public spaces such as bank vestibules, movie theaters and newsrooms, and have involved collaborations with actors, surgeons, political strategists and motorcycle gang members.

Liz Magic Laser

Natasha Chuk

Dina Kantor

MFA Photography, Video and Related Media and BFA Visual &amp; Critical Studies present a conversation between art writer Natasha Chuk and photographer Dina Kantor. They will discuss the themes of Chuk's recently published book Vanishing Points (Intellect, 2015), which features images from Kantor's "Treece" series. A Q&amp;A will follow.

Natasha Chuk and Dina Kantor in Conversation - The Vanishing Points of Treece

A panel discussion addressing the newest iterations of non-objective art and the trends that have emerged in abstraction as well as the numerous stylistic changes abstraction has gone through since Kandinsky first practiced it over a century ago. Panelists also discuss the recent resurgence of interest in abstract art for both young artists and art collectors. Moderated by artist and SVA faculty member Amy Wilson (BFA 1995 Fine Arts). Panelists include curator and art advisor for Levin Art Group Todd Levin, painter and art critic Walter Robinson and artist, writer and curator Ryan Steadman.

"Zombie Formalism" and Other Recent Speculations in Abstraction

Rosemary Balsam

Yale University psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Rosemary Balsam discusses the history and impact of distorted views on the female-sexed body and traditionally female roles like motherhood. Balsam is the author of Women’s Bodies in Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2012).

Mohamed Gohar

Egyptian broadcaster and producer Mohamed Gohar presents a screening of the classic Egyptian movie The Night of Counting the Years (1969) and discusses journalistic and media responsibility and the use of art in promoting social stability with artist and SVA faculty member Peter Hristoff (BFA 1981 Fine Arts). Presented by BFA Visual &amp; Critical Studies.

José Parlá

Artist José Parlá talks about his personal history and education, his influences and his recent projects, including a mural at One World Trade Center, his participation at the Havana Biennial and his current shows at the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery and the Mary Boone Gallery, both in New York City.

José Parlá - Painter, Sculptor & Photographer

Saiyid Ali Naqvi

Ali Naqvi

Intellectual and writer Saiyid Ali Naqvi talks about the life and work of renowned Pakistani artist and calligrapher Sadequain.

Sadequain: A Talk by Saiyid Ali Naqvi 

Cara Starke

A talk by Cara Starke, director of exhibitions for Creative Time, an organization dedicated to producing public art exhibitions around the world.

Leo Treitler

Leo Treitler: Our Mimetic Heritage from Plato to Louis Vuitton 

A panel discussion moderated by William McAllister, senior research fellow and director of the Mellon Interdisciplinary Fellows Program/INCITE, Columbia University, focusing on how art can be used as a transformative tool for the homeless. This event includes a screening of a short film about Residents of New York, a public work by Andres Serrano developed as a case study for using art to raise awareness about homelessness. Panelists include Susan Craine, director of community and corporate programs, New York Cares; John Leo, actor, Theatre of the Oppressed; Marcus Moore, leader of civil rights and housing campaigns, Picture The Homeless; Maaji Newbold, actor, Theatre of the Oppressed; and Heidi Schmidt, public affairs manager, office of external affairs, New York City Department of Homeless Services.

No Fixed Address: Art as an Advocacy Tool for the Homeless

Galia Solomonoff

Carla Stellweg

Pablo León de la Barra, Guggenheim UBS MAP curator for Latin American art, talks with art historian and SVA faculty member Carla Stellweg

Pablo León de la Barra in Conversation with Carla Stellweg

Terence Gower

Claire Bishop

Artist Terence Gower and writer and scholar Claire Bishop discuss their recent work. Gower presents work from his recent large-scale installations Public Spirit and Baghdad Case Study.

Terence Gower in Conversation with Claire Bishop

Svetlana Mintcheva

New York-based street artist ESSAM (a.k.a. Essam Attia, BFA 2011 Photography) and Svetlana Mintcheva, founding director of the Arts Advocacy Project at the National Coalition Against Censorship, talk about art in the street as being distinct from art in a museum, regulations of public space and the relationship between an artist’s mission and the constraints of the law.

Essam in Conversation with Svetlana Mintcheva

Jackson Lears

Jackson Lears, cultural and intellectual historian and distinguished professor of history at Rutgers University, discusses the evolution of "the American sublime." Originally arising from a Romantic, Protestant faith in the divinity of wild nature, the notion was transformed and fragmented in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Americans came to attach notions of sublimity to technology and celebrity but remained attracted to a more complex vision of nature, one that oscillated between ecological perceptions of dense biodiversity and minimalist conceptions of emptiness and openness—what Wallace Stevens called "the empty spirit / in vacant space." By the early 21st century, postmodern theorists advanced the idea that nature was culturally constructed. Lears asks: Has any coherent idea of sublimity survived?

Ivana Jevtic

Dr. Ivana Jevtic, faculty member of the archaeology and history of art department at Koc University, Istanbul, discusses how narrative imagery was developed in Byzantine painting, one of the less-explored facets of that era's visual culture. Her focus is on the late Byzantine period, when visual storytelling grew in popularity and the depicted figures evolved from static icons to become animated, expressive characters set in elaborate scenes. Presented by the BFA Visual &amp; Critical Studies Department.

David Matlin

Writer David Matlin reads from his latest works: A HalfMan Dreaming (Red Hen Press, 2012), a novel, and the newly published Up Fish Creek Road and Other Stories (Spuyten Duyvil, 2013). In addition to his fiction, Matlin has written about the arts, politics and the environment, as well as about the U.S. prison system and how it undermines the quality of life for all Americans. He lived in New York City and the Catskill Mountains for nearly 30 years before moving back to his home state of California, where he teaches at San Diego State University and explores the Anza Borrego Desert. Presented by the BFA Visual &amp; Critical Studies Department.

Events & Discussions

Gary Indiana

Stanley Whitney

Artist Stanley Whitney discusses his career and the evolution of his work from the 1970s through the present. Professor emeritus of painting and drawing at Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Whitney holds a BFA from Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Yale University. Born in Philadelphia, he lives and works in New York City and Parma, Italy. He is represented by Team Gallery, New York; Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin; Galerie Albert Baronian, Brussels; and Christine Koenig Gallery, Vienna. Presented by the BFA Visual &amp; Critical Studies Department.

Nadja Aksamija

Byron Kim

Judith Linnhares

Alexi Worth

Megan Craig

Danielle Mysliwiec

Richard Shiff

Leipzig School

Allison Smith

Rochelle Feinstien

"Between Picture and Viewer"

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