Walls and Bridges: Season 2

Playlist created by Villa-Gillet | 12 videos | view description

After a wonderfully successful first season, Walls and Bridges is coming back to New York! Over the course of three 10-day series, in the winter, spring and fall of 2011 in New York City, Walls and Bridges—a program curated by the Villa Gillet (director: Guy Walter) and presented by the Conseil de la Création artistique will present nearly 50 cultural events.

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Monday, April 11th | 6:30pm | Round-table | Aperture GalleryWith: Miguel Benasayag, Nina Berman, Didier Fassin, George PackerHosted by: Mark GreifCo-presented with Aperture and n+1So far, 2011 has been a watershed year for political engagement–from North Africa to the halls of the Wisconsin Capitol. Across the world the struggles for peace, civil and human rights and the protection of the environment move people to action. But who are the faces of these movements? Who are the Sartre, De Beauvoir and Luther King of today? What are the new tools of activism online and in the streets? A former Che-Guevarist in Argentina, Miguel Benasayag dedicates himself today to issues of health and immigration in France. Didier Fassin analyses the expansion of an international humanitarian government and studies the treatment of disadvantaged groups through an ethnography of police, justice and prison. George Packer, a staff writer for the New Yorker, has covered the Iraq War for the magazine, and has also written about the atrocities committed in Sierra Leone, civil unrest in Ivory Coast, the megacity of Lagos, and global counterinsurgency. Nina Berman, a documentary photographer with a primary interest in the American political and social landscape, will join the discussion. Her work has been extensively published, exhibited and collected, receiving awards in art and journalism, and her images of wounded American veterans from the Iraq War are internationally known.Tickets: Free547 West 27 St, 4 Floor

Tuesday, April 12th | 6:00pm | Round-table | The Institute for Public KnowledgeWith: Susan Barry, Howard Engel, Rodolfo Llinas, Pascal Mamassian, Israel Rosenfield, Luc Steels, Edward ZiffHosted by: Israel Rosenfield, Edward ZiffCo-presented with the Institute for Public Knowledge and Harper's MagazineNeurosciences can provide unexpected insights into free will by questioning how we see, hear and feel. To what extent do our decisions, thoughts and actions depend on our perceptions? Perhaps the best way to understand what the brain is doing is by studying what happens when it breaks down.This debate will center around two individuals whose neurological problems are discussed in Oliver Sacks’s recent book The Mind’s Eye: Susan Barry, a neurobiologist who lived in a two-dimensional world until as an adult she regained stereoscopic vision and Howard Engel, a mystery writer who can write, but no longer read. Israel Rosenfield, who has written extensively about memory, and Edward Ziff, who researches brain plasticity, will engage them in a discussion with a group of neuroscientists: Pascal Mamassian, who researches the brain’s visual deciphering of our environment, Rodolfo Llinas, who studies the brain rhythms that underlie consciousness, and Luc Steels, who employs artificial intelligence to study the genesis of language.Tickets: Free20 Cooper Square, 7th Floor, 10003 New York 212 992 9562 ipk.info@nyu.edu http://www.nyu.edu/ipk

Thursday, April 14th | 6:30pm | Round-table | The New School - Theresa Lang CenterWith: Nan Goldin, Ruwen Ogien, Carole Talon-Hugon, Lynne TillmanHosted by: Robert Polito, Benjamen WalkerCo-presented with the Writing Program at the New School, Cursor and ApertureIs there a limit to what art should show? Should it take into account its audience’s sensitivity or sense of modesty, or isn’t its purpose precisely to create some discomfort? Ruwen Ogien, theorist of “minimal ethics,” who has written extensively on pornography and Carole Talon-Hugon, the author of Morales de l’art that analyses the representation of emotions and passions, will debate it with Lynne Tillman, whose new collection of stories, Someday This Will Be Funny, will be published in April by Red Lemonade Press, and Nan Goldin, whose celebrated work has revolutionized the representation of love, gender, sexuality, domesticity and intimacy.Tickets: FreeArnhold Hall, 55 West 13th St (at 6th Ave), 2nd Floor, New York

Saturday, April 16th | 11:00am | Fair | Jo's RestaurantWith: Deborah Coen , Pierre Pachet, Lytle Shaw, Luc Steels, Ginger Strand, Carole Talon-HugonHosted by: Sina NajafiCo-presented with Cabinet and Jo's - 11AM to 4PMThis series of three "Fairs for Knowledge" aims to take learning out of the classroom and into unexpected venues, including a flea market, a restaurant, and a laundromat. Focusing on apparently minor topics that if treated correctly can in fact open up to a wide number of cultural and scientific disciplines, each fair will feature "stalls" where visitors can have short, spontaneous one-on-one conversations with leading experts in a given field. Aiming to create bridges between specialists and the general public, these fairs are designed to encourage an informal, social, and open mode of learning.The themes for the fairs will be "Hair", "Clouds", and "Chicken", three overfamiliar and undertheorized objects of study that are perfectly situated to create a conversation that draws on social, literary, artistic, political, and economic sources. The first event, on the topic of "Hair", took place on 30 January 2011at the Brooklyn Flea, with booths installed between vendors at the popular weekend market. This season’s Fair for Knowledge on “Clouds” will take place at Jo's restaurant, where diners can also order some food for thought—in the form of a conversation with scholar Lytle Shaw, historian Deborah Coen, essayist Pierre Pachet, computer scientist Luc Steels, essayist Ginger Strand or philosopher Carole Talon-Hugon—to be served at their table along with their meal.Tickets: Reservations: 212 966 9640264 Elizabeth Street at Houston St, 10012-5512 New York (212) 966-9640 info@josnyc.com http://www.josnyc.com

Saturday, April 16th | 8:00pm | Performance | The Invisible Dog Art CenterWith: Esther Allen, Jonah Bokaer, Wally Cardona, Guilhem Flouzat, Francisco Goldman, Arnon Grunberg, Trajal Harrell, Romain Huret, Serge Michel, Ruwen Ogien, Ned Rothenberg, Dan Safer, David SamuelsHosted by: Rob SpillmanCo-presented with The Invisible Dog Art Center and Tin House96th street in Manhattan. The Brooklyn Bridge. The Atlantic Ocean. The Berlin Wall. The winter you read Nietzsche. Your summer of love. The day you picked up a trumpet for the first time. The minute you understood you couldn’t come home again. What’s your rupture?An evening all about befores and afters, heres and theres, right and wrong sides of the tracks. Novelists, non-fiction writers, actors, dancers, choreographers, will come to the stage and tell you the story of this particular place in the world or that decisive instant in their life; a physical border or a turning point.This will be a night of music also, as Ned Rothenberg’s saxophone and Guilhem Flouzat’s drums lend their eloquence to the narratives. Tickets: Free51 Bergen Street, 11201 New York 1 347 560-DOG [364]-1 theinvisibledog.ny@gmail.com http://theinvisibledog.org

Sunday, April 17th | 2:30pm | Round-table | The Cooper UnionWith: Eric Chauvier, Serge Michel, Alex Waterman, Heriberto YepezHosted by: Mónica de la TorreCo-presented with BOMB Magazine and the Cooper UnionIf borders intrinsically divide and separate, they also can be highly stimulating for the imagination. This panel will address how art, culture, intellectual trade and insights manage to negotiate, mitigate, and supersede borders. Serge Michel travelled the world documenting the Chinese expansion in Africa and reporting on the shift in Iranian society. Anthropologist Eric Chauvier defends the beauty he sees in often stigmatized peri-urban areas. Composer Alexander Waterman is the author of a new version of Perfect Lives by Robert Ashley, Vidas Perfectas, an opera in Spanish set on the border between Mexico and the USA. This border is the source of inspiration for Tijuana-based writer Heriberto Yepez, whose essays, fiction and poetry explore the many facets of their relationship between the two countries.Tickets: Free30 Cooper Square, 8th Floor, 10003-7120 New York 212 353 4100 info@cooper.edu www.cooperunion.edu

Monday, April 18th | 7:00pm | Screening and discussion | UnionDocsWith: Laurel Nakadate, Ruwen OgienHosted by: Christopher Allen, Steve HolmgrenCo-presented with UnionDocsProlific video artist, filmmaker, and photographer, Laurel Nakadate will present selections from her recent work in an open dialogue with philosopher Ruwen Ogien, known for his compelling, numerous, and potentially controversial texts on morality and ethics.Nakadate’s work, currently on display in a large exhibition at PS1, often makes significant, unusual and complicated demands on her real world subjects, on her art world audience, and, just as regularly, on herself.Questions arise regarding voyeurism, the power of the camera, binaries of exploitation and connection in art, and the social norms of desire. Ogien’s philosophical inquiry will drive the discussion, referencing his extensive writing on topics such as (bio)ethics, pornography, the undesirables in society, commodification and the body, and moral panic.Tickets: 9$ suggested donation322 Union Ave (btwn Maujer & Ten Eyck St), New York http://www.uniondocs.org

Tuesday, April 19th | 6:30pm | Round-table | The Institute for Public KnowledgeWith: Fabienne Brugère, Romain Huret, Alondra Nelson, Patrick SavidanHosted by: Mitchell CohenCo-presented with the Institute for Public Knowledge, Raison Publique and Dissent MagazineIs each and everyone of us able to exercise, to the same extent, the liberties that the law guarantees? Under which conditions can we hope to see this equality in freedom manifest? Calling for an examination of the stakes of racial and ethnic inequality, as well as disparate social circumstances, these questions will be tackled by Patrick Savidan, author of several books on equal opportunity and founder of the French Observatory of Inequalities; Fabienne Brugère, whose latest research regards the ethics of care; Alondra Nelson, whose study of the Black Panther Party’s health politics is forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press and Romain Huret, a historian of the contemporary United States, whose interests lie in discourses created by public institutions on poverty.Tickets: Free20 Cooper Square, 7th Floor, 10003 New York http://www.nyu.edu/ipk

Wednesday, April 20th | 6:15pm | Round-table | The Heyman Center For The Humanities -- Davis Auditorium, the Schapiro CenterWith: Paul Audi, Valérie Gérard, Charles LarmoreHosted by: Astra TaylorCo-presented with The Heyman Center for the Humanities.How does one arrive at wisdom? Is it through struggle, meditation, reading, experience, loss or love? And what is wisdom anyway? Is it about making the right decisions, or is it about acceptance? Does wisdom lead to happiness, or is wisdom the endpoint? Charles Larmore, who specializes in moral and political philosophy, Paul Audi, who has written extensively on Rousseau and Nietzsche, working chiefly on the relations between ethics and aesthetics, and Valérie Gérard whose philosophy is inspired by Hannah Arendt, will team up in their effort to find where wisdom lies.Tickets: Free530 W 120th St, 10027 New York 212 854 8443 heymancenter@columbia.edu www.heymancenter.org