Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference on the Middle East, South Asia and Africa

Columbia University's Department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS) will be hosting the Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference on the Middle East, South Asia and Africa from April 15th to the 17th. Please see the description below:

The discipline that was once called “Oriental Studies” has been divided up in various ways in today’s university. Post-colonial literature has a foothold in the English department, history departments have by and large stopped confusing “European history” with “world history,” and of course the area studies departments with venerable names like Near Eastern Studies or South Asian Languages and Civilizations have taken up an array of new methodologies from other departments. Several universities have begun expanding their African and South Asian studies offerings under the umbrella of “Global Studies.” This conference is concerned not with “the death of the discipline” as so many others have been, but rather with the diversity of the disciplines when it comes to studying the non-Western World.

Please note that the consortium director will be presenting a paper in the South Asia(s) panel titled, "Bollymizwid and Bollyraï: Digital Mashups of Hindi, Tunisian, and Algerian Popular Music." Consortium members are encouraged to attend and engage in discussion.

Film: The End of Poverty?

Below is the information for a film that will be open for one week in New York on November 13th, 2009 at the Village East Cinema (2nd Ave @ 12th St.). The film addresses (neo)colonial and neoliberal roots of global poverty, and should be of interest to Consortium members, especially as a contemporary expressive medium of human rights discourses. Please see the film's website for further details and dates in other cities.

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The End of Poverty?

Global poverty did not just happen. It began with military conquest, slavery and colonization that resulted in the seizure of land, minerals and forced labor. Today, the problem persists because of unfair debt, trade and tax policies -- in other words, wealthy countries taking advantage of poor, developing countries.

Renowned actor and activist, Martin Sheen, narrates The End of Poverty?, a feature-length documentary directed by award-winning director, Philippe Diaz, which explains how today's financial crisis is a direct consequence of these unchallenged policies that have lasted centuries. Consider that 20% of the planet's population uses 80% of its resources and consumes 30% more than the planet can regenerate. At this rate, to maintain our lifestyle means more and more people will sink below the poverty line.

Filmed in the slums of Africa and the barrios of Latin America, The End of Poverty? features expert insights from: Nobel prize winners in Economics, Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz; acclaimed authors Susan George, Eric Toussaint, John Perkins, Chalmers Johnson; university professors William Easterly and Michael Watts; government ministers such as Bolivia's Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera and the leaders of social movements in Brazil, Venezuela, Kenya and Tanzania . It is produced by Cinema Libre Studio in collaboration with the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.

Can we really end poverty within our current economic system? Think again.

The film has been selected to over 25 international film festivals and will be released in theatres in November 2009. Directed by Philippe Diaz, produced by Cinema Libre Studio with the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, 104mins, 2008, USA, documentary in English, Spanish, French with English Subtitles.

Performing Revolution in Central and Eastern Europe

Performing Revolution in Central and Eastern Europe
5 November - 31 March 2009
Romanian Cultural Institute

Below is the information for an upcoming festival in New York. Note the Festival Symposium on Thursday, November 5th, and the NYPL exhibit, Revolutionary Voices: Performing Arts in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1980s, which are of particular interest to the Consortium. We will be organizing an excursion for Consortium members to attend the symposium, and to meet for a discussion/lunch. If you are interested in joining us, please email chreculture [at] gmail [dot] com to let us know.

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Performing Revolution in Central and Eastern Europe
A five-month long festival featuring a wide range of performances, exhibitions, film screenings, and symposia throughout New York City

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, in association with leading New York City cultural organizations, among which is the Romanian Cultural Institute, presents Performing Revolution in Central and Eastern Europe. This five-month festival focuses on the performing arts as a powerful voice and contributing force in the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe. Spearheaded by The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, which will present a major exhibition on the themes of the festival, Performing Revolution features over 20 events throughout New York City, with a specific focus on performing arts in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia.

Performing Revolution in Central and Eastern Europe explores the revolutionary mindset of performing artists through theater, music, and dance performances, exhibitions, film screenings, readings, and symposia. While certain festival events illustrate how artistic resistance in the 1980s contributed to the profound political changes in 1989, others comment on the different contexts that continue to characterize revolution in performance today.

The main festival event is the exhibition Revolutionary Voices: Performing Arts in Central & Eastern Europe in the 1980s (November 18, 2009 – March 20, 2010) that examines how performances attempted to break boundaries set by the communist state’s culture politicians, aesthetes, and censors. The exhibition focuses on theater performances, music, and dance events, which through their form and/or content contested the prevailing totalitarian regime and anticipated the forthcoming political/social changes. As the revolution in most countries of the Soviet bloc did not take place in the form of a violent overthrow of power, art was one the main arenas where “the revolutionary” started to happen. The exhibit is curated by Karen Burke, Assistant Chief, Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and Aniko Szucs, Ph.D. Candidate in Performance Studies at New York University.

The Romanian Cultural Institute in New York participates in: Rebel Waltz, a weekend of music featuring underground bands that performed behind the Iron Curtain in the 1980s, which opens Performing Revolution (Nov 6-8); the exhibition Revolutionary Voices: Performing Arts in Central & Eastern Europe in the 1980s; a series of book launches featuring Romanian authors; the festival symposium presented by The Harriman Institute at Columbia University (Nov 5) and will present its Annual Romanian Film Festival at Tribeca Cinemas (Dec 4-6) as part of Performing Revolution.

Critical Strategies in Art and Media

Critical Strategies in Art and Media: Perspectives of New Cultural Practices
Thursday, 10 September 2009
1:00pm to 7:00pm
11 E. 52nd St. New York, NY

Below is the information for a free conference at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York, on Thursday September 10th, 2009. Consortium members are encouraged to attend, as we will be organizing a discussion related to this topic in January 2010.

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Beyond the obsolete models of artist or author as genius and their fetish objects, what collective and collaborative practices are inventing new terrains and flows?

As information and communication technologies saturate our world, how is art giving way to new forms of cultural symbolic manipulation?

Can we identify new models to replace the auteur and the artwork? If so, where do they come from and what might that say about the future of critical practices?

What new kinds of "virtual" spaces are opening up for cultural practice in electronic media? As "old media" begin to collapse under the pressures of the virtual, what new media can we find?

How are didactic illustration and channeled dissidence giving way to new forms of surprise and intensity?

What strategies elude the creative industries' seemingly infinite appetite for things radical? Are there any strategies that can elude being reduced to styles in the service of sales, or are critical practices doomed to play cat and mouse with the forces of consumerism?



A World-Information Institute event in cooperation with Ludwig Boltzmann Institute/Media.Art.Research and the Austrian Cultural Forum New York (ACF NY)

world-information.org/wii
acfny.org
media.lbg.ac.at

Publication: "Critical Strategies in Art and Media", Autonomedia 2010