Designed by artists Melanie Crean and Claire Picher, the Building Better Speech workshops investigate how issues of identity and power can be communicated as a form of text, either through the body’s gestures, or through network-based collective action. Building Better Speech workshops make use of performance, games, and open education models to collaboratively facilitate dialogue around issues defined by groups affected by political transformation and upheaval.

In the pilot iteration of Building Better Speech, a workshop has been designed with a group of female high school students from Turning Point for Women and Families, a Queens-based organization that supports Muslim American families dealing with issues of domestic violence. Over the course of the workshop, the young women first identify and then explore issues of faith and stereotypes through automatic writing assignments, serigraphy, theatrical games, reflection, and discussion. These various methods are a means of improving communication within groups and building ties to allies, as well as promoting mutual understanding. Physical and visual approaches to communication augment the spoken word to help overcome the greatest obstacle to communicating: the challenge of being heard.

On the occasion of Performa 11, and hosted by the Performa Institute, Crean, Picher and the young women of Turning Point for Women and Families will conduct an open workshop, inviting the public to explore issues of stereotyping and identity in a shared session of collective performance games.

The project is developed in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School, and presented as part of the Performa Institute, a research and educational initiative of Performa 11.

Posted on November 7, 2011

In January 2009, artist and Parsons faculty member Melanie Crean launched The Shape of Change, an ongoing project consisting of two interconnected works that examine the ephemeral nature of change, independence and the formation of identity. The first work tracks change on an international scale on the Web site www.shapeofchange.com, an online archive of American and Iraqi desires for political change.

Through the presentation and visualization of opinions of artists, writers and the general public, this part of The Shape of Change seeks to countermand the empty political brand that the term ‘change’ was reduced to in recent American and Iraqi elections. The second project looks at change on a personal scale, documenting an infant’s early development as it learns to walk and speak, thus establishing itself as an independent social subject. In this conversation, scholars and practitioners from the fields of art, science and religion discuss how their concepts of change both correspond and differ.

Participants:

AA Bronson is an artist and healer living and working in New York City. In the sixties, he left university with a group of friends to found a free school, a commune, and an underground newspaper. This led him into an adventure with gestalt therapy, radical education, and independent publishing. In 1969 he formed the artists’ group General Idea with Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal; for the next 25 years they lived and worked together to produce the living artwork of their being together, in addition to undertaking over 100 solo exhibitions, and countless temporary public art projects. In 1974 they founded Art Metropole, Toronto, a distribution center and archive for artists’ books, audio, and video. From 1987 through 1994, they focused their work on the subject of AIDS. He is currently the President of Printed Matter, Inc., in New York City, and Artistic Director of the Institute for Art, Religion, and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary.

Melanie Crean is Assistant Professor of Media Design at Parsons The New School for Design, teaching classes in experimental time-based work, mobile media and gaming. As the former Director of Production at Eyebeam, she founded a studio that worked with socially based moving image, sound, public art and open source software. She designed special effects at MTV Digital Television Lab and produced documentaries in Nepal, on subjects that include women trafficking and the spread of HIV along trucking routes. Crean has received commissions from Art in General, Bronx Arts Council, Harvestworks, NYFA, NYSCA, Rhizome and Creative Time.

Sensei Jules Shuzen Harris is a Soto priest who has been practicing Buddhism for more than twenty-five years. He holds an Ed.D. with a concentration in applied human development from Teachers College of Columbia University and a MSW from New York University. As a psychotherapist, Shuzen has found creative ways to synthesize Western psychology and Zen to achieve dramatic results with his patients. He also focuses on the relationship between Zen and the martial arts. He is a fourth-degree Dan Black Belt in Iaido (the art of drawing and cutting with a samurai sword) and a Black Belt in Kendo (Japanese fencing). He also founded two schools of Japanese swordsmanship in Albany, NY and Salt Lake City, UT.

Alaa Majeed is a reporter, producer, and translator. She received her BA from Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. Majeed has co-produced segments for Al-Jazeera International and PBS. She has also reported for United Press International, Pacifica Radio, the BBC, National Public Radio, “60 Minutes,”and The Sunday Times (London). Her experience as a translator includes work with news services, conducting/translating classes for Iraqi civil servants, and a position with Nature Iraq, a non-governmental, environmental organization. She is currently also working as a researcher, monitoring news wires, documenting press freedom violations, and conducting investigative interviews with journalists overseas for the Committee to Protect Journalists, which is based in New York. In 2007, she received the International Courage in Journalism award from the International Women’s Media Foundation.

Presented as part of Streaming Culture / Art & Politics, a new interdivisional initiative organized by Victoria Vesna, Visiting Professor, UCLA, and Director of Research, School of Art, Media and Technology, Parsons The New School of Design, in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.

If you are not able to join us in person, log on to: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/parsons-the-new-school-for-design

Posted on April 19, 2010

Friendship and hospitality frame a series of conversations this spring at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics in collaboration with the Bachelor’s Program at The New School for General Studies. Each evening features a faculty member from The New School who introduces their best friend—a prominent figure outside of The New School, and coming from a field different from the one of the host. Friendship and hospitality serve as more than framing devices: they are engaged in a variety of ways, and each pair is free to choose their approach in elaborating on the story of their friendship. The evening has a strong social element. The audience is invited to mix, eat, and drink—gestures of hospitality are extended to all present.

Participants Filmmaker Vladan Nikolic, Associate Professor, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Film and Media Studies, The New School, and Director and Producer (Surla Films), will host Eric Werthman, psychotherapist and director of Going Under (2004).

Posted on April 5, 2010

In collaboration with Performa09, the Vera List Center and Parsons The New School for Design present the American premiere of Museum Futures: Distributed, Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska’s new film on the power of cultural institutions. Set in 2058, the film offers a provocative vision of a hyper-globalized art world featuring the future director of the future Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden, which commissioned the piece on occasion of its 50th anniversary in 2008.

Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska have been collaborating since 1995. They have worked with museums, banks, galleries, archives, auction houses, schools, and department stores. They have investigated the smuggling of goods across the Polish-Ukrainian border, documented the lost property recovered in the London transport system in a single day, and impersonated a famous art dealer. Their different projects have consistently engaged with the relationship between art and institutions coupled with other domains such as politics, society and economics.

After the 30 minute-screening, the respondents Jamer Hunt and Christiane Paul offer an analysis of the film from their respective fields, in a joint conversation with Marysia Lewandowska.

Presented by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics in collaboration with Performa09 and Parsons’ Streaming Culture / Art & Politics series, and on occasion of the Vera List Center’s 2009-2010 program theme “Speculating on Change.”

Posted on October 26, 2009

Part of the Eugene Lang First Year Seminar Series focusing on the history of The New School. Seminar Fellow Tess Harrison leads a discussion about the nature of institutionalized education and the distinctions between pedagogical and experiential knowledge.

Presented as part of the week-long exhibition and event series, “By Any Name: Institutional Memory at The New School.”

Posted on October 7, 2009

Part of the Eugene Lang First Year Seminar Series focusing on the history of The New School. Seminar Fellow Ali Krasners leads a discussion about citizenship, leadership and community at The New School.

Presented as part of the week-long exhibition and event series, “By Any Name: Institutional Memory at The New School.”

Posted on October 7, 2009

Since the 1930s, artist-instructors such as Berenice Abbott, Thomas Hart Benton, Stuart Davis, Lewis Mumford, Jose Clemente Orozco, and Ralph Pearson have brought a resolve of professionalism to The New School. Legendary art historian Meyer Schapiro’s lectures of 1936-1952 thrilled a generation with their sense of philosophical dialogue. Painter Robert Motherwell said, “It was in order to study with Meyer Schapiro that I came to New York.” Since then, The New School has hosted international art luminaries from Joseph Beuys to John Currin to Trisha Donnelly. Yet, the institution now finds itself at a crossroads of purpose and identity. How should it go forward in art education? What is “academic” and what is “professional”? What has the university been doing right? What has the university been doing wrong? Artist-instructor John Zinsser hosts an open discussion with current and former New School students, asking questions essential to the ongoing mission of the arts at The New School.

Presented as part of the week-long exhibition and event series, “By Any Name: Institutional Memory at The New School.”

Posted on September 20, 2009