“The power of mass culture rests on the trust of the public. This legitimacy is a paper tiger.”
–PTTV Manifesto

Borne of the residual political optimism from the sixties and a flush of infatuation with small-format video, Paper Tiger Television (PTTV) began as a series on Communications Update on public access. Featuring Herb Schiller tearing apart the New York Times’ “all the news that is fit to print,” Paper Tiger’s penetrating and playful critiques of Time, Rolling Stone, National Geographicand Cosmopolitan soon followed.

The public access movement took root at a moment of disillusionment with network television, generating hope that cable would offer a genuine alternative to TV wasteland. Over the last thirty years, the accessibility of public access TV centers has significantly declined, while for-profit corporate media consolidated from fifty into five companies that control 90% of the public’s media consumption.

Yet, with the growth of the internet and the proliferation of consumer grade production equipment, social media, crowd sourcing, online video, live streaming, and wireless technology, today’s media environment is rife with opportunities for innovation and collaboration.  Still, from the digital divide, to online filter bubbles, to the echo chamber of social distribution of mass media, to SOPA and Net Neutrality, an analysis of how these developments are used coupled with the threats coming from the policy level reveals that even these seemingly promising trends are nuanced.

Given these developments, what does a vibrant, radical media look like, how could it function? What lessons can we apply from Paper Tiger’s innovative media activism?  How can we use media strategically and creatively in the pursuit of social justice?

Moderated by Daniela Capistrano, Multi-Platform Producer of DCAP Media, the festive event features a keynote address, a screening of Paper Tiger Television’s Greatest Hits, selected by current Tigers, followed by a panel discussion on the future of rrradical media.

Keynote Speaker
Malkia Cyril, Executive Director, Center for Media Justice

Panelist
Andy Bichlbaum, The Yes Lab
Jamilah King, News Editor, Colorlines
Jennifer Pozner, Founder, Women in Media & News

Follow the links to detailed event description and DAY TWO schedule.

* Presented by Paper Tiger Television, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, and the School of Media Studies at The New School for Public Engagement , on occasion of the Vera List Center’s 2011-2013 focus theme “Thingness.”

What is radical media? What has it been in the past? What can it be in the future? What is media’s relationship to social justice and movement building?

Paper Tiger Television, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, and the School of Media Studies at The New School for Public Engagement present a two-day conference of activists, artists and media makers to celebrate, reflect and build on thirty roarin’ years (and counting!) of media art and activism.

In 1981, Paper Tiger Television (PTTV) pioneered a truly radical public access show, raising awareness amongst workers in the communication industries of the economic, political and social power structures perpetuated through the profit-driven mainstream media. Ever since then, the collective has been making fun, yet incisive video that demystifies the information industry and provides a platform for underrepresented perspectives. Collaborating with activists and artists, PTTV videos take many forms — from critical performative readings of the mass media & popular culture, to traditional style documentaries on social justice issues.

Thirty years later, how can we harness collaborative culture, critical analysis, participatory technologies and aesthetics to incite social change?  What content and platforms can we create that will respond to the limits and possibilities of the ever-shifting contemporary media landscape?

We invite artists, activists, scholars and media makers, movers and shakers of all stripes to explore these questions. Participants are challenged to collaboratively design prototypes for a new rrradical media, building on the ideals of non-hierarchical-participatory culture, critical analysis, activism and innovative aesthetics. A broad cross section of individuals, working together with varied proclivities, interests and abilities, opens up the potential for something truly revolutionary to develop.

Follow the links to detailed event schedules: DAY ONE and DAY TWO.

*Presented by Paper Tiger Television, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, and the School of Media Studies at The New School for Public Engagement, on occasion of the Vera List Center’s 2011-2013 focus theme “Thingness.”

Michael Moore, award-winning filmmaker and author of the recent book Here Comes Trouble; Naomi Klein, Nation columnist, and best-selling author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capiltalism; William Greider, Nation National Affairs correspondent and author of Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall and (Redeeming Promise) of Our Country ; Rinku Sen, executive director of the Applied Research Center and publisher of Colorlines.com speaks about how the Occupy movement provide new political platform against corporate power.

Moderated by Richard Kim, Executive Editor of The Nation.

Sponsored by The Nation and The New School.

On occasion of the exhibition And Another Thing at The James Gallery at The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, the Vera List Center and the James Gallery presents a panel discussion featuring artists, scholars and writers on the subject of “thingness.”

What are the political and ethical implications of considering all objects—whether animal, vegetable, or mineral, even whether animate or inanimate– equivalent and thereby interchangeable? Moderated by the exhibition’s co-curator Katherine Behar, sociologist Noortje Marres, media scholar Shannon Mattern and urban designer David Turnbull discuss how this kind of perspective changes the conversation around sustainability as well as human interaction. What happens when technology reaches the scale of cities? Can an object bear responsibility that has previously been reserved for humans? Beginning with the artist’s sometimes contentious relationship to material presence as a platform for the examination of these questions, this panel considers the constellation of disciplines including architecture, ecology, global geography, urban studies, and anthropology that are tackling these questions.

Presented on occasion of the Vera List Center’s 2011-2013 focus theme “Thingness.”

The final talk of the spring 2011 Public Art Fund Talk series, Working with Sol is a conversation among some of the people who worked most closely with Sol LeWitt throughout his long career. Moderated by Public Art Fund Director and Chief Curator, Nicholas Baume, the talk features gallerist Paula Cooper, artist Pat Steir, and Principal Assistant of Structures, Jeremy Ziemann.

This talk ties in with Public Art Fund’s upcoming exhibition at City Hall Park, Sol LeWitt: Structures, 1965-2006, opening on May 24.  For the exhibition, a map is being produced featuring works by LeWitt in public spaces in New York City — among them The New School Art Collection’s Wall Drawing #1073: Bars of Color from 2003. Visit this two-storey mural, a gift of the artist and one of his last public commissions, at Arnhold Hall, 55 West 13th Street.

The second presentation in the spring Public Art Fund Talks at The New School series, New York Stories continues to explore the ongoing resonance of radical work created by artists who first came to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s.

Artist Rob Pruitt speaks about The Andy Monument. His homage to Andy Warhol stands on a corner of 17th Street and Broadway, just as Warhol did when he signed and gave away copies of Interview magazine. Pruitt’s sculpture adapts and transforms the familiar tradition of classical statuary, and depicts Warhol as a ghostly, silver presence: a potent cultural force as both artist and self-created myth. Public Art Fund director and chief curator Nicholas Baume, cultural critic Wayne Koestenbaum, and artist and writer Rhonda Lieberman join the artist in a lively conversation about Warhol’s lasting influence on art and culture.

In collaboration with the School of Art, Media, and Technology, Parsons the New School for Design, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics presents an evening of discussion on the work of John Knight. Curator Sabine Breitwieser, writer Anne Rorimer, art historian Benjamin H.D. Buchloh and critic André Rottmann convene to examine the artist’s pivotal role in the development of institutional critique and site-specific art. Moderated by New School faculty member, Simonetta Moro, the panel takes place on the occasion of the opening of Knight’s exhibition at Greene Naftali Gallery on April 7, 2011.

Since the early 1970s John Knight has dedicated his practice to mapping the intersections of art, design, and institutional power through a series of spatial interventions and graphic maneuvers. Following closely on the architectural implications of Minimalism, Knight belongs to a generation of artists including Michael Asher, Daniel Buren, and Dan Graham that has consistently addressed the ideological valences of constructed space. Working “in situ,” all of Knight’s projects address the specific demands of their context, whether it be the gallery, the museum, the library, or the commercial billboard. Recent projects include shows at Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles (2009); Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2009); Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, Berlin (2009); Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich (2008); Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló (2008).

In the United States, the AIDS crisis is now almost completely within the control of public health management systems. Through global NGOs, we have exported our programs for managing this epidemic, along with US public health ideologies that downplay or avoid politically sensitive concerns with sexual rights (such as the rights of commercial sex workers), harm reduction (such as drug legalization and needle exchange), and the oppression of racial and sexual minorities (in the form of multi-generational poverty, incarceration). Increasing infection rates among poor women, rural populations, and young men of color who have sex with men and the inability of many around the world to access affordable, life-saving treatments remind us that social violence and structural inequalities are not resolved by the efficient management of the epidemic.

As long as this global health structure remains in place, the AIDS crisis is always still beginning. Film screening of Jean Carlomusto’s award-winning film Sex Is An Epidemic (2010), followed by an open discussion on how to organize against the AIDS crisis.

The sound-art collective Ultra-red is concerned with the intersection of sound and politics. Collective listening procedures serve as foundation of their exhibition Vogue’ology (at Parsons’ Aronson Gallery, November 17 through 30) which examines the possibilities for establishing an archive of the House/Ballroom community. These procedures have been deployed by the exhibition’s curatorial and archive teams to process and select fragments and phrases from House/Ballroom oral histories and vogue descriptions for the exhibition. Their interpretation will be further provoked and utilized to encourage visitors to move through the exhibition space. On occasion of Vogue’olgy, members of Ultra-red consider this intersection of sound and politics in a public event with artists, union organizers, historians and representatives of Ballroom ministries. The audience is invited to engage with sound as an object of reflection and with listening as a means of political organizing.

* Presented on occasion of the Vera List Center’s 2009/2011 focus theme “Speculating on Change.”

Aperture Foundation, the Photography Program in the School of Art, Media and Technology at Parsons and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics present a panel entitled Contemporary Documentary Practices, as part of the ongoing series, Confounding Expectations: Photography in Context.

Martha Rosler’s seminal critique of documentary photography in the 1981 text In, Around and Afterthoughts on Documentary Photography, this panel explores the viability of documentary practices today, both within the contemporary art realm and in the larger context of visual culture. In the 1981 text, Rosler claimed that documentary photography has yet to be realized in its full potential. Moving from a direct critique of documentary photographic practices, many contemporary photographers are utilizing art strategies to initiate and maintain social and political engagement through the use of the photographic medium. This discussion aims to examine photography’s ability to fostering social change in the contemporary moment and in generating a discussion about the importance of institutional and discursive framing in determining photographic meaning. Moderated by Susan Bright, panelists include LaToya Ruby Frazier, Chris Verene, and Michael Wolf.