Seminar

Seminar 2: Virus Becoming

Nov 7, 2022

6:00–7:30pm ET

Online

In conceiving the Panopticon, did philosopher Jeremy Bentham construct a small passageway where prisoners could seek privacy and self-comfort away from the all-surveilling institutional gaze? Shu Lea Cheang has been searching for this off-the-path getaway, to slip, to divert, to resist, to reclaim a genre to call one’s own. Since 2009, Cheang has been developing Viral Love Biohack as her current cycle of work, which mixes science fiction visions with gender studies and queer culture. In the second VLC Correction* seminar, Cheang discusses UKI, a sci-fi, viral, alt-reality cinema in the making. In this [science] fiction scenario involving bioinformatics (the collection and interpretation of biological data) and an accidental bioengineering glitch, “UKI” emerges as a virus that departs from a gender binary and deviates into transgenic discourse. Living with the virus, Cheang argues, we are trans-mutating our viral bodies into a brave new Eco-System. Virus Becoming, as Cheang’s lecture is titled, is a newly discovered passageway to self-granted emancipation.

Shu Lea Cheang is an artist and filmmaker whose work aims to re-envision genders, genres, and operating structures. Her genre bending gender hacking practices challenge the existing operating mechanisms and the boundaries imposed on society, geography, politics, and economic structures. As a net art pioneer, her BRANDON (1998–99) was the first web art commissioned and collected by New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Her feature length films, FRESH KILL (1994), I.K.U. (2000) and FLUIDø (2017), respectively termed ecocybernoia, sci-fi cyberpunk, and sci-fi cypherpunk, seek to define a genre of new queer sci-fi cinema. From homesteading cyberspace in the 90s to her current retreat to post-netcrash BioNet zone, Cheang takes on viral love, bio-hack in her current cycle of works. Cheang is currently at work on UKI, a sci-fi viral, alt-reality cinema.

More on Cheang’s work is available at http://mauvaiscontact.info/

Correction* Seminar 2: Virus Becoming
Correction* Seminar 2: Virus Becoming w/ ASL

READING & RESOURCE LIST

Correction* Seminar Series
A series of twelve seminars, Correction* is structured as an open curriculum and presented from September 2022 through May 2024. Led by Vera List Center faculty and staff, each monthly seminar in this two-year series explores the perils and potentials of the political, social, and metaphorical implications of “correction.” Bridging theory and practice, Correction* unfolds through three distinct research clusters every semester set to guide our joint investigation into Restitution, the Body, and Carcerality. It is presented as part of the Barbara Jordan Lectures: The State of Democracy series.

The Vera List Center is committed to ensuring that our programs are accessible to and inclusive of all. Please let us know when registering if you need any accommodations.

The Fall 2022 programs of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics are generously supported by members of the Vera List Center Board, other individual donors, and the following institutional donors:

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
The Boris Lurie Art Foundation and the Schaina and Josephina Lurje Memorial Foundation
Bridge Philanthropic Consulting
The Dayton Foundation
The Ford Foundation
Italian Council
The Kettering Fund
Mellon Foundation
The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation
and Pryor Cashman LLP

We also gratefully acknowledge the support of The New School, our academic home.

Related

Seminar Overview

Correction* Seminar Series

Sep 26, 2022–May 6, 2024

Seminar

Seminar 1: Ashes to Artifact: Cultural Death, Repair, and Restitution of the Benin Bronzes

Sep 26, 2022

Seminar

Seminar 3: Correcting Mistaken Ideas: Revisiting the People’s Program at Lincoln Hospital with Walter Bosque

Feb 13, 2023

Seminar

Seminar 4: Becoming One: The University Between Labor Struggles and Communities of Care

Feb 27, 2023

Seminar

Seminar 5: Lupus as an Operating System

Apr 10, 2023

Seminar

Seminar 6: Indigenous Cultural Revitalization: Rematriation and Preservation

May 1, 2023

Seminar

Seminar 9: Of Bodies and Sound

Dec 18, 2023

Seminar

Seminar 8: “Hader Halal” (With Regard to Presence)

Nov 13, 2023

Seminar

Seminar 7: Bring into Order: School(ing) as a War of Correction

Sep 18, 2023

Seminar

Seminar 10: Reducing Harm (As Prompt, As Practice)

Feb 12, 2024

Seminar

Seminar 11: Many Returns

Mar 4, 2024