Book Launch, Party

In celebration of the release of the second issue of Where We Are Nows new online journal, edited by Joseph Grima, Marisa Jahn and Vera List Center director Carin Kuoni, contributors gather to discuss their explorations of this issues guiding theme: Speculating on Change.

Explicitly tied to difference, change as such is perhaps most clearly measured in terms of chronological time, comparing a “before” to an established “after.” Speculation on change, however, entails projection, prognosis and risk into the future, and corresponds to the fluid, divergent and simultaneous time space continuum of our contemporary existence.

The launch features a presentation by journal contributor Melanie Crean. “The Shape of Change,” her ongoing web project featured in the second issue, investigates how people perceive, measure and represent change over time, in both personal and political contexts, through two distinct approaches. The first component of the project is a public web archive that tracks American and Iraqi citizens desire for political change as the two countries attempt to extricate from one another politically and militarily. The second component documents an infants early development as it learns to walk and speak, and thus establish itself as an independent social subject. The two approaches serve as counterpoint to one another, creating a portrait of the ephemeral nature of change, independence and identity formation, from a macro and micro perspective.

Other journal contributors include Tom Angotti, Daniel Bozhkov, Celine Condorelli, Melanie Crean, Sean Gourley, Bryan Finoki, Beatrice Gibson, Carlos Motta, <b>Andrew Ross, Ben Shepard, Mark Tribe and Merve Unsal.

Where We Are Now was founded in November 2007 by an ad hoc group of representatives of many arts organizations in the city, among them The Change You Want to See Gallery, Creative Time, Cooper Union, Parsons the New School of Design and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics. It is a discursive and loosely organized platform with the mission to illuminate, deepen and amplify the discourse around an aesthetic practice with political content in New York City.

Participants
Tom Angotti, Professor, Department of Urban Affairs & Planning, Hunter College
Melanie Crean, Assistant Professor of Media Design, Communication Design and Technology, Parsons The New School for Design
Joseph Grima, Director, Storefront for Art and Architecture
Marisa Jahn, artist and co-Founder of Pond
Carin Kuoni, Director, Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School
Ben Shepard, Assistant Professor of Human Service at New York School of Technology/City University of New York

Presented on occasion of the Vera List Center’s 2009/2010 program theme “Speculating on Change.”