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=Cultural Production's Wiki=

This space is primarily for members and friends of the [|Cultural Production] program at Brandeis University. Let's use this space to share ideas about cultural production, to inform one another of interesting cultural events in the greater Boson/New England area, and discuss readings, films, plays, concerts, exhibitions and other happenings of mutual interest.

Please sign your contributions (with your real name or a screen name). Feel free to add content any time, but please limit your deletions to your own work.


 * What is Cultural Production?**

Cultural Production is an unusual and dynamic interdisciplinary program. Spanning the Social Sciences, Humanities and Creative Arts, faculty and students examines art, cultural form and community transformation. Students pursue creative projects that synthesize scholarship and arts, with a deep commitment to social justice and community building. Current student projects range from designing new museums tha will help safeguard indigenous human rights in the Philippines to documenting the musical and poetic creativity of African immigrants in the Boston area.


 * //Please join our [|Cultural Production group]on Facebook!//
 * //see [|Mark Auslander's blog, "Cultural Productions"]//


 * UPCOMING EVENTS**

(Fall 2010) Visit by Jane Taylor to Brandeis University (Nov. 8-9, 2010)

(Fall 2009)
 * Lecture by Prof. Rob Weller (Anthropology, Boston University) Monday, November 16 at 12 noon on Ritual and Ambiguity in China.

(Spring 2010)


 * Burial, Interrupted: Circulating Corpses and the Unquiet Body Politic(Symposium: February 2010)
 * Trip to New York City for the "Guggenheim Project"(artist Tino Seghal)
 * Graduate student conference. Realms of the Real: Throug the Looking Glass. (March 2010, tba)

PREVIOUS EVENTS (Fall 2009)


 * Exhibition: Red Thread: The Art of Kumi Korf (Sept 23-Nov. 1, 2009) Gallery talk, Sept.23 (co-curated by Cultural Production student Claire Mauro)
 * Monday, October 26. "I sent my message: Song and the Power of Women in Southern Sudan". A multimedia installation by Cultural Production graduate student Atem Aleu.
 * "The Practice of Clothing Robots" (Brownbag lecture presentation by Alessandra Sabelli, Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 12 noon) location, tba.


 * PREVIOUS EVENTS**

(Spring 2009)

[|Culture Combat: Provoking the Social Imaginary]**.** A graduate student conference. Sponsored by the interdisciplinary MA program in Cultural Production. Saturday, March 14, 2009. Brandeis University

Arresting Moments: Wonder and the Pedagogy of the Imagination. (April 1)

=Saturn Dreaming of Mercury: Art and the Trickster Spirit= An exhibition curated by Sage Rogers April 1-April 30, 2009 Schwartz Gallery, Brandeis University

Exhibition: **By Any Other Name: An Artistic and Social History of the Rose Art Museum** Shapiro Campus Center Art Gallery Thursday April 23rd-May 1, 2009

=Roundtable: Art, the Law and the Public Trust: Legal Perspectives on Museums in= =Hard Times= Wednesday, April 29, 2009 3:00-4:30 p.m. Rose Art Museum Brandeis Unversity

See http://www.musicunitesus.info/nettle.html
 * Nettle: Music for a Nu World: Cultural Collaboration in the Globalized Age.** March 19-21 MusicUnitesUs residency of the geography-defying performance group Nettle at Brandeis University

Schedule for the residency will be posted here: http://www.musicunitesus.info/schedule-spring2008.html

PREVIOUS EVENTS

Hitting Close to Home: Art and Human Rights from Slavery to Guantanamo. Symposium, in conjunction with Atem Aleu's Art Exhibition in the Schwartz Gallery. (February 2-3.)

//Gallery talk by Atem Aleu at 4:15 p.m.on Tuesday, February 10, 2009.// //Schwartz Gallery//

Darwin's Doubles: Evolution, Art and the Politics of Representation. Roundtable. Thursday, February 12 (Darwin's 200th birthday)


 * PREVIOUS CULTURAL PRODUCTION EVENTS (Fall 2008)**


 * Marcelo Brodksy.** The noted Argentinian photographer and human rights activist Marcelo Brodsky, as well as the memorial architect Julian Brodsky, will speak in Professor Auslander's cultural theory seminar, "Making Culture: Theory and Practice" (CP201) on Tuesday, November 18 from 9:10-10:30 a.m. Kutz 120. The class is open to the campus.

Symposium**. Duchamp and the Legacy of Surrealist Exhibition Design** Rose Art Museum

Tuesday, November 18, 6:30 p.m. exhibitions are open at 6:00

Keynote Speaker: Lewis Kachur, Kean University, Author of Displaying the Marvelous (MIT Press, 2001)

“Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Exhibition” Duchamp’s public recognition derived from a notorious exhibition, the furor surrounding his Nude Descending a Staircase at the NY Armory show of 1913. He began to investigate exhibiting as a mode of framing the concerns of his art. By the 1938 Exposition internationale du surréalisme, Duchamp led the group in transforming the exhibition space into an elaborate, environmental work of art. In later Surrealist exhibitions, he involved younger artists, including a fruitful exchange with Robert Rauschenberg. Selected examples will suggest Duchamp's influence on contemporary installation art continues to this day.

7:15 Invisible Rays: The Surrealism Legacy Michael Rush, Curator and Henry and Lois Foster Director, Rose Art Museum 7:35 Interdisciplinary Responses Mark Auslander, Brandeis University, Anthropology, Cultural Production Andreas Teuber, Brandeis University, Philosophy


 * Jake Homiak.** Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution. November 21-22


 * Colloquium with Jake Homiak Thursday, Nov. 21 3:00-5:00 p.m. (Lown 1)
 * Workshop with Jake Homiak. Friday, Nov 22, 9:10-10:30 a.m.

From Back 'o Wall to the Smithsonian: Reflections on the Internationalization of Rastafari. (Jake Homiak. Smithsonian Institution. Brandeis Anthropology PhD '85)

Cultural Production Program Colloquium, Thursday, November 20 from 3:00-5:00 p.m. Lown 2 Brandeis University

(To see the Lown building on the map of the Brandeis campus: http://my.brandeis.edu/map/print-page?id=63)

Over a span of nearly 80 years Rastafari has evolved from an African-centered movement and small marginalized 'cult of outcasts' in colonial Jamaica to a widespread international network that spans the Black Atlantic and beyond. The trajectory of its development raises interesting questions about its nature as an object of study and the concepts social scientists have used to describe and analyze it. Is it primarily a millenarian, messianic, or visionary movement, as some have argued; a form of racial consciousness informing the points of connection in a transnational 'imagined community'; or an alternative modernity capable of transcending the Caribbean roots of the movement and its often essentialized signifiers of race and nation? In this presentation, Jake Homiak, Smithsonian Department of Anthropology, provides an overview of the origins and development of the movement that suggests that all of these designations are in play as they are mapped to the variable panoply of symbols and forms of practice comprising the culture of the movement. While Homiak links the formation of the movement to pan-African ideas and perspectives on race and sovereignty in the early 20th century, he argues that the contemporary reach of the movement across boundaries of race and nationality must be seen in terms of how social actors draw upon symbolic ambiguities and a dialectic of cultural openness-and-closure that is characteristically Caribbean. Using examples from different periods of the movement's development as well as the 'situated lives' of its diverse practitioners with whom he is familiar, Homiak seeks to draw inferences about the evolving dynamic and flexibility of Rastafari both in its local and global environments. As a white middle-class academic, he also offers some thoughts on the ethnographic challenges involved in navigating the 'back-stage' of a predominantly black movement whose practitioners have long taken a guarded approach to outsiders and are increasingly concerned about their own representational authority. This includes Homiak's work with the Rastafari in mounting an exhibition on the origins and spread of the movement in the African Voices Hall of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Jake Homiak received his doctorate in anthropology from Brandeis University in 1985. He did fieldwork in Jamaica through much of the 1980s and over the past 28 years has worked with Rastafari in Ethiopia, South Africa, the Eastern Caribbean, Panama and the United States.

This event is co-sponsored by the Departments of Anthropology and African and Afro-American Studies (Martin Weiner Fund).

(Spring 2009)

Art and Public Action
Thursday, November 13, 6:30 p.m. Rose Art Museum

Part I – 6:30 p.m. Artist Talk: Terry Berkowitz Artist Terry Berkowitz will deliver an illustrated talk about her socially engaged art including the Malaya Lola Project. The Malaya Lola (Free Grandmothers) are a self-named and organized group of surviving victims of rape and torture that followed the raid and bombing of their village in the Philippines by Japanese soldiers in 1944. Through her photographic portraits and related projects, Berkowitz hopes to afford high visibility to the Malaya Lolas, create publicity around the call for legal reparations and give the women an opportunity to voice their demands in their own words.

Part II – 7:30-8:00 p.m. Community Engaged Dialogue Community activists in Waltham will respond to Terry Berkowitz's talk and share their experiences with art and social engagement. This event is co-sponsored by The Rose Art Museum, Iskwelahang Philipino, Pilipino - American Association of New England (PAMAS), and the M.A. Program in Cultural Production


 * Shubha Mudgal**. The virtuoso South Asian vocalist will be in residence at Brandeis, October 15-18, sponsored by the Intercultural Residency Series and the South Asian Studies program.

//Cultural Production events with Shubha Mudgal include://
 * Workshop on //"Classical and Pop Music Intersections: South Asia and Beyond"// (Friday, October 17 from 9:10-10:30 a.m.)
 * Workshop: " //"Music and Visions of the Sublime.//" (Friday, October 17 from 12:10-1:30 p.m.) Slosberg Music Hall.
 * Please note that Rituparno Ghosh's film, "Raincoat,"(2004) featuring the vocals of Shubha Mudgal, will be screened on Wednesday, October 15. Details, tba)

PREVIOUS EVENTS (Spring 2008)

Environmental Social Art: Trauma, Healing, and Community Building.Lecture by Mariyo Yagi (Environmental artist, designer and landscape engineer) Wednesday, March 26. 4:00 p.m. (Venue: TBA)


 * Justice Continues at Home**. Wednesday, April 2 at 4:00 p.m. International Lounge, Usdan.

Pedagogy of the Imagination (March 4, 2008) symposium at the The Rose Art Museum.


 * PREVIOUS EVENTS (**Fall 2007)

Wednesday, August 29. **Orientation for New Students in Cultural Production**

Theater and Peacebuilding program events, including a community workshop with Yuyachkani on storytelling, gender and justice, and performance of Rosa Cuchillo. Saturday, October 6, 2007. 6:00 p.m. Shapiro campus center theater, Brandeis University.

October 9. at 4:00 p.m. "Family Literacy and Community Empowerment: Tales from Lesotho" (Professor Jane Hale) Location: TBA

//Intercultural Residency Series:// Residency of Ologunde (an Afro-Brazilian Performance group) October 18-20, 2007

Symposium on Visualizing Science: Image-Making in the Constitution of Scientific Knowledge. (Rose Art Museum) October 24, 2007.

Roundtable on Video Art by South Asian Women Artists. November 6, 2007. 12:10-1:30. Rose Art Museum.

Symposium on Sexualities in Asia. co-sponsored with the Asian and Asian Diaspora Studies, November 6, 2007. 1:40-4:30 p.m. in the Women's Studies Research Center.

Residency of forensic anthropologist Bill Haglund, early November 2007 (details, tba)

Hybrid Powers: The Recombinant Fiction of Octavia Butler. Interdisciplinary roundtable. November 19, 2007. 3:30-5:00 p.m. Rose Museum.

Bricolage Revised: A Roundtable. Rose Art Museum, Tuesday, December 4, 2007

"Just For Play: Unmasquing A Midsummer Night's Dream." Colloquium by Bradd Shore (Emory) Co-sponsored by Anthropology and Cultural Production. February 14, 2008.

In January or February: interdisciplinary symposium //on The Pedagogy of the Imagination//

PREVIOUS EVENTS

Lecture:

"Warner Bros. Presents Leo Frank: The Making of Mervyn LeRoy's THEY WON'T FORGET (1937)"

BY: Matthew Bernstein, associate professor and director of graduate studies in the Film Studies Program at Emory University, and author of the forthcoming Screening a Lynching: the Leo Frank Case in Film and Television

Time and Place: February 15, 2007, 12-1:30 (place, tba)

Roundtable on developing the exhibition, "Leave the Bones and Seize the Land: Southern Sudanese Art from Kakuma Refugee Camp". Tuesday, December 5 from 9:10-10:30 am. Rapaporte Treasure Hall. Goldfarb Library, Brandeis University.


 * Symposium: "Privacy Rites: Space, Surveillance, and Power in Historical Perspective"**
 * **The symposium is held in conversation with the exhibition [|“Balance and Power: Performance and Surveillance in Video Art”] at [|Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum] (September 21- December 17, 2006). It also commemorates the 150th anniversary of Justice Louis Brandeis (1856-1941).**
 * [|Abstract]
 * The Privacy Rites Symposium Program
 * **//Wednesday, November 8, 2006//**
 * //4:00-6:30 p.m.//**
 * //Levine-Ross, Hassenfeld Conference Center//**

Film and Imagination in New York City, Post 9/11 **Please join us for a screening of //"Trio: A New York Trilogy,"// three short films directed by Eva Saks. Following the screening, we will have an informal discussion of film and collective imaginings of New York City in the five years since the 9-11 attacks. Visiting scholar Edward Linenthal will join in our conversation. 11:00 a.m. Monday, September 11, 2006 in Brown 224 (Brandeis University)**

[|The Cultural Politics of Commemoration],** a lecture by Edward Linenthal (Indiana University). 3:30 p.m. Monday, September 11, International Lounge, Usdan (Brandeis University)

Read a [|summary of Dr. Linenthal's address]

//The Cultural Production program's "official" website is at://

http://www.brandeis.edu/programs/culturalproduction/