ISCP Talk
December 12, 2017, 6:30–8pm

Ethics, Documentary, and the Internet: Paolo Cirio in conversation with Julia Powles

This conversation between Paolo Cirio and Julia Powles for the exhibition Concrete Truth: Art and the Documentary will explore how free speech can be reconciled with the right to a dignified image of vulnerable individuals, both on the internet and in the field of art. Cirio’s project Obscurity, featured in Concrete Truth, will act as a case study to discuss what the artist calls “the ethics of representation as well as the aesthetics of ethics.” Obscurity obfuscates over ten million internet mugshots and criminal records for the “Right to Be Forgotten Law” being proposed in the United States.

Paolo Cirio engages with legal, economic, and semiotic systems of the information society. His works investigate social fields impacted by the internet, such as privacy, copyright, democracy, and finance. In 2017, Cirio’s artworks have been presented and exhibited in art institutions including MIT Museum, Boston; Tate Modern, London; C/O Berlin; Museum für Fotografie, Berlin; Münchner Stadtmuseum; Musée National d’Histoire et d’Art of Luxembourg; and Haifa Museum of Art. He has won a number of awards, including the Golden Nica first prize at Ars Electronica in Linz and the Transmediale second prize in Berlin.

Dr. Julia Powles is a research fellow at New York University School of Law and Cornell Tech, where she works on the law and politics of technology. Prior to coming to New York, Powles was a postdoctoral fellow in law and computer science at the University of Cambridge, a policy fellow and contributing editor at The Guardian newspaper, and speechwriter for the Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization. She has worked as a lawyer, scientific researcher, and clerked in the Federal Court of Australia and Commonwealth Administrative Appeal Tribunal, working on technology, intellectual property, and national security cases.

This program is supported, in part, by Greenwich Collection, Ltd., National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Council District 34; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

6:30–8pm

Twitter

Facebook

Copy link

Participating Residents

Paolo Cirio

Paolo Cirio, Obscurity, 2016, inkjet prints and video, dimensions variable. Installation view of 'Concrete Truth: Art and the Documentary'. Photo by Martin Parsekian

Video Documentation of the Conversation

Current and Upcoming Events & Exhibitions

Somewhere Inside: ISCP and the Studio

Through January 20

Exhibition

Sujin Lim: The Land, Dark and Muddy

Through February 7

Exhibition

Exhibition
December 5, 2017–February 16, 2018

Re-Re-positioning the Present

Re-Re-positioning the Present is an exhibition curated by ISCP alumna Hsiang-Ning Huang in ISCP’s Project Space, featuring work by the contemporary Taiwanese artist known as “Shake.” The exhibition aims to address the complex political reality of Taiwan, historically located on the boundaries of different empires.

During a half century of Japanese colonization from 1895-1945, Taiwan served as a base for Japan, and place to maneuver to the south. After the end of World War II, the exiled government from China took over Taiwan. During the Cold War, Taiwan became part of the frontier for the US to fend off Communist powers. As neoliberalism has arisen, the empire assumes yet another new face.

Shake’s work draws from a variety of sources such as historical archives, poetry and personal memoirs, and tries to reach identity, territorial, cultural and institutional issues. Re-Re-positioning the Present features a series of video installations collected under the title The Subduction Zone, where Shake employs unique Taiwanese topography as a metaphor to represent the island’s geopolitical history and present condition, using a mesmerizing depiction of tectonic plates, as well as archives, poems, and military songs sung in schools. In An Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier, the main materials will be archives and personal writings from the post-WWII period to the Cold War period. The project aims to represent the conflicts and ruptures that occurred during the process of redefining the imperial boundaries. In addition to presenting a comprehensive picture of the historical and legal context with the archives, it also examines life experiences on the island of Taiwan through personal writings as well as how these experiences have formed and changed being contained and excluded by the Empire.

Cinematic writing (écriture cinématographique), is the initial creative approach that inspired Shake’s work. Her creation tries to address mythic, identity, territorial, cultural and institutional issues. Therefore, in her work, she often mixes heterogeneous elements, or adopts a kind of translated context, and responds to or reroutes the rigid system or the value and cognition of cultural symbols which have been shaped by history, society, mass media and individuals. Meanwhile, so as to resist rigid film language, in addition to filming as the only manner, she also tries to work with other mediums and expressive formats to expand beyond institutional film methods of representation.

Hsiang-Ning Huang (born 1982, Taipei) is a curator and a member of tamtamART Taipei, and currently works at MoCA Taipei. Her recent curatorial projects include Rosa’s Wound, MoCA Taipei, 2017; The Moment that Comes is about to Go, MoCA Taipei, 2016; Invading Heterotopia, a two-night projection in a historical area facing the crisis of urban renovation; and It’s not a REAL film, 2014. Huang’s work focuses on the intersection of aesthetics and politics in contemporary art; in other words, the engagement of art in the political realm, providing a critical perspective on social realities and proposing an imagination towards a better future. Huang was a resident at ISCP in 2016.

This program is supported, in part, by New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; Ministry of Culture, Republic of China (Taiwan); and Taipei Cultural Center in New York.

Download Press Release

Twitter

Facebook

Copy link

Participating Residents

Hsiang-Ning Huang

Shake, The Subduction Zone Series, Our Status Quo, (video still), 2016, FHD video installation with surround sound and color, 4 min, 5 sec. Courtesy of the artist

Current and Upcoming Events & Exhibitions

Somewhere Inside: ISCP and the Studio

Through January 20

Exhibition

Sujin Lim: The Land, Dark and Muddy

Through February 7

Exhibition

ISCP Talk
November 28, 2017, 6:30–8pm

Amigxs: Zine Launch and Readings

Camilo Godoy has invited Ella Boureau, Susie Day, Michael Funk, Jorge Sánchez, Pamela Sneed, and Aldrin Valdez for a reading at ISCP in conjunction with the artist’s billboard and zine Amigxs.

Ella Boureau is a New York City based playwright, director, essayist, and short-story writer, as well as the Awards Coordinator for Lambda Literary Foundation. She founded and ran the online magazine and reading series In the Flesh for several years. Her writing has been featured in Guernica, Tin House, Slice Magazine, and Full Stop and her first play, Helps to Hate You a Little: A Lovestory, debuted at Cloud City in 2016.

Susie Day has written political satire and covered prison issues (non-satirically) for a variety of publications such as Gay City News, Monthly Review, Truthout, Sinister Wisdom, and The Advocate. Some of her work is collected in her book, Snidelines: Talking Trash to Power (Abingdon Square Publishing, 2014). She lives in Washington Heights with her cuter-half, Laura Whitehorn and two mentally unstable cats.

Mike Funk is a writer who draws. He lives in Brooklyn, New York and makes comics, music and time for his cat.

Camilo Godoy was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and is based in New York. He is a graduate of The New School with a BFA from Parsons School of Design, 2012; and a BA from Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, 2013. Godoy was a 2015–2017 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence; 2014 Keyholder Resident, Lower East Side Printshop; 2014 Hemispheric New York Emerging Performers Program Fellow, The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics; and 2012 Queer Art Mentorship Fellow. His work has been presented at venues such as La Mama Galleria, New York; Movement Research at the Judson Church, New York; Donaufestival, Krems; and Mousonturm, Frankfurt among others.

Jorge Sanchez is a poet and attorney from Caguas, Puerto Rico and self described “maricón.” He lives in Newark, New Jersey and his writings have been recently published in Rhizome magazine in collaboration with Printed Web and at ElInstituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, among others.

Pamela Sneed is a New York–based poet, writer and performer. She is author of Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom Than Slavery, KONG and Other Works and a chaplet, Gift by Belladonna. She has been featured in The New Yorker, Time Out, Bomb, VIBE, and on the cover of New York Magazine. She has appeared in Artforum, HuffPost and Hyperallergic. Her forthcoming chapbook, Sweet Dreams, will be published by Belladonna Publishing in 2018.

Aldrin Valdez is a Pinoy visual artist and writer. Their first full-length collection of poems will be published by Nightboat Books in 2018.

This program is made possible through the generous support of The New York Community Trust Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

6:30–8pm

Twitter

Facebook

Copy link