Thu, May 29, 2008
7:00 PM

(directions)

Night School Public Seminar 5: Okwui Enwezor, The Politics of Spectacle

Part of Night School, Museum as Hub
 
Discussions, Film / Video

Night School Public Seminar 5: Okwui Enwezor, The Politics of Spectacle
Screening: Le fond de l’air est rouge (The Grin Without a Cat), 1977
Director: Chris Marker, Running time: 180 min

A Grin Without a Cat is Chris Marker's epic film essay on the worldwide political wars of the 1960s and ‘70s: Vietnam, Bolivia, May '68, Prague, Chile, and the fate of the New Left. From 1967—the year Marker argues was the key turning point—the film is a sweeping, global contemplation of a defining ten years’ political history.

Described by Marker as "scenes of the Third World War," the film is divided into two parts, each weaving together two strands:

Part 1: Fragile Hands
1. From Vietnam to Che's death
2. May 1968 and all that

Part 2: Severed Hands
1. From the Spring in Prague to the Common Program of Government in France
2. From Chile—to what?

Released in France in 1978, the film was restored and "re-actualized" by Marker fifteen years later (after the fall of the Soviet Union).

Night School is an artist's project by Anton Vidokle in the form of a temporary school. A yearlong program of monthly seminars and workshops, Night School draws upon a group of local and international artists, writers, and theorists to conceptualize and conduct the program. This month’s seminar is conceived by Okwui Enwezor.

*This event is free, but tickets are required.

Sponsors TOP

Night School is a program of the Museum as Hub, which is made possible by the Third Millennium Foundation.

With additional generous support from Metlife Foundation

Additional support is provided by the Asian Cultural Council, National Endowment for the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Endowment support is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Skadden, Arps Education Programs Fund, and the William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for Education Programs at the New Museum.

Profiles TOP

Okwui Enwezor

Okwui Enwezor is Dean of Academic Affairs and Senior Vice President at San Francisco Art Institute. He is Adjunct Curator at International Center of Photography, New York and previously Adjunct Curator of Contemporary Art, at the Art Institute of Chicago. Enwezor is Artistic Director of the 7th Gwangju Biennale, opening September 2008. He was previously Artistic Director of the 2nd International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Seville, Spain (2005-2007); Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany (1998-2002); and the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale (1996-1998). Enwezor has organized numerous exhibitions around the world, including “The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994”; “In/Sight: African Photographers, 1940-Present”; “Global Conceptualism”; and most recently “Archive Fever: Photography Between History and the Document.”

Enwezor is founder and editor of the critical art journal Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. As a writer, critic, and editor, Enwezor has been a regular contributor to numerous exhibition catalogues, anthologies, and journals including: Third Text, Documents, Texte zur Kunst, Grand Street, Parkett, Artforum, Frieze, Art Journal, Research In African Literatures, and others. Enwezor has published several books including Reading the Contemporary: African Art, from Theory to the Marketplace co-edited with Olu Oguibe; Mega Exhibitions: Antinomies of a Transnational Global Form and the four-volume publication of Documenta11Platforms: Democracy Unrealized; Experiments with Truth: Transitional Justice and the Processes of Truth and Reconciliation; Creolité and Creolization; Under Seige: Four African Cities, Freetown, Johanneburg, Kinshasa, Lagos. He is co-editor of Modernity and Contemporaneity: Antinomies of Art and Culture after 20th Century, and is currently completing two books: The Postcolonial Constellation: Contemporary Art and the Global Stage and Archaeology of the Present: The Postcolonial Archive, Photography and African Modernity. Enwezor lives and works in New York and San Francisco.