On- Campus

Just a week after the second anniversary of Hurricane Maria hitting Puerto, Marcela Guerrero, the assistant curator at the Whitney Museum, presented What Blackouts Illuminate in Kresge Auditorium to a crowd of sixty, including students, faculty and members from the Brunswick community.

What happens when an island loses power for 170 days? Guerrero began her talk with a video addressing the discrepancy of blackouts depending on the relative socioeconomic conditions of the community which is being hit with a blackout. She compared Hurricane Harvey in Texas, where power was restored after eleven days, to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, where after 170 days power was just beginning to return to pre-blackout levels. Without electricity, you can’t refrigerate your food. Without electricity, you can’t use electronic banking. Without electricity, you can’t preserve vital medicines that are temperature sensitive.

Using a variety of art pieces to highlight the detrimental effects of the blackout on the population, Guerrero brought in material crafted by Puerto Rican artists. Some notable artists include: Torres-Ferrer, Allora and Calzadilla. Their work is exhibited in Puerto Rico and throughout the United States, including the Whitney Museum, diversifying the gallery space by displaying art from a traditionally underrepresented population. Guerrero herself is Puerto Rican and is contributing to this paradigm shift in the art world through her profession.

Guerrero also addressed the dynamic between art and resistance by speaking to the recent shift in the Puerto Rican government as a result of festive protests after leaked documents revealed that corruption contributed to the delayed return of power. During the blackout, Puerto Ricans effectively took governance into their own hands and became their own first response teams. At the same time, President Trump was accusing the Puerto Rican people of “asking for too much,” despite the status of Puerto Rico as a tax-paying territory subject to American aid. Puerto Ricans took to the streets at night with lights, dancing, yoga, motor cycles, and even scuba diving, ousting Governor Ricardo Rossello, who had been in power.

Despite the tragedy Hurricane Maria brought to Puerto Rico, they found unity in the struggle. In their perseverance, their hope became a beacon of light in the darkness.

February 12, 2018 | 4:15 PM – 5:30 PM | Hubbard Hall, Thomas F. Shannon Room [208]

The Trump White House promised “deconstruction of the administrative state”. But what does that mean? Is it happening? In this talk, Professor David E. Lewis of Vanderbilt University will assess President Trump’s approach to managing the executive branch during his first year in office, including his appointments (and vacancies); his organizational initiatives; and the interaction of political appointees and civil servants as the White House seeks to control the wider bureaucracy.

Lewis is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. An expert on the presidency, executive branch organization, and the US civil service, Lewis is the author, most recently, of The Politics of Presidential Appointments: Political Control and Bureaucratic Performance (Princeton University Press) and winner of the Herbert Simon Award for contributions to the scientific study of the bureaucracy. Before joining Vanderbilt, he taught at Princeton University and the College of William and Mary. Lewis currently serves as the president of the Southern Political Science Association and of the Midwest Public Administration Caucus.

Sponsored by the Department of Government & Legal Studies with support from the John C. Donovan Lecture Fund.

Free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be provided.

February 5, 2018 | 4:30 PM – 5:30 PM | Visual Arts Center, Beam Classroom

Ashley Ferro-Murray will discuss how certain trends in the history of the relationship between “technology” and “dance” impact her work as a curator of dance and theater at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), a multi-venue arts center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. From this historical perspective, Ferro-Murray will discuss a range of current curatorial projects including her work with Trajal Harrel, Maria Hassabi, Ali Moini, Okwui Okpokwasili, and Andrew Schneider. She will reflect on what she sees as the current and evolving state of incorporating digital culture into cross-disciplinary performance, including film and installation works, through the lens of her curatorial work with these and other artists.

Ferro-Murray is associate curator of theater/dance at EMPAC. She holds a PhD in performance studies with emphasis in new media from the University of California, Berkeley. Current commissions and coproductions include works by Mary Armentrout, Mallory Catlett, Elena Demyanenko and Erika Mijlin, Trajal Harrell, Maria Hassabi, Ali Moini, Andrew Schneider and Alice Sheppard.

She is also currently working on a book project titled Choreography and the Digital Era: Dancing the Cultural Differences of Technology. Based in part on her doctoral research and informed by her current curatorial practice, Choreography in the Digital Era explores the importance of movement in the construction of bodies and identity in the digital age. She has published in Media-N Journal, The Drama Review, and Dance Research Journal. Recent articles include ‘Transborder Immigrant Tool’, ‘Choreographic Resistance in the US-Mexican Borderlands and Technologies of Performance’, and ‘Machinic Staging and Corporeal Choreographies’. Ferro-Murray has given talks at University of California, Irvine, The University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr College, Cornell University, and Bowdoin. She was previously the Andrew W. Mellon Creative Time Global Fellow and the recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Grant. This summer Ferro-Murray will be on faculty of the NEH Institute for Digital Technologies in Theatre & Performance Studies at the University of Georgia.

Lecture sponsored by Digital and Computational Studies (DCS).