Conference: The Artist as Activist (Museum of Modern Art, New York; June 4, 2015)

post presents: The Artist as Activist

Artists can be activists but can art be activism? Coco Fusco, Oleksiy Radynski, and Ram Rahman—artists who have all engaged with activist practices—will discuss relations between art and politics in Cuba, Ukraine, and India.

Thursday, June 4
6:30 p.m.
The MoMA Library
The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building
4 West 54 Street (between Fifth and Sixth avenues)
New York, NY 10019

Admission is free with your RSVP. However, space is limited and seating will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis. Please arrive early to be guaranteed a seat. RSVP to contact_c-map@moma.org

Ram Rahman is a photojournalist, artist, curator, designer, and activist, and co-founder of the Sahmat Collective. Sahmat is an acronym for the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust and the Hindi word for “in agreement.” The Sahmat Collective was founded in 1989 in response to the murder of the political activist, actor, playwright, and poet Safdar Hashmi, during one of his street theater performances. The collective is a platform for exchanging ideas and voicing resistance.

Oleksiy Radynski is a filmmaker and writer based in Kyiv. His latest films include Incident in the Museum and Integration. Radynski is a member of Visual Culture Research Center, an initiative for art, knowledge, and politics founded in Kyiv in 2008. Since 2011, he has been an editor of the Ukrainian edition of Political Critique magazine. His texts have recently been published in e-flux journal and in the books Soviet Modernism 1955–1991: Unknown Stories; Post-Post-Soviet?: Art, Politics and Society in Russia at the Turn of Decade; and Sweet Sixties: Specters and Spirits of a Parallel Avant-Garde.

Coco Fusco is an interdisciplinary artist and writer who combines performance and media in a variety of formats. Her work has been included in various biennials, including the current Venice Biennale, and has been presented at The Museum of Modern Art, Tate Liverpool, The Walker Art Center, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, among others. Fusco is the author of English Is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas, The Bodies That Were Not Ours and Other Writings, and A Field Guide for Female Interrogators. She is also the editor of Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas, and Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self. She is currently working on a new book entitled Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba.

post is an online platform developed by The Museum of Modern Art, and managed with an international network of partners and contributors. It was launched in February 2013 with the aim of publishing research resources and artistic projects that engage with narratives falling outside art history’s familiar accounts. Broadening the scope of MoMA’s collection and exhibitions, post explores experimental practices in Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

post grows out of Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (C-MAP), a cross-departmental research program begun in 2009 at MoMA to facilitate a museum-wide study that reflects the multiplicity of modernities and histories of contemporary and modern art.

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