SYMPOSIUM
Saturday, May 31 - 5 pm
See Something, Say Something: Strategies of Counter-Surveillance
The Whitney Independent Study Program at THE KITCHEN
with Karen Beckman, Peter Galison, Thomas Y. Levin, and Lin + Lam
moderated by Yates McKee
In conjunction with the exhibition For Reasons of State, guest curators
Angelique Campens, Erica Cooke, and Steven Lam will hold a panel
discussion on the impact of governmental and corporate secrecy on life
in our contemporary society and its manifestations in visual culture.
The phrase “See Something, Say Something,” spreads the logic that
citizens will benefit from policing each other. This panel, however,
extends accountability beyond the gaze of the citizen-spy to also
include the state. Who is responsible for withholding and distributing
information? What type of information becomes de/classified? How can we
take (more) control of our public access to knowledge?
Biographies:
Karen Beckman is the Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Associate Professor in the
History of Art department at the University of Pennsylvania, where she
is also the director of Cinema Studies. She is the author of Vanishing
Women: Magic, Film and Feminism (2003), and is co-editor with Jean Ma
of Still Moving: Between Cinema and Photography (forthcoming 2008). She
is currently completing "Little Bastard": Car Crashes, Cinema, and the
Politics of Speed and Stasis (also forthcoming), and she is one of the
editors of the journal Grey Room.
Peter Galison is the Joseph Pellegrino University Professor of the
History of Science and of Physics at Harvard University. He has worked
extensively with de-classified material in his studies of physics in
the Cold War, including his 2008 film Secrecy (co-directed with Robb
Moss). He has also written several books, including his most recent
Objectivity (with L. Daston, 2007), contributed to the exhibition
catalogue for Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy (2005) and
co-curated Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion and
Art (2002) at ZKM, Germany.
Thomas Y Levin is a Princeton professor of media and cultural theory
who has organized numerous exhibitions and conferences related to his
continued research of the aesthetic politics of surveillance. The
editor and translator of Siegfried Kracauer's The Mass Ornament, he
most recently co-edited a volume of essays by Walter Benjamin entitled
The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility and
other Writings on Media.
Lin + Lam (Lin plus Lam) produce interdisciplinary projects that
examine the ramifications of the past for the current socio-political
moment. Informed by documentary and experimental cinema, Lana Lin's
films interpret different cultural contexts, raising questions about
the politics of translation and the processes of identification.
Trained in architecture, H. Lan Thao Lam uses photography, sculpture,
and installation to probe the construction of history and lived places.
Their collaborative work has been exhibited in international venues
including the Museum of Modern Art, NY, Los Angeles Contemporary
Exhibitions, the China Taipei Film Archive, Creteil International
Women's Film Festival, and the London Film Festival, among others.
Yates McKee is a PhD candidate in Art History at Columbia University,
and associate editor of Nongovernmental Politics (Zone Books 2007). His
work has appeared in venues including October, Grey Room, and the
Journal of Aesthetics and Protest.
"For Reasons of State"
May 16 - June7, 2008
Gallery Talk
Sat. May 24 2 pm
Sat. June 7 2 pm
Gallery Hours
Tuesday-Friday 12-6 pm
Saturday 11-6pm
THE KITCHEN
512 West 19th Street
New York, NY 10011
thekitchen.org
A,C,E to 14th Street (8th Avenue)
L to 8th Avenue (14th Street)
1 to 18th Street (7th Avenue)
