Past Events – The Centre for Art and Politics

PATH TO INSURRECTION

Post author By dg87
Post date Tuesday November 5, 2024

Path to Insurrection is a visual journey by award
winning, street photographer Chris Suspect, whose
work follows the destabilising political situation in the
U.S. that culminated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol
on 6 January 2021. Based in Washington, D.C.,
Suspect witnessed the many events and more than
four years of protest that transformed the streets and
many lives in this capital city. Suspect will discuss this
project and others including Truly Blessed, and his
current project on the Day of the Dead (Dia de los
Muertos) in Mexico City. In 2022, Suspect was named
the winner of the Zeitgeist Award from Abbey Road
Studios in London, and his work has been shown
around the world and used by media outlets from
CNN to Forbes, and from the Washington Post to The
Atlantic. Suspect and Centre for Art and Politics
Director, Jeffrey Murer, will discuss the importance of
street photography, photojournalism, and the ethics
and obligations of witnessing history and being
among crowds with whom one may or may not have
an affinity. Please join us Thursday 7 November 5pm.

Film Screening

Horizon Blosom

Post author By dg87
Post date Thursday May 16, 2024

Anna Torres and Michael Alpert

Horizons Blosom

Conversation with Dr Jeffrey Stevenson Murer, Director of the Centre for Art and Politics with conversational and musical contributions from Michael Alpert.

Dr Anna Elena Torres is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago in the departments of Comparative Literature and Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity. Torres is the author of Horizons Blossom, Borders Vanish: Anarchism and Yiddish Literature (Yale University Press) and co-editor of With Freedom in Our Ears: Histories of Jewish Anarchism (University of Illinois Press).

Michael Alpert has been a pioneering figure in the renaissance of East European Jewish music and Yiddish culture since the 1970s, and is the recipient of a 2015 National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts — the USA’s highest honor for traditional and heritage artists. He is internationally known for his award-winning performances and recordings with Brave Old World, David Krakauer, Itzhak Perlman, Theodore Bikel, Andy Statman, Daniel Kahn, Frank London and others.

Click the link to watch a full recording of the event and music…..

Film Screening

Oqlanmagan – The Unexonerated – Film screening and Q&A session

Post author By dg87
Post date Friday April 5, 2024

In the 1990s, Uzbekistan’s first president Islam Karimov arrested tens of thousands of practising Muslims, imams, and citizens engaged in Islamic study groups, forcing them to sign pre-written confessions that led to decades in prison on terrorism and treason charges.

Following Karimov’s death in 2016, his successor, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, acknowledged for the first time the existence of a blacklist against former prisoners, their social contacts and extended family. Oqlanmagan — The Unexonerated, a documentary sponsored by the Oxus Society, is one of the first attempts to tell the story of more than 18,000 people formerly designated as “extremists” by the Karimov government.

This event will feature a screening of the film followed by a discussion with Noah Tucker, Oxus Society senior researcher and the film’s producer, and Emina Umarov, a researcher whose family lived through the Karimov repression and the prison system before receiving asylum in the United States.

“Ukraine Week” in St Andrews

Post author By dg87
Post date Friday March 29, 2024

2024 marks 10 years since the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine. In recognition of this dark anniversary, join us for a programme of cultural events that reflect on Ukraine’s cultural and environmental heritage and celebrate its activist cultures. The programme is kindly supported by the Centre for Global (Post-)socialisms and the Centre for Art and Politics. We would appreciate it if you could publicise the programme around your networks and lists.

2 April 12-2pm: Self-Documentation and Community Archives Workshop, Buchanan Building 312

This workshop brings together researchers working on documentary practice, activist preservation, community & family archiving, and digital resilience in Ukraine and beyond. Participants will share findings and challenges from their work, inviting discussion of the practices and ethics of self-documentation and archival resistance to erasure.

3 April 6.30-8pm: ‘Energised Ukraine: Art in Precarious Times’ Byre World Talk, Byre Theatre

Hosted by Viktoriia Grivina and Kateryna Volochniuk in conversation with Ukrainian photographer Igor Chekachkov, this Byre World talk will look at the way Ukrainian artists have engaged the country’s vast energy landscapes in their work and ask what it means to make art when the infrastructure of the city you live in is crumbling and blackouts are changing daily routines and habits. Igor Chekachkov will present his own documentary work and offer reflections on the practice of photography in wartime conditions.

4 April 2-4pm: A Celebration of Ukrainian Cultures, Sandy’s Bar, Student Union

Marking the 10^th anniversary of Russia’s war against Ukraine, we come together to celebrate Ukraine’s cultural diversity, which continues to inspire artists, filmmakers, thinkers, and activists even in the most difficult conditions of terrorism and military aggression. Join us for food, drink, music, film, art, literary readings and more.

Film Screening

Horizons Blossom, Borders Vanish: Anarchism and Yiddish Literature With Dr Anna Elena Torres

Post author By dg87
Post date Tuesday March 19, 2024

Dr Anna Elena Torres will read from her latest book Horizons Blossom, Borders Vanish: Anarchism and Yiddish Literature, in a conversation with Dr Jeffrey Stevenson Murer, Director of the Centre for Art and Politics with conversational and musical contributions from Michael Alpert.

Dr Anna Elena Torres is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago in the departments of Comparative Literature and Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity. Torres is the author of Horizons Blossom, Borders Vanish: Anarchism and Yiddish Literature (Yale University Press) and co-editor of With Freedom in Our Ears: Histories of Jewish Anarchism (University of Illinois Press).

Michael Alpert has been a pioneering figure in the renaissance of East European Jewish music and Yiddish culture since the 1970s, and is the recipient of a 2015 National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts — the USA’s highest honor for traditional and heritage artists. He is internationally known for his award-winning performances and recordings with Brave Old World, David Krakauer, Itzhak Perlman, Theodore Bikel, Andy Statman, Daniel Kahn, Frank London and others.

Film Screening

Post author By dg87
Post date Friday March 15, 2024

Maré from the Inside: Race, Gender and Utopia in Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas

Film Screening

Maré from the Inside: Race, Gender and Utopia in Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas – Arts/Photo Exhibit – Guided Tours Friday 15.03 and Monday 18.03 at 3.30pm

Post author By dg87
Post date Friday March 15, 2024

Maré from the Inside: Race, Gender and Utopia in Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas
Maré from the Inside is an interactive multi-media exhibit developed by artists, activists, and academics from Complexo da Maré, a group of 16 contiguous favelas (informal and marginalised neighbourhoods) in Rio de Janeiro. The exhibit’s photographs, films, and texts present Maré and its residents in all their vibrancy, diversity, and contradictions. In so doing, the collaborative project leverages art’s pedagogical potential to contribute to a more nuanced public understanding of favelas. The favela, after all, is both a product of the structural forces of slavery, colonialism, and capitalism, as well as a geography of resistance in which Black, Indigenous, and other marginalised Brazilian communities have refused to be overdetermined by these interlocking systems of oppression. From this perspective, favelas are also an ongoing project, a desire for utopia, and a dream.

When and Where
Maré from the Inside will be located on the ground and first floors of the Theatre Arts Building from March 15th until May 25th.
Guided tours (starting in Arts Lecture Foyer):
Friday, March 15th: 3:30pm — 5pm (followed by a catered reception)
Monday, March 18th: 3:30pm — 5pm

Film Screening

Q&A with Dr Castelloe and Professor Vamik Volkan

Post author By dg87
Post date Tuesday November 28, 2023

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/40aag_VCKtzY8PHYOH5IeTi2cJqyF8Z8UGBGm4NWIphiAg3sSsASGjRBOBG9cIKn.rMkkmiIj861dzmkF

Film Screening

‘All. Rights. Matter.’Centre for Art and Politics Seminar

Post author By dg87
Post date Monday September 18, 2023

Thursday 21 September 20234:00pm to 5:30pmSchool II, St Salvator’s Quad, School II

‘Leilah Babiyre made and exhibited the installation ‘I care about you’ (2016) during the ARTWORK AT KAMPALA Exhibition hosted at Makerere University in 2016. She used this work to publicly declare that she was gay (something that costed her admission for graduate training in 2018). She is currently exiled in the USA. In the presentation, I shall raise issues of art, politics and law to speak about Babirye’s work, mine and that of two others Sheila Nakitende and Mzili Mujunga. These are the few visual artists who have dared to speak about gay rights in Uganda.’

Dr Angelo Kakande (Associate Professor, Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts, Makerere University, Uganda) is visiting the School of Art History in September 2023 as part of his 2023-2024 Global Fellowship at the University of St Andrews. Dr Kakande is an artist, art historian and lawyer, and an expert in histories of modern and contemporary art in East Africa. His artworks and publications have particularly engaged with the ways in which art functions in defense of individual and collective rights. He joins us at St Andrews in connection with Dr Kate Cowcher’s ongoing research project, Dar to Dunoon, investigating the African modern artworks in the Argyll Collection.

Featured Past Events

Art Practices in the Time of War: Ukrainian Artists and Authors Residency

Post author By jwh5
Post date Thursday August 18, 2022

Art Practices in the Time of War: Ukrainian Artists and Authors Residency

18th August 2022

17:00 – 19:00 BST

Online Event

Art Practices in the Times of War: Ukrainian Artists And Authors Residency

NGO Cultural Traffic (Ukraine) and The Centre for Art and Politics at the University of St Andrews invite you to join a roundtable discussion with Ukrainian artists and creative authors who have chosen to stay in Ukraine and continue their creative practices in the country during the war.

In June of 2022, NGO Cultural Traffic organised a series of pop-up residencies for artists and other creatives in the Carpathian Mountains, a relatively safe area in western Ukraine. Organized by Olena Kasperovych, an art curator from Kharkiv, the residencies did not require artists to create any “finished products” (artworks, exhibitions, texts), but instead offered them a space to recuperate artistically, physically and mentally.

At this talk, we have invited the participants of the pop-up residencies in Vyzhnytsa and Creative Rural Hub to reflect on their art and working process in the times of war. They will discuss how they are processing displacement, grief and a sense of loss through art and text. At the roundtable, we will also open a wider discussion on Ukrainian contemporary art and literature, allowing the audience to ask questions about particular works, creative processes and practices, the challenges and opportunities that arise in our understanding of Ukrainian art life and, finally, what this war means for a wider world of art and culture.