For more information about this campus event please visit: https://www.arch.rpi.edu/2019/10/fall-2019-lecture-series/.

For more information about this campus event please visit: https://www.arch.rpi.edu/2019/10/fall-2019-lecture-series/.

 

For more information about this campus event please visit: https://www.arch.rpi.edu/2019/10/fall-2019-lecture-series/.

This event has been postponed to follow University policies that have been put in place in light of new developments related to the coronavirus.

This event has been postponed to follow University policies that have been put in place in light of new developments related to the coronavirus.

This event has been postponed to follow University policies that have been put in place in light of new developments related to the coronavirus.

This event has been postponed to follow University policies that have been put in place in light of new developments related to the coronavirus.

This event has been postponed to follow University policies that have been put in place in light of new developments related to the coronavirus.

For more information about this campus event please visit: https://www.arch.rpi.edu/2019/10/fall-2019-lecture-series/.

Join EMPAC’s curators for a tour of the building and a behind-the-scenes look at artist Beatriz Santiago Muñoz’s new production. Santiago Muñoz is in residence to film an ensemble of performers in Studio 1 and the Concert Hall for an EMPAC-commissioned video installation that will be premiered in fall 2020.

In this talk, Zackery Belanger will present a new perspective on acoustic architecture and the shapes of spaces – ideas that grew out of innovative approaches in the design and construction of EMPAC’s studios and venues.

The design of EMPAC challenged its acoustics consultants to venture into unknown territory. The results turned out to be excellent, which is a rare occurrence with radical new approaches in acoustics. The fabric acoustic ceiling throughout the concert hall is the only ceiling of such light material in the world, and the acoustic panels covering the walls of the two large studios work miraculously without a scientific explanation of the acoustic perception experienced by artists, engineers, and audiences. This talk will be presented in Studio 2 allowing for an auditory experience of its design.

Belanger was a member of EMPAC’s acoustic design team with Kirkegaard Associates. In collaboration with Grimshaw Architects he mathematically designed and modeled the panels for the studios. After the completion of EMPAC, he stepped back from consulting and enrolled in the Program in Architectural Acoustics in Rensselaer’s School of Architecture. There, and as a Researcher-in-Residence at EMPAC, he collaborated with EMPAC Director Johannes Goebel to investigate the panels. At a pivotal moment in the work, the panels in Studio 2 were removed row-by-row with measurements taken and analyzed.

Every aspect of a space – its dimensions, surfaces, materials, ornament, furniture, objects, and occupants – combines to yield its acoustic character. Unfortunately, rooms are not yet designed this way, and acoustics remains a realm of extraneous materials and surfaces to be added (or avoided) in the designed environment. Belanger’s design work, research, and experiments point to a radical new perspective: an accessible, shared parameter – the geometry of physical spaces – is proposed as a catalyst for the integration of acoustics into architecture.

The push for LGBTQ state recognition, civil rights, and cultural visibility has been accompanied by a push for the recording and preservation of LGBTQ history as an epistemic right. Carleton University professor Ann Cvetkovich will address the recent proliferation of LGBTQ archives as a point of departure for a broader inquiry into the power of archives to transform public histories. These new LGBTQ archival projects must respond to historical and theoretical critiques, including decolonization, that represent archives as forms of epistemological domination and surveillance or as guided by an impossible desire for stable knowledge.

Drawing on the work of Tammy Rae Carland, Ulrike Mueller, Kent Monkman, and others, Cvetkovich’s talk will focus on how artists use creative and queer approaches to archives that are simultaneously critical and transformative. Their experiments in archival preservation and innovative media practices grapple with the materiality of the archive in order to reveal its ephemeral and affective dimensions.

Ann Cvetkovich is Director of the Pauline Jewett Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies at Carleton University. She is the author of Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian Sensationalism; An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures; and Depression: A Public Feeling. She is currently writing a book about the state of LGBTQ archives and their creative use by artists to produce counterarchives and interventions in public history.

A conversation with Ileana Ramírez Romero, director of Tráfico Visual. This informal discussion on the Venezuelan and Latin American cultural scene will be led by curator Vic Brooks.

In 2009, Ramírez founded Tráfico Visual, a digital platform for contemporary art. The platform is dedicated to the dissemination of content linked to contemporary art and the Venezuelan and Latin American cultural scene. Currently, Tráfico Visual is a contributor to Publishing Against the Grain, a traveling exhibition organized by Independent Curators International (ICI), and in fall 2019 is participating in El Revés de la Trama, 45th Salón Nacional de Artistas, Bogotá.

As Director of Programs at Fundación Cisneros in Caracas, Ramírez directed the Fundación Cisneros Seminar 2017-19. The Seminar is held in Caracas, Venezuela, and was created in 2011 to encourage the multidisciplinary study of culture and modern and contemporary art in Latin America. The seventh edition Disruptions: Dilemmas Regarding the Image in Contemporaneity was conceptualized and presented by Ramírez in 2018. She has also promoted educational projects and initiatives such as the artists residency program in Caracas and the Art in Context talks series.

Light refreshments will be provided.

Ramirez earned a degree in law from Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB) but her affinity to visual culture and arts led her to develop an extensive professional career in the art scene. She was Coordinator of Programming at Centro de Arte Los Galpones and Coordinator of Exhibitions at Sala Mendoza. At the end of 2017, with the cultural office of the Spanish Embassy in Venezuela, Ramírez organized the Seminario de Crítica de Arte. Ramírez has organized numerous interviews and meetings between individuals in the local and international artistic communities.

Drawing upon the relationship of Black Pentecostalism to performance studies, as well as the relationship of quantum mechanics to the human experiences of loneliness and love, Ashon Crawley will present a lecture on his action painting practice as well as performative modes of breath, including shouting, noise, and speaking in tongues.

Ashon Crawley is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies, African American, and African Studies at the University of Virginia. He is author of Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility (Fordham University Press), an investigation of aesthetics and performance as modes of collective, social imagination, as well as the forthcoming book, The Lonely Letters, an exploration of the interrelation of blackness, mysticism, quantum mechanics and love. All of his work is about otherwise possibility.

Choreographer Sydney Skybetter will present his research on the intersections of gesture, dance history, computer science, and homeland security. With case studies of the Snowden leaks, Facebook’s Oculus platform, the film Minority Report, and early motion capture research conducted with choreographers Merce Cunningham and Bill T. Jones, Skybetter will sketch a vision of the evolution of contemporary surveillance technologies undergirded by dance theory and choreographic method.

Sydney Skybetter is a choreographer, dance scholar, and founder of the Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces (CRCI), a convening of performing artists, arts professionals, ethnographers, anthropologists, and speculative designers. As lecturer at Brown University, Skybetter’s research explores the choreographics of human-computer interfaces and mixed reality systems. He has lectured at Harvard University, Saatchi, and MIT, among other institutions, across the subjects of dance and dance history to cultural futurism and computer-human interfaces.