Public Trust / Slought

Join us at Slought for There Are Many Ways To Make a Clearing, a free program this Friday, December 1, 2023 from 4-6pm. The event will feature a presentation by artist and educator Jennifer Harge and a conversation with Assistant Professor of Africana Studies Jasmine Johnson about freedom-making strategies from a Black q***r feminist perspective. Presented in partnership with the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania.

Jennifer Harge will present her ongoing archival project, There Are Many Ways To Make a Clearing, that houses movement scores, maps, prayers, and citations she's utilized over the last decade to craft a Black q***r feminist creative praxis as a dancemaker in Detroit, MI. In this presentation, Harge will share choreographic entry points into the archive and discuss the permissions she has given herself and her work to build a practice rooted in Black longevity.

Learn more at: https://publictrust.org/make-a-clearing

Slought and the Department of Francophone, Italian, and Germanic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania are pleased to announce "Ketahanan Kota / Urban Resilience" on Thursday, November 16, 2023 from 6-8pm. This event, free and open to the public, will feature Ahmad Khairudin (Adin) and Sinta Penyami Storms in conversation about the art of climate resilience in Semarang and Philadelphia, and will be moderated by Simon Richter, Professor and chair of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania.

When it comes to investing in climate adaptation, vulnerable communities are often last on the list. To the extent that municipal, state and federal governments acknowledge the need to build protective infrastructure, they choose to protect assets and property on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis. Unsurprisingly, industries and wealthier regions come out on top while lower-income and frontline neighborhoods are left to fend for themselves. In situations like these, the concept of resilience is often invoked. It recognizes a genuine capacity of communities to adapt locally and to practice mutual support, even as it glosses over governmental neglect. As the threats and impacts of climate change multiply and expand, how can communities and neighborhoods, thrown on their own resources, improve their resilience in the sense that they raise their profile and increase their political agency? Where governments fail and residents struggle, can socially engaged artists help them connect in productive ways?

Join Adin, director of Kolektif Hysteria in Semarang, Indonesia (a coastal city about the size of Philadelphia), and Sinta Penyami Storms, Philadelphia-based community artist and organizer, for a conversation on the arts of resilience in Indonesian and Indonesian diasporic communities. Both Adin and Sinta are known for their ability to leverage the arts to create broad coalitions and involve communities in processes of self-representation that raise awareness and increase resilience that involve the youth.

Learn more at: https://slought.org/resources/ketahanan_kota

Image: Mural by Brebes Art Dictive in Tambakrejo, from Grobak Hysteria's Penta K Lab 4 “Turning to the Sea” festival

Slought and the Departments of Cinema & Media Studies and Francophone, Italian, & Germanic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania are pleased to announce Performative Opacity, a public conversation with scholars Ian Fleishman and Iggy Cortez, introduced by Meta Mazaj, about stardom and screen performance in the work of Isabelle Huppert. The program, free and open to the public, will take place at Slought on Monday, November 13, 2023 from 6-8pm.

With a corpus of well over a hundred films, Huppert is a singular French actor who offers a unique testing ground for current approaches in film studies and affect studies. Attention to Huppert's performances can reframe recent discussions on the social and cultural dimensions of emotion through a compelling paradox. Her roles tend to express grandiose and overwhelming conditions central to debates in the humanities—negativity, dispossession, trauma—but through elusive or resistant forms of expression: what J. Hoberman once called her "genius to distinguish varieties of blankness."

In their recent volume, Performative Opacity in the Work of Isabelle Huppert (2023), editors Ian Fleishman and Iggy Cortez, together with a variety of scholarly contributors, survey Huppert's corporeal bearing, her repertoire of gestural and emotional expressions, the affective attributes and orientations she signifies – they also take her work as an invitation for sustained reflection on the aesthetic, political and even philosophical questions it raises. Her affective disposition towards abject, aberrant, or discordant characters approaches the darker recesses of the psyche. Depravity, dispossession and trauma come to light in the microeconomy of a grimace, through subtle vocal modulations, and in the stillness of expressions that, when held in a long-take close-up, register almost imperceptible psychic movements and inflections.

Learn more at: https://slought.org/resources/performative_opacity

Slought and the Departments of Cinema & Media Studies and Francophone, Italian, & Germanic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania are pleased to announce Pour la France | For My Country, a film screening and discussion with director, Rachid Hami about faith, homeland, and integration. The program, free and open to the public, will take place at Slought this Thursday November 2, 2023 from 6-8:30pm.

In Pour la France | For My Country, Aissa Saïdi (Shain Boumedine), a young officer of Algerian origins, tragically loses his life during an initiation ritual at the prestigious French military academy of Saint-Cyr. His death rips his family apart as controversy arises over Aissa's funeral plans when the Army refuses to take responsibility. Ismaël (Karim Leklou), his older, rebellious brother, tries to keep the family united as they fight to win justice for Aissa. The film's narrative is built around the story of the Saïdi family, ever since Nadia (Lubna Azabal), the mother of Aissa and Ismaël, left her native Algeria and her husband behind, to move to France with her young boys. For My Country is a searing drama on social and racial injustices, offering an insightful perspective on what it means to be a European citizen with Arab roots and how this multi-layered identity affects the lives of each family member differently.

With nationalism gaining ground in France, Pour la France | For My Country challenges the many clichés that plague public debate and interrupts the cycle of films that present violent, depressing, or exotic stories about immigration and the banlieue. Like many Muslims, the Saïdis celebrate Christmas and feel deeply French without ever denying their roots. They represent the success of integration and the rejection of assimilation. They are complex, nuanced, different from each other, and all refuse the victimization into which they could fall. In this way, Hami offers us a modern image of a French Arab family and weaves together a constellation of themes including family, life and death, and the desire to belong to a country.

Learn more at https://slought.org/resources/for_my_country

Image: Rachid Hami, Film Still from Pour la France (For My Country), 2022

Please join us tomorrow for The Family of Luis and other films, an evening of film screenings by Laurence Salzmann and conversation about visual ethnography and its limits. The program will take place at Slought from 6-9pm and will include screening of excerpts from five documentary films set in Latin America, including The Family of Luis, El Rayo, La Lucha/ Tales of the Inca, and Écheleganas / Do Your Best. These screenings will be followed by a public conversation with the artist in dialogue with Jason Francisco, a photographer and essayist at Emory University, and Yolanda Carbajal Zuniga, a Peruvian scholar. The event is free and open to the public, and light refreshments will be provided. This is among the first of several events celebrating the gift of Salzmann's archive to the University of Pennsylvania's Kislak Center. An exhibit on his work, "A Life with Others," will be on display at the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center until December 4.

The film program will feature images and video that span four countries and six decades, and introduce us to the indigenous Peruvians, Afro-Cuban wrestlers, Mexican farmers and emigrants who whose lives Salzmann sought to document. If they offer an anthropological view into cultures little understood by North Americans, they also testify to Salzmann's relationships with his subjects and his commitment to avoiding didacticism and a documentary aesthetic. Salzmann lived within the communities he depicts in these films for months and at times years, and learned to speak their languages, including Spanish and Quechuan, an indigenous language that has endured since the Incan empire.

Following the screening, Salzmann and his interlocutors, including Yolanda Carbajal Zuniga, an indigenous, Quechuan-speaking collaborator, will explore the challenges of creating art that documents other cultures. How does Salzmann's work both respond to and resist prior historical and anthropological methodologies, which have often reflected a colonizing gaze? How can visual ethnography support and strengthen communities through an ethics of collaboration and a commitment to the preservation of memory and cultural heritage? How can artists prevent the lens of the camera from becoming an instrument of alienation and othering?

Learn more at https://slought.org/resources/the_family_of_luis
Image: Laurence Salzmann, The Family of Luis, Ciudad Juarez Mexico, 1966

Slought is pleased to announce The Family of Luis and other films, an evening of film screenings by Laurence Salzmann and conversation about visual ethnography and its limits. The program will take place at Slought on Friday October 6, 2023 from 6-9pm and will include screening of excerpts from five documentary films set in Latin America, including The Family of Luis, El Rayo, La Lucha/ Tales of the Inca, and Écheleganas / Do Your Best. These screenings will be followed by a public conversation with the artist in dialogue with Jason Francisco, a photographer and essayist at Emory University, and Yolanda Carbajal Zuniga, a Peruvian scholar. The event is free and open to the public, and light refreshments will be provided.

The film program will feature images and video that span four countries and six decades, and introduce us to the indigenous Peruvians, Afro-Cuban wrestlers, Mexican farmers and emigrants who whose lives Salzmann sought to document. If they offer an anthropological view into cultures little understood by North Americans, they also testify to Salzmann's relationships with his subjects and his commitment to avoiding didacticism and a documentary aesthetic. Salzmann lived within the communities he depicts in these films for months and at times years, and learned to speak their languages, including Spanish and Quechuan, an indigenous language that has endured since the Incan empire.

Following the screening, Salzmann and his interlocutors, including Yolanda Carbajal Zuniga, an indigenous, Quechuan-speaking collaborator, will explore the challenges of creating art that documents other cultures. How does Salzmann's work both respond to and resist prior historical and anthropological methodologies, which have often reflected a colonizing gaze? How can visual ethnography support and strengthen communities through an ethics of collaboration and a commitment to the preservation of memory and cultural heritage? How can artists prevent the lens of the camera from becoming an instrument of alienation and othering?

Learn more at https://slought.org/resources/the_family_of_luis

Image: Laurence Salzmann, The Family of Luis, Ciudad Juarez Mexico, 1966

Slought is pleased to announce two new publications celebrating the work of Jackson Mac Low, "The pronouns: a collection of forty dances for the dancers" and "Jackson Mac Low: Between Writing and Performance".

The pronouns: a collection of forty dances for the dancers is an iconic collection of dance-instruction poems from 1964 by performance artist, composer, anarchist-pacifist, and poet Jackson Mac Low, who was famous for employing techniques of "systematic chance" in his writing. Each poem uses one of forty pronouns and a random combination of a limited vocabulary to create a script that one or more dancers interpret, thereby bringing the poem to life differently each time it is read or performed.

In Jackson Mac Low: Between Writing and Performance, an international ensemble of creative artists and scholars of literature, art history, dance and performance, and philosophy illuminate the legacy of the multi- and inter-medial writer Jackson Mac Low. Themes explored in the volume include Mac Low's poems "for the dancers," The Pronouns, and their various manifestations in performance and print; the interactions of poetry and performance in Mac Low's oeuvre; the nexus of chance and intentionality in his artistry; the relation of his creative work to his pacifist and anarchist politics; and his evolving relation to technological interfaces-from writing machines and algorithms to computers. A selection of archival and previously unpublished texts and images are also featured.

If you like our work, consider ordering copies for your book group or classroom to help us engage others. Order online today at: https://slought.org/resources/bookshop

Slought and Palestine Writes announce a special screening of the groundbreaking Palestinian/Jordanian film Farha, followed by a discussion with director and writer Darin Sallam, this Tuesday, September 19, from 7-9:30pm. This event is free and open to the public, however, registration via Eventbrite is required.

Farha is a 2021 internationally co-produced historical drama film about a Palestinian girl's coming-of-age experience during the Nakba, the 1948 displacement of Palestinians from their homeland. The film is directed by Darin J. Sallam, and is based on a true story recounted to Sallam's mother by a friend, living as a refugee in Syria, about her experience during the Nakba in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their homeland. The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on 14 September 2021 and began streaming on Netflix on 1 December 2022. Farha was the winner of the Best Youth Feature Film category at the 2022 Asia Pacific Screen Awards and winner of the Best Feature Film at the Malmö Arab Film Festival, among other awards, and was Jordan's submission in the Best International Feature Film category at the 95th Academy Awards.

This event is organized in partnership with the upcoming Palestine Writes festival, which will take place at the University of Pennsylvania from September 22-24, 2023. Palestine Writes is the only North American literature festival dedicated to celebrating and promoting cultural productions of Palestinian writers and artists. Born from the pervasive exclusion from or tokenization of Palestinian voices in mainstream literary institutions, Palestine Writes brings Palestinian cultural workers from all parts of Historic Palestine and our exiled Diaspora together with peers from other marginalized groups in the United States.

Learn more at https://slought.org/resources/farha and https://palestinewrites.org/festival-program

Please join the Section on Medicine and the Arts at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia for RX/Museum: A Prescription for Healing in Medicine, a conversation and book launch with the faculty directors of RX/Museum, this Thursday, September 14, from 7-9pm. Lyndsay Hoy, MD and Aaron Levy, PhD of RX Museum will reflect upon the power of arts engagement in times of crisis and the inherent value and applicability of the arts to medicine and its practitioners. A book signing and light reception will follow. This event will take place at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia and is open to the public. Tickets are required to attend. Please register at the link below.

Rx/Museum is an arts initiative that seeks to bring the museum experience to spaces of caregiving. It initially emerged as a grassroots effort between an art historian and a physician advocating for the essential role of the arts amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Over time, Rx/Museum has grown into a sustained collaboration between Penn Medicine and Philadelphia arts institutions and a virtual community of over 1,300 clinicians, caregivers, and patients from across the region and throughout the country. Within this work, the arts reveal themselves as integral to fostering humanistic learning and well-being in medicine and beyond.

“As humans, our health connects us to uncertainty, mortality, faith, autonomy, and more. So does art—and Rx/Museum, a thoughtful project that connects art and medicine, finds themes of health and humanity in both.”
— Erin Blakemore, The Washington Post

Learn more at https://collegeofphysicians.org/events/rxmuseum-prescription-healing-medicine

Please join us tomorrow for Listening Beyond Words: A Workshop with the Penn Medicine Listening Lab, from 6-7:30pm. This event will take place at The Arthur Ross Gallery. It is free and open to the public, however, due to limited space, registration via Eventbrite is required.

As human beings, we will all undergo a wide variety of experiences related to illness, caregiving, and our own vulnerability. Feeling deeply heard can allay some of the profound alienation, fear, loss, and loneliness that often accompanies illness, and itself contribute to the healing process. A compassionate listener can often hear both what has and has not been explicitly said, and help us understand our own life experiences in a new way. This experiential workshop, led by Aaron Levy, PhD and Teya Sepinuck, will engage some of the powerful audio stories contributed by patients, caregivers, staff and clinicians to the Penn Medicine Listening Lab. We will also work in dyads to share our own stories and listen deeply to one another. In so doing, we will lay the groundwork for a practice of hearing what might be beyond words.

Learn more at: https://arthurrossgallery.org/events/event/listening-beyond-words-a-workshop-with-the-penn-medicine-listening-lab%e2%80%afled-by-aaron-levy-and-teya-sepinuck