Spring 2021 Virtual PRACTITIONER-IN-RESIDENCE
Unravelling Collections and Practices: Rights, Materialities and Photographic Agency at the Arab Image Foundation (AIF)
The workshops will be led by three members of the current Board of Directors of the AIF: Vartan Avakian, Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh and Kristine Khouri.
In the context of a world that is increasingly challenged by wars, ongoing conditions of coloniality, financialization and environmental destruction, all of which bring about new forms of migration, displacement, dispossession and transition, this seminar for the NYU Kevorkian Spring 2021 Practitioner-in-Residence will investigate the ways in which an archive can function as a space for renegotiating the distribution of agency, imagine forms of custodianship, and addressing questions around rights.
The spring sessions are conceived in three parts, which will be articulated through lectures, practice-based workshops, and public events. The workshops will be led by three members of the current Board of Directors of the AIF: Vartan Avakian, Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh and Kristine Khouri.
As a group, the PIR will question how collective work practices and horizontal governance - combined with critical documentation procedures - as well as creative ways of engaging with collections, can contribute to rethinking society in Lebanon today - and how these issues resonate beyond borders.
Across the spring semester each Practitioner will bring collections, some from the AIF, into the workshop sessions. Participants will learn, explore, and generate new knowledge by working on these collections.
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