Public Seminar Interview with Khary Lazarre-White

Lazarre-White discusses his latest book ‘Passage’

Mr. Lazarre-White recently spoke with Public Seminar about where Passage came from, the experience of writing it, and what he hopes the novel will communicate. Copies of Passage can be found at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or at your local book retailer.   *** Public Seminar: Thank you for taking some time with Public ...
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Bringing AIDS Home

A Queer Look at the History of an Epidemic

AIDS at Home includes a wide range of materials, from archival documents and ephemera to documentary film and fine art. Visitors can watch Buddies for Life, a short documentary about the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) buddy program, in which volunteers provided help and companionship to people living with AIDS. ...
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The Body in Space/Trauma in the Body

A Review of Roxane Gay’s ‘Hunger’

Roxane Gay’s first book-length memoir, Hunger, is about space: the space that certain bodies are allowed to occupy, and the world’s response when they are unable or unwilling to fit inside it. In tender, explosive prose, Gay writes of the systemic medical dismissal and the social and sexual ostracism that ...
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The Body in Space/Trauma in the Body

Creating City People, Not Just Maintaining Buildings

New York City’s Cultural Plan

Last week the city released its much-awaited cultural plan. The Department of Cultural Affairs undertook an unprecedented year-long process of surveying New Yorkers about arts and culture in New York, about what worked and what did not in the city’s creative life. Not surprisingly, equity and inclusion were repeated refrains: ...
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Creating City People, Not Just Maintaining Buildings

Practice Makes Practicable

From Participation to Interaction in Contemporary Art

Clocking in at nearly 900 pages of dense text plus index, Practicable: From Participation to Interaction in Contemporary Art, edited by artist and researcher Samuel Bianchini and curator and critic Erik Verhagen, is a door-stopper of a book. Its ambition is equal to its mass -- it proposes to rewrite postwar Western ...
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Practice Makes Practicable

Revisiting the Scourge of Human Folly

A Review of Charles Ludlam’s ‘The Artificial Jungle’

“A theme that threatens to destroy one’s whole value system. Treat the material in a madly farcical manner without losing the seriousness of the theme. Show how paradoxes arrest the mind. Scare yourself a bit along the way.” – Charles Ludlam During the 1960s, New York City experienced a surge in ...
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Revisiting the Scourge of Human Folly

Anish Kapoor

Against site-specific politics/For abandoning intention

Every day, Anish Kapoor wakes up at 6:30 in the morning. He drinks a cup of tea while he catches up on email and reads the newspapers. Depending on swell of emails in his inbox and to the world’s general behavior, he prepares breakfast between 7:45 and 8:00. Kapoor eats ...
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Anish Kapoor

Trump as Ubu Roi

On the charismatic appeal of vulgarity

Many are the analogies for the current President of the United States. Such analogies always contain within them theoretical debates about the nature of Trump’s appeal, the prospects for his rule, and how the coterie around him will conduct themselves in relation to Trump, in relation to each other, and ...
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Trump as Ubu Roi

Hanged at Sunrise

The Impossible Ethics of the “Homeland”

Nicholas Brody, one of the central characters of the popular and critically acclaimed drama Homeland, is a third generation United States Marine. Called Brody by his friends, Brody’s entire character is created around and through the interrelated issues of drones, torture and jihad. As the drama unfolds, Brody becomes a ...
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Hanged at Sunrise

Fame, Truth, and Justice

A Review of Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro

“…The general reaction to famous people who hold difficult opinions is that they can’t really mean it. It’s considered, generally, to be merely an astute way of attracting public attention, a way of making oneself interesting...”- James Baldwin, No Name in The Street James Baldwin was more than a writer and ...
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Fame, Truth, and Justice

The Right to Lie

Lawrence Abu Hamdan

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, a 2015-17 Vera List Center Fellow, is a visual artist and audio investigator with a background in DIY music. He was the Armory Show commissioned Artist of 2015 and has exhibited and performed at venues such as The New Museum, Van AbbeMuseum, The Shanghai Biennial (2014), The Whitechapel Gallery, MACBA, ...
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The Right to Lie