Colloquia Fall 2015

 Marina Sitrin will open a conversation on recent horizontal movements from around the world, sharing stories from her participation in and study of movements such as Occupy Wall Street, housing defenses in the US and Europe, struggles against mines and Monsanto in Latin America, Frack-Off in the UK and neighborhood assemblies in Greece.

 Justin Downs is a founder and “AnthroEngineer” at Innate Engineering Fabrication (IEFRD), where he develops community-owned, open source, sustainable technologies and software. He will speak on IEFRD’s ongoing work, which includes remote solar network infrastructure, and lion-tracking collars for conservationists and Maasai herdsmen working to reestablish balance in Kenyan ecosystems.

 Mark Filippi joins us to discuss and demonstrate his scholarship and praxis in methods of improving interpersonal communication and the process by which belief becomes conviction. This talk will include a brief discussion of the relationship between image and identity, and the somatic patterns of social interaction. Following this overview, Filippi will demonstrate some techniques of classic neurolinguistic programming.

 Professor Kevin L. Ferguson’s work in media studies seeks to orient the moving image toward a radical, surrealist-inspired perspective. His recent work repurposes medical imaging software to simultaneously “sum” the frames of 54 different Disney films for the creation of a single new picture. Right now, he is in the process developing software that will derive 3D cubes from moving image texts, effectively transposing time into space.

 Dr. Mara Einstein’s Black Ops Advertising is an exposé of the rapid rise of sponsored content, a strategy whereby advertisers become publishers and publishers create advertising. Einstein shows how stealth advertising has so blurred the lines between editorial content and marketing message that it has become virtually impossible to tell real news from paid endorsements.

 Jonah Brucker-Cohen presents his work challenging and subverting accepted notions of network interaction—from software manipulation to translating virtual processes into the physical world. He will discuss the series of global hardware hacking workshops that he has initiated and run since 2003. He will conclude with a live demo of a SimpleTEXT project that allows members of the audience to participate in a collaborative audio-visual performance using their cellphones.

 Prof. Amy Herzog will discuss her current project The Pornographic Arcades Project: Peep Shows and Public Space in Times Square. Taking influence from Walter Benjamin’s arcades project, this study examines the adult cinema arcades in New York from 1965-1975. Trafficked by a diverse demographic, the porn shops in Times Square created a venue for sexual minorities at the same time that they inflamed debates about feminism, pornography and public space.

 Trebor Scholz studies digital work, self-organized learning and media activism. He oversees the Institute for Distributed Creativity and has edited the essay collections Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory, Learning Through Digital Media and The Art of Free Cooperation.

 Prof. Leslie McCleave will be speaking on the integration of social issues into narrative film. Her films Road, Avenue X, Blixa Bargeld Stole My Cowboy Boots, and Meeting Marty have screened worldwide. Her latest film, How Sweet the Sound: The Blind Boys of Alabama is currently touring the film festival circuit.

 Prof. Anupama Kapse’s work examines the framework of silent and early sound cinemas outside the U.S., particularly those of India. She coedited the volume Silent Cinema and the Politics of Space. Her current project, Film as Body/Politic, examines “early” cinema in India.

 Prof. Michael Lacy is co-editor of Race and Hegemonic Struggle in the U.S.: Pop Culture, Politics, and Protest. He offers a reading of the post-apocalyptic film, The Book of Eli in light of racial, religious, and economic traumas experienced in the U.S. since 9/11. Lacy will share his latest work, while also giving an overview of studying race from a critical rhetorical/communication perspective.