Arts Speaker Series: Cultural Politics of Biodiversity
The Arts Speaker Series is held once per month on the Third Thursday of the month at 4:30pm in Nevins Theater during the 2023-2024 Academic Year. On October 19, the Visiting Artists and Scholars Committee welcomes Cultural Politics of Biodiversity: Animal Life on Camera by Artists from Turkey. A seminar broadcast into Nevins Theater, Powell Campus Center, Alfred University, in two panels, on October 19 at 4:30 pm artist and scholars joining us from as far as Turkey. Participants: Mehmet Ali Boran, Ali M. Demirel, Ayşe Erkmen, Deborah Hardt, Erkan Özgen, Şener Özmen, Hale Tenger, Hakan Topal, with Lewis Johnson and Işın ÖnolThe first panel chaired by Lewis Johnson, curator of Among Us: Animal Life in Video Work by Artists from Turkey, currently on display at the Time Space Interface/Harland Snodgrass Gallery, from October 8th to 29th.
Proposing that the work in the show indicates ways of tracking a series of problematics of human and animal coexistence in and beyond Turkey, he will suggest how questions of cultural diversity and biodiversity can be productively linked. He will then introduce the first two speakers: Deborah Hardt of İzmir Economics University in Turkey, who will speak to ‘Animals and Imagery: The Evolution of our Fascination with Animals’ and Hakan Topal of Purchase College, SUNY, who will speak about his recent installation piece, ‘The Golden Cage, 2022: Narrating the Intersecting Realities of Refugees, Ecology, and the State Apparatus’ with discussion to follow.
Chaired by New York-based curator and educator Işın Önol, the second panel will be of artists who have work in the exhibition. Ali M. Demirel will speak about working according to ‘Animal Scale’ and Hale Tenger will provide some ‘Reflections on “how can we live together”’. Mehmet Ali Boran, Ayşe Erkmen, Erkan Özgen and Şener Özmen will also be available via zoom, to take questions and respond to observations about their concerns, of form, meanings, effects, and more, in their work with or about animals.
Sponsored by the Visiting Artists and Scholars Committee; Division of Expanded Media; Global Studies Program; Division of Art History. Coordinated by Gerar Edizel.