general interest events

Polar Descriptions: Amy Balkin and Adriane Colburn

Rob Halpern — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:54:13 -0500

Start: 11/23/2008 - 18:00

End: 11/23/2008 - 20:00

Timezone: Etc/GMT-7

Polar Descriptions: Amy Balkin and Adriane Colburn
Sunday, November 23rd, 6 pm
at the Studio for Urban Projects
3579 17th St., San Francisco (located between Dolores & Guerrero)

Amy Balkin / Adriane Colburn

Please join us for a presentation from Bay Area artists and social system geographers Amy Balkin and Adriane Colburn, who have recently visited the Arctic sea and ice.

The frozen expanses of the North have historically been a location of fantasy, exploration, and now, global dread. First hand accounts of this distant landscape have traditionally informed out greater understanding of the environment, mapping, and trade. In this informal talk Amy and Adriane will show images and describe their own rarified journeys, as well as the history of artists/explorers who have visited this mythic location of the earth.

Also included in this presentation will be the premiere of an arctic-sublime-cocktail-float “The Sea at Night”

Space is limited. Please RSVP to mephilross@yahoo.com

"The Greenroom" at Vera Center, New School University (NYC)

Thom Donovan — Tue, 20 May 2008 10:21:26 -0400

TWO NIGHTS, ON THE HEELS OF MEMORIAL DAY "The Greenroom" Tuesday, May 27, 2008 - 6:30 to 9:00 p.m. Wednesday, May 28, 2008 - 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. The New School, Wollman Hall 65 West 11th Street, 5th floor (enter at 66 West 12th Street) New York City Admission: $8 each night, free for all students, as well as New School and CCS Bard faculty, staff and alumni with valid ID, and members of the CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art Two evenings of special screenings introduce The Greenroom, a large-scale exhibition exploring the “documentary turn” in recent contemporary art practice and its heritage in relation to the history of film, documentary photography, and television. Set to open in Fall 2008 at the The Hessel Museum of Art and Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, The Greenroom, curated by CCS graduate program director Maria Lind, will feature works by more than forty artists and extend beyond the exhibition format to include a long-term research project and related publications. The research project is a collaboration between the CCS, Art in Contemporary Culture at Bard College, and the artist and theoretician Hito Steyerl. These preview screenings, organized by curatorial assistant and CCS Bard graduate student Fionn Meade and presented in collaboration with the Vera List Center at The New School, include selected works from artists participating in The Greenroom exhibition. Co-sponsored by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. PROGRAM 1, Tuesday, May 27, 6:30-9:00 p.m. [for program notes scroll down.] Yael Bartana, "Mary Koszmary" (2007, 11 minutes) Rosalind Nashashibi, "Ambassador" (with Lucy Skaer), (2004, 5 minutes) Matthew Buckingham, "Situation Leading to a Story" (1999, 21 minutes) Chantal Akerman, "D'Est: Au bord de la fiction" (1993, 110 minutes) PROGRAM 2, Wednesday, May 28, 6:30-8:30 p.m. [for program notes scroll down.]

"Polis Is This-Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place"- Henry Ferrini / Ken Riaf film in Berkeley Video & Film Festival

Nonsite admin — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 15:28:05 -0400

Start: 10/05/2007 - 21:35

End: 10/05/2007 - 22:35

Timezone: Etc/GMT-7

Landmark California Theatre - 2113 Kittredge St. Downtown Berkeley - Box Office - 510.464-5983 - Bo0x

Tickets available at California Theatre Box Office Festival Weekend - Tix: $11.@ Gen. Adm. / Students, Seniors, EBMC Members $8.@.

A General Admission Ticket is good for all screenings entire day. Filmmakers reception not open to general public.

A 3 Day Festival Pass will be available for $25.@ in advance starting Sept. 20 at East Bay Media Center - 1939 Addison Street - Downtown Berkeley's Arts District - 510.843.3699 -

$25.@ by phone or in person - Hours Mon - Fri. 10am - 5:30pm - Accepting Visa, Mastercard, American Express.

Chris Abani, Joe Meno, and Felicia Luna Lemus @ City Lights Books

Nonsite admin — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 15:24:26 -0400

Start: 10/04/2007 - 19:00

End: 10/04/2007 - 21:00

Timezone: Etc/GMT-7

Chris Abani reading from
Song for Night

Joe Meno reading from
Tender As Hellfire

and
Felicia Luna Lemus reading from
Like Son

all published by Akashic Books

Long before he established himself as an indie-publishing sensation with his hit novels Hairstyles of the Damned and The Boy Detective Fails, Joe Meno brought out his debut novel, Tender As Hellfire , with St. Martin's Press. Here, with a re-edited paperback edition, Meno limns a near-fantastical world of trailer park floozies, broken-down '76 Impalas, lost glass eyes, and the daily experiences of two boys trying to make sense of their random, sharp lives.

Chris Abani's new novella furthers his reputation as the most acclaimed young African writer today.
Part Inferno, part Paradise Lost, and part Sunjiata epic, Song for Night is the story of a West African boy soldier's lyrical, terrifying, yet beautiful journey through the nightmare landscape of a brutal war in search of his lost platoon. The reader is led by the voiceless protagonist who, as part of a land mine-clearing platoon, had his vocal chords cut; a move to keep these children from screaming when blown up, and thereby distracting the other minesweepers. Written in a ghostly voice, each chapter is headed by a line of the unique sign language these children invented. This book is unlike anything else ever written about an African war.
Chris Abani is a Nigerian poet and novelist and the author of The Virgin of Flames, Becoming Abigail (a New York Times Editors' Choice), and GraceLand (a selection of the Today Show Book Club; winner of the 2005 PEN/Hemingway Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award). His other prizes include a PEN Freedom-to-Write Award, a Prince Claus Award, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship. He lives and teaches in California.

kino21 presents Guy Debord's In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni @ Artists' Television Access

Nonsite admin — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 15:04:39 -0400

Start: 09/27/2007 - 20:00

End: 09/27/2007 - 22:00

Timezone: Etc/GMT-7

ATA is located at 992 Valencia St., San Francisco.
Suggested donation: $6-$10

Screening will include an English-language voiceover prepared from Ken Knabb's translation of the film script.

Naomi Klein reads at SF Unitarian Church

Nonsite admin — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 14:26:52 -0400

Start: 09/26/2007 - 19:30

End: 09/26/2007 - 21:30

Timezone: Etc/GMT-7

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism

http://www.naomiklein.org

Admission $12.00 (in advance at City Lights Bookstore or at the door)

doors open at 7 pm, event begins at 7:30

She also will be in Berkeley at a KPFA event on Sept. 28

http://www.naomiklein.org/meet-naomi/tour-dates/2007-09-28-kpfa-berkeley

The bestselling author of No Logo shows how the global “free market” has exploited crises and shock for three decades, from Chile to Iraq

In her groundbreaking reporting over the past few years, Naomi Klein introduced the term “disaster capitalism.” Whether covering Baghdad after the U.S.occupation, Sri Lankain the wake of the tsunami, or New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic “shock treatment,” losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate makeovers.

The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman’s free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement’s peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq.

At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. Klein argues that by capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.

Landscape for Politics: Reading Event w/ Rebecca Solnit

Nonsite admin — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 17:56:08 -0400

Start: 08/06/2007 - 19:30

End: 08/06/2007 - 21:30

Timezone: Etc/GMT-7

Moe’s Books
Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley
7:30pm
Monday, August 6th

Eddie Yuen, co-editor of Confronting Capitalism: Dispatches from a Global Movement will moderate an evening of readings and conversation with Rebecca Solnit who will be reading from Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics; Jake Kosek who will be reading from Understories: The Political Life of Forests in Northern New Mexico; and Marina Sitrin who will read from Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina.

Rebecca Solnit will be reading (and signing) solo at The Booksmith, 1634 Haight St, at 7:00pm, Tuesday, August 7th.