Symposium: Aesthetics of Catastrophe

Northwestern University
Friday, June 5, 2009
Annie May Swift Hall Auditorium

This symposium addresses questions of visual representation and public advocacy as they are evident in contemporary economic, environmental, and political disasters. Events such as floods, fires, terrorism, and genocide generate heightened media coverage, compelling images, and questions about the limits of photographic representation of events that involve massive disruption and loss. In the US, a series of disasters including 9/11, Katrina, and the economic crash have pushed photojournalists and media scholars alike to ask whether the available conventions for documentary witness need to be extended or reworked. This symposium provides images and arguments dedicated to provoking and guiding extended discussion of topics such as the violent image, visual fragmentation and political distribution, emergency status and citizenship, and the iconography of a “catastrophile” society.

Schedule:

9:00 – Coffee

9:30 – Ann Larabee, Michigan State University, “Brownfields, Ghostboxes, and Orange Xs: Reading Disaster and Catastrophe in the Urban Landscape”

10:45 – Robert Lyons, Photographer, “Intimate Enemy: Images and Voices of the Rwandan Genocide”

1:00 – David Campbell, Durham University, UK, “Constructed Visibility: Photographing the Catastrophe of Gaza”

2:15 – Aric Mayer, Photographer, “Representing the Unrepresentable: Disaster, Suffering, and Locating the Political in the Viewer-Image Exchange”

3:30 – Lane Relyea, Northwestern University, “From Spectacle to Database: On the Changed Status of Debris and Fragmented Subjectivity in Recent Art Culture”

4:45 – Reception

Free and open to the public. Organized by Robert Hariman. Sponsored by the Program in Rhetoric and Public Culture, the Center for Global Culture and Communication, the School of Communication, and the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, Northwestern University. For more information, please contact Patrick Wade at wpatrickwade@gmail.com.

Save the Date

Friday, June 12, 2009
7:00 PM – 9:30 PM

Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute
Presents the Sixth in a Series

Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Visual Art: The Aesthetics of Catastrophe; Hurricane Katrina
Photographs by Aric Mayer with Poetry by Rebecca Meredith

“Going into New Orleans, I carried with me the knowledge that I was entering someone else's city and that I had a responsibility to do something there that might be of value long after the immediate crisis had stabilized. My goal was to create a large body of photographs that crossed the city, carrying the viewer directly into this apocalyptic landscape. Only here, instead of explosions and fire, the more usual metaphors of destruction, this was an apocalypse of water, which is a very different thing. Throughout Western history, water has been a symbol of the unconscious, of the indwelling unrecognized forces and agencies that operate beneath the surface of our conscious lives. This is a fitting metaphor, for we are still untangling and discovering the unseen political and social influences that contributed to the disaster.”

Aric Mayer, from Aesthetics of Catastrophe, Public Culture v 20.2, Duke University

Aric Mayer is a Kenyan born US based artist and filmmaker. He was the main photographer covering Hurricane Katrina for the Wall Street Journal. Mayer's post-Katrina landscapes were exhibited in a solo exhibition at Gallery Bienvenu in New Orleans to commemorate the first anniversary of the storm, and have been published in numerous journals and magazines. He is a member of the board of directors of the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.

Rebecca Meredith is a senior clinical associate at SPSI. Her poems about the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the area in which she grew up, the Mississippi Gulf Coast and New Orleans, have appeared in print in numerous literary magazines and anthologies.


ARTIST: Aric Mayer, M.F.A.
POET: Rebecca Meredith, M.A.
DISCUSSANT: Susan Radant, Ph.D.

PROGRAM: Wine and cheese social, 7:00 – 7:30 PM; presentation, 7:30 – 9:30 PM

LOCATION: Seattle Psychoanalytic Society & Institute. For details, please register to reserve your place.

REGISTRATION: Space is limited; early registration is strongly encouraged. Please RSVP to SPSI in care of Susan Radant, Ph.D., (206) 282-2382, or by email at sradant@u.washington.edu. Please include your phone number and email address.

· For more information about Aric Mayer, please visit: http://aricmayerstudios.com/
· For more information about the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute: www.spsi.org

It has been quiet here...

... on the blog for the past few weeks. I dusted off my beloved Mont Blanc and have been writing with ink on paper and reading actual books. It feels great. I'll be back to posting soon.