The “Before I Die” board [...]]]> Aspirations big and small are highlighted in a new public artwork in at 14th and Q streets NW.  A giant chalkboard, which appeared earlier this month along a construction barrier, poses a prompt to the passerby: Before I Die.  With chalk and an agenda, the new installation has become an instant hit.

The “Before I Die” board was first concieved by artist Candy Chang, a 2011 TED fellow whose art revolves around the idea of making cities more comfortable and contemplative spaces.  Chang’s first chalkboard was placed on the side of an abandoned building in New Orleans, and since then many other artists have brought her project to about 30 other locations.  Sophie Miller, a Columbia Heights resident, brought the board to Logan Circle after recieving a small grant from a friend.

The board has become covered with public responses from the inspirational to the absurd.  Washingtonians want to “Liberate Palestine”, “To Fall in Love”, and “Swim in Buttermilk”.  Perhaps even more important than the individual responses themselves is that a work such as this one provides the public with an opportunity to step back from their everyday lives and reevaluate personal goals, dreams, and ideals.  Read more here.

Prototyping Futures/Occupying the Present, is a three-day conference with workshops initiated by the Piet Zwart Institute. The event gathers scholars from diverse disciplines to explore strategies of resistance, intervention, and critical production in response to the crises of the present. Rather than foregrounding critique, the focus will be on experimental practices that work [...]]]>  

Prototyping Futures/Occupying the Present, is a three-day conference with workshops initiated by the Piet Zwart Institute. The event gathers scholars from diverse disciplines to explore strategies of resistance, intervention, and critical production in response to the crises of the present. Rather than foregrounding critique, the focus will be on experimental practices that work towards the production of alternative narratives and the imagination of different futures. More here.

In the aftermath of atrocity, societies develop diverse mechanisms to cope with the legacy of violence. The experienced trauma involves not only the physical [...]]]> International symposium organized by the Center for Global Studies

Tuesday, April 17, 2012 from 11:30pm to 7:30 p.m.
Research I, Room 163
George Mason University – Fairfax Campus

In the aftermath of atrocity, societies develop diverse mechanisms to cope with the legacy of violence. The experienced trauma involves not only the physical violence visited upon individual bodies, but also the destruction of families, communities and broader societal networks. Truth commissions seek to develop new narratives to understand past violence, while other mechanisms, including trials and reparations programs, attempt to provide more concrete forms of justice to survivors and relatives of victims of violence. Beyond these traditional transitional justice mechanisms, diverse art forms have also been deployed by those directly affected by violence as well as by artists seeking to convey new interpretations of why violence occurred and how it has impacted people and society at large. This international symposium brings together artists, filmmakers, scholars and those affected by violence–from Latin America, the Balkans, and Beyond–to discuss how the arts are deployed to represent past violence and reinterpret fundamental understandings about power, truth, and justice.