Online event series hosted by MIT List Visual Arts Center and Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati
September 17, 2020–March 4, 2021
A businessperson waits for a delayed subway. A wrongly convicted prisoner awaits justice. A refugee waits for their asylum case. A nation waits for the promised boon of economic development. The world waits for a vaccine. Nature waits for its exploitation to end.
Waiting is usually what we do between things. It is the space between two destinations, an empty and anxious time to fill with distractions. But when we look more closely, we see that waiting is also an activity in itself, bristling with energy, uncertainty, and inequality. What does the condition of waiting reveal about us, our world, and the natural environment that sustains it?
This series of eight sessions offer glimpses into the thought and practices of artists, architects, historians, and theorists who grapple with this question. In each hour-long session, participants will share their own research into an aspect of waiting while touching on some of its registers: enforced waiting, chronic waiting, natural waiting, existential waiting, and even those desirable modes of waiting that we long for. A brief moderated discussion and audience Q&A will follow.
These events, and the resulting publication, Shifter 25: Waiting, are co-hosted by MIT List Visual Arts Center and Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati in conjunction with solo exhibitions by Sreshta Rit Premnath to be held in March 2021 (MIT List) and October 2021 (CAC).
Register via the links below or the Events + Programs page of the List Center, where you can find participant bios and further details. All program times are EST.
Shifter Sessions
Guadalupe Maravilla & Lauren Williams
September 17, 2020, 5:30–6:30pm
Guadalupe Maravilla will speak about his work on immigration detention, trauma, and healing through sound. Lauren Williams will present her exploration of how Black rage, born of chronic waiting, can be a transformative power.
Kevin Jerome Everson & Nicole Fleetwood
October 8, 2020, 5:30–6:30pm
Kevin Jerome Everson will discuss his cinematic work exploring the temporality of incarceration. Nicole Fleetwood will discuss her scholarly and curatorial work on the US carceral system’s impact on Black lives and the artwork that emerges from and reflects on it.
Sandrine Canac & Felipe Steinberg
October 22, 2020, 5:30–6:30pm
Sandrine Canac will offer a fictionalized conversation that takes place in postcolonial theorist Dipesh Chakrabarty’s “waiting room” of history. Felipe Steinberg will share his research into US labor laws and how the state of always being “on-call” is a form of unpaid waiting.
Mustafa Faruki & Kameelah Janan Rasheed
November 12, 2020, 5:30–6:30pm
Mustafa Faruki will discuss his work on the “Celebatorium,” a site of temporal suspension that forecloses futurity. Conversely, Kameelah Janan Rasheed will discuss people who seek immortality—that is, those who desire to wait forever.
Diego Gerard & Margarita Sánchez Urdaneta
December 3, 2020, 5:30–6:30pm
Diego Gerard will use strategies of absurdity and magical realism to discuss the ongoing tragedy of forced disappearances in Mexico in the midst of the drug war. Margarita Sánchez Urdaneta will use the concept of horrorism to consider the terror of waiting for a legal sentence.
Matthew Metzger & Jane Norris
January 28, 2021, 5:30–6:30pm
Matthew Metzger will speak about guitarist Steve Lacy's use of silences between phrases as a mode of critique, curiosity, and anticipation. Jane Norris presents recordings of the electronic pulses of plants and asks if they are waiting for our resonances to align or for us to hear them.
Taraneh Fazeli & Jonathan VanDyke
February 18, 2021, 5:30–6:30pm
Taraneh Fazeli will speak about her ongoing research into time as it is encountered and reconsidered by those with chronic illness. Jonathan VanDyke discusses a durational performance in which he stands sentinel outside his parents’ home where he spent innumerable hours beside his ailing father.
Rebecca Comay & Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme
March 4, 2021, 5:30-6:30pm
Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme will speak about how they use strategies to counter the perpetual disaster of the present. Rebecca Comay will speak about her research into trauma, memory, and the temporality of human life.
Accessibility
This online series will use Zoom with live closed-captioning.
About Shifter
Shifter explores the intersection of contemporary art, theory, and experimental writing. They convene public dialogues and produce publications. Shifter is programmed by Sreshta Rit Premnath and Avi Alpert.
For more information, please contact:
Mark Linga
MIT List Visual Arts Center
mlinga [at] mit.edu
Jen Cox
Contemporary Arts Center
T 513-345-8403
jcox [at] cincycac.org
Marietta Burdick / Delaney Smith
Resnicow and Associates
T 212-671-5185 / T 212-671-5160
mburdick [at] resnicow.com / dsmith [at] resnicow.com
