The Open PEI Series presents two international seminars
Of Animals and Monsters
Thursday, 21 and Friday, 22 October from 6 to 9 pm;
Saturday, 23 October from 10 am to 2 pm
SICK 80s. The AIDS Crisis, Art and Counter-biopolitical Guerrilla
Friday, 26 November from 6 to 9 pm;
Saturday, 27 November from 10 am to 2 pm
Plaça dels Angels, 1
08001 Barcelona
Of Animals and Monsters
Open PEI seminar organised by Xavier Antich and Manuel Asensi
Thursday, 21 and Friday, 22 October from 6 to 9 pm;
Saturday, 23 October from 10 am to 2 pm
Of Animals and Monsters will begin with a discussion of the nature of the animal in writings by Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida, both of whom suggested conceiving animality as an anomalous, liminal phenomenon. From this perspective, the seminar will reopen the question of animality and the monstrous at the intersection between thought and artistic practice, as part of an investigation on both identity and community.
PARTICIPANTS:
Xavier Antich is professor of Aesthetics, director of the Masters in Communication and Art Criticism at the Universitat de Girona and director of the MACBA’s Independent Studies Programme (PEI).
Manuel Asensi is professor of Literature Theory at Universitat de València and assistant director of the MACBA’s PEI.
Anne Sauvagnargues is Maître de conférences in Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon and author of Deleuze et l’art and Deleuze. De l’animal à l’art.
Jeffrey J. Cohen is associate professor of Cultural Studies at George Washington University. He is the editor of Monster Theory. Reading Culture and author of Hybridity, Identity and Monstrosity in Medieval Britain.
Pilar Pedraza is professor of Art History at Universitat de València. Her books include Venus barbuda y el eslabón perdido, Espectra. Descenso a las criptas de la literatura y el cine and Máquinas de amar. Secretos del cuerpo artificial.
Ximena Briceño is lecturer at Stanford University and specialist in museum narratives of contemporary performative practices and their relationship with contemporary Latin American literature. Her latest book is Consuming Cultures. The Museum Boom in Latin America.
Lars Bang Larsen is a critic and curator. He is the author of monographs on Sture Johannesson and Palle Nielsen, and the essay Zombies of Immaterial Labor: the Modern Monster and the Death of Death.
Registration: beginning 11 October
SICK 80s. The AIDS Crisis, Art and Counter-biopolitical Guerrilla
Open PEI seminar organised by Beatriz Preciado
Friday, 26 November from 6 to 9 pm;
Saturday, 27 November from 10 am to 2 pm
SICK 80s invites theorists, activists and artists to carry out an archaeology of the languages, representations and practices that emerged during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. The seminar will explore issues such as the relevance of the notion of biopolitics in describing contemporary forms of control of the body and sexuality, the continuity between the practices of ACT-UP and anti-psychiatry and institutional criticism, the shift from identity politics to queer micropolitics, the emergence of activist knowhow and the introduction of artistic counter-biopolitics of intervention in the public sphere.
PARTICIPANTS:
Michel Feher is a philosopher, founding editor of Zone Books and president of Cette France-là, a French organisation that publishes a yearly volume monitoring France’s immigration policy under Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency. He is currently working on an essay entitled S’apprécier: pourquoi et comment embrasser la condition néolibérale.
Cindy Patton is an activist in the AIDS movement and cofounder of the Boston AIDS Action Committee. She continues to write on the cultural and social aspects of AIDS, from her position as Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, and Canada Research Chair in Community, Culture and Health at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.
Christophe Broqua is a social anthropologist and associate researcher at SOPHIAPOL-LASCO (University Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense) and APC-CI (Abidjan, Ivory Coast). Since the mid-1990s he has been researching collective movements associated with AIDS and homosexuality.
Registration: beginning 15 November
For more information about the seminars and the MACBA’s Open PEI series, please visit www.macba.cat.