The Vera List Center for Art and Politics and multimedia platform Contemporary And (C&) present the C& Center of Unfinished Business at The New School, a roving reading room and exhibition that inscribe the VLC’s focus theme Correction* into colonial legacies and postcolonial realities.
This spring, new VLC publications explore aspects of ecology and the (il)legibility of AI, with Maria Thereza Alves: Seeds of Change, and the second edition of the digital publishing series Post/doc.
Exhibition
C& Center of Unfinished Business
April 1–May 26, 2023
Social Justice Hub, University Center
The New School, 63 5th Avenue, fifth floor
The Vera List Center iteration of the C& Center of Unfinished Business introduces titles from the VLC Fellows Library as well as The New School faculty and alums, and features public programs, readings, and a free broadsheet publication that look at libraries, reading rooms, and archives as sites of intervention, liberation, and repair. For more information and to visit the exhibition, kindly visit our website.
Reading
New School New Books: A Reading Series
Friday, April 21, 2023, 11am–4:30pm EDT
Social Justice Hub, University Center
The New School, 63 5th Avenue, fifth floor
We are celebrating faculty from across The New School and their milestone publications in the fields of film studies, fashion, musicology, design, environmentalism, and philosophy. Participants include Amanda Bellows, Simon Critchley, Gwenda-lin Grewal, Pablo Helguera, Nicolas Langlitz, Ricardo Montez, Julie Beth Napolin, Claire Potter, Brittnay L. Proctor, Evan Rapport, Lauren Redniss, Ann Stoler, Radhika Subramaniam, Jilly Traganou, Ricky Tucker, Terry Williams, and Genevieve Yue.
Panels
Libraries as Correctives
Monday, April 24, 2023, 10–11:30am EDT
Online
How do libraries act as correctives? How do they become sites of intervention, gathering, and radical storytelling? Co-presented with Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong, this program brings together Mearg Negusse, C& Center of Unfinished Business in Berlin; Malose Malahlela, Keleketla! Library in Johannesburg; and Aqui Thami, Sister Library in Mumbai to explore the transformative potential of libraries in the cultural field.
Libraries in Practice: Tending Toward Liberation
Thursday, May 18, 2023, 6:30–8 pm EDT
Social Justice Hub, University Center
The New School, 63 5th Avenue, fifth floor
Organizers from New York-based independent artist-run libraries, non-circulating collections, reading rooms, and small presses explore the unequivocal relationship between books, libraries, freedom, and liberation. With Emmy Catedral, Pilipinx American Library and the Center for Art Research and Alliances; Julia Grosse, C& Center of Unfinished Business; and Yusuf Hassan, BlackMass Publishing.
Publications
C& Center of Unfinished Business
Published by the Vera List Center, 2023
Designed by Bella De Angelis, New School student/VLC Programs Intern
This publication accompanies the Vera List Center iteration of the C& Center of Unfinished Business and the winning essay of the 2023 Vera List New School Art Collection Writing Awards by Parsons Photography student Ashley Zhang, who reflects on Alfredo Jaar’s Searching for Africa in LIFE.
Maria Thereza Alves: Seeds of Change
Co-published by the Vera List Center and Amherst College Press, April 2023
Designed by Common Name
In an era of climate change, extractivist economies, and forced mobility, who and what belongs? Throughout her prolific career, Brazilian artist Maria Thereza Alves has focused precisely on this question. Seeds of Change is the first monograph to document her investigation into the history of ballast flora—displaced plant seeds found in the soil used to balance colonial shipping vessels—revealing the entangled relationship between “alien” plant species and diasporic communities. The print book is now available to order. Find the ebook on Fulcrum.
Post/doc
Published by the Vera List Center, May 2023
The spring edition of our digital publishing series Post/doc launches in May to explore the notion of “correction” in digital spaces. It considers how AI, avatars, and virtual renderings of the self can correct, subvert, distort, and disrupt modes of visibility or legibility as a tool to reimagine one’s own identity. This edition will feature writer, technologist, and designer Ari Melenciano and interdisciplinary artist Catalina Ouyang.
For more information, full program listings, and registration, visit veralistcenter.org.
