Since 2014 dancer and choreographer Farah Saleh has undertaken long-term research on Palestinian gestures in order to investigate how artists can contribute to change through exploring and problematizing social and political memories. She archives an array of bodily gestures, movements and alternative narratives through reenacting, transforming, analyzing and commenting on the movements and stories. Indeed, this project is an attempt to collect fragments of a gestural collective identity, and reconstruct an archive that the dominant Palestinian nationalist and non-Palestinian narratives have ignored. Nicola Perugini will present his work on human rights and spatial politics from his research on human shields, investigating the ways that the current significance of human shielding both as a military instrument and as a legal category cannot be overstated given that urban settings have become decisive arenas of many contemporary conflicts. Please join Farah Saleh, Nicola Perugini and James Gallery Curator Katherine Carl for a lively discussion of this research and its artistic and cultural impact.
This event is presented as part of Social Choreography, an interdisciplinary research group devoted to intersections between art movements and social movements. The group is supported by the Mellon Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research. For more information or to join, email [email protected].
Co-sponsored by the Social Choreography Mellon Seminar in Public Engagement and Collaborative Research and Middle East and Middle East American Center, and supported in part by Artis Foundation for Contemporary Art.