Location:

Stanford Calderwood Pavilion @ the Boston Center for the Arts

527 Tremont Street, Boston

Performance at 7 pm (*please arrive by 6:45 pm)

No place like home is a performance that at various times acts like a documentary or a lecture, with a narrator who weaves together images and sound through storytelling. Exploring the subjective perspective of first-person politics, the narrator tells a story of the rural town of Siler City, North Carolina, a community in significant transition both economically and demographically—much like the United States as a whole. This story is an interrogation of what meaning can be made of home when home is a distant place in ever-shifting territory. With characters such as a Ukrainian billionaire, a former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard-turned-artist, Aunt Bee, even the poultry industry, this story engages with and articulates the impact of globalized economies upon existing historical, political and social situations. Drawing from an archive of material compiled through off-site research and visits to Siler City, the narrator peels back a veneer of complexity to reveal undercurrents of power, desire and histories that intertwine with contemporary issues of race, immigration and industrial decline. 

Cathy McLaurin is an artist who uses performance, video, photography, drawing and writing to interrogate what is. Her practice is an investigation into the insidious slow drip of complacency that leads to the raging tidal wave of institutionalized systems. 

cathymclaurin.com

Location:

C. Walsh Theatre

55 Temple St.

Suffolk University

Melissa Mohr, Margot Mifflin, and Bill Downing

Moderated by Robin Abrahams

Margot Mifflin	Bill Downing	Melissa Mohr
	Robin Abrahams

Not long ago, we lived in a world where cursing was verboten, only sailors had tattoos, and smoking marijuana was confined to college experimentation. Are these things really more prevalent today or were they acceptable long before they reached the puritanical eyes of American society? And if they are met with less disdain these days, is it because we’re a more accepting society or because this is the beginning of a backslide into a social world rife with slovenly self-conduct? Moderator Robin Abrahams(author, “Miss Conduct” etiquette column) talks with Melissa Mohr (author, Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing), Margot Mifflin (author, Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo), andBill Downing (former President, MassCANN/NORML) to determine whether we can let it all hang out or if crossing the line is a harbinger of societal disaster.

Melissa Mohr and Margot Mifflin will be selling and signing copies of their books at the end of the event.

An evening of demonstration and discussion of Mahmood Rezaei-Kamalabad"s The Sense of Unity Healing  Machine . The gyro-scope like machine mimics the rotation of the earth as the person vertically secured to a stretcher within the machine  experiences rotational movments.  Mahmood believes the rotational movement has health benefits on a molecular and cellular level that may be influential in today's medical research towards finding solutions to many of the world's health problems.

During the North Cambridge  Open Studio Weeken, May 11-12, 2013

Location:

C. Walsh Theatre

55 Temple Street

Suffolk University

Elizabeth F. Thompson

Moderated by Robert Laffey

Elizabeth F. Thompson

How much closer are Middle Eastern countries to having functioning constitutional governments than they were in the spring of 2011? How will such governments impact their economies? What unique challenges and opportunities has each country faced in building new government? How has the culture played into the emerging politics? Elizabeth F. Thompson (author, Justice Interrupted) joins us to provide an update on happenings in the Middle East, particularly in terms of consequences we did not foresee two years ago. Robert Laffey (Assistant Professor of Government, Suffolk University) guides this discussion on post-Arab Spring sociopolitical changes and mines Thompson’s book for answers.

Elizabeth F. Thompson will be signing and selling copies of her book, Justice Interrupted, at the end of the event.

A decentralized music festival where Somervillians share their love of playing and listening to music on the porch!

The Scientist Within; Scientific Biography and the Creative Moment is an illustrated lecture by Richard Holmes about the largely forgotten roots of scientific biography  in the 17th and 18th centuries. He considers the gradual evolution of the modern idea of "the scientist" and discovery in the Romantic period and makes observations on the idea of "creativity" and the imaginative impact of scientific lives on popular culture.

Location:

C. Walsh Theatre

55 Temple Street

Suffolk University

Anchee Min

Moderated by Elif Armbruster

Anchee Min

Elif Armbruster

Twenty years after penning her first memoir on growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution, author Anchee Min now releases The Cooked Seed: the true story of her journey to, and within, America. Min draws us in to bear witness to her trek from a land of deprivation to one of surrounding bounty that is just out of her reach. She works five jobs at once and suffers rape, exhaustion, and divorce. As these revolutionary personal events shape her world view, they culminate in the biggest shift of all: the birth of her daughter. Moderator Elif Armbruster (Associate Professor of English, Suffolk University) helps Min present her unique immigration narrative within the universal struggle of building a life despite precious few fundamental tools.

Anchee Min will be signing and selling copies of her book, The Cooked Seed, at the end of the event.

Anchee Min (author, The Cooking Seed) gives us her true story of immigrating to America and the shocking events of her journey within it.

Seating is first-come first-serve.

To Register: http://www.fordhallforum.org/programs/chinese-american

Registration does not save you a seat; it simply tells the Forum how many people to expect.

Location:

The David Winton Bell Gallery

List Art Center at Brown University

64 College St, Providence

Gallery Hours:

11-4 Monday through Friday

1-4 Saturday and Sunday

Daniel Heyman, “The Broomstick was Metal” from 10 Iraqi Portraits (2008)
Gouache, watercolor, ink and pencil, 26 x 38 inches
Lent by the artist, courtesy of Cade Tompkins Projects

Daniel Heyman’s Iraqi Portraits give voice to the former detainees of Abu Ghraib Prison. Between 2006 and 2008, Heyman traveled to Jordan and Turkey with American lawyer Susan Burke to witness the testimony of former prisoners held at Abu Ghraib and later released without charges. While lawyers collected statements for the lawsuit, Heyman sketched the likenesses of the detainees. Moved by the power of the Iraqis’ words, he began transcribing their testimonies directly onto his images. The exhibition, continues with portraits of witnesses of the Blackwater/Nisour Square shootings and a 10-by-12 foot expressionistic etching entitled When Photographers are Blinded, Eagles’ Wings are Clipped. While the Iraqi Portraits serve a dual purpose as art and document, When Photographers are Blinded… represents Heyman’s personal response to the war.

Painter and printmaker Daniel Heyman lives in Philadelphia and teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design and Princeton University. An exhibition of his Iraqi War images entitled Bearing Witness traveled throughout the United States between 2010 and 2012, and his work has been exhibited in major institutions including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Princeton University Museum of Art, and the New York Public Library.

The Heyman exhibition is curated by Jo-Ann Conklin.

Location:

The David Winton Bell Gallery

List Art Center at Brown University

64 College St, Providence

Gallery Hours:

11-4 Monday through Friday

1-4 Saturday and Sunday

Location:

C. Walsh Theatre

55 Temple St.

Suffolk University

Nicco Mele and Kevin Bankston

Moderated by Dharmishta Rood

Nicco Mele

Dharmishta Rood

Kevin Bankston

The invention of the internet has opened an entirely new world of communication and, therefore, organization. With so much power now in the hands of the individual, one questions whether we need institutions anymore. As this technology progresses, we face an inevitable need to restructure our government systems, safety measures, and concept of ownership, as well as their attached legal implications. But while the world touts the internet as the prime conveyor of a bold, new democracy, we consider how it also ushers in sharper methods of surveillance and control. Moderator Dharmishta Rood (Fellow, Harvard University Psychology Department) leads Nicco Mele (Founder, EchoDitto and author, The End of Big) and Kevin Bankston (Director, Free Expression Project, Center for Democracy & Technology) in a bold discussion on how the internet is giving rise to the individual.

Nicco Mele will be signing copies of his book, The End of Big, at the end of the program.

Location:

Neil L. and Angelica Zander Rudenstein Gallery at Harvard University

W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African American Research

104 Mt. Auburn St, 3R, Cambridge

Gallery Hours: Monday - Friday, 9AM - 5PM

Exhibit on view through May 2013

From an interview with the artist:

'In the hands of artist·Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, a few photographic works prove powerful enough to make a profound statement about family and the Afro-Latin experience in America.

“I tried to talk about the nuances of construction of the family. I’ve always been curious about the dichotomy, almost the opposing sides — black/white, Cuba/America, Africa/Europe — and then the result, the hybrid surge element,” said Campos-Pons, whose exhibit “Something About Family” opened Thursday at the·Neil L. & Angelica Zander Rudenstine Gallery in the·W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research.

“I’ve been using diptychs and triptychs to comment on the idea of fragments and how we make a whole. It’s almost like we take particles of identity to create this new one,” she said.'

The entire interview can be found here.