Examining Systems

October 21, 4:00-6:00 PM

Program statement from the SUGs/SITE archive:

“This first program of the Talking Points exhibition is a performance night featuring pieces by Luis Mejico, Jae Hwan Lim, and Liz Vitlin. All three artists will present pieces that interrogate systems of knowledge against the frame of politics. Each piece utilizes a distinct performance methodology, presenting multiple modes of challenging structures of power. Jae Hwan Lim’s work, With You, isolates the physicality of politicians’ gestures as a means to analyze their sinerity and authenticity. In Luis Mejico’s work, Pedagogy of the Positive, the artist takes on the entirety of North American Educationsal systems with the intent to provide a more reasonable alternative. Liz Vitlin will present, Presidential Astrology, a performative lecture that provides as astrological reading of each candidate’s birth chart to predict the 2016 preseidential election. Either in confronting systems hypervisible or obscured, these artists question, expand, and complicate our understanding of the contemporary political landscape.”

‘In complete world’ by Shelly Silver, screening and community gathering

October 28, 4:00-6:00 PM

Program statement from the SUGs/SITE archive:

“‘In complete world’ is a feature length documentary made by the artist and filmmaker, Shelly Silver, set against the backdrop of New York during the U.S. presidential election of 2008. Silver provides us with an extraordinary document of the uneasy space identity politics occupy within a democracy, posing a host of pervasive questions to her interviewees; ‘Are you satisfied? Are we responsible for the government we have? Waht do you think our goernment should be doing for you personally? …Do you vote?’ The film questions politics framed through the notion of class politics, drawing the essence of the masses through individual portraits that function as ‘real’ testimonies on film. The continuity between individual and collective responsibility moves us to consider how we as citizens within the school reflect on our own outward and inward journeys during this corresponding political moment eight years later in American politics. This screening was been made possible by the Video Data Bank. Moderated by Pia Singh (MA 2017).”

Performative Panel Discussion

November 2, 4:00 PM

Program statement from the SUGs/SITE archive:

“Performative Panel Discussion led by Marcela Torres (MFA 2017) // Every four years the U.S. performs the ritual of electing a president, a personwho can tactfully lead our great nation towards progress. Individual communities throughout the U.S. evaluate what progress means to them and select candidates who they believe most resemble these traits and ideologies. These candidates then perform and embody these beliefs. They continue to perform the traits that made them viable to their constituents, but also try to prove to other communities that they are trustworthy and have their interests in mind. This performing of virtue becomes so over the top that the candidates seem to be performing near absurdity. Within this panel I would like to invesigate the process of creating an ideology and what it means and looks like to try to fit a live person into a hypothetical space. and whether judgement is ever satisfied or if it inherently changes the second we approach it. Using the farme of the art world and the platform of Talking Points, artists and art historians stand-in as political officials in this discussion as a method of examining how we posture ourselves to our audiences.”

October 17 – November 11, 2016

SUGs in collaboration with the Flaxman Library Special Collections

Program statement from the SUGs/SITE archive:

“This Satellite Library corresponds with the Student Union Galleries’ ‘Talking Points’ exhibition. Additional publications are on view in the LeRoy Neiman Center Gallery alongside the exhibition. Using the urgency of the current US presidential election as impetus and entry, the ‘Talking Points’ Satellite Library attempts to provide a constellation of our political reality with attention on the complexities of what is at stake for various populations. This selection of works from the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection was curated in response to work from the exhibiting artists by Emily Fenn (BAVCS 2017). *Inspired by the De Nue Satellite Library curated by Janelle Miller (BFA 2017), Flaxman Library Special Collections will host a series of Satellite Libraries curated by members of the SAIC community in conjunction with exhibitions and events around campus. These curated selections will be available on our flat file in the Special Collections Reading Room (Sharp 508) during open hours. Unlike our exhibitions, Satellite Libraries will be available for handling and close inspection during the course of their run. Curated by Emily Fenn.”

SAIC’s student-run fnews Magazine covered Talking Points and the exhibition’s programming.

SUGs’ ‘Talking Points’ is Personal, Political, and Thankfully Unpredictable