"Three Short Texts on the Necessity of Creating an Economy of Equivalence,"

Three one-hour lectures. The outline of a possible text. Five parts will be tested and developed quickly.

Night School is an artist's project by Anton Vidokle in the form of a temporary school. A yearlong program of monthly seminars and workshops, Night School draws upon a group of local and international artists, writers, and theorists to conceptualize and conduct the program.

This event is free, but tickets are required. Tickets can be reserved online or at the Museum prior to the seminar's start; a limited number of tickets will be available the day of the event.

People get news about science and technology in many ways including: TV, newspapers, magazines and web sites. However, science centers, museums and community outreach projects are gaining momentum as vital ways to deliver up-to-date stories about the latest scientific breakthroughs and research, engage lay audiences and build scientific literacy.

Laura Allen, Senior Writer and News Producer of Science Bulletins, American Museum of Natural History. Since 2004, Laura has managed the editorial and visual production of all bi-weekly news updates and writes the essays that supplement each semi-annual Science Bulletin feature documentary online. Part of her job involves explaining how scientists collect and interpret scientific data.

Karen de Seve, Senior Exhibit Developer and Project Manager of Breakthroughs, Liberty Science Center. Karen edits and manages current e-news stories displayed within the Liberty Science Center's exhibition galleries, and develops and writes Breakthroughs exhibitions on various topics and themes.

Susan Heilman, Current Science and Technology Department, Boston Museum of Science. Susan gives daily presentations at the Museum of Science and discusses the latest science news stories during a monthly cablecast on New England Cable News and in regularly produced podcasts. Susan will be on location in Boston and will participate via videoconference.

The Harriman Institute with the Central Asia Studies Program and Eurasia Initiative student groups present a lecture entitled, "Adventurers from Kazakhstan: Where the Nomads Go these Days," by Grigoriy Evseev, President of Central Asian Geographic Society.

Introduction by Rafis Abazov, author of Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of Central Asia.

For further info and questions, please contact Rafis Abazov or Alla Rachkov.

Artistic labor markets are puzzling. In most advanced countries, census data provide quite similar pictures about artists' earnings : artists actually appear to get lower returns from their educational investments than is the case in other comparable occupations, to have more variable income across time and to experience huge income inequalities. Nevertheless artists are not deterred from entering such an occupation in growing numbers, nor is there as much withdrawal from artistic careers as would be expected.

Given that these labor market disparities persist across time, any type of usual labor market disequilibrium is unlikely to be the cause. I’ll review several alternative explanations : risk-loving, miscalculation due to overestimation of one’s chances of success, psychic rewards, impact of work contingency. Then I’ll turn to the issue of talent : art worlds have developed an insuperable engine to rank artists by quality level and market value, to select and signal the best works out of an ocean of products through endless competitive comparisons, to let the whirl of fads and fashions promote or eliminate aspiring superstars, to celebrate skyrocketing and ephemeral celebrity as well as to provide civilization with Pantheons of eternal values. Finally, I’ll ask under what conditions inequalities of such a magnitude may be occupationally legitimate.

Pierre-Michel Menger is senior researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris and professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales where he teaches sociology of labor and sociology of art and culture.

For further information regarding this event, please contact Maison Events.

Hayden White and Michael Taussig, two highly original and unorthodox intellectuals, write about the question of method and the place of meaning in the study of culture and history.

For further information regarding this event, please contact Jonah Cardillo.

"Three Short Texts on the Necessity of Creating an Economy of Equivalence"

Three one-hour lectures. The outline of a possible text. Five parts will be tested and developed quickly.

Night School is an artist's project by Anton Vidokle in the form of a temporary school. A yearlong program of monthly seminars and workshops, Night School draws upon a group of local and international artists, writers, and theorists to conceptualize and conduct the program.

This event is free, but tickets are required. Tickets can be reserved online or at the Museum prior to the seminar's start; a limited number of tickets will be available the day of the event.

Fences have a longstanding relation both with liberal individualism and imperialism. After 1945, walls took over from fences, with an unprecedented determination to divide. They spread like a bushfire from to Palestine, from the tablelands of Kashmir to the villages of Cyprus, from the Korean peninsula to the streets of Belfast. When the Cold War ended, we were told to expect their collapse. Instead, they grew taller, more impenetrable, longer. They globalised. From the West Bank to Kosovo, from the killing fields of old Ethiopia to the US-Mexico borders, their spectre is upon us. Why? What are the forces sustaining this Globalising Wall? How does it feel to live in its shadow?

Yanis Varoufakis teaches political economy at the University of Athens. His books include Rational Conflict, Foundations of Economics, and Game Theory: A Critical Text.

Danae Stratou has regularly participated in shows in Museums and Biannual exhibitions internationally. Her solo exhibitions include Water Section (2000), See Through (2005) and CUT – 7 Dividing Lines (2007), on which this talk is based.

2:00 p.m. Welcoming Remarks
Marianne Hirsch, Institute for Research on Women and Gender
Michael Ryan, Columbia University Libraries

2:15 to 3:30 p.m. Fear of Flying at 35
Moderator: Natalie Kampen, Barnard Center for Research on Women
Participants: Susan Rubin Suleiman, Harvard University
Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Stanford University
Aoibheean Sweeney, CUNY Graduate Center

4:00 to 5:15 p.m. Can a Feminist Classic Be a Classic?
Moderator: Margo Jefferson, Columbia University School of the Arts
Participants: Min Jin Lee, novelist
Nancy K. Miller, CUNY Graduate Center
Rebecca Traister, salon.com

6:00 to 7:00 p.m. Erica Jong in conversation with Jenny Davidson, Columbia University

7:00 p.m. Reception

For further information regarding this event, please contact Columbia University Libraries.

"Three Short Texts on the Necessity of Creating an Economy of Equivalence"

Three one-hour lectures. The outline of a possible text. Five parts will be tested and developed quickly.

Night School is an artist's project by Anton Vidokle in the form of a temporary school. A yearlong program of monthly seminars and workshops, Night School draws upon a group of local and international artists, writers, and theorists to conceptualize and conduct the program.

This event is free, but tickets are required. Tickets can be reserved online or at the Museum prior to the seminar's start; a limited number of tickets will be available the day of the event.

A roundtable discussion of agency in surveilled space: who is watching, who is being watched, who decides which spaces are visible to the camera and which are effectively invisible, off-limits to authorities. The panelists will examine how engineers, artists, and activists intervene in surveillance systems to subvert, invert, and redefine these relationships, and how the principle of “sousveillance”—meaning surveillance from “below,” or watching the watchers—applies. It features artists and engineers who collaborate to produce software and hardware applications that access and visualize data usually obscured from public view; artists whose projects have questioned the rhetoric of surveillance by intervening more playfully in the expected aesthetics or power dynamics; and activists who monitor post-9/11 surveillance by intelligence agencies and its effects on immigrant and dissenting communities.

Panelists:
Tad Hirsch, researcher and member of the artist collective Institute for Applied Autonomy
Anjana Malhotra, human rights lawyer and former fellow with Human Rights Watch
Jenny Marketou, video and installation artist
Trevor Paglen, artist, writer, and experimental geographer, Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley
Brooke Singer, digital media artist, Assistant Professor of New Media at Purchase College, State University of New York, and cofounder of the art, technology, and activist group Preemptive Media.

Moderator: Lex Bhagat, co-editor of Atlas of Radical Cartography

This panel is the third in a four-part series of roundtable discussions organized by Index of the Disappeared. A physical archive of post-9/11 disappearance and a mobile platform for public dialogue, Index for the Disappeared was founded by Chitra Ganesh and Mariam Ghani. The series is hosted and co-sponsored by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School along with NYU’s Kevorkian Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Center for Media, Culture and History, and the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Art in General.

Lecture will be given be Dr. Sean P. S. Gulick (University of Texas at Austin, Joint Ocanographic Institute Distinguished Lecturer). This is a unique opportunity to listen to one of the world's leading scientists on one of the most exciting discoveries of the last 20 years.

Explore the general context of transformation of practices related to war, human rights, and ethics - and how these concerns challenge anthropologists. What does the military want from anthropologists and what does that signify for our discipline?

Scott Horton, Human Rights First, Project on Accountability for Private Military Contractors Brian Ferguson, Rutgers - Newark

A New York Academy of Sciences event at Columbia University.

Mowry Baden has influenced a generation of sculptors in Canada and the U.S. with his engaging, participatory installations. For almost 40 years, he has challenged notions about contemporary sculpture through a staggering number of projects and artworks that borrow from psychology, architecture and performance. Robert Hullot-Kentor is a critic, philosopher and translator whose recent book, "Things Beyond Resemblance" (Columbia University Press, 2006), collects his essays about philosopher Theodor W. Adorno. Presented by the BFA Fine Arts and Visual and Critical Studies Departments.

The notion of a "new" Middle East, which came to fruition in the 1990s, signified a vision or expectation of a positive transformation in the region. The optimism was generated by the end of the Cold War and America's triumph in the first Gulf War. But this perspective has since been replaced by the gloomy mood of the current decade. Profound changes-the rise of Iranian power, the return of an Islamist Turkey to an active role in the Middle East, the fundamentalist challenge, the decline of U.S. prestige and influence, and the Arab-Israeli stalemate-are shaping a "new, new" Middle East. Observers contend developments call for fresh Israeli thinking about Israel’s place and role in the region and in the international arena. The impending end of the Bush presidency and the U.S. presidential elections give these developments a particular edge. Rabinovich, chief negotiator with Syria under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, will address these and other matters in his lecture.

Itamar Rabinovich served as Israel's ambassador to the United States from 1993 to 1996 and as the president of Tel Aviv University from 1999 to 2007. He is the author of several books, including Syria Under the Ba'ath; The War for Lebanon; The Road Not Taken: Early Arab-Israeli Negotiations; The Brink of Peace: Israel and Syria; and Waging Peace: Israel and the Arabs at the End of the Century. Rabinovich is currently a Global Distinguished Professor at NYU's Taub Center for Israel Studies.

While there has been a tremendous focus on green new construction, the vast majority of our building stock has already been built. Greening existing buildings, and increasing their energy efficiency, provides unique challenges and opportunities. Jeffrey Perlman, President of Bright Power, will discuss the five steps to greening existing buildings, with a particular focus on affordable multifamily housing.

Gordon Holness P.E. is Chairman Emeritus of Albert Kahn Associates, Inc. He serves in a consulting capacity and as an expert for design and construction. He will introduce the reason for the topic - energy availability and world climate change. This will include discussion on the growing United States and a Worldwide energy demand. He will examine available resources, where the USA gets and uses its energy and the resulting escalating costs. The bulk of the presentation will focus on the case for energy efficient and sustainable buildings.

Exercising its unique position as a neutral third party, the Academy formed a collective - including architects, engineers, scientists, policy makers from city and state, foundation and non-profit leaders - representing the key players in New York in the area of green buildings and sustainable design. This newly formed group addresses a unique niche for which the Academy can leverage its scientific strength to deliver significant value to the green buildings discourse. This year's focus will be on addressing energy and measurement issues with respect to sustainable design including a survey of best practices nationally and internationally.

The Olympic aquatics pavilion in Beijing resembles a box of bubbles. This extraordinary feat of architechure and engineering will be discussed by Denis Weaire, physics professor at Trinity College Dublin, who first observed the efficiency of bubble structures, and a representative from the engineering firm Arup, famous for their design contributions to some of the greatest buildings of our times.

Over the past two decades, tactics of branding and marketing have been applied to the promotion of religion, adding to the commercial clutter of todays society. This panel discussion will explore the political, social, and theological implications of this ever-increasing commoditization of faith. Discussants will include Mara Einstein, Associate Professor of Media Studies, Queen College, and the author of Brands of Faith: Marketing Religion in A Commercial Age; Heather Hendershot, Professor of Media Studies, Queens College, and the author of Shaking the World for Jesus: Media and Conservative Evangelical Culture; Douglas Rushkoff, Director of the ITP Narrative Lab at NYUs Tisch School, and the author of Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism; and Jeff Sharlet, contributing editor, Harpers, and co-creator and editor of www.therevealor.org.