date
- 12.05.2023
seminar
Brad Evans and Chantal Meza “Liberation at a technological age”
We have been so used to thinking about politics through the technical language of connectivity, networks and becoming, the normalisation of technologically enabled resistance is seldom questioned. But what if the dominant form for power was technology? How might we resist it seductions? What if our conceptions of liberation were feeding the machine? And what if the language of liberation was being coded to destroy a deeper and more poetic meaning of being human? This talk will address these concerns by explicitly looking at the way the imagination is being brought into the field of battle. We will attend to the dominance of the technical image of thought, which will call for a new image of liberation that emanates from the arts .
bio
Brad Evans is a British academic, and Professor of Political Violence at the department of Politics, Languages & International Studies at the University of Bath, United Kingdom. He is the author of Ecce Humanitas: Beholding the Pain of Humanity and of Liberal Terror alongside numerous articles and edited volumes. In 2011, Evans founded the Histories of Violence project which sought to explore “the theoretical, aesthetic and empirical dimensions to violence”. As part of this project, Evans co-directed a documentary, Ten Years of Terror, with Simon Critchley. As a further extension of the Histories of Violence Project, Evans hosted a series of conversations on violence for the opinion section of the New York Times, co-authoring ten pieces with thinkers such as Simon Critchley, Bracha Ettinger, Zygmunt Bauman, Richard Bernstein and Simona Forti. This series was continued at the Los Angeles Review of Books, where Evans has co-authored articles with various artists and thinkers including Oliver Stone, Russell Brand, John Akomfrah, Elaine Scarry, Malcolm London, Jake Chapman, and Marina Abramovic. As a guest-editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books, in 2015 Evans curated a collection of essays dedicated to the commemoration of the death of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze.
Chantal Meza is a self-taught abstract painter living and working in the United Kingdom. The creative act in Chantal’s work is guided by the conflict and imbalance between the sensory and the technical, between the affirmation of life and whimsical annihilations. Expressing what is integral to life’s creative journey, what prevails in her artistic act is a commitment to the human-sensorial over the purely human-technological, which she sees as inseparable from arts integrity. Her works have been Exhibited in more than 30 group and Individual Exhibitions in prominent Museums and Galleries in Mexico, Paraguay and the United Kingdom such as: Chiapas Museum of Science and Technology, Mexico. National Art Museum (MUNAL) Mexico. Centro Cultural Juan de Salazar (CCEJS) Paraguay. Museum of Modern Art (MAM) Mexico. Ashcroft Art Centre, United Kingdom. Watercolour National Museum, Mexico. Arocena Museum, Coahuila. Cultural Center Tijuana (CECUT) Tijuana. Arroyo de la Plata Gallery, Zacatecas. Popular Art Museum (MAP), Mexico. Guadalupe Museum, Zacatecas. Pape Museum, Cohauila. University Cultural Complex (CCU-BUAP) Puebla, among others.
date
- 12.05.2023
bio
Brad Evans is a British academic, and Professor of Political Violence at the department of Politics, Languages & International Studies at the University of Bath, United Kingdom. He is the author of Ecce Humanitas: Beholding the Pain of Humanity and of Liberal Terror alongside numerous articles and edited volumes. In 2011, Evans founded the Histories of Violence project which sought to explore “the theoretical, aesthetic and empirical dimensions to violence”. As part of this project, Evans co-directed a documentary, Ten Years of Terror, with Simon Critchley. As a further extension of the Histories of Violence Project, Evans hosted a series of conversations on violence for the opinion section of the New York Times, co-authoring ten pieces with thinkers such as Simon Critchley, Bracha Ettinger, Zygmunt Bauman, Richard Bernstein and Simona Forti. This series was continued at the Los Angeles Review of Books, where Evans has co-authored articles with various artists and thinkers including Oliver Stone, Russell Brand, John Akomfrah, Elaine Scarry, Malcolm London, Jake Chapman, and Marina Abramovic. As a guest-editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books, in 2015 Evans curated a collection of essays dedicated to the commemoration of the death of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze.
Chantal Meza is a self-taught abstract painter living and working in the United Kingdom. The creative act in Chantal’s work is guided by the conflict and imbalance between the sensory and the technical, between the affirmation of life and whimsical annihilations. Expressing what is integral to life’s creative journey, what prevails in her artistic act is a commitment to the human-sensorial over the purely human-technological, which she sees as inseparable from arts integrity. Her works have been Exhibited in more than 30 group and Individual Exhibitions in prominent Museums and Galleries in Mexico, Paraguay and the United Kingdom such as: Chiapas Museum of Science and Technology, Mexico. National Art Museum (MUNAL) Mexico. Centro Cultural Juan de Salazar (CCEJS) Paraguay. Museum of Modern Art (MAM) Mexico. Ashcroft Art Centre, United Kingdom. Watercolour National Museum, Mexico. Arocena Museum, Coahuila. Cultural Center Tijuana (CECUT) Tijuana. Arroyo de la Plata Gallery, Zacatecas. Popular Art Museum (MAP), Mexico. Guadalupe Museum, Zacatecas. Pape Museum, Cohauila. University Cultural Complex (CCU-BUAP) Puebla, among others.
seminar
Brad Evans and Chantal Meza “Liberation at a technological age”
We have been so used to thinking about politics through the technical language of connectivity, networks and becoming, the normalisation of technologically enabled resistance is seldom questioned. But what if the dominant form for power was technology? How might we resist it seductions? What if our conceptions of liberation were feeding the machine? And what if the language of liberation was being coded to destroy a deeper and more poetic meaning of being human? This talk will address these concerns by explicitly looking at the way the imagination is being brought into the field of battle. We will attend to the dominance of the technical image of thought, which will call for a new image of liberation that emanates from the arts .
