We are excited to announce the 2008 Spring term Monday Nights@VAP entitled “Zones of Emergency” which bring together practitioners from a wide range of backgrounds and fields to examine the scale and complexity of catastrophe and disaster scenarios through lectures and panel discussions. Lectures and panel discussions will range from the philosophical and cultural understandings of the emergency to practical “on the ground” operating organizations to current use of networked technology examining its own breakdown. This lecture series is co-organized by Ute Meta Bauer (Director of the MIT Visual Arts Program), Jae Rhim Lee, and Amber Frid-Jimenez.
In tonight’s lecture, artist Alfredo Jaar will present a selection of works that focus on his practice in zones of emergency like Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship, and in Rwanda in the aftermath of the genocide (1994 -2000). Kayvan Zainabadi, former president of Amnesty International at MIT, will speak about his experience at MIT working with Amnesty on crisis in Darfur.
The lecture is open to the public, so if you’re in the Boston area feel free to drop by! If not, you can catch tonight’s lecture (and future lectures) on our video blog at http://www.zonesofemergency.net/.
