Haig Aivazian, Joseph Masco, Lisa Wedeen

The works in Haig Aivazian’s All of the Lights cover a lot of ground—geographically, historically, and conceptually—as they draw out connections between places, things, and events that might at first seem unrelated. In his two videos and the surrounding installation, considerations of power, technology, and the control of public life rise into view as he makes compelling use of found footage and other repurposed materials.

On the final weekend of the exhibition, two scholars from the University of Chicago, Joseph Masco, Professor of Anthropology, and Lisa Wedeen, the Mary R. Morton Professor of Political Science, offer their reflections on Aivazian’s work and their own, before joining the artist in discussion, moderated by curator Karsten Lund.

Each working at the intersection of many fields in their research, Masco and Wedeen, like Aivazian, at times delve into the effects of technology, political imaginaries in the US or the Middle East, power and violence, and the roles played by mass mediation and visual culture. Together with the artist, they offer wide-ranging perspectives on these dynamics, to name only a few, and the images and narratives that shape them.

The two video works in All of the Lights, All of Your Stars Are but Dust on My Shoes (2021) and Prometheus (2019), will screen three times on Renaissance TV before and after the talk, at 11am, 1pm, and 4pm CDT.

Joseph P. Masco is Professor of Anthropology and of the Social Sciences in the College at the University of Chicago, Anthropology Department Chair, and a fellow of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT). His new book, The Future of Fallout, and Other Episodes in Radioactive World-Making (2021), assesses the memory practices, visual culture, concepts of danger, and toxic practices that, in combination, have generated a US national security culture that promises ever more safety and comfort in everyday life but does so only by generating, and deferring, a vast range of violences into the collective future.

Lisa Wedeen is the Mary R. Morton Professor of Political Science and the College and Co-director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT) at the University of Chicago. In her most recent book, Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria (2019), Wedeen draws on extensive fieldwork and a variety of Syrian artistic practices to lay bare the ideological investments that sustain ambivalent attachments to established organizations of power and contribute to the ongoing challenge of pursuing political change.

Organized in partnership with the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT).

Live captioning will be available for this event.