Class of ’17 presents: The Mindless Identity of the World

Studium Witte de With's Class of ’17 invites you to their finissage event: The Mindless Identity of the World. Reading the Body.

Studium Witte de With Class of ‘17 is a peer-led education program by Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art. Each year a select group of students from partner institutions collaboratively explore art and art education on the intersection of the professional field and higher education curriculums. Over the course of the year, they have reflected upon the Witte de With programming, and engaged in it through their own program for higher education. This event marks the final chapter of their program, inspired by themes from the exhibition by Judy Radul, complemented with new perspectives that explore the frameworks of looking and being looked at in the performance of gender identities.

The Mindless Identity of the World. Reading the Body presents a threefold program of actions to reclaim one’s body and identity, with a performance by Ingrid Eel, a lecture on the history of Voguing by mother of the iconic Voguing house’s Ultra Omni Eurasian chapter, and a Zine Making workshop by RaeZor Beam (limited seats available, see below for reservation details).

Program

4:30 pm: Doors open
4:40 pm: Performance Ingrid Eel: On Legibility
5 pm: Lecture Marina Ultra Omni: Voguing and Identity
5:45 pm: Panel discussion with the Ultra Omni Eurasian chapter
6 pm: Break & drinks
6:30 - 8 pm: Zine Making Workshop: Framing and Self Representation (only 15 seats available for the workshop, for r.s.v.p. see below)

Exploring identity politics within the development and use of biometric technology, the performance lecture On Legibility by Ingrid Eel surveys the failures of facial recognition, fingerprint scanners, and iris scanners, highlighting cases of biometric illegibility. Unpacking the implications of being legible in the eyes of the state and society, and siding with the aesthetics and politics of illegible bodies and faces, Eel scrutinizes dominant bodies as a standard from which others are mere deviations.

Marina Ultra Omni will give a lecture on Voguing and Ballroom. In this lecture, she provides a brief account on the rich and diverse history of ballroom culture with a focus on gender-categories, kinship, performance and identity. She will talk about her family House of Ultra Omni to give concrete examples. During her lecture she will also engage in a conversation with house member Roberto Ultra Omni to discuss the ballroom category ‘Realness’.

To explore your own individual relation to your body and the way it is reflected upon in every day culture, RaeZor Beam will deliver an informative zine-making workshop sparked from their personal zine “Its No Big Deal”. This zine explores topics such as dysphoria, pronouns, transition, and transphobia. Rae’s workshop aims to develop social tools to create realities of justice and desired representation through zine making. Audiences are invited to create their own 6-page mini-zine to explore self-representation, and influence the ways identities are policed by the outside gaze. Through this workshop, you will be able to approach questions of political media-making in an informative and playful manner.

Workshop

15 seats available for the workshop by RaeZor Beam. Please r.s.v.p. by sending an email to education [​at​] wdw.nl, titled “Zines Workshop 6 May”.

About Witte de With Class of ‘17

Studium Witte de With Class of ‘17 is a peer-led education initiative by Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art. Each year a select group of students from partner institutions collaboratively explore art and art education on the intersection of the professional field and higher education curriculums. The participants form a co-programming team by and for students, to explore and map the cultural and political ecology of our time.

Class of ’17: Holly Benfield (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Victoria Douka-Doukopoulou (ArtScience Interfaculty The Hague), Jim van Geel (Reinwardt Academy), Aleid de Jong (Leiden University), Nia Konstantinova (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Amy Pickles (Piet Zwart Institute), Joyce Poot (Leiden University) and Martina Tosi (Willem de Kooning Academy).

About Studium Witte de With

Class of ‘17 is part of Studium Witte de With, the higher education platform for art and theory by Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art. Studium Witte de With is intended to serve as a catalyst bridging various fields of knowledge across higher education. It presents lectures, debates, workshops, and other programming in collaboration with partner institutes, to root firmly the programme in the curriculums of Academies and Universities.