A special program of events, performances, conversations, and workshops centering on ATTENTION, presented by associates of the “Friends of Attention”collective. From the politics of algorithms to the aesthetics of dreams, from the attention economy to tracking shots of early cinema, this series focuses on the perils and pleasures of the directed senses and the tuned mind. Every second Saturday; check the calendar page for details and RSVP.
November 2020 – June 2021
‘Attention, Duration, Subjectivity’
Vigils and Vigilance
12 June 2021 – 2 pm EST
Subtitled ‘Attention, Duration, Subjectivity’, Vigils and Vigilance is a panel discussion with artists and researchers working on problems of sustained attention.
Departing from the pioneering research of Norman H. Mackworth, whose discovery of the ‘vigilance decrement’ marked the origins of Cold War investigations into durational visual experience, the session features presentations by art historian Joanna Fiduccia (Yale), anthropologist and artist Hermione Spriggs (UCL/Slade), and artist/researcher K MacBride (University of the Arts, London). The discussion is moderated by D. Graham Burnett.
Supported by Glasgow International
ANIMAL STATIC:
Speeds of Looking, Speeds of Making
8 May 2021 – 6 pm EST
Artist, musician, and writer Lex Brown makes work that cycles and recycles our data-worlds, dramatizing the ways information conditions our bodies and our language. Her installations and performances conjure new kinds of humor, disorientation, and awareness from the compulsive ecologies of perpetual mediation. Join us for another “Second Saturday,” where Lex will show some video work, and discuss dynamics of attention and distraction with D. Graham Burnett.
MYTHO-LOGICKING:
Logic, Sound, and the Body
10 April 2021 – 6 pm EST
How does rationality feel? Can analytic abstraction touch our flesh? Can it be sensed? Working with sound, artist/scholar Anya Yermakova stages somatic encounters with non-Aristotelian logic. Join Monira and the Friends of Attention for a quick refresher on Russian avant-garde experimentalism on the art-science borderlands (circa 1900), together with a Yermakova listening party (and Q & A)! Another ATTENTION SERIES “Second Saturday” hosted by D. Graham Burnett.
PULLING PUNCHES: Attention, Capital, Labor
13 March 2021 – 6 pm EST
Digital hypercapitalism is currently fracking living humans for every last drop of their monetizable attention. Join representatives of the “Anti-Capitalist Working Group” of the Friends of Attention, for a report on the prospects of an “Attention Liberation Front,” and the screening of a new short by Julian Chehirian and Kristin Lawler. Another “Second Saturday,” hosted by D. Graham Burnett.
OTHER BODIES
13 February 2021 – 6 pm EST
Get the jump on Valentine’s Day by joining Monira for an online private screening of OTHER BODIES, an edgy fairy-tale of unsuppressed desires and multiple misreadings. Eros vies with Thanatos in this short film by 2021 Sundance Lab writer/director Alyssa Loh and cinematographer Izik Alequin. Another cocktail evening “Second Saturday” with the Friends of Attention, hosted by D. Graham Burnett.
LISTENING OUT
9 January 2021 – 6 pm EST
To be inside while “listening out” the window is a form of awareness both receptive and reaching — part daydream, part animal alertness. In a live, meditative, essay-performance, artist and writer SAL RANDOLPH will share a sonic windowscape, invoking the intimate modalities of aural attention and blurring the lines between listener and what is listened to. Another cocktail evening “Second Saturday” with the Friends of Attention, hosted by D. Graham Burnett.
The Cinema of Attention
12 December 2020 – 6 pm EST
Using a curated sequence of classic cinema scenes, LA-based filmmaker and activist LANE STROUD will awaken the eye and dramatize the moving camera as an attentional instrument. How has cinema figured the work of looking? Can screen-vision show the difference between looking and seeing? Pour an evening cocktail and join host D. Graham Burnett and guests for another “Second Saturday” with the Friends of Attention.
A Manifesto for the Freedom of Attention
14 November 2020 – 6 pm
Artist Stevie Knauss presents an online version of her pre-COVID Cloud City performance — “a love letter to a sound mind.” Directly addressing the alienation, atomization, and disillusionment we experience at the disintegration of shared reality, Knauss speaks in a flash-bang of clarity, and sings a burning desire to live in a better world, a desire to desire on our own terms with clear-eyed imagination. Hosted by D. Graham Burnett.
The first in the ATTENTION SERIES program of Second Saturday events.
Don't miss out on new events, programs, and artist opportunities!
