Center for Human Rights and the Arts

Cassils: The Struggle For/ The Struggle Against
2021-04-02 12:00 (America/New_York)
In a time of lockdown and quarantines, of fascism and propaganda, we need reason and action to be supported by visions of change. Cassils discusses artistic and performative tactics uniquely suited for our time. Reflecting on ten years of practice where they carve out strategies for trans representation, they discuss tactics to educate, engage and agitate while attempting to balance and center love, community and relevant action.

The White Pube: [ideas for a new art world]
2021-03-26 12:00
The ~cultural sector~ has been resistant to change, it has held on to antiquated balances of power like no other area of society, and that rigidity has affected the way we distribute resources amongst ourselves within the creative industry. We have got to radically restructure the way we do things. If we had the chance to terraform the arts landscape we’ve got, and become more expansive in what we do, where would we start? How do you go about making an industry that’s sustainable, accessible, genuinely diverse, fundamentally joyful?

Faustin Linyekula: Of Ruins And Responsibility
2021-03-12 12:00
This lecture will be (again) a dialogue with the ruins I inherited from my fathers, guided by the poet’s voice:
I would come to that country, my country, and I would say to it:
“Kiss me without fear… And if I do not know what to say, it is still for you that I speak. ”
And I would say to it:
“My mouth shall be the mouth of misfortunes which have no mouth, my voice the freedom of those which break down in the prison cell of despair. ”
And, coming, I would say to myself :
“Beware, my body and soul, beware above all of crossing your arms and assuming the sterile attitude of the spectator, because life is not a spectacle, because a sea of sorrows is not a proscenium, because a man who cries out is not a dancing bear. ”
Aimé Césaire, Return to My Native Land
(Translated from the French by John Berger and Anna Bostock)
