[-empyre-] "home and away"

[Christina McPhee]

dear -empyreans-

Please welcome Naeem Mohaiemen, who will join us as soon as he can  
from New York  today,  Thursday January 10...it's 3 am in New York  
City at the moment so-- meanwhile check out his website: http://shobak.org

Naeem is our first guest, and will be able to join us for all the rest  
of this month, except when in planes between New York and Dhaka,  
Bangladesh-- his two homes.

Naeem is a generous and gregarious superdynamo (in my humble opinion);  
he's working on multiple fronts, as journalist, as visual artist, as  
agent provocateur.

Using video, archive and text, Naeem investigates national security  
panic, failed revolutionary movements, and the slippage between utopia  
and dystopia.
Projects include a multiyear investigation of hysterical conditions  
(Visible Collective, disappearedinamerica.org), My Camera Can Lie? (UK
House of Lords), and Sartre Kommt Nacht Stammheim (Pavillion).  
[shobak.org]

When we skyped last month about the possibilities for -empyre-'s  
"Stations, Sites"  Naeem explored with me a  few issues that may be  
interesting, and I quote him here from our chat:

"1. We were presenting in Vietnam/Singapore last month, and we were  
talking about how artists were just descending on to the cities,  
taking from the cities, making work "about" the cities (for the  
"natives") and leaving again, and the dynamic that creates (in  
audience and in us). 2. We were talking about our privilege as artists  
who travel etc and I said that the ultimate privilege was not class  
privilege but passport privilege... A red or blue passport is worth a  
lot and it changes how people make work, and how their work is seen."


Naeem will begin by talking about passport privilege and artist  
perceptions between "home" and away.


all best,

Christina



http://christinamcphee.net