January 25: "Throw Your TV Out the Window" with RothStauffenberg

Talk on "Throw Your TV Out the Window" -- RothStauffenberg exhibition placed in context of video art and media criticism

When: Thursday January 25 7:00 PM
Where: Indianapolis Museum of Art DeBoest Lecture Hall

Much of early video art was understood as “media criticism” because it turned the major weapon of mass media--television--against itself. Rosanne Altstatt, former Director of the Edith Russ Site for Media Art in Oldenburg Germany and now a visiting scholar at Purdue University, presents screenings and discussion about historical and recently minted classics by artists such as Nam June Paik, Dara Birnbaum, and Ant Farm. This program, on the opening night of the RothStauffenberg exhibition, will be followed by an informal gallery walk-through led by Altstatt and Rebecca Uchill, IMA assistant curator of contemporary art.

RothStauffenberg is an artists’ team that consists of Christopher Roth and Franz Stauffenberg, both of whom live and work in Berlin, Germany. The duo work on the cusp of media, video, and installation art, often combining elements from all media to create highly experiential environments. For their exhibition at IMA, the artists of RothStauffenberg will display a range of their work, and adapt some elements of existing pieces in new installations. The project will include a multi-part projection of footage taken from the artists’ Hollywood film archive, as well as wallpaper decorated with timecode, pointing to the way that directors and editors use numbers to organize film, independently of a narrative structure.

If this event sounds interesting, you should check out the RothStauffenberg exhibition, which will be at IMA January 25 to July 29 in the Off the Wall Gallery and Carmen & Mark Holeman Video Gallery. You can attend the crash courses on Pop Art at the IMA February 8, and at the Eiteljorg February 15. See the exhibition of Ed Paschke at Herron School March 9, too.

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February 2: Spend an Evening with NPR superstar Tavis Smiley

WFYI welcomes Tavis Smiley back to Indianapolis for an exclusive evening with the Indiana native, author, PRI and PBS host

When: Friday February 2, 5:30 pm Dinner & Reception with Tavis Smiley; 8:00 pm Lecture
Where: Madame Walker Theatre 617 Indiana Ave Indianapolis, 46202

Tavis Smiley was raised in north central Indiana and educated on the Bloomington campus of IU. Today he is at the center of a news and philanthropic empire. Smiley hosts the late night television talk show, Tavis Smiley on PBS, and his radio show The Tavis Smiley Show on public radio is distributed by PRI, Public Radio International. (Smiley is the first American ever to simultaneously host signature talk shows on both public television and public radio. )

In 2004, Texas Southern University honored Smiley with the opening of The Tavis Smiley School of Communications and The Tavis Smiley Center for Professional Media Studies, making him the youngest African American to ever have a professional school and center named after him on a college or university campus. Smiley cemented his commitment to TSU with a $1million gift to the Center. The mission of his nonprofit organization–Tavis Smiley Foundation–is to enlighten, encourage and empower Black youth. Tavis Smiley Presents, a subsidiary of The Smiley Group, Inc., brings ideas and people together through symposiums, seminars, forums and town hall meetings.

Smiley is author of many books, including the newly published What I Know for Sure: My Story of Growing Up in America.

Click here to order tickets.

If this event sounds interesting, you should check out some of the other African American public intellectuals and policymakers coming to Indianapolis in the spring: Christopher Edley January 14, Henry Louis Gates and John Hope Franklin April 5, and Colin Powell March 12. Tavis Smiley's programs provide an alternative to the simplistic and divisive DC media culture dissected by Stefan Halper February 21.

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February 21: Join Stefan Halper in searching for the "the Rational Center" in policy discussions

Stefan Halper, influential critic of neo-conservative foreign policy, turns his attention to the debasement of public discourse of media-hungry public intellectuals

When: Wednesday, March 21 Social hour 5:30-6:30; dinner 6:30-7:15; talk 7:15-8:45
Where: The Marten House 1801 West 86th Street Indianapolis 46260

A couple of years ago Stefan Halper came to public notice with America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order (written with Jonathan Clarke), a conservative critique of the hijacking of US foreign policy by radical neo-conservatives. Today their argument is well on its way to becoming accepted wisdom among conservatives. In Silence of the Rational Center: Why American Foreign Policy Is Failing, Halper (and Clarke) turn from an ideology to the shrill and sterile DC-centered media and policymaking climate.

Stefan Halper is a Senior Fellow at the Centre of International Studies and a Senior Research Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He directs the Donner Atlantic Studies Programme at the Centre of International Studies and lectures on latter 20th Century US foreign policy, Anglo-American relations, and contemporary international security issues. Stefan Halper holds doctorates from both Oxford and Cambridge. He has served four American presidents in the White House and Department of State and is an expert on U.S. foreign policy, national security policy, the United Nations and Anglo-American relations. Dr. Halper's research interests remain centred on Anglo-American relations, US national security issues and international security matters. Recently he has focused on the nature of the political discourse of the right. and the left, the rise of extremist views and their prevalence in the national political discussion, the rise of anti-Americanism among European elites and the implications for US policy in the decades ahead.

Read this early review of The Silence of the Rational Center, and see this film of Halper and Clarke discussing America Alone.

Prof. Halper will participate in an informal discussion at Sagamore Institute the afternoon of February 21. For more information, contact John Clark at john@sipr.org.

If this event sounds interesting, you should check out other discussions of America's disoriented empire such as the debate over Europe vs US January 30, or Pierre Atlas's discussion of the Middle East on January 24.

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