Talk

From November 3 to 27, 2017 the Vera List Center hosts a series of bi-weekly lunchtime readings in the context of Maria Thereza Alves, Seeds of Change: New York—A Botany of Colonization. These readings, organized in collaboration with The High Line, activate and amplify the metaphors and relations embedded in the exhibition.

Alex Smith and M. Téllez from Metropolarity join us on Tuesday, November 21th for a reading from their most recent publication Style of Attack Report. “METROPOLARITY is a DIY sci-fi collective based, bred, and tested in the colliding future-present of Philadelphia. This Style of Attack Report contains select work from METROPOLARITY’s four founding members, who contribute theory, practice, and experience of home grown speculative visioning for both historical documentation as well as personal and collective survival. The collection serves as a model and a record of how Black, brown, queer, low-resource, working, ill and in-recovery people can project themselves into the future, conjuring resources, technology, and magic that aid us in the present.” –metropolarity.net

In the context Seeds of Change, a long term project Maria Thereza Alves initiated in 1999, the artist situates the presence of ballast flora in the contemporary landscape as evidence of alternative histories and ways of knowing the land we are inhabiting. In her words “The earth you think you’re standing on is not, it is someplace else, the only way you would know the place is from the flower.”

The readings in this series address the variegated intersections of Alves’ project and those of contemporary writers including: Wendy S. Walters, Patricia Klindienst, Jennifer Kabat, Alex Smith (Metropolarity) and M. Téllez (Metropolarity). To expand on these connections each reading draws out specific narrative threads over the course of this month long reading series engagement.

The Seeds of Change Lunchtime Reading Series is organized in collaboration with Melanie Kress, Eric Rodriguez, Jasmin Chabla and Andi Pettis at The High Line. These readings draw on a community of elected affinities responding to the exhibition and look to the future it promises in the summer of 2018 when the plants are re-sited in ballast flora gardens around New York, including the forthcoming installation at The High Line, as well as Pioneer Works and Weeksville Heritage Center.

Hyperallergic is the exclusive media sponsor for the International Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics 2016-2018.