VISTA de Williams College
Williamstown, Mass
March 6, 2007
Fellow Students,
You are cordially invited to join us at Williams College the weekend of April 6th – 8th 2007 for the East Coast Chicano Student Forum (ECCSF) spring conference. VISTA is deeply committed to rejoining the greater Latina/o student community on the East Coast and strengthening the ties with institutions of equal caliber. We believe it is time for Williams College to once again regain its leadership role in hosting ECCSF.
The theme for our Spring conference is “Trafficking Bodies: Agitation through media art and performance.” Invited lecturers, artists, and activists include: award winning director of “Señorita Extraviada,” Lourdes Portillo, world renowned artist/activist Favianna Rodriguez, avant-garde performance artist Nao Bustamante, and critically acclaimed filmmaker Sergio de la Torre.
Our aim with this conference is to depart from traditional representations of urban turmoil, border industrialization, performance of labor, and disjuncture within feminist discourses. Media art and performance operates with the symbolic currency of trafficked bodies in order to critically engage witnesses/consumers in discussions about the aforementioned concerns. With lectures about art interventions, we hope to catalyze dialogue about the ways in which today’s visual culture (re)produces images of bodies that can provoke indignation, arouse concern, and/or move viewers to action. How do we balance artistic endeavors with debates over the ethics and politics of image making?
We hope that you will join us in our exploration of such critical issues. We look forward to hosting you this Spring! Attached you will find registration information, directions to our campus, and our schedule of events.
Sincerely,
The ECCSF Planning Committee, VISTA de Williams College
1 comment:
I am truly impressed by the level of preparation and thoughtfulness that has gone into a truly remarkable theme ("Trafficking Bodies"). Good job Williams! This theme has yet to be addressed by any ECCSF host institution. The praxis and theorizing of the Mexican/Chican@ diaspora through performance and art in academia is extremely crucial because it engages far more than political, social, economic discourses. Not only does the theme focus on the intersectionality of race, sex, gender, and class, "Trafficking Bodies" also seems to correlate analyzes of performance and art by bringing the margins to the center. I am extremely excited for Williams and encourage all to attend what seems to be a unique conference that is bound to challenge our notions of transnationalism as well as how we posit our own definitions of the Chican@/Mexican experience in the United States and beyond.
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