Collapse – Opening Reception

Rhode Island School of Design is hosting Collapse in Providence, RI, on September 21-23, 2022 and will feature speakers, a series of panel discussions, and an exhibition of original works by RISD faculty and staff funded by the CfC inaugural Art & Inquiry grant program.

Join a dialogue among artists, designers, scholars, and activists exploring phenomena of collapse. From 9/11 to the January 6 attack on the Capitol, from climate to finance and food production and distribution, collapse seems to define these fragile times. As we collectively confront the precarity of natural and human-made systems, how might we collapse the spaces that divide us to identify the insights, mindsets, and practices needed to move beyond collapse and achieve a sustainable, equitable, and just future?

Speakers include:

Chef Michael Lomonaco – Click here to register
Wednesday, September 21 from 10:00 – 11:30 am
Metcalf Auditorium/Chase Center
RISD Museum
20 North Main St, Providence, RI 02903

Chef/Partner of Porter House Bar and Grill, Columbus Circle, Manhattan, and former Culinary Director of the Windows on the World restaurant atop the World Trade Center’s North Tower. Lomonaco, who survived the attacks of 9/11 by a twist of fate and as a NYC restaurateur, has been navigating the catastrophic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, will give a talk and engage in audience Q&A. Lomonaco’s experience provides a unique perspective on adapting, adjusting, and responding to crises with creativity and compassion. These experiences have given him “an acute appreciation for humanity, courage, and determination.”

Kameelah Janan Rasheed – Click here to register
Wednesday, September 22 at 5:00 pm (Joining Remotely)
Auditorium
20 Washington Place, Providence, RI 02903

Kameelah Janan Rasheed (she/they) was born in East Palo Alto, CA, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She has an MA in Secondary Social Studies Education from Stanford University (2008) and a BA in Public Policy from Pomona College (2006). She was an Amy Biehl U.S. Fulbright Scholar at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa (2006–7).
“I grapple with the poetics-pleasures-politics of Black knowledge production, information technologies, [un]learning, and belief formation. I am interested in the rituals and technologies we use to generate, share, and conceal knowledge.”

Jack Halberstam – Click here to register
Friday, Septmeber 23 from 10:00 am – 11:30 am
Auditorium
20 Washington Place, Providence RI 02903

Unworlding: An Aesthetics of Collapse: The term “collapse” derives from Latin and contains “col” meaning “together” and “labi” meaning slip. This etymology offers us a glimpse of the potential aesthetic folds hidden in the term. Collapse can refer to a system plagued by multiple failures, a mental break, a physical depletion, a structure giving way, a fall. But it specifically means many things falling together, and a fall created by a loss of support. An aesthetics of collapse might name a series of gestures that orient towards falling, that skew away from making, building, improving and that embrace the beauty of gradual and inevitable decay. Under the aesthetic heading of “collapse” we can gather together the hollowed out and split structures created by self-described anarchitect Gordon Matta-Clark as well as Rachel Whitehead’s infamous sculpture “House” (1993), a plaster cast of the inside of a house in East London slated for demolition, that required the actual house to be dismantled around it. While Matta-Clark’s cuts and incisions commented on the beginnings of New York City’s post-war wave of gentrification and real estate, Whitehead, twenty years later offered a temporary monument to the removal of low-income housing as preparation for gentrification. I will offer a look at art work from the 1970’s that orients towards dismantling, demolition and collapse and develop a queer and trans theory of collapse alongside a model of anti-anti-utopian unworlding!

For a list of all panels and breakout sessions please click here.