WHAT COMES AFTER: CITIES, ART AND RECOVERY

WHAT COMES AFTER: CITIES, ART AND RECOVERY
An International Summit
September 8-11, 2005

How do people make sense of their daily lives after catastrophe? How do art
and culture return meaning to places of devastation? How have artists
contributed to renewal, hope, and reconciliation while insisting on
remembrance? Over three days of roundtable discussions, performances, films,
and arts installations in all media, Cities, Art and Recovery will consider
how people remember and rebuild after tragedy and how the arts have been
crucial to such recovery.

Join Lower Manhattan Cultural Council this September 8-11 in the first of
two international summits focused on the arts and culture after catastrophe.
Artists, performers, writers, architects, lawyers, scholars, activists,
community and political leaders from a range of contexts that have been
directly affected and transformed by violence will gather in downtown
Manhattan in a public exchange of stories, strategies, ideas and memories.
Over three days of roundtable discussions, performances, films, and arts
installations in all media, Cities, Art and Recovery will consider how
people remember and rebuild after tragedy and how the arts have been crucial
to such recovery.


Roundtables:
The Design of Recovery
What are the political and aesthetic challenges of rebuilding after
disaster? How do architects and planners balance utilitarian, economic and
technological issues against those of environment, cultural heritage and
local practice?

Afterword: The Language of Recovery
What are the demands placed on language and writing by disaster? How does
writing after catastrophe work as advocacy, witness, mirror, mourning, elegy
or indictment?

The Arts of Emergency
How are artists provoked by the mechanisms of destruction and terror? How
does photography, painting and performance intervene to restore face and
voice, expose the erasures of history and demand recognition?

Revenge, Reparation, Reconciliation
How can artistic media be used by formerly hostile groups to reconcile
opposing points of view, recognize divergent historical narratives and
promote trust? What cultural strategies do advocates, jurists and activists
employ to effect accountability and foster healing?

Remembrance, Repetition, Residue
What is the relationship of memory and forgetting to the recovery of daily
life after trauma? How are the arts of memory - museums, memorials,
archives - sentinels of the future?

The Arts of Possibility
Can cultural and symbolic forms help to imagine a future while always
remembering the past and mourning loss? Can artistic strategies serve as
antidotes to revenge, sorrow and despair to restore hope, encourage safety,
and return the promise of tomorrow?


Schedule:
Thursday, September 8
6:00 pm Opening Reception
8:00 pm Performance: Diamanda Galas Defixiones (NY Premiere)

Friday, September 9
9:00 am Keynote Breakfast
10:30 am Arts Tours: What Comes After
2:00 pm Roundtable: The Design of Recovery
4:30 pm Homage to Susan Sontag
7:30 pm Film screening

Saturday, September 10
9:00 am Keynote Breakfast: United Nations speaker
10:15 am Roundtable: Afterword: The Language of Recovery
1:30 pm Roundtable: The Arts of Emergency
3:45 pm Homage to Edward Said
4:30 pm Roundtable: Revenge, Reparation, Reconciliation
7:30 pm Film screening
8:00 pm Performance: Diamanda Galas Defixiones

Sunday, September 11
9:00 am Keynote Breakfast
10:15 am Roundtable: Remembrance, Repetition, Residue
Remembrance of 9/11: Performance/Readings
3:00 pm Roundtable: The Arts of Possibility
9:00 pm Performance: Political Cabaret, Joe's Pub
11:00 pm Closing party: Joe's Pub

Registration information announced on August 22, 2005.

For details and additional programming, visit www.lmcc.net/recovery

Contact:
Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
120 Broadway
31 Floor
New York NY 10271