Panel, Screening

“Change Encounters” is a new project by Lin + Lam, conceived in response to the Vera List Center’s focus theme “Speculating on Change.” Lin + Lam have collected an interdisciplinary array of cultural and historical predictive devices, appropriations from popular culture, historical sources, and academic scholarship, including original interviews with professionals from diverse backgrounds, and arranged this archive into an interactive website. “Change Encounters” offers multiple vantage points on the nature and the process of change and speculation, and is accessed through a random number generator based on the 64 hexagrams of the I-Ching, one of the oldest books in the world and a predictive device that is still commonly used today.

Change is an encounter with difference that requires opening oneself to the unknown. Similarly, to engage with this project is to enter a relationship with the unpredictable.

Participants
Claudia Bader, psychoanalyst, astrologer and creative arts therapist, and Adjunct Faculty, The New School
Lopamudra Banerjee, Assistant Professor of Economics, The New School for Social Research
Gregg Bordowitz, writer and artist
Cynthia Chris, Associate Professor of Media Culture, College of Staten Island, CUNY
Andrew Culver, composer
Julie Felner, Director of Strategy, SYPartners
Orit Halpern, Assistant Professor of History, The New School for Social Research
Rachel Harris, Gender Equality Architecture Reform Lead, Women’s Environment & Development Organization (WEDO)
Carin Kuoni, Director, Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School
Benjamin Lee, Professor of Anthropology and Philosophy, The New School for Social Research
Colleen Macklin ,Director of PETLab, and Associate Professor of Communication Design and Technology, Parsons The New School for Design
Cate Owren, Program Director, Women’s Environment & Development Organization (WEDO)
Annie Shaw, artist, and Senior Office Assistant, Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School
Elizabeth Snyder, actress
Polly Thistlethwaite, librarian, CUNY Graduate Center
Henry Weingarten, Managing Director, The Astrologers Fund
Robert Wosnitzer, Research Fellow, Institute for Public Knowledge, New York University
Margaret R. Zellner, Ph.D., L.P., psychoanalyst and behavioral neuroscientist

Lin + Lam
Inspired by a particular site, historical incident, or political issue, Lin + Lam (Lana Lin and H. Lan Thao Lam) collect research in the form of interviews, archival materials, and found objects. Their collaboration brings together their backgrounds in architecture, photography, sculpture, installation, and time-based media. Their work has been exhibited at international venues including the Museum of Modern Art, New Museum, The Kitchen, and the Queens Museum, New York, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, Arko Arts Center (Korean Arts Council,) Seoul, the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Germany, and the 3rd Guangzhou Triennial, China. Their work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts, among others. Lam received her MFA from CalArts. Lin received her MFA from Bard College. Lam is faculty at Goddard College, MFA-IA program. Lin is faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts and Jacob K. Javits Fellow in the Media, Culture, and Communication doctoral program at NYU. Lin + Lam are 2009-10 Vera List Center Fellows.

For more information about Lin + Lam, please go to www.linpluslam.com