In her 45-minute performative slide lecture, artist Andrea Geyer will present an unsettling consideration of oppressed identity and a concise critique of the aggressive racism naturalized by capitalist democracy. Geyer will personify the archetypical (male) scholar of anthropology, speaking from the immanently authoritative position of academia and drawing authority from citing a canon of academic authors. The subject matter of her speech is the construction of a false memory of Native American culture, through ethnographic research and, more generally, the process of acquiring knowledge and its intertwinement with power and oppression. Geyer’s talk will be accompanied by slide projections of photographs taken by the artist at Chaco Canyon, an epicenter of cultural life in North America pre-1300. Spiral Lands/Chapter 2 considers the way in which science and the quest for knowledge oppresses the identity of their very subjects.

This program has been made possible, in part, by a generous grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

This event is presented as part of the Vera List Center’s program cycle on “Branding Democracy,” and is presented in conjunction with the exhibition, OURS: Democracy in the Age of Brandin, on view from October 15, 2008 to February 1, 2009.