Talk

Through her writing and education work, Carol Becker has forayed into the untapped nexus of art and politics. She has moved ideas to a more democratic moment, and encouraged students, educators and cultural producers to think subversively. In her work, Surpassing the Spectacle, Becker suggests that governments create the conditions which allow us to think about freedom in more inclusive ways. She has stretched our notions of art beyond the purely visual and and the historically specific sites of museums and galleries. Becker is current faculty and vice president for Academic Affairs at the Art Institute of Chicago. In this talk, she discusses the Mai Lai Massacre in Vietnam, the vestiges of destruction from the war on that village, and American responsibility within the pain of Mai Lai’s history.