Panel, Screening

The pandemic that continues to ravage the planet and its populations does so along largely predictable lines. The most vulnerable suffer disproportionately in the face of continued racial tension, while engineered geographies of deprivation redouble as sites of concentrated misery. The scale of this contagion resulted in early soundbites about “equal opportunity infection.” The impact of this pandemic has instead made clear that “to make live and let die” is always and everywhere dependent on protocols.

The virus materializes biopolitical logics by enacting the imperial security protocol of the latently weaponized body. Our cells are the sleeper agents now, and the multiple determined protocols of the imperial war machine are kicking into gear accordingly. For, even as the federal government in the U.S. fails to contain this particular virus, it has doubled down relentlessly on the requisite social wars and pre-existing conditions that preceded the disaster. In so doing, states, capital, and their allies have committed to a collective refusal of their death-dealing. And at the center of all this: the body and the myriad things that it can do.

Convened by Joshua Scannell, Assistant Professor, School of Media Studies, Schools of Public Engagement, The New School, the third event in the As for Protocols seminar series explores the relationships between the body, race, and technology, especially as they play out during a pandemic, with its own set of protocols, and when so much is laid to waste and so much else is up for grabs.

With Anthony Ryan Hatch, sociologist and Associate Professor and Chair of the Science in Society Program at Wesleyan University; Ronak K. Kapadia, Associate Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago; and Jasbir Puar, theorist and Professor and Graduate Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University. Artists Stephanie Misa and James Clar screen a new video, The Diamond (Princess) Is Forever, and present a performance featuring students from the Design Theory class of Professor Jay Nathan Jore, University of the Philippines Cebu.

Performers: Jenny Ann Abear, Vince Anthony Aberion, Ella Alvarez, Ella Baja, Wynd Caindec, Marie Elaiza Cajes, Khyle Donal, Myke Jhae D. Ebora, Rachel Anne Gallardo, Sofia Go, Roselle Ann Herrera, Rania Jumdail, Harem A. Mabugat Jr, Evangelie Parrado, Praia Bea Patac, Gratz Jul-Elijah Redoble, Audrey Meg Sialana, and Allyca Zoe Villaflor.

Accessibility 
The Vera List Center is committed to ensuring that our programs are accessible to and inclusive of all. As part of that commitment, this event will feature close captioning subtitles and ASL interpretation. Please let us know when registering if you need any additional accommodation.