Join us for a conversation on Studies into Darkness: The Perils and Promise of Freedom of Speech, a timely publication on censorship, speech, and making social justice visible. With a dialogue and a participatory manifesto-building exercise, this gathering brings the book’s design into conversation with its content, touching on the rigidity and slippages inherent in speech, translation, and comprehension. Artist and book designer Nontsikelelo Mutiti and book contributor Gabriela López Dena engage with co-editors Carin Kuoni and Laura Raicovich. Organized by The Francis Kite Club and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics. 

A collection of texts, artist projects, and archival documents, Studies into Darkness: The Perils and Promise of Freedom of Speech emerges from a provocation by artist Amar Kanwar: Is there an idea, concept, or social construct that would benefit from a retreat “into darkness”—into a space of profound reconsideration and rethinking? “Darkness” here holds the promise of complexity, discovery and, in Kanwar’s words, “visions from within the depths.” The book itself—in content and form—plays with the concept of darkness as both a tonal variation and a factor of legibility. Designed by Nontsikelelo Mutiti and Julia Novitch, the blackness of the printed word is arrived at through layering spectral color inks where, as they say, “things may be shining through.” Alongside newly commissioned texts, Gabriela López Dena’s selection of republished historic feminist manifestos speaks to the medium of manifestos as both a form of expression and a proposal for political pathways forward.

With a dialogue and a participatory manifesto-building exercise, this gathering brings the book’s design into conversation with its content, touching on the rigidity and slippages inherent in speech, translation, and comprehension to address key elements and strategies used in manifestos as a genre.

The Francis Kite Club
The Francis Kite Club is a bar and cultural forum; a site of fellowship and a shared space in the East Village of Manhattan founded by friends and co-conspirators. The Kite hosts a range of activities, including live music, art, performance, workshops, and special convenings in a bar setting. The effort reflects a desire to come together, think, share, have a good time, and escape the norms of our professional and social trenches. www.franciskiteclub.com

Vera List Center for Art and Politics
The Vera List Center for Art and Politics is an artist-focused research center and public forum for art, culture, and politics. It was established at The New School in 1992—a time of rousing debates about freedom of speech, identity politics, and society’s investment in the arts. A leader in the field, the center is a nonprofit that catalyzes and supports politically engaged art, public scholarship, and research throughout the world. It fosters vibrant and diverse communities of artists, scholars, and policymakers who take creative, intellectual, and political risks to bring about positive change. www.veralistcenter.org