Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander First Nations readers are advised that this announcement may contain the names of deceased people. The family has granted permission.

We are pleased to present the VLC Forum 2023: Correction* from October 12 through 14. An international, annual convening of key participants in the field of art and politics, this year’s forum is organized at The New School within the framework of the center’s two-year investigation of Correction*.

The VLC Forum 2023 celebrates the Aboriginal urban art collective proppaNOW, recipient of the Vera List Center’s 2022–2024 Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice. proppaNOW: There Goes the Neighbourhood!, an exhibition of the collective’s work, is presented at the Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons School of Design from October 9 through November 5 (extended through November 9), 2023. This exhibition marks the first institutional presentation of the collective in the Western hemisphere, twenty years after their founding in Brisbane, Australia. Following the announcement of the prize at the VLC Forum 2022, the collective has added three new members: Shannon Brett, Lily Eather, and Warraba Weatherall, who join Vernon Ah Kee, Tony Albert, Richard Bell, Megan Cope, Jennifer Herd, Gordon Hookey, and the late Laurie Nilsen.

Alongside proppaNOW members, the forum also presents the Jane Lombard Fellows, who are finalists for the prize: the Pan-African Another Roadmap Africa Cluster (ARAC), Colectivo Cherani from Mexico, KUNCI Study Forum & Collective from Indonesia, and from Palestine Khalil Rabah. Over the course of three days, we celebrate and convene these artists and our communities through workshops, conversations, and a communal dinner and festive party. We conclude with a keynote lecture by farid rakun, part of the Jakarta-based collective ruangrupa and knowledge-sharing platform Gudskul.

With international artists, conversations, workshops, an exhibition, an accompanying publication, a community dinner and party, the VLC Forum 2023 highlights artists and collectives working in community and advancing social justice across the world. See the full schedule below.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12

3–5 pm EDT
Unchrono/logical Timeline Activation Chapter 2.2 New York
Workshop
Event Café at The New School
University Center, 63 5th Avenue, lower level

Kicking off day one of the VLC Forum 2023 , 2022–2024 Jane Lombard Fellow Another Roadmap Africa Cluster (ARAC) hosts the workshop Unchrono/logical Timeline Activation Chapter 2.2 New York, an exercise in “inhabiting” histories and considering history as a “resource.” In this workshop, participants engage with previous ARAC timelines, learn about local arts education and practices throughout Africa, and are invited to create their own interpretation, and expand on timelines by adding memories, images, text, and sounds. Led by ARAC’s Lineo Segoete and Zachary Rosen.

5–6:30 pm EDT
Impossible Structures with Khalil Rabah
Conversation
Online

2022–2024 Jane Lombard Fellow Khalil Rabah reflects on the semi-fictional Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind, a roving museum dedicated to generating interest in the natural and cultural history of Palestine. In conversation with curator Fawz Kabra, Rabah will discuss the ongoing project, the challenges of museology and national representation, and the impossibility of institutional structures and restructuring.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13

10–11:30 am EDT
Blackness Is…: Global Black and Indigenous Solidarities
Panel Discussion
Online

Bringing together artists, writers, curators, and scholars from across Australia, the Americas, Africa and its diaspora, this conversation meditates on the multiplicity of Black subjectivities. Speakers include members of 2022–2024 Jane Lombard Prize recipient proppaNOW—Vernon Ah Kee and Warraba Weatherall—alongside M. Carmen Lane, two:spirit African-American and Haudenosaunee (Mohawk/Tuscarora) artist, writer and facilitator; Lineo Segoete from Another Roadmap Africa Cluster; and moderator Darla Migan, art critic, philosopher, and part-time lecturer at Parsons School of Design. 

5–6:15 pm EDT
proppaNOW: There Goes the Neighbourhood!
Exhibition Opening and Walkthrough
Aronson Gallery
Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Parsons School of Design, The New School
66 5th Avenue, New York

The Vera List Center for Art and Politics presents proppaNOW: There Goes the Neighbourhood! featuring the work of Aboriginal urban artist collective proppaNOW, recipient of the 2022–2024 Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice. There Goes the Neighbourhood! presents the work of proppaNOW members Vernon Ah Kee, Tony Albert, Richard Bell, Megan Cope, Jennifer Herd, and the late Laurie Nilsen and their unwavering commitment to pushing for greater visibility for Aboriginal struggles and rights within Australia and beyond. proppaNOW originated in Brisbane, Australia, and has been active since 2003.

Join proppaNOW’s Lily Eather and Camila Palomino, VLC Curatorial Assistant, for a walkthrough of the exhibition.

proppaNOW: There Goes the Neighbourhood! is on view from October 9–November 5 (extended through November 9), 2023 and is open daily from 12–6 pm, Thursdays late until 8 pm.

6:30–8 pm EDT
Prize Ceremony and Conversation between proppaNOW and Wanda Nanibush
The Auditorium, The New School
Enter at 66 West 12th Street, New York

Join us in celebrating proppaNOW, the recipient of the 2022–2024 Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice. proppaNOW, the First Nations artist collective from Brisbane, Australia was founded in 2003 to combat the invisibility of urban Aboriginal contemporary art. Over the last twenty years, they have broken with expectations of what is proper (“proppa”) in Aboriginal art; created a new sovereign space for First Nations artists internationally outside colonial stereotypes, desires for authenticity, and capitalist capitulations; and opened new political imaginaries.

We will begin the celebrations with a prize ceremony honoring proppaNOW. Immediately following the ceremony will be a conversation between proppaNOW members Vernon Ah Kee, Tony Albert, Richard Bell, Megan Cope, Gordon Hookey, Lily Eather, Warraba Weatherall; and 2022–2024 prize jury member and Anishinaabe curator, artist, and educator Wanda Nanibush, with an introduction to proppaNOW by member Warraba Weatherall. 

8–10 pm EDT
VLC Forum 2023: Correction* Community Dinner and Party
Wollman Hall, The New School
Enter at 65 West 11th Street, New York

The annual VLC Forum Dinner extends the festivities into the night with a free dinner and party for all–celebrating proppaNOW, the Jane Lombard Fellows, Forum participants, and our communities. ARAC member Christian Nyampeta hosts, with a DJ set and karaoke to follow. Open to the public as well as The New School faculty, staff and students. Registration available here. 

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 14

11 am–12 pm EDT
Igniting Resistance: A Conversation with Colectivo Cherani
Conversation
Wollman Hall, The New School
Enter at 65 West 11th Street, New York

2022–2024 Jane Lombard Fellow Colectivo Cherani is a collective and artistic initiative from Michoacan, Mexico. The collective was first organized as a political movement following the P’urhepecha community uprising in 2011 to counter deforestation and violent threats posed by illegal logging and organized crime and political corruption, while also emerging as a cultural movement to energize and maintain the artistic expression of the P’urhepecha. Join for a discussion about the collective, P’urhepecha resistance movements, and experiments in autonomy and self-governance with Colectivo Cherani members Betel Cucué, Giovanni Fabián Guerrero, Alain Silva Guardian and Pablo José Ramírez, prize nominator, curator, art writer, and cultural theorist. 

12:30–2 pm EDT
On Learning Together
Panel discussion
Wollman Hall, The New School
Enter at 65 West 11th Street, New York

How can trust lead to growth and reflection, and create capacity for collective learning and studying? Bringing together 2022–2024 Jane Lombard Fellows ARAC and KUNCI Study Forum & Collective from Indonesia, this conversation focuses on experimental pedagogies and solidarities within arts education. Speakers include Rifki Akbar Pratama, KUNCI Study Forum & Collective; Lineo Segoete and Zachary Rosen, ARAC; moderated by Sarah Rifky, Senior Curator and Director of Programs at The Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University

2:30–4 pm EDT
farid rakun: On space, or putting the ruang in ruangrupa
Keynote Lecture
Wollman Hall, The New School
Enter at 65 West 11th Street, New York

ruangrupa regards space as their primary material. You can see it reflected in last year’s documenta fifteen, arguably their best known and largest to date public endeavor in sustaining many inter-lokal networks and relationships through lumbung. It is also indicative of how they began (like many other Indonesian collectives) by renting house after house in the south of Jakarta. In his VLC Forum 2023 keynote lecture, ruangrupa member farid rakun shares a story of using space as a guiding tool to give some sense to the collective’s journey to date.

The lecture is followed by a toast and reception.