The Vera List Center is pleased to announce the VLC Forum 2021: As for Protocols. An international, annual convening of key participants in the field of art and politics, this year’s Forum continues the VLC’s two-year investigation As for Protocols.

Each day of the Forum highlights the protocols-related work of one of the 2020–2022 Jane Lombard Fellows: Emeka Okereke and other Invisible Borders Trans-African Photographers Organization members gather online and at UnionDocs for workshops, conversations, and screenings; we present an introduction to NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati‘s Nepal Picture Library; Underground Resistance presents Nomadico, with a conversation and live DJ performance at Weeksville Heritage Center; and Jorge González of Escuela de Oficios creates an outdoor communal altar at The Clemente.

Ahmedabad-based Avni Sethi is the recipient of the 2020–2022 Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice. She is also the founder and curator of Conflictorium, a museum of conflict in the same city. The exhibition anchoring the VLC Forum 2021—Owed to a Certain Emptiness: Infra-structuring the Conflictorium—is dedicated to Sethi’s groundbreaking project, with an installation and live exchanges on the political dimension of emptiness and infrastructures of care.

All events, including film screenings, performances, and concerts, are free with RSVP.

Vera List Center Forum 2021
Program

EXHIBITION
Owed to a Certain Emptiness: Infra-structuring the Conflictorium
October 9–24, 2021, open daily
Parsons School of Design, The New School, Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries, 66 5th Avenue, New York

In an exhibition environment inspired by Conflictorium, the museum she founded in India just over ten years ago, Avni Sethi leads reflections on infrastructure and museum accountability. Resonating concepts of dialogue and community participation prevalent at Conflictorium, the exhibition at Parsons also provides a remote space of reflection, a “pause” which, this time, is self-chosen, not pandemic-imposed. Over the course of the exhibition, Sethi hosts various conversations and exchanges on the notion of infrastructure, presence, and emptiness. All visitors must register in advance and adhere to specific Covid protocols, full details available here.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 12 | VLC FORUM DAY ONE
Invisible Borders Trans-African Photographers Organization
10 am, 12 pm, & 2 pm EDT: Workshops
6:30 pm EDT: Film Screening and Conversation
Online & at UnionDocs, 322 Union Ave, Brooklyn

In a performance of coming together, Jane Lombard Fellow Emeka Okereke gathers members and collaborators of the Invisible Borders Trans-African Photographers Organization, an artist-led initiative that challenges the perception of borders within the 54 countries of Africa. Virtual workshops and conversations, as well as an in-person screening at UnionDocs reflect on notions and spaces of encounter, the poetics of relation, and the protocols necessary to translate these concepts into artistic practice.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13 | VLC FORUM DAY TWO
Nepal Picture Library
11–1 pm EDT Presentation
4–5:30 pm EDT Workshop
Online

In the presentation, we introduce the Nepal Picture Library, a communitarian archive founded by Jane Lombard Fellow NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati that actively preserves the memory cultures of minority groups and social resistance in Nepal, and regularly focuses on the country’s feminist histories, and how these histories arise in children’s literature and books.

Later, artist and educator María Verónica San Martín hosts a Zoom workshop presenting a wide variety of bookmaking techniques for children. Attendees will explore the concept of three-dimensional books inspired by materials, methods, and perspectives that will be presented by the instructor. The class will focus especially on the art of storytelling as a means of portraying historical events. In addition to bookbinding and printmaking, attendees may also use other art forms, such as drawing, painting, or collage.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 14 | VLC FORUM DAY THREE
Underground Resistance
5:30–7 pm EDT: Underground Resistance and Friends: A Conversation
7–8 pm EDT: Reception & Visit of historical Hunterfly Road Houses
8–10 pm EDT: Concert: UR presents Nomadico
Weeksville Heritage Center, 158 Dr. Joan Maynard Way/Buffalo Avenue, Brooklyn

Jane Lombard Fellow Underground Resistance presents Nomadico at Weeksville Heritage Center for a DJ performance and accompanying public program, contextualizing the world-building and political project that is Underground Resistance, a techno music collective and label based in Detroit.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 15 | VLC FORUM DAY FOUR
Conflictorium
2 pm: Conversation
Online

Daily conversations with different interlocutors animate the exhibition Owed to a Certain Emptiness: Infra-structuring the Conflictorium. On Day Four of the Forum, Avni Sethi engages in an in-depth conversation with seminal filmmaker and artist Amar Kanwar.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 16 | VLC FORUM DAY FIVE
Escuela de Oficios
2–6 pm EDT Community Altar
The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center, 107 Suffolk St, New York

Following a recent trip to Mexico to connect with his paternal roots and learn traditional tallow candle-making techniques, Jorge González sets up a candle-making site as an altar at The Clemente, enacting Escuela’s continuous, embodied work of community regeneration.