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Past Talks & More | Artist Talks
Arts, Technology and Social Change Lecture-performance and discussion
Book Signing | Reception Follows
Free for all audiences with ticket
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ACCESSIBILITY We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. If you have questions about accessibility or require an accommodation such as CART captioning or ASL interpretation to participate in this event, please contact Accessibility Manager Helyn Marshall at accessibility@wexarts.org or via telephone at (614) 688-3890. Requests made by two weeks in advance will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the Wexner Center for the Arts will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.
Artist Zach Blas presents a new lecture-performance as part of the Arts, Technology and Social Change series, followed by a conversation with scholar Pamela M. Lee.
In Expositio, Iudicium, Lacrimae, Blas explores today’s tech industry, asserting artificial intelligence exists “alongside corporate gods, mystical glyphs, religious icons, occult sigils, and captured bodies, and where emotional crying is a symbolic language of quantification.”
After the performance, Blas will be joined in conversation by renowned art historian Pamela M. Lee to discuss his new book, Unknown Ideals, which was released in 2022 by Sternberg Press. A reception and book signing will follow in the Lower Lobby.
IMAGE CAPTION Left to right: Zach Blas, courtesy of the artist; Zach Blas, IUDICIUM, 2022 (still), courtesy of the artist; Pamela M. Lee, courtesy of the speaker.
The Arts, Technology and Social Change series is a new initiative conceived by Ohio State’s Department of History of Art, Department of Art, Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Translational Data Analytics Institute. Envisioned as a series of “microresidencies” in which artists participate in various events on campus including exhibitions, workshops, and performances, the program acts as a cross-department platform to explore questions of virtuality—spanning virtual technologies and life in the digital sphere—in relation to civil rights, sex and gender, indigeneity, displacement, migration, genocide, and environmental justice in our contemporary moment.
Artist, filmmaker, writer Zach Blas is an assistant professor of visual studies at the University of Toronto. His practice spans installation, moving image, computation, theory, and performance. Blas’s recent exhibitions include the 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, British Art Show 9, Positions #6 at the Van Abbemuseum, Uncanny Valley: Being Human in the Age of AI at the de Young Museum, The Body Electric at the Walker Art Center, and the 12th Gwangju Biennale. His artist monograph Zach Blas: Unknown Ideals (2022) was published by Sternberg Press and edited by Edit Molnár and Marcel Schwierin. Learn more on Blas’s website.
Pamela M. Lee is a professor of modern and contemporary art in the Department of the History of Art at Yale University. Previously, she held the Osgood Hooker Professorship at Stanford University. Her recent publications include Think Tank Aesthetics: Midcentury Modernism, the Cold War and the Neoliberal Present (MIT Press, 2020) and The Glen Park Library: A Fairytale of Disruption (no place press, 2019). Lee is an editor of the journal October. Her essay “When the Lizard King Met the Lizard Brain: The Doors” appears in Zach Blas: Unknown Ideals (2022).
SUPPORT FOR THIS INITIATIVE PROVIDED BY Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme at The Ohio State University
WEXNER CENTER PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY Greater Columbus Arts Council The Wexner Family National Endowment for the Arts Ohio Arts Council L Brands Foundation The Columbus Foundation Nationwide Foundation Institute of Museum and Library Services Vorys, Sater, Seymour, and Pease
ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY Mike and Paige Crane Axium Packaging CampusParc Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams President Kristina M. Johnson and Mrs. Veronica Meinhard Nancy Kramer Larry and Donna James Lisa Barton Johanna DeStefano Jones Day Alex and Renée Shumate
Past Talks & More
Zach Blas and Pamela M. Lee
