The Department of Art and Art Professions, New York University Steinhardt School of Education, Professor Hiroshi Sunairi and Ombretta Agró would like to invite you to a two-session symposium on nuclear disarmament, activism and the arts:
Friday, April 15 th , 2005
3:30 PM to 8:00 PM
Department of Art and Art Professions
34 Stuyvesant Street, New York
(Between 3 rd and 2 nd Avenues)
Einstein Auditorium
Facilitator: Monika Szymurska
Guest speakers: John Burroughs, Kathleen Sullivan, Eric Ritz, David Clark
Six decades after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, humanity continues to live under the threat of nuclear annihilation. Despite the efforts to control and abolish these genocidal weapons, the world faces a growing risk of a cascade of proliferation. Drawing from their experience as educators and activists, the panelists will reflect on the importance of promoting education and awareness in the context of the nuclear age.
6:00 to 8:00 PM
The Nuclear Age and the Arts
Facilitator: Kathleen Sullivan
Guest speakers: Dominic McGill, Ombretta Agrò, Joy Garnett, Hiroshi Sunairi, Nobuho Nagasawa
This panel will explore the ways by which artists may contribute to define and develop a new critical approach in the context of the nuclear age, one that is triggered by accessing the visual and interpretive arts. The panelists have explored these issues from various angles in their work within the arena of contemporary art and will address the complex links between contemporary art and the existence of nuclear weapons.
Co-sponsorship: GRACE-Global Resource Action Center for the Environment and Educators for Social Responsibility-ESR Metro, members of the Abolition 2000 network
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: 212.254.8713 / sunairi@verizon.net
About the speakers:
Eric Ritz , Fashion Peace
Fashion Peace represents a meeting point for creative people to showcase options and opportunities through art, fashion and music. A method of creative expression that champions balance, positive thoughts and intelligence, Fashion Peace provides seeds to those who are in search of helping the world grow into a better place for everyone to enjoy without consideration of geography, social status or race.
Kathleen Sullivan , Coordinator, Nuclear Weapons Education and Action Project, Educators for Social Responsibility-NY Metro Area
Sullivan is a nuclear researcher, disarmament educator, author and activist who has been engaged in the nuclear issue for the last 20 years. She is the coordinator of one of the most significant youth programs in the US to teach nuclear awareness classes to high school students. She is also a consultant to the United Nations Department for Disarmament Affairs in New York, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization in Vienna, writing disarmament curricula for young people to be posted on the UN and CTBTO websites. Sullivan has recently published the article Atomica World: the Place of Nuclear Tourism in Tourism Mobilities: Places to Play, Places in Play (Routledge, 2004). Current writing projects include co-editing Making the Invisible, Visible: Inspiring nuclear awareness through the visual arts . Her PhD is from Lancaster University, UK.
John Burroughs , Executive Director, Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy
Burroughs represents LCNP in Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) review proceedings, the United Nations, and other international forums. In 1998, Burroughs represented LCNP at the negotiations on the International Criminal Court in Rome, and in 1995, he was the nongovernmental legal coordinator at the hearings on nuclear weapons before the International Court of Justice. Burroughs is co-editor of Rule of Power or Rule of Law: An Assessment of U.S Policies and Actions Regarding Security-Related Treaties and author of The Legality of Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons: A Guide to the Historic Opinion of the International Court of Justice. He is an adjunct professor of international law at Rutgers Law School, Newark. He has a J.D. and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.A. from Harvard.
David Clark , Founder and CEO of EPOP International. David has been creating unique international cause-related events for the last ten years, and formerly served as CEO of Amnesty International's Art for Amnesty in Dublin, overseeing their international arts campaigns. In 2002 with EPOP, David created the landmark HIV/AIDS initiative titled "46664" for Nelson Mandela, which was globally broadcast on World AIDS Day in 2003 to over a billion people worldwide via MTV, BBC and CNN, and featured performances by Bono, Beyonce, Queen, The Corrs, Peter Gabriel and The Eurythmics. Presently, EPOP, with Mayor Akiba of Hiroshima have created a landmark music and art initiative called Back to the Garden . A Back to the Garden concert will be held at Madison Square Garden on July 25th and will be broadcast globally on August 6, 2005, and, a Back to the Garden fine art exhibition will open in New York on that date, and tour internationally. This arts initiative will start off with a Christie's benefit art auction on May 3rd, and the following day Yoko Ono's announcement at the United Nations. The project will benefit the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize nominated "Hibakusha" - who are the living witness/survivors of the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Dominic McGill , English-born artist, lives and works in New York.
McGill is known for his work with the Standard and Poor collective and for his street performances and guerrilla art. In 1997 and 1998, the duo performed as The Red Carpet Rollers , showing up uninvited at unlikely venues such as the Trump Towers, only to build a crowd that waited for a celebrity who never arrived. For the last five years he has been working on the project Tomorrow , in which McGill presents sculpture and drawings that explore the dark history of nuclear apocalypse past and future, musing upon humankind's adaptation to its psychotic commitment to nuclear armament.