On the occasion of the Barbara DeGenevieve retrospective at SAIC Galleries, the Department of Exhibitions and Events will host “In Your Face: A Symposium on Transgressive Pleasure,” in the MacLean Ballroom at 112 South Michigan Avenue on Saturday, September 14, at 10:00 a.m. The event will feature an introduction by the exhibition’s curator Alan Labb, Associate Professor of Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a keynote address by David Getsy, Eleanor Shea Professor of Art History at the University of Virginia, and three panels of renowned theorists, historians, and artists. Moderated by SAIC faculty members Jeremy Biles, Kirin Wachter-Grene, and Adam Greteman, the panels will address the erotics of art, interclass contact, and radical pedagogy. RSVP Here

This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

---

Symposium Schedule

Welcome: Lisa Wainwright
Keynote: David Getsy
Introduction: Issues of Censorship, Then and Now: Alan Labb

Three Panels:

1. Pedagogiphilia

MODERATOR: Adam Greteman (SAIC Art Education)
Panelists: Sean Fader, Jennifer Reeder, Oli Rodriguez, and Amber Hawk Swanson
What are the lessons from a pedagogy with a craving for excess? How do students’ appetites for learning rub up against a pedagogue’s appetite to teach? Returning to scenes of being taught by Barbara DeGenevieve, this panel explores the pleasurable and painful afterlife of pedagogical practices that pushed boundaries then and now.

2. Celebrating the Erotics of Art – Theory and Practice

MODERATOR:  Jeremy Biles (SAIC Liberal Arts)
Panelists: Ron Athey, Amina Ross, Juliana Huxtable, and John Neff
This panel engages the erotics of art with an emphasis on praxis, considering ways in which theory and practice are mutually animating. Taking cues from Barbara DeGenevieve’s practice and life, the conversation will proceed as an experiment in which the participating panelists—artists whose work engages eroticism in diverse ways—will be prompted to reflect on the place of eros and erotic desire in their work and in their practices of life. 

3. The Panhandler Project and Interclass Contact

MODERATOR: Kirin Wachter-Grene (SAIC Liberal Arts)
Panelists: Keren Moscovitch, Brontez Purnell, Clifford Owens, and Avgi Saketopoulou
This panel features a dynamic conversation about Barbara DeGenevieve’s most controversial work, “The Panhandler Project”–a 28 minute video featuring the outcome of the artist finding five homeless, African American men who agree to pose nude for $100, food, and lodging. Panelists will discuss the ethics of the work in relation to matters of consent (and coerced consent); power; artistic risk; race and gender; and interclass contact (practices of relation between and across class boundaries).