RU Talk: Fiction/Reality – Pauline Batista and Ana Kuzmanić in conversation with Charlene K. Lau

Monday, May 13, 6.30pm
Residency Unlimited (RU)
360 Court Street (enter the Church through the main entrance)
Brooklyn, NY 11231

During these critical times, the borders between fiction and reality have become increasingly blurred. In a sphere where fascist politics regularly impinge on and tamp down civil rights, and technology companies enact their libertarian fantasies and neoliberal agendas, retreat into a fictive world has seldom seemed so attractive. How do we re-center our human selves in the inhospitable, and how might the gap between life and fiction close in times of crisis? The RU artists Pauline Batista and Ana Kuzmanić will discuss these issues and how they relate to their respective practices with the art historian and critic Charlene K. Lau.

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Charlene K. Lau is a New York-based art historian, art critic and cultural worker. She is an Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellow at Performa and has fifteen years of professional experience working in Canada, Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States with institutions including the Canadian Art Foundation, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Textile Museum of Canada, Vtape and White Cube. Charlene has held teaching positions at Parsons School of Design, Ryerson University, Western University and York University. Her writing has been published in The Brooklyn Rail, C Magazine, Canadian Art, Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty, Fashion Theory, Journal of Curatorial Studies, and PUBLIC. Charlene’s research interests include the historical and contemporary avant-garde in art and fashion, the Gesamtkunstwerk, art criticism, politically-engaged practices, and the pornographic. She received a PhD in Art History and Visual Culture from York University (Toronto), an MA in the History and Culture of Fashion from the London College of Fashion (UK), and a BA in Art History and Visual Studies from the University of Toronto.

This program is made possible with the support from DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Grant and the Trust for Mutual Understanding New York.