Panel Discussion: Ethnicity/Community/Identity/Art

Ethnicity/Community/Identity/Art | Panelists | Facebook Event

October 18, 2015
6:00pm

Artist Savas Boyraz’s work looks at Kurdish ethnic identity and community and the ways it has been disrupted by borders, wars, and government policies. His work seeks to reunite Kurdish identity and document current Kurdish experiences and communities. This panel will draw on the themes in Boyraz’s work to explore issues around ethnic heritage, community, identity, and political self-determination and the ways art can contribute to the creation of community or how art suffers as communities are disrupted or destroyed. While most of us acknowledge the need for community and desire greater connections through our communities, the term is inherently vague and as there as many ways to identify community as there are forms of identity – ethnicity, race, class, gender, sexual preferences, professions, neighborhoods, social or political interests, sports, and the list can go on and on. What are the advantages or disadvantages of the multiplicity of identities and communities in a city like New York/Brooklyn? How can these overlapping communities serve the social and political needs of the 99% or 99.9% in the face of popular media that often represents the interests of the 1%. And finally what is the role of artists and art work in creating, sustaining, and uniting communities or how is creativity impacted when artist-friendly communities are not sustained.

Moderator:
Pennee Bender (American Social History Project, CUNY)

Panelists:
Ozan Aksoy (Ethnomusicologist, New York University)
Betty Yu (Artist, U.S. Department of Arts and Culture)
Judy Pryor-Ramirez (Director of Civic Engagement & Social Justice, The New School)
Dean Moss (Choreographer, Curator, gametophyte inc.)
Maritza Arrastia (Educator, Turning Point Brooklyn)