MOCO TALK with Professor Pamela M. Lee

Please join the History of Art department’s Modern & Contemporary Forum this Wednesday, April 10 at 5pm for an exciting book preview with Professor Pamela M. Lee, Carnegie Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art. Professor Lee will offer readings from her forthcoming book, The Glen Park Library: A Fairytale of Disruption (no place press, June 2019), followed by open discussion.

From Silicon Valley, digital technologies, and the dark web, to poetry, public libraries, and visual art, this innovative work of “experimental art criticism” chronicles the sweeping effects of the notion of ‘disruption’ in contemporary culture. Against the backdrop of its titular “fairytale of disruption” –– the October 2013 arrest of Ross William Ulbricht, site administrator of the dark-net market Silk Road –– the book sketches a brief portrait of ‘disruptive innovation,’ while providing insightful analysis of works by artists such as Gretchen Bender, Cécile B. Evans, Josephine Pryde, Carissa Rodriguez, and Martine Syms. In antithesis (or antidote) to the gospel of disruption, The Glen Park Library proposes “close reading” and “slow looking.” As Lee writes,

“Few care to wrestle with language when it’s quicker and easier just to make shit up; and fewer still bother about the provenance of images—or their destiny, for that matter. […] But to read things in detail, to look at things closely, sustaining more attention than is typically warranted in this day and age, that’s what we’re up against here at the Glen Park Library. Call it close reading and slow looking in the epoch of fast history.”

After the reading, a reception will be held in Loria’s third-floor lounge. We will have copies of The Glen Park Library on hand for consultation. For those interested in pre-ordering the book, MIT Press has generously provided special discount codes for the event.