Revisiting a model introduced during the 2014 edition of the Biennial, the festival syllabus has situated the festival within a larger geographical and political context. This year, with the 2019 Live Arts Bard (LAB) Biennial: Where No Wall Remains Festival, the syllabus addresses borders and migration through rigorous and scholastic engagement with different perspectives on the theme. Understanding that the festival takes place at a time when our understanding of borders and migration transcends specific geographies or individuals, the syllabus provides multiple entry points into this layered subject.
Grounded in conversations with the LAB Festival artists and curators, the syllabus weaves together texts, media and other sources integral to their artistic and intellectual practices. These resources can be accessed through the Reading Room at the Bard College campus (Annandale-on-Hudson). As a living and expanding resource, the material from the syllabus will also be taken up as a part of public programs scheduled to take place at the Reading Room. A list of events will be up on the website soon.
This unique festival, serving Bard undergraduate and graduate students, as well as the larger community, requires us to integrate the festival into an educational framework that reflects the complexities of the present global condition. This syllabus is structured to initiate dynamic conversations within the Bard community and beyond, culminating (but not terminating) in the festival in November.
Download as PDF: Introduction | Syllabus
GENERAL
Luiselli, Valeria. Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions. Coffee House Press, 2017.
Nail, Thomas. The Figure of the Migrant. Stanford University Press, 2015.
Nail, Thomas. Theory of the Border. Oxford University Press, 2016.
TANIA EL KHOURY
Cantu, Fancisco. The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border. Riverhead, 2019.
Alfaro-Velcamp, Theresa. So Far from Allah, So Close to Mexico: Middle Eastern Immigrants in Mexico. University of Texas Press. 2017.
Pastor, Camila. The Mexican Mahjar: transnational Maronites, Jews, and Arabs under the French Mandate. University of Texas Press. 2017
JASON DE LEÓN
Warwick, Kevin. “The Story of the DIY Publication That Kept Bands on the Road for Decades.” Vice. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywyzpm/the-story-of-the-diy-publication-that-kept-bands-on-the-road-for-decades. 6 May 2019.
Fishbone. The Reality of My Surroundings. Ocean Way Recording. 1991.
De León, Jason P. The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail. With photographs by. Michael Wells. University of California Press, 2015.
ALI CHAHROUR
al-Sarraj, Abu Mohammad J. Death of Lovers. Dar Sader, 2007.
“نور الهدى ياجارة الوادي تلفزيون لبنان ١٩٦٩” YouTube, uploaded unknown.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnLzYtz81l8
Arak el-balah (Date Wine). Directed by Radwan El-Kashef, Misr Arab Films Company. 1999.
BASEL ABBAS AND RUANNE ABOU-RAHME
Bolaño, Roberto, and Natasha Wimmer. The Savage Detectives. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
Serge, Victor, and Richard Greeman. Unforgiving years. New York: New York Review Books, 2008.
Moten, Fred. “Music against the Law of Reading the Future and ‘Rodney King'”. The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 27, no. 1 (1994): 51-64. doi:10.2307/1315058.
Tavares, Paulo. “In The Forest Ruins” e.flux. https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/superhumanity/68688/in-the-forest-ruins/
Puar, Jasbir K. “Introduction”. The Right to Maim, edited by Mel Y. Chan and Jasbir K. Puar, Durham and London: Duke University Press 2017.
Johnson, Gaye Theresa and Alex Lubin. Futures of Black Radicalism. London; Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2017.
Jafa, Arthur. On the Blackness of Blacknuss: My Black Death. Hudson, NY: Publication Studio Hudson, 2015.
Said, Edward W., and Jean Mohr. After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.
Rich, Adrienne. Diving into the Wreck; Poems, 1971-1972. New York: Norton, 1973.
EMILY JACIR
Serge, Victor, and Richard Greeman. Unforgiving years. New York: New York Review Books, 2008.
Saleh, Tawfik, Muḥammad Khayr Ḥalawānī, Bassam Loutfi, Saleh Kholoki, Abdel Rahman Al Rachi, and Sahib Haddad. al-Makhdūʻūn = The dupes. Seattle, WA: Arab Film Distribution, 1972.
MIRNA BAMIEH
Caputo, John D. The Conditions of Hospitality: Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics on the Threshold of the Possible. Edited by CLAVIEZ THOMAS. Fordham University, 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13wzzzq.
Gvion, Liora, David Wesley, and Elana Wesley. Beyond Hummus and Falafel: Social and Political Aspects of Palestinian Food in Israel. University of California Press, 2012. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt7zw3n7.
Heine, Peter, and Peter Lewis. The Culinary Crescent: A History of Middle Eastern Cuisine. Gingko, 2018. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv6zd9br.
Counihan, Carole, and Penny Van Esterik. 2008. Food and culture: a reader. New York: Routledge.
EMILIO ROJAS
Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands: the new mestiza/La Fronteras. 3rd ed., Aunt Lute, 2007.