May 24, 2013

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Video premiére | LOOP Barcelona, May 23-25

March 28, 2013

Galeria Filomena Soares: Carlos Motta’s Nefandus, 2013 

In Nefandus a man travels by canoe down the Don Diego river in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in the Colombian Caribbean, a landscape of “wild” beauty. The man tells stories about pecados nefandos [unspeakable sins, abominable crimes]; acts of sodomy that took place in the Americas during the conquest. It has been documented that Spanish conquistadores used sex as a weapon of domination, but what is known about homoerotic pre-hispanic traditions? How did Christian morality, as taught by the Catholic missions and propagated through war during the Conquest, transform the natives’ relationship to sex? Nefandus attentively looks at the landscape, its movement and its sounds for clues of stories that remain untold and have been largely ignored and stigmatized in historical accounts.

Guest Editor | (im)practical (im)possibilities, e-flux journal # 44, April Issue

March 28, 2013

“(im)practical (im)possibilities” with essays by Gregg Bordowitz, Ryan Conrad and Sarah Schulman, Antke Engel and Renate Lorenz, Malik Gaines, Jack Halberstam, Nathan Lee, Miguel A. López,Beatriz Preciado, Virginia Solomon Greg Youmans. Edited by Carlos Motta

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Panel | “Youth,” part of IDEAS CITY Conference, May 2, 5-6:30pm

March 27, 2013

Youth
Youth is a vast global neighborhood replete with its own government, social networks, and modes of learning. Mentors and innovators discuss youth as Untapped Capital, focusing on the incredible capacity of today’s youth as innovators for change. Panelists: Naomi Hirabayashi, Barry McGee, Carlos Motta, and Ellin O’Leary; Moderator: Dennis Schol

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Lecture | Carlos Motta at Paul Branch Lecture Series, CalArts, LA, April 25, 6pm

March 27, 2013

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Art Fair | Y Gallery at PARC, Lima, Peru, April 24-28

March 27, 2013

Performative Symposium | Godfull: Shape Shifting God as Queer, Union Theological Seminary, April 12, 7pm

March 27, 2013

A performative symposium convened and moderated by artist Carlos Motta and minister Jared Gilbert

 

Participants: Lovett/Codagnone, Darnell L. Moore, Ernesto Pujol, Robert Sember, Samita Sinha, and Linn Tonstad

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Friday, April 12, 2013, 7:00–11:00pm
Admission is free but reservation is required.
RSVP here

James Chapel/ Union Theological Seminary
3041 Broadway at 121^st Street
New York, NY, 10027, USA 

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The Institute for Art, Religion and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary presents Godfull: Shape Shifting God as Queer, a performative symposium convened by artist Carlos Motta and minister Jared Gilbert featuring performative lectures and performances by a group of academics, activists, artists and theologians to explore the intersections of queer politics, spirituality and social justice.

The regulation of sexual activity is the primary system for controlling bodies within religions and the societies they influence. Such regulations often authorize violence against bodies as well as the depravation and social stratification of gender and sexual identities. As lesbians and gays have gained unprecedented visibility and in some cases legislative recognition, American faiths have by and large opened their doors to those homosexuals who manage to comply with institutionalized systems of social respectability. These faiths are now unwittingly complicit in new forms of heteronormative oppression. 

Queer sexuality, bodies and activism form the ground from which queer art, spirituality and political narratives nurture new visions of a just society. At the same time queer communities remain in constant tension with these visions, always exploring the evolving and deviant backside of spiritual, political and social spaces. 

Godfull: Shape Shifting God as Queer explores queerness as a constant force of disruption in theology and sexual politics. The participants speak of a “queerness” in theology that is particular and explicit of the queer body, a “queerness” that represents a constant pursuit of new social and spiritual revelations through deviant, subversive and indecent affirmations that will continue to challenge repressive notions of morality and respectability. 

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Godfull: Shape Shifting God as Queer was commissioned by The Institute for Art, Religion and Social Justice and is a project initiated by Carlos Motta as part of his artist residency at the Institute in spring 2013.  

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Solo Exhibition | La forma de la libertad, Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, April 9- June, 2013

March 26, 2013

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Screening | Fractured Spaces, Flaherty NYC Film Festival, Apri 3, 7pm

March 12, 2013

92 Y Tribecca
200 Hudson Street at Canal Street

A selection of short films that examine physical spaces, many of them fragmented or under transformation. This program includes an unsettling tour through the streets of Madrid by the collective, Los Hijos, in Enero, 2012 (January, 2012); a striking portrait of Haiti that Fern Silva creates in Peril of the Antilles; the eerie tranquility of a Peruvian beach resort recorded by Andrea Franco in En Ancón (In Ancon); an illuminating examination of the World Trade Center site by Carlos Motta in his film Ivory Tower; and a playful, virtual journey by Juan Daniel Molero in Image Not Found. Franco & Motta will be in attendance for a post screening discussion. Curated by Jerónimo Rodríguez

Peril of the Antilles (Fern Silva, USA, 2011, 5 min.)
En Ancón (Andrea Franco, Perú/USA, 2012, 27 min.)
Ivory Tower (Carlos Motta, Colombia/USA, 2011, 11 min.)
Enero, 2012 (Los Hijos, Spain, 2012, 18 min.)
Image Not Found (Juan Daniel Molero, Peru, 2013, 18 min.)

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Review | Gender Talents: A Special Address by Ellen Feiss, Frieze Blog, March 4, 2013

March 10, 2013

“The ‘special’ mode of address offered by this symposium was acutely aware of its setting. Curated by Tate Film and Electra Productions and convened by the artist Carlos Motta, ‘Gender Talents’ was held in Tate Modern’s Tanks, that subterranean domain of the museum reserved for its most subversive offerings. The event itself was a one day conference as part of the series ‘Charming for the Revolution: A Congress for Gender Talents and Wildness’ and was held in an installation by Motta, with speaker’s platforms and a foundation designed for seated panel discussion reminiscent of the environment he created for his 2011 exhibition ‘We Who Feel Differently’, at the New Museum. The audience was seated tightly around a central stage, with the darkened walls at the periphery of the room providing space for projections during each presentation. Somewhere between a TV studio (the dramatic lighting of The Weakest Link came to mind) and a TED Talk, emphasized by the participants’ headsets, the tightly curated scene of the symposium plainly addressed the construction of all public forums of knowledge exchange. This highlighted what would be one of the main considerations of the occasion: the tension between critical speech and its institutional framework…”

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