Bellwethers The Culture of Controversy-CANCELLATION on 6/4

By The Drawing Center

Jun 4  |  Culture

The Drawing Center will present a new program series, Bellwethers: The Culture of Controversy

On three consecutive Tuesdays this spring – May 21, May 28, and June 4 – The Drawing Center will present a new program series, Bellwethers: The Culture of Controversy, which will convene a prominent group of writers, cultural critics, and artists to respond to a cultural “bellwether” and take it in their own interpretative direction. Each session examines a timely indicator, word, or phrase emblematic of a polemical socio-political topic of our moment and that impacts art as well as broader cultural production.

Cancellation on 6/4 – With Anna Khachiyan and Natasha Stagg 

The third and last event of the series: CANCELLATION invites Anna Khachiyan and Natasha Stagg to respond to the new culture of cancellation. On the one hand, “cancel culture” has been used to swiftly punish perceived criminal behavior; on the flip side, it can operate as a means to extinguish nuanced debate and cast out public figures in trials by Twitter. How do we navigate this phenomenon that some see as inherently undemocratic and anti-nuanced and others praise as effective in a world in which the law is statistically proven to fail women and people of color? How does cancellation impact revisionist artistic and political histories?

Anna Khachiyan is a writer based in New York, and the co-host of the leftist podcast Red Scare.

Natasha Stagg is a writer based in New York. Stagg’s work has appeared in Affidavit, Artforum, Bookforum, The Brooklyn Rail, CR Fashion Book, DIS Magazine, n+1, The Paris Review, Spike Art Quarterly, among many other publications. Stagg’s debut novel Surveys was published by Semiotext(e)/Native Agents in 2016, and her book of critical essays will be published by Semiotext(e) later this year.

Bellwethers: The Culture of Controversy is a series of programs made possible by The Evelyn Toll Family Foundation.

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