Social Saturday | August 1, 2015
A Panel on the Cartographic Imaginary
John Green, James Trainor and Michael Blanding
Discussion Begins at 6:30 PM
Mapping is a way of simultaneously understanding and producing the lived environment. This conversation brings together three writers who approach this notion from very different perspectives. Projecting out to the nearby non-site of Agloe, New York -- a town that came into being because of its inclusion on a map -- the panel will explore different ways of “writing a reality into being” across the intersections of fantasy, exploration, and "common sense."Mapping is a way of simultaneously understanding and producing the lived environment. This conversation brings together three writers who approach this notion from very different perspectives. Projecting out to the nearby non-site of Agloe, New York -- a town that came into being because of its inclusion on a map -- the panel will explore different ways of “writing a reality into being” across the intersections of fantasy, exploration, and "common sense."
This panel discussion is presented by Experience Economies as part of their session "Landscape Experiences."
Please Request Your Invitation HERE!
John Green is the author of Paper Towns, a book in which Agloe, New York, features prominently. His other titles include Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Will Grayson, Will Grayson (with David Levithan), and TheFault in Our Stars. John has been awarded the Printz Medal, a Printz Honor, and the Edgar Award. He has twice been a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. John was selected by TIME magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. With his brother, Hank, John is one half of the Vlogbrothers, one of the most popular online video projects in the world. The film Paper Towns, based on John's book, opens in theaters nationwide on July 23.
James Trainor writes about art, history, landscape, urbanism and contemporary culture. His articles on topics including ecological costs of publishing an art magazine, radical playground design of the 1960s-1970s, art tourism and the American West, and the quixotic quest for the “Center of the World” have appeared in Frieze (where he was US Editor from 2004 to 2009), Artforum, Artsy, Art in America, Cabinet, Art Asia Pacific, Bomb, Border Crossings and other periodicals. He has taught numerous experiential field seminars with artist Andrea Zittel, including the Institute of Investigative Living at A-Z West in Joshua Tree, CA (2012-ongoing). James has been awarded an Arts Writers Grant from Creative Capital and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. In July 2015 he was granted a writing fellowship at the MacDowell Colony for the Fall/Winter 2015-2016 session.
Michael Blanding is a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute of Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University, and a writer whose work has appeared in WIRED, Slate, The Nation, The New Republic, The Boston Globe Magazine, and Boston. His New York Times Bestselling book, The Map Thief: The Gripping Story of an Esteemed Rare-Map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps, was published by Gotham Books in June 2014. The Map Thief, which explores the history of mapmaking as a means of understanding the “value” of maps as rare commodities, has won several awards, including being named an NPR Book of the Year, a New England Independent Booksellers Association bestseller, a New England Society Book Award winner, and a finalist for the Chatauqua Book Prize.
Tour – 4:00 p.m.
Cocktails with the Fellows BYOB – 6:00 p.m.
Lecture Presentation – 6:30 p.m.
Dinner BYOB – 8:00 p.m.
Experience Economies: Landscape Experience
Session Leaders
Gavin Kroeber and Rebecca Uchill
Landscape Experience 2015 Fellows
Cari Freno | Independent/Virginia
Claire Haik | School of Visual Arts
Danielle A. Allinice | Independent/Washington
Eric M. Diehl | Virginia Commonwealth University
Jennifer Brook | Independent/New York
Katherine Bickmore | Independent/Hamilton College/New York
Michelle Kelly Rogers | Independent/Florida
Rachel L. Cohn | Virginia Commonwealth University
Rebecca Conroy | Independent/Australia
Ruth Patir | Columbia University
Vered Engelhard | Independent/Peru
Misha Wyllie | Virginia Commonwealth University
2015 Mildred Fellows
Christopher Beer | Supervisor of Entanglement
Mariana Gutierrez | Ministry of Comfort
Isobel Rose Lister | Officer Of Complex(ity)
Cameron Klavsen | Resident Artist in Complex(ity)
Jaquel Theis | Land Steward 1
Juliet Dunn | Land Steward 2
This program is hosted as part of the session "Landscape Experience," organized by Experience Economies, the curatorial/event-based research duo of Gavin Kroeber and Rebecca Uchill. The session brings together artists, urbanists, writers, curators, historians, and other invited guests to address the entanglements of “landscape”: a knot of often-contradictory concepts, histories, and traditions, the word landscape implies both nature and culture, representation and direct experience, physical landmarks and the immaterial practices and ideologies that give shape and meaning to them. Town Friday and Social Saturday events during this session will open these ongoing discussions to a broader public. All are welcome.