Jack Halberstam, professor of gender studies and English and director of the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Columbia University, will deliver the lecture “An Aesthetics of Collapse” in conjunction with the exhibition “The Nature of Waste: Material Pathways, Discarded Worlds” on Thursday, October 21, at 5:30 pm.
The lecture addresses Alvin Baltrop, a Black photographer who has been celebrated for his images of gay men cruising on New York City’s West Side Piers in the 1980s. As Halberstam explains, Baltrop left an archive that, when examined closely, offers an aesthetics of collapse. Baltrop’s gorgeous imagery of collapse orients us away from queer bodies—vehicles for current configurations of desire, location software, and capital—and towards abstract forms of the erotic.
"An Aesthetics of Collapse" will serve as the keynote talk for the exhibition "The Nature of Waste: Material Pathways, Discarded Worlds," which explores waste from a variety of perspectives, including postcolonial theory and LGBTQ+ studies. Supported by a grant from the Daugherty Water for Food Institute at UNL, the exhibition presents a holistic investigation into waste streams, by surveying artworks that use as inspiration our castoffs, leftovers, junk, detritus, scarcity, and ruins. In so doing, the works contribute to contemporary conversations on the Anthropocene, the geological age in which humans currently live.
Halberstam is the author of seven books, including his latest book, “Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire” (Duke University Press, 2020). Places Journal awarded him its Arcus/Places Prize in 2018 for innovative public scholarship on the relationship between gender, sexuality, and the built environment.
The lecture is sponsored by the School of Art, Art History & Design; the College of Fine and Performing Arts; the Water for Food Institute; and the Sheldon Museum of Art.
More details at: https://sheldonartmuseum.org/events/%E2%80%9Can-aesthetics-of-collapse%E2%80%9D-a-lecture-by-jack-halberstam