The Steinhardt School of Education
Department of Art and Arts Professions, New York University

Professor Hiroshi Sunairi and Ombretta Agró
would like to invite you to the following two-session
symposium on nuclear disarmament, activism and the arts:


NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT SYMPOSIUM: Arts + Activism

When:
Friday, April 15, 2005

Where:
Einstein Auditorium
First floor of the NYU Barney Building
Department of Art & Art Professions
34 Stuyvesant Street, New York, NY 10003



FIRST SESSION
3:30 - 5:30 PM: Education for Nuclear Disarmament
Facilitator: Monika Szymurska
Guest speakers: John Burroughs, David Clark, Kathleen Sullivan, Eric Ritz

Six decades after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, humanity
continues to live under the threat of nuclear annihilation. Despite
the efforts to control and abolish these genocidal weapons, the world
faces a growing risk of a cascade of proliferation.
Drawing from their experience as educators and activists, the
panelists will reflect on the importance of promoting education and
awareness in the context of the nuclear age.

SECOND  SESSION
6 - 8 PM: The Nuclear Age and the Arts
Facilitator: Kathleen Sullivan
Guest speakers: Ombretta Agrò, Joy Garnett, Dominic McGill, Nobuho Nagasawa, Hiroshi Sunairi,

This panel will explore the ways by which artists may contribute to define and develop a new critical approach in the context of the
nuclear age, one that is triggered by accessing the visual and interpretive arts. The panelists invited to speak have explored these
issues from various angles in their work within the arena of contemporary art and will address the complex links between
contemporary art and the existence of nuclear weapons.

Co-sponsorship:
GRACE-Global Resource Action Center for the Environment and Educators for Social Responsibility-ESR Metro, members of the Abolition 2000 network

About the speakers:

Ombretta Agró, Italian-born independent curator and art critic, lives and works in New York. 
Agró has been based in NY since 1998.  She has curated solo and group exhibitions in galleries, museums and art-fairs both in Europe and the U.S. and has lectured at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The School of Visual Arts, The Pratt Institute and Engine 27.  Since 1998 she has been working in a collaborative project entitled Atomica: Making the Invisible Visible, a book and traveling exhibition that reflects on the nuclear threat through a particular focus on visual arts.

John Burroughs, Executive Director, Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy.
Burroughs represents LCNP in Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) review proceedings, the United Nations, and other international forums. In 1998, Burroughs represented LCNP at the negotiations on the International Criminal Court in Rome, and in 1995, he was the nongovernmental legal coordinator at the hearings on nuclear weapons before the International Court of Justice. Burroughs is co-editor of Rule of Power or Rule of Law: An Assessment of U.S Policies and Actions Regarding Security-Related Treaties and author of The Legality of Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons: A Guide to the Historic Opinion of the International Court of Justice. He is an adjunct professor of international law at Rutgers Law School, Newark. He has a J.D. and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.A. from Harvard.

David Clark, a C.E.O. Of production company EPOP.
David has been creating unique international cause-related events for the last ten years, and formerly served as CEO of Amnesty International’s Art for Amnesty in Dublin, overseeing their international arts campaigns.  In 2002 with EPOP, David created the landmark HIV/AIDS initiative titled “46664” for Nelson Mandela, which was globally broadcast on World AIDS Day in 2003 to over a billion people worldwide via MTV, BBC and CNN, and featured performances by Bono, Beyonce, Queen, The Corrs, Peter Gabriel and The Eurythmics. Presently, EPOP, with Mayor Akiba of Hiroshima have created a landmark music and art initiative called Back to the Garden.  A Back to the Garden concert will be held at Madison Square Garden on July 25th and will be broadcast globally on August 6, 2005 – the 60th Anniversary of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, and a Back to the Garden fine art exhibition will open in New York on that date, and tour internationally for the next five years.  This overall arts initiative will be launched with a Christie’s benefit art auction on May 3rd, and the following day Yoko Ono will announce the international art tour at the United Nations.  The project will benefit the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize nominated “Hibakusha” - who are the living witness/survivors of the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Joy Garnett, artist based in New York City.
Garnett’s interests range from the role played by visualization in scientific production, to our culture's ambivalent, fetishistic relationship to technology, disaster, and the sublime. Her projects include a series of paintings based on declassified photographs of U.S. nuclear tests and works that focus on military and advanced technologies as represented by news, advertising, movies and television. In 2003 she curated the group exhibition Night Vision that examines how images of war are handled/ aestheticized in the mainstream media. She is the mind behind The Bomb Project, a comprehensive on-line compendium of nuclear-related links, imagery and documentation.

Dominic McGill, English-born artist, lives and works in New York.
McGill is known for his work with the Standard and Poor collective and for his street performances and guerrilla art. In 1997 and 1998, the duo performed as The Red Carpet Rollers, showing up uninvited at unlikely venues such as the Trump Towers, only to build a crowd that waited for a celebrity who never arrived. For the last five years he has been working on the project Tomorrow, in which McGill presents sculpture and drawings that explore the dark history of nuclear apocalypse past and future, musing upon humankind's adaptation to its psychotic commitment to nuclear armament.

Nobuho Nagasawa, artist and associate professor at SUNY Stony Brook University. 
A native of Japan, Nagasawa received her art education from the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin and the California Institute of the Arts.  Her works involve extensive community participation and in-depth research of the collective cultural history and memory. She has exhibited extensively in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the United States.  Her galleries and museums venues include the Royal Garden of the Prague Castle (Czech Republic), Ludwig Museum (Hungry and Germany), Rufino Tamayo Museum (Mexico), Sharjah Art Museum (United Arab Emirates), Alexandria Library (Egypt), and site-specific projects in Italy, Denmark, Japan and the United States.  Her critically acclaimed shows include The Atomic Cowboy: The Daze After (Daniel Saxon Gallery, Los Angeles 1992) and May13th, 1996, 10 A.M., I called the Pentagon (Rufino Tamayo Museum, Mexico City, 1996).

Eric Ritz, Fashion Peace
Fashion Peace represents a meeting point for creative people to showcase options and opportunities through art, fashion and music. A method of creative expression that champions balance, positive thoughts and intelligence, Fashion Peace provides seeds to those who are in search of helping the world grow into a better place for everyone to enjoy without consideration of geography, social status or race.
 
Kathleen Sullivan, Coordinator, Nuclear Weapons Education and Action Project, Educators for Social Responsibility-NY Metro Area
Sullivan is a nuclear researcher, disarmament educator, author and activist who has been engaged in the nuclear issue for the last 20 years.  She is the coordinator of the Nuclear Weapons Education and Action Project of Educators for Social Responsibility, Metro Area one of the most significant youth programs in the US to teach nuclear awareness classes to high school students.  She is also a consultant to the United Nations Department for Disarmament Affairs in New York, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization in Vienna, writing disarmament curricula for young people to be posted on the UN and CTBTO web-sites.  Sullivan has recently published the article Atomica World: The Place of Nuclear Tourism in Tourism Mobilities: Places to Play, Places in Play (Routledge, 2004).  Current writing projects include co-editing Making the Invisible, Visible: Inspiring nuclear awareness through the visual arts.  Her PhD is from Lancaster University, UK.
                
Hiroshi Sunairi, artist and studio arts professor, New York University.
A native of Hiroshima, and a descendent of the of Hibakusha, Sunairi’s work includes the Peace by Piece exhibition, the result of a collaborative
project of the students who attended his art class on Hiroshima and Nagasaki through the arts. Sunairi is currently working on a project that examines the questions of the remembrance and reconstitution of the bombing of Hiroshima. His solo show, A Night of Elephant, will be presented in the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art in the summer of 2005. 
 

Other related events at New York University:
 
One Thousand Cranes Workshop in front of the Einstein Auditorium:
One Thousand Cranes Workshop by Peace by Piece students will be held during the Nuclear Disarmament Symposium from 3:30 to 8:00 P.M. in front of the Einstein Auditorium. The purpose of this workshop is to share peace making by teaching how to fold origami cranes, through telling of the story of Sadakom, who died of leukemia after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
 

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