TOPIC:
GIAS Working Groups at Tisch
The Global Institute for Advanced Study (GIAS) is a nascent initiative at NYU that represents a significant University investment in research and scholarship. In 2015, faculty from Tisch School of the Arts submitted two separate requests for three-year GIAS Working Groups (described below) - and both were awarded full funding for activities which launched in 2016.
Pato Hebert (Critical Collaboration) and Dr. Andy Teirstein (Translucent Borders) presented on their work so far and shared plans for the next phase of their projects.
CRITICAL COLLABORATION:
Guided by Pato Hebert (Associate Arts Professor, Art & Public Policy), the Critical Collaboration Working Group will investigate the relationship between creativity and social change. The project is particularly interested in how critical collaboration might contribute to change at interpersonal, social and structural levels. We hope to better understand how such changes might be seeded through critical thinking and reflexive action that are developed in concert with others. Engaging emergent practitioners from the Tisch Art & Public Policy alumni network, along with NYU faculty members and practitioners local to five GNU sites (Abu Dhabi, Accra, Buenos Aires, Florence, Shanghai), the Critical Collaborations Working Group seeks to recognize and embody local dynamics with global implications. Practitioners are working in a variety of forms including performance art, photography, groundbreaking curatorial efforts and organization building. Their projects explore pressing issues such as gender-based violence, Indigenous aesthetic innovations, urban youth culture and art in the public sphere.
TRANSLUCENT BORDERS:
A border can be represented by a line on a map. But expand that line and it becomes its own space, fertile with the dramatic potential for either violence or collaboration and evolution. Translucent Borders gathers leading choreographers, composers, and other NYU faculty in Dance, Theater, Performance Studies, and Music to look at dance and music at points of global intersection. Our observations are based on experiences in the field. Together with local practitioners and scholars at various NYU Global Network University sites, we examine ways in which practitioners of dance and music act as catalysts for mutual change between disparate cultural entities.
SPEAKERS:
Pato Hebert, Associate Arts Professor, Art & Public Policy
Pato Hebert is a visual artist, educator and cultural worker. He splits time between New York City, and his creative studio in Los Angeles. Born in Idaho Falls, Idaho, Hebert spent his childhood there and in Eugene, Oregon. He also lived in Panamá, where is mother is from. He joined the Art & Public Policy Department at NYU in 2012. Prior to NYU, he was a visiting assistant professor at Reed College and Scripps College. He also taught at Art Center College of Design and the University of California Irvine.
Hebert’s artwork explores the challenges and possibilities of interconnectedness. He is particularly interested in space and place, spirituality and ecology, pedagogy and progressive praxis. He works with photography, graphic design, sculpture, installation, light, text, performance and socially engaged forms. His work appears in museums and gallery settings, as well as community spaces, schools, public architecture and unexpected nodes of circulation. He often works in collaboration with fellow artists, writers, educators, young people, community members and stakeholders.
Hebert has also worked in community-based HIV prevention and advocacy since 1994. Engaging primarily with queer people and communities of color, Hebert has worked in small grass-roots efforts, large community-based organizations as well as international mobilization and advocacy. For many years he led local prevention programs, large-scale outdoor medium campaigns and a national community-based publishing house inside of AIDS Project Los Angeles. He currently works with the Global Forum on MSM & HIV to help organizations strengthen civil society and push governments to better meet the health needs and human rights of LGBT people.
Hebert earned his M.F.A. in Studio Art from the University of California Irvine, and his B.A. in Studio Art from Stanford University.
Dr. Andy Teirstein, Arts Professor, Dance
Arts Professor Teirstein has been teaching at NYU since 1997. A student of Leonard Bernstein and Henry Brant, he has written music for dance, theatre, film, and for the concert hall. Honors include fellowships and awards from NEA, Meet the Composer, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, New York Foundation for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, The Richard Rodgers Award, and ASCAP. Teirstein’s eclectic background has led him to successful collaborations with many choreographers including Donald Byrd, Stephen Petronio, Liz Lerman, Cherylyn Lavagnino, Jaqulyn Buglisi, and Jim Martin. He has scored, arranged, and/or directed a number of musical theatre pieces, including Winter Man, The Wild, A Blessing on the Moon, and The Vagabonds, based on the visions of poet William Blake. Music for film includes the BBC film Men, with choreography by Victoria Marks, The West (PBS), and a BBC documentary series on Chinese scroll painting, Masters of Space. As a performer, he was an original cast member of the Broadway musical hit Barnum, and appeared on Search for Tomorrow and in the film Sophie’s Choice. He has performed with Pete Seeger, Paul Simon, the Vanaver Caravan, and The Seat of the Pants Band. Teirstein continues to tour as an actor and musician in the award-winning musical, “Woody Sez,” and produced the show’s tour in Israel and Palestinian Territories. His String Quartet with projections of his own photography, “Restless Nation,” has received performances from the Catalyst String Quartet and from the Cassatt String Quartet. Dr. Teirstein has served on the selection committee for organizations including the New York Foundation for the Arts, The Blue Mountain Center, and the Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature. His CDs include the Naxos American Masterworks Open Crossings, Mannahatta, and Welcome to Willieworld.