Events

The Change You Want To See is happy to host Aaron Gach, co-founder and Director of Operations at the Center for Tactical Magic. Expect an evening of Revolutionary Breakthroughs in Extra-Sensory Perception. Replete with projects, experiments, and anecdotes from the Tactical Magic trenches, this exposition will pull back the curtain on all types of contemporary magic, art, and politics.

Saturday, April 4, 7-9pm (free)

About the Center for Tactical Magic
Inspired by studies with a private investigator, a magician, and a ninja, the Center for Tactical Magic formed as an organization dedicated to the coalescence of art, technology, magic, and positive social change. Working across barriers of art, design, architecture, and community service, the CTM’s collaborations have also involved aquatic biologists, members of the Black Panthers, radical ecologists, and the American Red Cross to name a few. Their activities have sought to cultivate mirth and mischief in all four hemispheres, frequently infiltrating multiple spheres of influence -- social, cultural, and political -- with notions of responsible citizenship through creative action.

Center for Tactical Magic Projects

Please join us Thursday, April 17th for a screening of 500 Miles to Babylon, a compelling film about Iraq under U.S. occupation. Filmmaker David Martinez will be on hand to discuss his experiences in Iraq. Sarah Husain, a representative of the War Resisters League’s Youth and Counter Militarism Project will discuss counter-recruitment campaign efforts in New York City.

ABOUT THE FILM:
500 Miles to Babylon is a one-hour documentary shot in multiple cities in Iraq in 2003-4. Narrated by the filmmaker, using footage shot in Iraq threaded with graphically animated archival sequences to provide historic context, the film addresses the current war not simply as a conflict over petroleum profits or a scheme to fill a company’s coffers, but as part of a larger American imperial project.

Through impromptu interviews, glimpses of daily life, still photographs, and footage of car-bombs, demonstrations, night-time graffiti artists, Sufi rituals, and the celebrations following Saddam’s capture, 500 Miles To Babylon reveals the complex situation in contemporary Iraq through a personal lens. Far from being a simple anti-war movie, 500 Miles illustrates the terrible complexity of a people brutalized by a dictatorship, and the catastrophic results when that system is changed overnight by shortsighted military means.

Presentations on the theory and practice of surveillance and contemporary protest art, by graduate students in the ITP program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

The presenters' talks will be grouped into four panels, to be moderated by their Professor, Marisa Olson (Curator at Large, Rhizome), on topics ranging from voyeurism and play to intervention and networks of control. These panels will consist of both artist talks and critical essays, and audience members will be invited to give feedback on a few works in progress.

Program:
12:00 Welcome & Introduction, Marisa Olson

12:05-1:15 Voyeurism vs. Exhibitionism: Online and In the Streets
Panelists: Allistar Peters and Meng Li, Ana Maria Gutierrez, Heather Rasley

1:15-2:00 Watchful Intervening: From Scientologists to Spy Shops
Panelists: Amanda Bernsohn and Kacie Kinzer, Syed Salahuddin

2-3:30 Playtime: Games, Toys, and Entertainment
Panelists: Oscar Torres, Scott Hoffer, Shlomit Lehavi and Leah Gilliam

3:30-5 Looking at Control: From Candidate Self-Surveillance to Wireless Subversion
Panelists: Michael Clemow and Tom Jenkins, Alberto Tafoya, Emery Martin