Spring 2009 Program

Plug-in Pavilion, Valparaíso, Chile
Architectural Design by René Davids
and Taylor Medlin

On Exhibit: January 19 – May 15, 2009

Opening Reception
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
4:00 – 5:30 pm | Townsend Center

The Townsend Center is pleased to present the award-winning architectural designs of René Davids, Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, and Taylor Medlin, MA student in Architecture. The work in the exhibition comes from Medlin and Davids’ entry to the 43rd Central Glass Architectural Design Competition, which won first prize out of 733 international entries. Judged by renowned architects including Toyo Ito, the 2008 competition had the theme of “Architecture coexisting with World Heritage Sites.”

Click here for more information about the exhibit.

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Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (2007)
Directed by Alex Gibney

Monday, February 2, 2009
7:00 pm | Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall

Quickly becoming one of the hottest documentary directors working today, Alex Gibney turns his lens in Gonzo toward Hunter S. Thompson, one of the icons of the American margins. Utilizing nearly every tool available to the medium, Gibney weaves together found footage, re-enactment, and interviews to create a convincing and compelling portrait of the film's larger-than-life subject.

Part of the Depth of Field Film + Video Series: Literature on Film.

Click here for more information about Gonzo.

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Michael Taussig, Anthropologist
“When the Sun Goes Down: A Pre-Copernican Turn of Remembrance”

Monday, February 9, 2009
4:00 pm | Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall

Michael Taussig is Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. His extensive fieldwork has spanned topics of slavery; hunger; commodity fetishism; the impact of colonialism on folk healing; the relevance of modernism and post-modernist aesthetics for the understanding of ritual; and the making, talking, and writing of terror. Taussig’s most recent book is My Cocaine Museum, and he is currently writing a new book entitled What Color is the Sacred?

Presented in collaboration with the Department of Anthropology.

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Adam Phillips, Psychoanalyst and author
"Freud's Helplessness"

Wednesday, February 18, 2009
4:00 pm | Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall

webcast of talk

 

Formerly the principal child psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital in London, Adam Phillips writes regularly for the New York Times, The Observer, and The London Review of Books. He is also General Editor of the new Penguin Modern Classics Freud translations. The New York Public Library, noting his “stylish brilliance,” has hailed Phillips as “one of the very best essayists at work today.” His books include Side Effects; Going Sane: Maps of Happiness; On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored; On Flirtation; Houdini's Box; and Equals.

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Certain Doubts of William Kentridge (2007)
Directed by Alex Gabassi

Monday, March 9, 2009
7:00 pm | Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall

In conjunction with Townsend’s 2008-2009 Avenali Lecture by South African artist William Kentridge, Depth of Field will feature two short documentaries on the artist and his work. Included in the screening will be Alex Gabassi’s 2007 biography of the artist, Certain Doubts of William Kentridge, and Kentridge’s interview with Dan Cameron, which focuses specifically on Kentridge’s animated short film, Automatic Writing.

Part of the Depth of Field Film + Video Series: Painting on Film.

Click here for more information about Certain Doubts or here for information about William Kentridge’s Avenali lecture.

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Avenali Lecturer, 2009
William Kentridge, Artist
“Learning from the Absurd”

Sunday, March 15, 2009
5:00 pm | Hertz Concert Hall

Follow-up panel discussion with William Kentridge
Monday, March 16, 2009
12:00 pm | Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall

Panelists: Kaja Silverman (Rhetoric and Film Studies), Larry Rinder (Berkeley Art Museum), and Mark Rosenthal (Norton Museum of Art)

This event is free and open to the public, but requires a ticket. Tickets will be distributed at the door beginning at 4:00 pm. Doors will open at 4:30 pm, and we ask that patrons be in their seats by 5:00 pm.

With an innovative use of charcoal drawing, prints, collages, stop-animation, film and theater, South African artist William Kentridge’s work tracks a personal route across the fraught legacy of apartheid and colonialism. Kentridge has gained international recognition for this work, and especially for his distinctive hand-drawn films, which are created using a technique he calls "stone-age filmmaking.” Through painstakingly photographing his successive charcoal marks and erasures on a page, Kentridge creates a mysterious and subtle moving picture. His appointment as Townsend Avenali lecturer coincides with the March 14th premier of William Kentridge: Five Themes at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Click here for more information about William Kentridge.

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Wang Hui, Political Theorist
“In An Age of Depoliticization: Some Reflections on Contemporary Intellectual Debates in China Since the 1990s”

Wednesday, April 1, 2009
4:00 pm | Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall
Discussants: Martin Jay (History), Pheng Cheah (Rhetoric) and Colleen Lye (English)

Wang Hui is professor of Chinese language and literature at Tsinghua University. Sent to compulsory "re-education" in a poor inland province for his role in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, he is a leading member of China’s “New Left” movement and a past editor of Dushu, one of China’s most influential literary journals. In May of 2008, Foreign Policy named him as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world.  

Wang Hui is a Townsend Resident Fellow funded by the Avenali Endowment. He will be hosted by the department of East Asian Languages and Cultures while at Berkeley in March/April 2009.

Click here for more information about Wang Hui.

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Andy Goldsworthy: Rivers and Tides (2004)
Directed by Thomas Riedelsheimer

Monday, April 6, 2009
7:00 pm | Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall

Rivers and Tides follows sculptor Andy Goldsworthy as he creates ephemeral, site-specific earthworks out of found materials in natural settings. As an artist, Goldsworthy seeks to mimic the patterns and rhythms of the natural world, and director Thomas Riedelsheimer’s film patiently and engagingly captures both the work and worldview of his subject.

Part of the Depth of Field Film + Video Series: Sculpture on Film.

Click here for more information about Rivers and Tides.

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Rebecca Solnit, Writer
"If Gardens are the Answer, What is the Question?"

Wednesday, April 15, 2009
4:00 pm | Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall

Rebecca Solnit is the best-selling author of numerous books, including A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, and most recently, Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics. A contributing editor to Harper's, columnist for Orion, and frequent contributor Tomdispatch.com, Solnit often writes on topics of the environment, politics, place, and art. She is a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award, the Wired Rave Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Part of the Forum on the Humanities and the Public World.

Click here for more information about Rebecca Solnit.

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Tzvetan Todorov, Theorist
"Memory, a Remedy for Evil?”

Monday, May 4, 2009
4:00 pm | Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall

From his earliest publications on literary theory in the mid 1960s, to his moral enquiries into identity, responsibility, and ethics in his more-recent historical studies, Tzvetan Todorov has been one of the foremost contemporary European literary and cultural theorists. While the fields of literary criticism and cultural history continue to relax their boundaries, thereby increasingly accommodating and influencing each other, Todorov ranks among the finest of writers whose works have moved easily between literary theory and its application in critical readings of important historical narratives.

Part of the Forum on the Humanities and the Public World.

Click here for more information about Tzvetan Todorov.