2022 Josep Luís Sert Practitioner: Martine Syms

Source: https://afvs.fas.harvard.edu/news/2022-josep-lu%C3%ADs-sert-practitioner-martine-syms Parent: https://afvs.fas.harvard.edu/sert-practitioner

October 03, 2022

The Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies is thrilled to welcome interdisciplinary artist Martine Syms as the 2022 Josep Luís Sert Practitioner in the Arts. Martine Syms is an artist who has earned wide recognition for a practice that combines conceptual grit, humor, and social commentary. Syms has shown at venues such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the ICA London, and has done commissioned work for Prada, Nike, Celine, Kanye West, and NTS, among others. Syms is a recipient of the Creative Capital Award, a United States Artists fellowship, the Tiffany Foundation award, and the Future Fields Art Prize. She is in a band called Aunt Sister, runs Dominica Publishing, and hosts Double Penetration, a monthly radio show on NTS.

Syms will visit AFVS from October 20-22, 2022. Please join the Department, in collaboration with the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts and the Harvard Film Archive, on Thursday, October 20, at 7:00pm for a screening of Syms’ film The African Desperate in the Carpenter Center Theater. This screening will be followed by an in-person conversation between Syms and AFVS Chair David Joselit. The African Desperate will also screen in the Carpenter Center Theater at 9:00pm on October 21 and at 7:00pm on October 23. Tickets for all screenings are available at this link; admission is free to Harvard students and AFVS staff and faculty.

AFVS students are also warmly invited to sign up for a workshop on Real Time Cinema with Syms. This workshop will take place in two parts: on Friday, October 21, from 10:00am-2:00pm, and on Saturday, October 22, from 10:00am-2:00pm. Please register here to join or to receive more details. Each student is asked to bring in a short text of their choosing. The group will read and discuss the texts, using the major arcana of tarot to discuss archetypes. Texts may be combined and treated as a three-card tarot spread, representing past, present, and future, or as the intrinsic possibilities that are outside of time but bound by history. On the second day of the workshop, the group will write and shoot a film together, using the readings and discussion from the previous day. LInk for Martine Syms Talk.

The Josep Lluís Sert Practitioner in the Arts position was created in 1986, inviting visiting artists in all media to spend several days in formal and informal activities appropriate to the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, including lectures, demonstrations, screenings, seminars, readings, performances, and close work with students of the department. The Sert Practitioner is made possible by a gift from Robert Gardner, former Director of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Director of the Film Study Center, and Chair of the Department.