November 11–14, 2016
Registration deadline: October 19
newcitiesfutureruins.com
Jubilee Park
917 Bank St.
Dallas 75223
Nasher Sculpture Center
2001 Flora St.
Dallas 75201
SMU Meadows School of the Arts
6101 Bishop Blvd.
Dallas 75205
Pollock Gallery
Hughes-Trigg Student Center
3140 Dyer St.
Dallas 7520
“New Cities, Future Ruins” is a four-day public convening and festival of ideas (November 11 through 14, 2016 in Dallas) exploring the intersection of art, design and the extreme urbanism of America’s Western Sun Belt, which stretches from Houston to Denver and from Phoenix to San Diego. Bringing together artists, architects, designers and scholars from around the world, the event will be hosted by SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts and will take place in a variety of locations across Dallas. The convening launches a four-year arts initiative developed in partnership with the Meadows School, which provided seed funding for the project through its annual Meadows Prize; Arizona State University Gammage; and the University of Texas at El Paso’s Rubin Center for the Visual Arts. The initiative will expand to include artist residencies and public projects around the region in 2017 and 2018 and will culminate with a touring exhibition and catalog in 2019.
Alongside a series of talks, panel events and roundtable discussions, the festival will feature free public exhibitions, installations and performances that critically re-imagine the cities of the Western Sun Belt as arenas for pioneering art and design, placing these sites in conversation with each other and with boom cities around the world. The weekend events will take place at various sites around Dallas, including Jubilee Park (917 Bank St., Dallas), Nasher Sculpture Center (2001 Flora St., Dallas), SMU Meadows School of the Arts (6101 Bishop Blvd. on the SMU campus), and SMU Meadows Pollock Gallery (Hughes-Trigg Student Center, 3140 Dyer St. on the SMU campus), using the city as a lab for the critical discussion of the places that both embody and illuminate global crises of rapid urbanization.
The convening will feature prominent voices from the field, including:
–Andrew Ross, activist and author of Bird On Fire: Lessons from the World’s Least Sustainable City. Ross will place the Western Sun Belt in an international context, drawing parallels with cities in high growth regions such as the Gulf states, zooming out on their economic and sustainability practices.
–Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman, directors of the University of California San Diego Cross-Border Initiative. Cruz and Forman will speak on the dynamic interrelations at the border of Mexico and California and what we can learn from the examination of the dialogue between San Diego and Tijuana.
–”Urban Boundaries” will be the topic of a roundtable discussion featuring Dallas-based artist lauren woods, whose work deals with the erection of racial boundaries in city planning; arts collective Postcommodity, which creates action-oriented work with an indigenous perspective; and AGENCY, which develops award-winning architectural projects addressing social practice issues.
Artist projects feature exhibitions, performances and installations, including:
–Quilian Riano, a New York-based architect whose practice focuses on tactical urbanism and participation, will create an installation similar to a sandbox.
–The work of Sophia Al-Maria, a Qatari-American artist, writer and filmmaker, will be featured in a small film exhibition.
Registration is open until October 19. See website for a full schedule detailing the artist projects and performances.
Contact: RonAmber Deloney, [email protected]
