Adelita Husni Bey: These Conditions

The Vera List Center for Art and Politics is pleased to present Adelita Husni Bey’s These Conditions, an exhibition and pedagogical film set at the Brooklyn Army Terminal from February 8 to April 8, 2022. It is open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays from 12–6pm ET and during scheduled events. The exhibition takes cues from historical pandemic protocols, considering the current pandemic and its aftermath from a larger, historical and artistic framework. Over two months, These Conditions hosts a group of individuals who have had to work in person during the pandemic to reflect on their experience and develop characters, scenes, and performative sketches that express the relationship between pandemics and social change. Through a weekly workshop, a core group of participants is led sequentially through three distinct spaces in an ad hoc structure: an empty room with the sonic features of a hospital, a waiting room, and a domestic space. A hybrid between a pedagogical space and a film set, the structure is altered and activated through the workshop’s discursive and movement-based activities. Part of the workshop will be recorded and edited into a short experimental film, which will premiere at the Vera List Center at The New School in fall 2022 before traveling as a film installation to Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea (Turin, Italy).

Within the pedagogical film set, a selection of films and posters from DIVA TV and ACT UP showcase the artistic and activist responses to the ongoing AIDS crisis. The Annex at the Brooklyn Army Terminal, which was built during the 1918 Flu Pandemic as a military supply base and is today a major manufacturing hub as well as a COVID testing and vaccination site, serves as the pedagogical set’s entry point into both current and historical pandemics.

Drawing poetic resonances between these events and spaces, the exhibition evokes historical insurrections to express their relationship to the ongoing social transformations resulting from our present conditions.

Two works developed last year are also on view: On Necessary Work (2021), an online film workshop shot over Zoom with Danish and US unionized healthcare workers centered around their experience of worsening labor conditions, and Cronaca del Tempo Ripetuto (A chronicle of histories repeating, 2021), an audio piece developed through a workshop with OCRA (Chamber Orchestra of Radicondoli, Tuscany), a self-run collective of young musicians without a conductor.

Presented in partnership with the Victorian College of the Arts at The University of Melbourne, the On Necessary Work study group features speakers from a range of disciplines and practices, including epidemiologist Rob Wallace, labor organizer Imogen Beyonon, and psychotherapist M. E. O’Brien. School of Tomorrow: From the Open Plan to the Tele-classroom—and seminar ten of the Vera List Center’s As for Protocols series—is convened on March 14 with Video School, as part of the public program held within the pedagogical environment. Husni Bey will also lead a series of family workshops. Additional public programs are announced on the Vera List Center website, www.veralistcenter.org.

Thursday, February 17, 7–8pm, online: 
On Necessary Work study group with Rob Wallace

Saturday, February 19, 2–4pm, Brooklyn Army Terminal Annex: 
Family Prop-making Workshop with Adelita Husni Bey

Thursday, February 24, 6–8pm, Brooklyn Army Terminal Annex: 
These Conditions: Poetry Night with Hannah Black, Ben Kruesling, and Nora Treatbaby 

Saturday, March 5, 2–4pm, Brooklyn Army Terminal Annex: 
Movement-based Kids Workshop with Adelita Husni Bey

Sunday, March 6, 12–6pm, Brooklyn Army Terminal Annex: 
Dance performance: Duvet

Thursday, March 10, 7–8pm, online: 
On Necessary Work study group with Imogen Beynon

Monday, March 14, 6–7:30pm, Brooklyn Army Terminal Annex: 
As for Protocols Seminar 10: School of Tomorrow—From the Open Plan to the Tele-classroom

Thursday, March 17, 7–8pm, online: 
On Necessary Work study group with M.E. O’Brien

Saturday, March 19, 3–5pm, Brooklyn Army Terminal Annex: 
Adelita Husni Bey in conversation with VLC curator Eriola Pira, followed by reception

Saturday, April 2, 12–2pm, Brooklyn Army Terminal Annex: 
Artist-led Family Workshop

Saturday, April 2, 4–6pm, Brooklyn Army Terminal Annex: 
Adelita Husni Bey in conversation with Contemporary Art Research Collaborative

Adelita Husni Bey’s These Conditions is a 2020–2022 Vera List Center Fellowship-commissioned project and has been supported by research assistance, production grants, and curatorial support by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics as part of its As for Protocols focus theme. It is curated by Eriola Pira and Carin Kuoni with curatorial assistance by Camila Palomino. The project is also supported by the Italian Council (10th edition, 2021), a program to promote Italian contemporary art in the world by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture. Additional support has been provided by the Brooklyn Army Terminal (New York City Economic Development Corporation).

For more information, visit veralistcenter.org.