Vera List Center

Vera List Center The Vera List Center for Art and Politics is an artist-focused research center and public forum for art, culture, and politics.

Established in 1992 at The New School. Our 2025–2027 Focus Theme is Matter of Intelligence. Our Focus Theme lasts for two years and informs everything we do and creates opportunities for shared learning with artists, scholars, activists, public intellectuals, students, and political and cultural leaders. Focus Theme for 2020-22 is "As for Protocols"

Explicitly—or not—protocols determine much of

what we do. Supplanting traditional notions of “good manners,” protocols are languages that regulate how people relate to each other, to their cultural, social, and political environments, and to the technologies that create them. They are evidence of governmental, organizational, social, or corporate power structures. Protocols speak to processes, rather than finite outcomes. While often overlooked or invisible, they set the tone and conditions for potential encounters. Investigating them as such will allow us to contribute to the creation of new protocols that are inclusive and equitable, ranging from computer interfaces, A.I., data aggregation, and algorithms to community agreements and culturally-specific engagement protocols to protocols undergirding scientific research. As “protocol” may also refer to documentation and minutes, the term signals a hybrid time frame of both the past and projection into the future. With the engagement of artists, scholars, activists, and students, the Vera List Center will consider protocols as the foundations for the performance of living, and begin thinking and working toward new spaces of political empowerment.

For today’s VLC Summer Reads, director of strategy and advancement Tabor Banquer (Tabor Banquer) reflects on spies, stat...
08/17/2026

For today’s VLC Summer Reads, director of strategy and advancement Tabor Banquer (Tabor Banquer) reflects on spies, statecraft, and the business of secrets. 🔎🔧

“I’ve always been fascinated by espionage stories (original, I know). And so I was particularly excited about the VLC’s recent Seminar: Artists, Scholars, and Spies with historian Gregory Afinogenov, artist Nina Hartmann, and writer and New School faculty member John Reed.

Inspired by the seminar, which explores the entangled histories of scholarship, research, and academia with statecraft, empire, and the infrastructures and practices of intelligence and espionage, here are five of my favorite stories where intelligence is—literally—power.

1.
The Americans (American television drama series, 2013–18).
Has a Soviet sleeper agent ever had more fun than Philip Jennings line dancing at his local honky-tonk?

2.
Demonlover (French neo-noir thriller film written and directed by Olivier Assayas, 2002).
Corporate espionage in the internet age—stylish, unsettling, and increasingly difficult to look away from (you’ll definitely want to, by the end).

3.
The Expats (Novel by Chris Pavone, 2012).
What if the stay-at-home mom next door was 007?

4.
Casino Royale (spy thriller film relaunching the iconic James Bond franchise, 2006).
What a thrill to watch Daniel Craig’s 007 play this glamorous but deadly game of poker.

5.
And last but not least, my all-time favorite comfort movie.
Clue (American comedy-crime film, inspired by the classic Parker Brothers board game, 1985)
“My business is secrets. And I’m going to sell my secrets—your secrets—to the highest bidder.” — Miss Scarlett, with the gun, in the hallway

“I’ve always been fascinated by espionage stories (original, I know). And so I was particularly excited about the VLC’s recent Seminar: Artists, Scholars, and Spies with historian Gregory Afinogenov, artist Nina Hartmann, and writer and New School faculty member John Reed.

Inspired by the seminar, which explores the entangled histories of scholarship, research, and academia with statecraft, empire, and the infrastructures and practices of intelligence and espionage, here are five of my favorite stories

For today’s VLC Summer Reads, director Carin Kuoni reflects.“We have the honor of working with Brazilian artist Rosana P...
08/04/2026

For today’s VLC Summer Reads, director Carin Kuoni reflects.

“We have the honor of working with Brazilian artist Rosana Paulino (Rosana Paulino) for her Jane Lombard Prize exhibition this October at The New School. This summer, while visiting Switzerland (where I was born), I’ve come across a particular connection between this country and Rosana.

One of the tallest Swiss mountains is the Agassizhorn (12,949 ft), named for Swiss American scientist Louis Agassiz (1807–73). As I was preparing to hike other, significantly lower peaks, I stumbled across intelligence on Switzerland’s colonial past. The website Black Central Europe offers one entry point, with their amazing website on ‘1,000 years of Black history in the German-speaking lands.’

Working at Harvard, Agassiz traveled throughout Brazil in 1865/66. ‘The kind reception I met at the hands of the [Brazilian] emperor on my arrival at Rio has been followed by every possible attention and mark of good-will.’ He wrote: ‘An unceasing traffic of birds, shells, fish, etc., went on there from morning to night, and to the various vendors were added groups of Indians coming to have their photographs taken.’

Many of the photos he commissioned of Black Brazilians, meant to provide evidence of ‘inferior intelligence,’ are still at HMSC.

In her 2016 artist book ¿História Natural?, for which she is receiving the Prize, Rosana Paulino uses some of Agassiz’ images with densely layered interventions of watercolor, fabric, etchings, collage, and suture-like threading. She deconstructs Western notions of intelligence to open a more comprehensive consideration of what it means to be in the world. Come see for yourself when her show opens on Oct. 9 at the VLC Forum 2026.

Meanwhile, in Switzerland efforts are under way to rename Agassizhorn. Initiated by Swiss historian Hans Fässler with Haitian Swiss artist Sasha Huber (Sasha Huber), Demounting Agassiz is a transatlantic committee of scholars, artists, and activists proposing the name Rentyhorn in tribute to Renty, an enslaved person from Congo whose Agassiz-commissioned portrait is also at Harvard. It is a matter of time—and art!—for this to happen.”

This summer, continuing the Vera List Center for Art and Politics’s current focus theme 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦, the VLC ...
07/14/2026

This summer, continuing the Vera List Center for Art and Politics’s current focus theme 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦, the VLC staff have selected a series of texts, films, TV shows, and archival materials exploring the material and immaterial manifestations of “intelligence.”

First up, Re’al Christian (Re'al Christian), VLC assistant director of editorial initiatives.

“Last week, on what would have been poet June Jordan’s 90th birthday, I re-read her ‘Poem about Intelligence for My Brothers and Sisters,’ published in her collection Directed By Desire (Copper Canyon Press, 2005).

In Jordan’s poem, she challenges the narrow framework of ‘intelligence’ as defined by academia, arguing for a more expansive definition that accounts for ways of knowing that exist beyond the institution.

This text is one of a few poems by Jordan that I habitually re-read, along with ‘Moving Toward Home’ and ‘I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies.’ Reading this text now, alongside my research and publishing work for 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦, I’m grappling with the reductive framework of ‘Black intelligence’ (when used in a Eurocentric context as a term of classification) pitted against the inherent fugitivity of Black radical thought as an epistemology that resists naming and, by extension, closure.

In this video from the 1981 Brockport Writers Forum, Jordan reads the poem and speaks about her practice while unpacking what it means to move in anti-Black space and remain whole.”

Stay tuned for other summer picks by the VLC staff.

Video credit:
June Jordan reading “A Poem about Intelligence for my Brothers and Sisters,” Brockport Writers Forum, September 25, 1981. Courtesy Brockport Writers Forum YouTube channel.

The Vera List Center for Art and Politics is pleased to present 𝘙𝘰𝘴𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘗𝘢𝘶𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘰: ¿𝘏𝘪𝘴𝘵ó𝘳𝘪𝘢 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭?, an exhibition celebr...
06/30/2026

The Vera List Center for Art and Politics is pleased to present 𝘙𝘰𝘴𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘗𝘢𝘶𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘰: ¿𝘏𝘪𝘴𝘵ó𝘳𝘪𝘢 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭?, an exhibition celebrating the groundbreaking work of Brazilian artist Rosana Paulino, recipient of the 2025–2027 Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice. On view October 9–November 1, 2026, at the Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries, Parsons School of Design The New School.

Anchored by her landmark artist book of the same name, ¿𝘏𝘪𝘴𝘵ó𝘳𝘪𝘢 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭? traces Paulino’s critical examinations of the entanglements between science, race, knowledge, and power. It brings together new works and a selection of sculptures, paintings, drawings, prints, and notebooks from the last several years, including rarely seen materials drawn directly from the artist’s studio.

Paulino’s presentation with the Vera List Center at The New School showcases her expansive practice as both an artist and educator, framing the significance of her work in Brazil within an international context.

The exhibition is presented as part of Vera List Center Forum 2026: Matter of Intelligence, October 9 & 10, at The New School and is curated by Carin Kuoni and Eriola Pira. As part of the exhibition, the Black Feminist Study Group is co-convened by Re'al Christian.

Learn more about the exhibition and the VLC Forum at the link in Vera List Center for Art and Politics’s bio.

06/22/2026

Save the date! We are pleased to announce the 𝗩𝗲𝗿𝗮 𝗟𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝘂𝗺 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲, presented on October 9 & 10 at The New School ✨

The VLC Forum is an annual international convening of key participants in the field of art and politics. This year’s forum, organized within the framework of our two-year focus theme, 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦, convenes artists, curators, writers, scholars, and designers, inviting us to explore the many forms intelligence can take.

The VLC Forum 2026 honors Brazilian artist Rosana Paulino (Rosana Paulino), recipient of the Vera List Center’s 2025–2027 Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice, with the solo exhibition ¿História Natural?, celebrating Paulino’s groundbreaking work and tracing the artist’s ongoing critical examinations of the entanglements between science, race, knowledge, and power.

The VLC Forum also assembles the finalists for the prize, named the Jane Lombard Fellows: Nepalese artist collective ArTree Nepal (Artree Nepal-Artist Collective); New York-based artist Stephanie Dinkins (Stephanie Dinkins); Hawaiian and Samoan digital media theorist and poet Jason Edward Lewis (Abundant Intelligences); and Finnish artist Jenna Sutela ().

In conversation with their nominators and invited guests—organizer and educator Neta Bomani (netazines); writer, artist, and 2025–2027 VLC Fellow Mashinka Hakopian (Mashinka Firunts Hakopian); fashion designer Prabal Gurung (Prabal Gurung); and writer Elvia Wilk (Elvia Wilk)—the fellows discuss their nominated projects. Along with other featured speakers, Chus Martínez (), curator and prize chair, delivers the keynote lecture.

Join us online and in person for presentations, conversations, performances, live broadcasts, publications and readings, and the annual VLC Community Dinner, Dream Futures.

Programming is free and open to the public! We are grateful to our funding partners who enable us to host these programs for free. Consider sustaining our work by becoming a member of Vera’s List.

Learn more about this year’s VLC

For the spring edition of the VLC’s publishing series 𝘗𝘰𝘴𝘵/𝘥𝘰𝘤, tonal geologist Ryan C. Clarke’s “Unmastered Notes on Cr...
06/18/2026

For the spring edition of the VLC’s publishing series 𝘗𝘰𝘴𝘵/𝘥𝘰𝘤, tonal geologist Ryan C. Clarke’s “Unmastered Notes on Creole Neotectonics” unfolds in a polyphonic rhythm, weaving between earth science, musicology, auto theory, and decolonial critique.

Constructing an epistemology that “geologizes blackness,” Clarke underscores geological processes that resituate non-Western cultural logics within diasporic frameworks, centering the ethos of Black Study as environmental thought. He explores states of land matter shaped through colonial violence and degradation to consider the indelible relationships between people, space, and place.

In doing so, he argues for Black fugitivity, self-organizing, and survivance as means of generating infinite possibilities through the voids left by erosion, displacement, and rupture.

The spring edition of 𝘗𝘰𝘴𝘵/𝘥𝘰𝘤: Fugitive Ecologies explores forms of relational knowledge grounded in landscapes shaped by historical violence. Read Clarke’s (Christopher Clarke) text alongside Le’Andra LeSeur’s (Le’Andra LeSeur) “how empty is this space? (After Stone, After Ruins)” at the links in our bio.

𝘗𝘰𝘴𝘵/𝘥𝘰𝘤 is edited by the VLC’s Re’al Christian (Re'al Christian).

Christopher Clarke Le’Andra LeSeur Re'al Christian Vera List Center for Art and Politics

For the spring edition of the VLC’s publishing series 𝘗𝘰𝘴𝘵/𝘥𝘰𝘤, Tulsa and New York-based artist Le’Andra LeSeur’s “how e...
06/03/2026

For the spring edition of the VLC’s publishing series 𝘗𝘰𝘴𝘵/𝘥𝘰𝘤, Tulsa and New York-based artist Le’Andra LeSeur’s “how empty is this space? (After Stone, After Ruins)” marks the final chapter in a three-part series exploring the body’s response to landscapes shaped by historical Black violence, taking Tulsa and the southern coast of Georgia as familiar points of departure.

Combining a 16mm film, an undulating score, historiographical notes, and annotative gestures, the project documents and archives sound within these landscapes to uncover traces left behind—from the site of the 1864 Ebenezer Creek Massacre outside of Savannah, Georgia, where the film was shot, to the Tulsa Massacre of 1921.

In this process of attunement and embodied wayfinding, LeSeur questions how the land remembers.

The spring 2026 edition of 𝘗𝘰𝘴𝘵/𝘥𝘰𝘤: Fugitive Ecologies explores forms of relational knowledge grounded in landscapes shaped by historical violence. Read / watch / listen to LeSeur’s project alongside Ryan C. Clarke’s () “Unmastered Notes on Creole Neotectonics” at the links in our bio.

𝘗𝘰𝘴𝘵/𝘥𝘰𝘤 is edited by the VLC’s Re’al Christian ().

06/02/2026

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s film 𝘈 𝘛𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘖𝘯𝘦 𝘑𝘦𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘴 (2026) tells the story of jewels and their guardians, both living remnants of the once-thriving Jewish Muslim world in North Africa.

Conceived as a necklace of tales, the film intertwines a plurality of voices with the lines of the Kol Nidrei prayer, which traditionally opens Yom Kippur services. Like a golden thread, the prayer runs through the film, revoking false promises as it resurrects the anticolonial imaginary of the ummah, the community of believers that is also the subject of Azoulay’s publication, The Jewelers of the Ummah (Verso 2024).

Join the and the Institute for Critical Social Inquiry (ICSI) on Wed, June 11, at 6 pm, for the New York City premiere of 𝘈 𝘛𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘖𝘯𝘦 𝘑𝘦𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘴, hosted .

The screening is followed by a conversation with and singer and artist Laura Elkeslassy (), who is featured in the film. The dialogue is introduced by Carin Kuoni and moderated by Ann Laura Stoler.

The program is free and open to the public. Kindly register in advance at the link in ’s bio.

Credits:
Cantors: Laura Elkeslassy, Sarah benichou, Reine Ruby, camera: Yohana Benattar, editor: Juna Suleiman. Video courtesy the filmmaker.

06/02/2026

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s film 𝘈 𝘛𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘖𝘯𝘦 𝘑𝘦𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘴 (2026) tells the story of jewels and their guardians, both living remnants of the once-thriving Jewish Muslim world in North Africa.

Conceived as a necklace of tales, the film intertwines a plurality of voices with the lines of the Kol Nidrei prayer, which traditionally opens Yom Kippur services. Like a golden thread, the prayer runs through the film, revoking false promises as it resurrects the anticolonial imaginary of the ummah, the community of believers that is also the subject of Azoulay’s publication, The Jewelers of the Ummah (Verso 2024).

Join the and the Institute for Critical Social Inquiry (ICSI) on Wed, June 11, at 6 pm, for the New York City premiere of 𝘈 𝘛𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘖𝘯𝘦 𝘑𝘦𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘴, hosted .

The screening is followed by a conversation with Azoulay and singer and artist Laura Elkeslassy (), who is featured in the film. The dialogue is introduced by Carin Kuoni and moderated by Ann Laura Stoler.

The program is free and open to the public. Kindly register in advance at the link in ’s bio.

Credit:
Cantors: Laura Elkeslassy, Sarah benichou, Reine Ruby, camera: Yohana Benattar, editor: Juna Suleiman. Video courtesy the filmmaker.

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