Vera List Center

Vera List Center Focus Theme: If Art is Politics
http://www.veralistcenter.org/
https://twitter.com/VeraListCenter/
https://vimeo.com/veralistcenter/

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.

Join us online this evening, June 1, for 𝘈𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴, 𝘚𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘢𝘳𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘚𝘱𝘪𝘦𝘴, our 6th 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 seminar. 🔎We close...
06/01/2026

Join us online this evening, June 1, for 𝘈𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴, 𝘚𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘢𝘳𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘚𝘱𝘪𝘦𝘴, our 6th 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 seminar. 🔎

We close out year one of the 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 Seminar Series with a look at how knowledge has been implicated in and mobilized by both covert and overt forms of state and imperial power, while also treating these entanglements as vital subjects of artistic and scholarly inquiry.

Feat.
▪️Gregory Afinogenov, historian and author of Spies and Scholars: Chinese Secrets and Imperial Russia’s Quest for World Power
▪️Nina Hartmann (), artist
▪️John Reed (), writer, New School faculty member, and author of The Never End: The Other Orwell, the Cold War, the CIA, MI6, and the Origin of Animal Farm

The program is moderated by the VLC’s Eriola Pira and artist Caitlin Cherry.

Register in advance at the link in our bio and we’ll see you online this evening!

From June 5 to 13, current VLC Fellow Moriah Evans () presents her performance […/+*^%€£¥$&@!!!!^^^] in New York. […/+*...
05/29/2026

From June 5 to 13, current VLC Fellow Moriah Evans () presents her performance […/+*^%€£¥$&@!!!!^^^] in New York.

[…/+*^%€£¥$&@!!!!^^^] confronts the body as a site of political and existential conundrums. The work probes how material, immaterial, biological, and sensorial resources coexist in dancing actions that oscillate from the unstable and unresolved to unified group choreographies of mesmerizing dance steps. In this maze of interdependence, the performance proposes non-linear thinking and embodied ways of knowing, questioning how bodies can and cannot be isolated from social, economic, and political urgencies.

[…/+*^%€£¥$&@!!!!^^^] is co-commissioned by The Chocolate Factory Theater and the and supported through Moriah Evans’ 2025–2027 Vera List Center Fellowship.

Visit the link in ’s bio for tickets.

Images:
Moriah Evans’ work-in-progress presentation of [.../+*^%€£¥$&@!!!!^^^] . May 16, 2026. Photos by Emmett Levy, courtesy the artist and LMCC.

Ahead of our next and final seminar for year one of 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦— “Artists, Scholars and Spies,” presented onl...
05/28/2026

Ahead of our next and final seminar for year one of 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦— “Artists, Scholars and Spies,” presented online on Monday, June 1—we’re sharing selections from the accompanying Are.na channel.

The channel, curated by the VLC’s , gathers readings alongside images, artist projects, and other materials shaping our seminar’s core questions. With this program we consider how forms of knowledge produced by artists, writers, scholars, and scientists intersect with those pursued by intelligence services, asking where their methods, ambitions, and objects of inquiry diverge or overlap with the logics of intelligence work itself.

Visit the links in our bio to explore these texts, including works by our speakers , and register in advance for the seminar.

The latest edition of the Vera List Center’s digital publishing series 𝘗𝘰𝘴𝘵/𝘥𝘰𝘤 explores forms of relational knowledge g...
05/21/2026

The latest edition of the Vera List Center’s digital publishing series 𝘗𝘰𝘴𝘵/𝘥𝘰𝘤 explores forms of relational knowledge grounded in landscapes shaped by historical violence, feat. tonal geologist Ryan C. Clarke () and multidisciplinary artist Le’Andra LeSeur ().

The 2nd edition published under the VLC’s 2025–2027 Focus Theme, 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦, the spring commissions consider practices of attunement, deep listening, and Black fugitivity. Clarke and LeSeur’s projects unearth forms of intelligence seemingly hidden but not absent.

Read / listen to / watch their projects, at veralistcenter.org.

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

The Vera List Center, in collaboration with the Institute for Critical Social Inquiry (ICSI) at The New School, is pleas...
05/20/2026

The Vera List Center, in collaboration with the Institute for Critical Social Inquiry (ICSI) at The New School, is pleased to present the New York premiere of Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s latest film, 𝘈 𝘛𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘖𝘯𝘦 𝘑𝘦𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘴 – ألف حليّة وحليّة.

Concluding Azoulay’s () 𝘜𝘯𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘐𝘮𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘗𝘭𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 film trilogy, 𝘈 𝘛𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘖𝘯𝘦 𝘑𝘦𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘴 relates the story of jewels and their guardians, both living remnants of the once-thriving Jewish Muslim world in North Africa. Scattered throughout the film, the jewels speak to a precolonial world that refuses to disappear and resists the colonial violence that has separated Jews and Muslims.

By sharing these stories and engaging in the making of the jewelry together, the film’s protagonists renew a truncated transmission of knowledge and know-how, thus suspending the museum verdict that, through looted objects, seals the history of this Jewish Muslim world and relegates it to a historical past.

Introduced by VLC director Carin Kuoni, the screening is followed by a conversation between Azoulay and singer and artist Laura Elkeslassy (), who is featured in the film. The dialogue is moderated by ICSI director and scholar Ann Laura Stoler.

Kindly register in advance at the link in our bio.

This evening, May 18, honors musician and composer Raven Chacon () with a 2026 honorary degree, alongside a cohort of o...
05/18/2026

This evening, May 18, honors musician and composer Raven Chacon () with a 2026 honorary degree, alongside a cohort of other extraordinary leaders in the fields of art, science, music, and theater.

Chacon’s “Score for an Unreliable Narrator” opens the VLC’s anthology 𝘈𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘰𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘴 (published with 2025). The book examines the modes by which protocols determine the ways we interact with each other, our environments, our bodies, our institutions, and our technologies. As many of the contributions attest, the traditional modes by which protocols are developed, tested, and evaluated often fall short of responding to the needs of our societies. What we sometimes overlook is that a protocol can be “individual responsibility as much as a communal one,” reflects Chacon.

“Score for an Unreliable Narrator” unfolds as an oscillating text that prompts us to consider our individual roles in the preservation, stewardship, and creation of new and preexisting protocols. As a foreword, it invites us to consider which protocols we bring into the book and which ones we hope to take away. As each prompt links and weaves into the next, “this score,” Chacon writes, “asks how we can be a stronger link in that chain, itself being a procedural protocol of contradictions.” 🌀

Join us in congratulating and each of the honorary degree awardees: Meg Crane, designer and inventor of the home pregnancy test; James Wines, artist and architect; and this year’s Commencement speaker, theater artist Taylor Mac.

Join us online on Monday, June 1, for 𝘈𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴, 𝘚𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘢𝘳𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘚𝘱𝘪𝘦𝘴, with historian Gregory Afinogenov, artist Nina Hartm...
05/18/2026

Join us online on Monday, June 1, for 𝘈𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴, 𝘚𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘢𝘳𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘚𝘱𝘪𝘦𝘴, with historian Gregory Afinogenov, artist Nina Hartmann, and writer and New School faculty member John Reed.

We close out year one of the 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 Seminar Series with a look at the entangled histories of scholarship, academia, and state power through the infrastructures and practices of intelligence and espionage. We ask how knowledge produced by artists, writers, scholars, and scientists intersects with intelligence work—where methods, aims, and forms of inquiry overlap, diverge, or entangle.

The seminar examines historical and contemporary examples of how knowledge has been implicated in and mobilized by both covert and overt forms of state and imperial power, while also treating these entanglements as vital subjects of artistic and scholarly inquiry. The program is moderated by the VLC’s Eriola Pira and artist Caitlin Cherry.

Kindly register in advance at the link in our bio.

Tomorrow, May 16, VLC Fellow Moriah Evans () presents her in-progress performance […/+*^%€£¥$&@!!!!^^^] at 4 pm, ✨As pa...
05/15/2026

Tomorrow, May 16, VLC Fellow Moriah Evans () presents her in-progress performance […/+*^%€£¥$&@!!!!^^^] at 4 pm, ✨

As part of LMCC’s daylong open studios, Evans’ immersive performance confronts the body as an ambivalent place of political and existential conundrums. Through a sequence of evolving circumstances—internal and external, individual and collective—the piece asks what it means to give, take, receive, and be taken through a compositional structure.

Evans’ […/+*^%€£¥$&@!!!!^^^] has been commissioned and developed, in part, as a 2025–2027 Vera List Center Fellowship project and will debut at next month, June 5–13, 2026.

Visit the link in ’s bio to register!

Photo by Ry Thiel, courtesy Moriah Evans.

Tomorrow, May 16, VLC Fellow Moriah Evans () presents her in-progress performance […/+*^%€£¥$&@!!!!^^^] at 4 pm, .As pa...
05/15/2026

Tomorrow, May 16, VLC Fellow Moriah Evans () presents her in-progress performance […/+*^%€£¥$&@!!!!^^^] at 4 pm, .

As part of LMCC’s daylong open studios, Evans’ immersive performance confronts the body as an ambivalent place of political and existential conundrums. Through a sequence of evolving circumstances—internal and external, individual and collective—the piece asks what it means to give, take, receive, and be taken through a compositional structure.

Evans’ […/+*^%€£¥$&@!!!!^^^] has been commissioned and developed, in part, as a 2025–2027 Vera List Center Fellowship project and will debut at next month, June 5–13, 2026.

Visit the link in ’s bio to register.

Photo by Ry Thiel, courtesy Moriah Evans.

The Venice Biennale main exhibition, 𝘐𝘯 𝘔𝘪𝘯𝘰𝘳 𝘒𝘦𝘺𝘴, features many artists in the VLC’s orbit who we’ve proudly worked wi...
05/12/2026

The Venice Biennale main exhibition, 𝘐𝘯 𝘔𝘪𝘯𝘰𝘳 𝘒𝘦𝘺𝘴, features many artists in the VLC’s orbit who we’ve proudly worked with over the years. Last week, many of these artists gathered for the Solidarity Drone Chorus, a procession that sonically occupied the main pavilions in support of Palestine and Ukraine, captured in the first image.

▪️Carolina Caycedo (), 2020–2022 VLC Borderlands Fellow, presents a body of works that honor knowledge keepers and seeds as symbols of mutualism and collaboration.

▪️Walid Raad, a 2004–2005 VLC Fellow, presents a group of works reflecting on the intersection of art, politics, commerce, and war, grappling with the material and intangible implications of violence on the practice of art.

▪️Fall 2025 Post/doc contributor Nolan Oswald Dennis’s () works use low-frequency sounds collected from seismic sensing meters across the African continent, probing the deep recesses of geological time.

▪️Sofía Gallisá Muriente (), who participated in the VLC Forum 2025: Correct History* with Natalia Lassalle-Morillo, presents “Observatorio de lagunas (Lacuna Observatory),” examining gaps in cultural memory in Puerto Rico through a layered, unstable archive.

▪️Natalia Lassalle-Morillo’s () “Retiro” emerges from a series of dialogues and reenactments with her mother, Gloria María Morillo, framing her story with a larger narrative of colonial aftermaths in Puerto Rico.

▪️Past program participant Alfredo Jaar’s () “The End of the World” considers the abundance of rare earth minerals in fueling geopolitical tensions and technologies of planetary renewal and war.

▪️Nina Katchadourian’s () “Seat Assignment” recreates impromptu games the artist invented on flight between 2010–11, taking mundane processes and transforming them into playful activations.

▪️Uriel Orlow’s () multipart installation considers what history makes silent or invisible, focusing on the entanglements between humans and plants to reflect on ecological histories of colonization and the need for reparative justice.

All photos by Carin Kuoni, courtesy the Vera List Center.

Address

New York, NY

Telephone

+12122292436

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Vera List Center posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category

//iconSize: [32, 32], //html: '' }) .bindTooltip(name, { //permanent: true, direction: 'bottom', //offset: L.point(12, 25), //opacity: 0.88, interactive: true }) .bindPopup(name); markersLayer.addLayer(marker); } function getMore() { if (gettingMore) { return; } gettingMore = true; var center = map.getCenter(); $.ajax({ url: "/vicinitysearch", data: { lat: center.lat, lng: center.lng, country: "UNITED STATES" } }) .done(function(data) { var added = 0; data.forEach(function(loc) { if (!locationIds.includes(loc.id)) { var mapLoc = {id:loc.id,lat:loc.latitude,lng:loc.longitude,title:trunc20(loc.name),popupHtml:loc.popupHtml,urlPath:loc.urlPath,pictureUrl:loc.pictureUrl}; locations.push(mapLoc); locationIds.push(loc.id); map._addMarker(mapLoc); added++; } }); }) .always(function() { gettingMore = false; }); } map._clearMarkers = function() { markersLayer.clearLayers(); } }); }, 4000); });