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December 2011

Thursday, 12/1

RealArts@Penn presents Steve Volk

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

hosted by: Anthony DeCurtis
co-sponsored by: The Povich Fund for Journalism Programs
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

As a staff writer for Philadelphia Magazine, Steve Volk has been built a solid reputation as an investigative reporter. His book, Fringe-ology is a journey into the unexplored territory where science and the paranormal converge. Fringeology moves into the heart of the paranormal universe to try to answer some of life's most fundamental questions. Along the way Volk encounters a psychologist who concludes that there is life beyond death, people who claim to have survived alien abduction, a former N.A.S.A astronaut who is now an avid paranormalist, professional ghost-hunters and more. Volk pulls fact from fiction and finds that there is still enough mystery left in the world to humble us all. Volk often writes about drugs, crime and the courts, and other long form journalistic pieces that explore the gritty city. He has also been published in the Philadelphia Weekly, Rolling Stone, Men's Journal and Vibe magazines.

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Friday, 12/2

Saturday, 12/3

Sunday, 12/4

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Monday, 12/5

A conversation with Joe Nocera

Sponsored by the Weber Symposium

5:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

Joe Nocera is business columnist for The New York Times and also contributes to The New York Times Magazine as a business writer. In addition to his work at The Times, he serves as a regular business commentator for NPR's Weekend Edition with Scott Simon. Before joining The Times, Mr. Nocera spent 10 years at Fortune Magazine, where he held a variety of positions, including contributing writer, editor-at-large and executive editor. His last position at Fortune was editorial director. He was the Profit Motive columnist at GQ until May 1995, and he wrote the same column for Esquire from 1988 until 1990. In the 1980's, he served as a contributing editor at Newsweek, as executive editor of New England Monthly and as senior editor at Texas Monthly. From 1978 until 1980, he was an editor at The Washington Monthly. Mr. Nocera's Saturday column, "Talking Business," ranges widely over the world of business, covering everything from Home Depot's annual meeting to Boeing's comeback to his off-beat musings about his broken iPod. Slate magazine says that his column "demystifies the world of business with original thinking, brainy reporting and the ability to see around corners."

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Tuesday, 12/6


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Wednesday, 12/7

MATERIAL CONSTRUCTION: An investigation in TEXT and MOVEMENT as artistic materials

A participatory event with Meg Foley of Moving Parts, Bonnie Jones, Laura Neuman, Megan Bridge and Peter Price of Fidget Space

7:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

rsvp required: to wh@writing.upenn.edu

In artistic practice and production, TEXT and MOVEMENT are materials with distinct texture, history, function, possibility, charge. This evening’s program includes five artists, working in choreography, performance, sound and the written word. Through a variety of multimedia performance, “reading” and participatory workshop, each of these artists will lead audience members through an embodied and communal investigation of text and movement: what they are, what they do, the overlap and interstice, the way instances of each construct space, bodies, and community, the possibility of a map, the relationships we find and make.

Megan Bridge is a dancer and dance maker based in Philadelphia. She currently co-directs Fidget Space, a platform for her collaborative work with Peter Price. Megan’s dances are awkward dystopias, referential and even appropriationist, grounded in the discourses of contemporary art, culture, and theory (we like experiments). On tour, Megan’s work has been seen in places like New York, Berlin, Dresden, Johannesburg, and Vienna. She works and lives in a warehouse space in Kensington (the fidget space) with her husband two kids. Bridge holds a BFA in dance from SUNY Purchase. www.thefidget.org

Meg Foley is a Philadelphia-based dance artist and the director of Moving Parts. Moving Parts is a familial dance think tank with a group of steady collaborators that explores how art environments are made and tries to create elusive yet emotionally evocative performance experiences that straddle the fine line between focus and freedom. Meg is concerned with work that is both somatically oriented and precisely organized visually. And ultimately in her practice, she asks existential questions about the human experience of being, in relation to self and in relation to others. Her work is grounded in the body, in the real, in the meaty part that holds the stuff of being alive. Her work has been presented by the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, Bowerbird, Mascher Space Cooperative, Little Berlin Gallery, Vox Populi Gallery, the Community Education Center, Cirque De Verre, Scripps College, and in Movement Research at the Judson Church. Meg also teaches both technique and critical theory and have led workshops on whether authentic movement really exists and on locating meaning within and constructing self-referential movement.

Bonnie Jones is a Korean-American writer, improvising musician, and performer working primarily with electronic music and text. Born in 1977 in South Korea she was raised on a dairy farm in New Jersey, and currently resides in Baltimore, MD. Bonnie creates improvised and composed text-sound performances that explore the fluidity and function of electronic noise (field recordings, circuit bending) and text (poetry, found, spoken). She is interested in how people perceive, “read” and interact with these sounds and texts given our current technological moment. Bonnie has presented her work in the US, Europe, and Asia and collaborates frequently with writers and musicians including Ric Royer, Carla Harryman, Andy Hayleck, Joe Foster, Andrea Neumann, Liz Tonne and Chris Cogburn. She received her MFA from the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College. bonniejones.wordpress.com

Laura Neuman is a poet and performing artist interested in the interstice and overlap between the way text functions in these media. From 2007-2011, she performed and collaborated with The Workshop for Potential Movement, and has also performed with members of Green Chair Dance. Laura’s poems have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, among other places, and have been performed at various reading series in Philadelphia, New York and Sydney, Australia. Laura has an M.F.A. in Writing from Bard College, and an M.A. in Poetry from Temple University. She currently teaches creative writing and composition at Temple.

Peter Price creates digital sonic and visual environments for live performance, and is co- director of Fidget Space, a platform for his collaborative work with choreographer Megan Bridge. His work has been presented by Network for New Music, Relache Ensemble, and performed at many Philadelphia venues including the Kimmel Center and the Painted Bride. Price has an extensive history of collaboration with Group Motion and other dance companies and performance artists in Philadelphia, and has toured to Tokyo, Poland, Lithuania, New York, Vienna, Berlin, Dresden, and Grahasmstown South Africa. Price studied at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and received a degree in composition from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He holds a PhD from the European Graduate School in Saas Fee, Switzerland, and his new book, Resonance: Philosophy for Sonic Art was recently published by Atropos Press.


Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Thursday, 12/8

Stefan Sagmeister

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

hosted by: Kenny Goldsmith
co-sponsored by: the ICA and the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

Stefan Sagmeister (1962-) is among today's most important graphic designers. Born in Austria, he now lives and works in New York. His long-standing collaborators include the AIGA and the musicians David Byrne and Lou Reed. His New York-based graphic design firm is called Sagmeister Inc.


Herman Beavers' class reading

8:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Friday, 12/9

Saturday, 12/10

Sunday, 12/11

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Monday, 12/12

CREATING CHARACTERS IN LITERARY JOURNALISM & MEMOIR

a reading by students in Jamie-Lee Josselyn’s writing class

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

This interactive workshop focused on ways to construct characters in journalistic profiles, memoirs, and personal essays. Students examined – in their own work and the work of others – how nonfiction writers must shape information to render people on the page in a way that is accurate, honest, and engaging. How do we decide what to include and how do we justify what we exclude? Come hear some of what the students learned.

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Tuesday, 12/13

A reading by students in Greg Djanikian's poetry class

5:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

Students in this course studied the rhythm and expressiveness of their language, while also exploring the things of this world, sometimes in new relationships and, perhaps, with broader vision.

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Wednesday, 12/14

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Thursday, 12/15

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Friday, 12/16

Saturday, 12/17

Sunday, 12/18

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Monday, 12/19

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Tuesday, 12/20

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Wednesday, 12/21

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Thursday, 12/22

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Friday, 12/23

Saturday, 12/24

Sunday, 12/25

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Monday, 12/26

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Tuesday, 12/27

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Wednesday, 12/28

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Thursday, 12/29

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Friday, 12/30

Saturday, 12/31