AFTERWORDS
AFTERWORDS is the Center for the Arts' public program series, asking: what happens after the encounter with the work of art? Each year, AFTERWORDS is organized around a keyword addressing different dimensions of art’s capacity to not only reflect but to transform the world.
To assemble is both to come together and to make or construct. These two meanings are inextricable: to come together is to make something (like a “we”) out of nowhere; to make or construct something out of other things rests on the belief that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. How does art take up this power of assembly? How does it call assemblies into being? And, in the wake of what art helps us assemble, what other work remains to be done?
Read in The Wesleyan Connection.
Learn more about upcoming AFTERWORDS events.
Image: Saidiya Hartman ’83, Hon. ’19, Kiara Benn ’20, and Kaneza Schaal ’06 in October 2024. Photo by Sandy Aldieri of Perceptions Photography.
2025
April March
2024
October
2025
April
Monday, April 14, 2025 at 12:00pm
Jones Room, Theater Studios, 275 Washington Terrace, Middletown, Connecticut
March
Monday, March 3, 2025 at 5:00pm
The Russell House, 350 High Street, Middletown
Encounter Machines is a work-in-progress manifesto that seeks to find new relevance between architecture and opera, exploring questions of scale, queerness, fragmentation, failure, and more. The text draws on Peter Zuspan’s work designing spaces for performance (including the National Sawdust and Bushwick Starr) as well as his ongoing research on the spatial limits and possibilities of new and experimental opera. The presentation will be followed by a discussion with the multidisciplinary artist Helga Davis.
2024
October
Wednesday, October 2, 2024 at 4:30pm
Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism, 116 Mount Vernon Street, Room 102, Middletown, Connecticut