Studies into Darkness: Editors and Artists in Conversation

Co-published by Amherst College Press and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School, Studies into Darkness: The Perils and Promise of Freedom of Speech emerged from a series of seminars guided by acclaimed artist, filmmaker, and activist Amar Kanwar at the Vera List Center. This collection of newly commissioned texts, artist projects, and historic resources examines aspects of freedom of speech informed by recent debates around hate speech, censorship, sexism, and racism. “Darkness” here holds the promise of complexity, discovery and, in Kanwar’s words, “visions from within the depths.”

Studies into Darkness: Editors and Artists in Conversation from Vera List Center on Vimeo.

This program brings together the book’s editors Carin Kuoni and Laura Raicovich with contributors Mendi Obadike and artist Chloë Bass in a conversation moderated by Re’al Christian who discuss the themes behind Studies into Darkness and the ways in which the book itself plays with the concept of darkness as both a tonal variation and a factor of legibility, a space from which truth can be extracted or hindered. This event was part of the Vancouver Art Book Fair’s Art Book Month.

The inspiration for Studies into Darkness came, in part, from the work of multidisciplinary artist Amar Kanwar. Within Kanwar’s film Such a Morning, Kuoni and Raicovich found a methodology from which to reconsider free speech and what it means in our culture. In a conversation with Public Seminar’s Lindsey Scharold, Kuoni and Raicovich share the thoughtful curatorial sense behind the project. Read the conversation here.