Human Rights Through Education is proud to announce that, for our upcoming conference, "Human Rights in Urban America," we feature director/producers Jen Senko and Fiore Derosa to screen and discuss their new documentary film: THE VANISHING CITY.
"Global trends in major cities around the world have changed rapidly in the last several decades. As cities become more interconnected, and less dependent on localized economic models, domestic issues of increased class inequality and sustainability have emerged as central components to city planning debates. These trends are perhaps best exemplified in the city of New York.
Told through the eyes of tenants, city planners, business owners, scholars, and politicians, The Vanishing City exposes the real politic behind the alarming disappearance of New York’s beloved neighborhoods, the truth about its finance-dominated economy, and the myth of “inevitable change.” Artfully documented through interviews, hearings, demonstrations, and archival footage, the film takes a sober look at the city’s “luxury” policies and high-end development, the power role of the elite, and accusations of corruption surrounding land use and rezoning. The film also links New York trends to other global cities where multinational corporations continue to victimize the middle and working classes."
-from The Vanishing City Website http://www.vanishingny.org/
The Vanishing City was the opening film for the Harlem Film Festival 2010, where it received the award for Best Short Documentary. The film was also awarded Best Feature Documentary Film at the 2010 Williamsburg International Film Festival. The film also won an Honorable Mention in the Los Angeles International Film Festival.
About the filmmakers:
FIORE DEROSA
Fiore DeRosa is a long time lower Manhattan resident and an award winning film and theater director. His film “Distraction”, which he wrote, directed and produced won third prize in the Zoie Film Festival, and is currently in online distribution with “REAL”, and rated one of the top 100 viewed films. His recent film, “After The Tango”, which he wrote and directed, has just finished post-production and is soon to be in the film festival circuit. He was the Founder and Creative Director of The Abraxxas Theater in New York City, and previously the Managing Director of Hunger Theater of Philadelphia. With Hunger Theater, his production of “American Buffalo” won The Golden Cockerel Award for best play in the 2000 Edinburgh film festival.
JEN SENKO
Jen Senko is an award-winning filmmaker and a long-time Soho resident. She graduated on the Dean’s List from Pratt Institute. Senko’s first documentary, “Road Map Warrior Women”, won recognition with several festival awards, including Certificate of Merit Finalist from the 2000 Houston Film Festival and the Special Jury Award from the 2001 Brooklyn Film Festival. Subsequently, Jen was a guest on the panel for the “Women Who Rock” symposium sponsored by CineWomen. Over the past ten years she’s been involved in writing, directing, producing, casting and shooting. She started her LLC, JSenko Productions, in order to produce a number of independent films, including “Downsizing of the Gods” written by Lynwood Sawyer and DP’d by Abe Schrager (“Dead Man Walking”, “The Hours”, “Sex in the City”, etc.). In fall 2006 she was the casting director for the Latino short “La Chiva” which was picked by a panel of blue ribbon judges (including famed director Robert Rodriguez) to be one of three finalists in a high-profile contest sponsored by Mercury/Ford. Senko directed a two-minute short in November 2006 called “Jesus Cares. Guess Who Doesn’t.”
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
HRTE at Leadership Connection: Day 2
Hello everyone!
It was an exciting day for Human Rights Through Education. Connections were made, souls were searched, stomachs were filled, personalities were discovered, personal space bubbles were popped.
Our day consisted of breakfast (great omelettes), low ropes (we definitely got cozy), lunch date with Health in Action, discovering our personality types, making our HRTE facebook page (our friends include Jal and Tutu), eating some more, and talking about organizations, social justice, and the campus climate (and that every org can be a social justice organization in some way).
Fun fact: All 3 HRTE representatives here are INFPs (Introverted Intuitive Feeling Percieving). According to our table of personality types, INFPs are:
"Idealistic, loyal to their values and to people who are important to them. Want an external life that is congruent with their values. Curious, quick to see possibilites, can be catalysts for implementing ideas. Seek to understand people and to help them fulfill their potential. Adaptable, flexible, and accepting unless a value is threatened."
We are also all NF's aka DOLPHINS, who "lubricate the interpersonal fabric of an organization" and are "humanists, catalysts, focus on meaning of humanity's past and possibilities for the future."
What personality type are you, HRTE and friends?
We had a really great discussion about the future of HRTE and came up with a lot of ideas that we want to consider when we get back to campus. We want to strengthen what we have currently been doing, as well as look at other ways to reach out to the campus community at large, and work on creating an active culture of human rights within the fabric of the student organization community.
The day ended with a jigsaw-puzzle extravaganza with some members of Circle K. Our jigsaw puzzle consisted of a picture of BOTH Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus, as well as some flowers and butterflies. It was covered in glitter and glowed in the dark.
Does it get much better than that?
Sian and Julia
It was an exciting day for Human Rights Through Education. Connections were made, souls were searched, stomachs were filled, personalities were discovered, personal space bubbles were popped.
Our day consisted of breakfast (great omelettes), low ropes (we definitely got cozy), lunch date with Health in Action, discovering our personality types, making our HRTE facebook page (our friends include Jal and Tutu), eating some more, and talking about organizations, social justice, and the campus climate (and that every org can be a social justice organization in some way).
Fun fact: All 3 HRTE representatives here are INFPs (Introverted Intuitive Feeling Percieving). According to our table of personality types, INFPs are:
"Idealistic, loyal to their values and to people who are important to them. Want an external life that is congruent with their values. Curious, quick to see possibilites, can be catalysts for implementing ideas. Seek to understand people and to help them fulfill their potential. Adaptable, flexible, and accepting unless a value is threatened."
We are also all NF's aka DOLPHINS, who "lubricate the interpersonal fabric of an organization" and are "humanists, catalysts, focus on meaning of humanity's past and possibilities for the future."
What personality type are you, HRTE and friends?
We had a really great discussion about the future of HRTE and came up with a lot of ideas that we want to consider when we get back to campus. We want to strengthen what we have currently been doing, as well as look at other ways to reach out to the campus community at large, and work on creating an active culture of human rights within the fabric of the student organization community.
The day ended with a jigsaw-puzzle extravaganza with some members of Circle K. Our jigsaw puzzle consisted of a picture of BOTH Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus, as well as some flowers and butterflies. It was covered in glitter and glowed in the dark.
Does it get much better than that?
Sian and Julia
Monday, May 3, 2010
HRTE at Leadership Connection: Day 1
Greeting HRTE Folk/Friends O'HRTE!
Devin, Julia, and I are winding down our first day at Leadership Connection 2010 at the lovely Lake Walloon in Northern Michigan.
I can't upload pictures yet, but it looks a little something like this:
We have been doing a lot of organization soul-searching,and in the grand HRTE tradition, have been eating lots of great food. Steak for dinner! So luxury.
We have decided that if HRTE were a machine, it would be a blender, because we blends a lot of different viewpoints and ideas into a cohesive, delicious smoothie of human rights awareness. We also chose to visually represent our group with pictures of: fireworks (start small but explode into something great), a winding path (who knows where the future of HRTE leads?), and a hot-air balloon (something that also starts small, inflated into something much bigger by the power of education, constantly moving and changing).
So far, the HRTEgans have been a success.
On the agenda for tomorrow: "Low Ropes" and personality profiling.
Hope everyone is having a wonderful vacation so far,
Sian (and Devin and Julia)
Devin, Julia, and I are winding down our first day at Leadership Connection 2010 at the lovely Lake Walloon in Northern Michigan.
I can't upload pictures yet, but it looks a little something like this:
We have been doing a lot of organization soul-searching,and in the grand HRTE tradition, have been eating lots of great food. Steak for dinner! So luxury.
We have decided that if HRTE were a machine, it would be a blender, because we blends a lot of different viewpoints and ideas into a cohesive, delicious smoothie of human rights awareness. We also chose to visually represent our group with pictures of: fireworks (start small but explode into something great), a winding path (who knows where the future of HRTE leads?), and a hot-air balloon (something that also starts small, inflated into something much bigger by the power of education, constantly moving and changing).
So far, the HRTEgans have been a success.
On the agenda for tomorrow: "Low Ropes" and personality profiling.
Hope everyone is having a wonderful vacation so far,
Sian (and Devin and Julia)
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Is this the Human Rights Army?
Above is a picture from an amazing article about female UN Peacekeepers in Liberia. Although I think that the idea is amazing, and the results seem very real, are these women being played into a gendered role? Even though they are dressed in blue, is their use too typically 'pink'?
Also, UN, please stop referring to them as "blue helmettes." What ever happened to MDG #3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women?
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Oh Happy Day!
The genocide which began in 2003 in Darfur, a southern region of the Sudan, has, to date, resulted in the death of over 450,000 people, the displacement of over a million, and the rape and psychological terror of countless more. Yet, hope that it may soon end is on the horizon! Today, the president of the Sudan Omar Al-Bashir and the the leaders of the most powerful rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement, have signed a ceasefire. Only time will tell what ultimately happens, but it's a step in the right direction.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/world/africa/24briefs-sudanbrf.html?ref=world
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
The Anti-Invictus
The recently-released film Invictus tells the story of how Nelson Mandela was able to use a sporting event, the 1995 Rugby World Cup, to help heal deep racial fissures in South African society and move the country further towards reconciliation.
As Foreign Policy's latest photo essay makes abundantly clear, however, sport does not always play such a commendatory role in promoting human rights. In their essay, journalists Kayvan Farzaneh and Andrew Swift show how young children are being used to do hard labor in preparation for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, and how New Delhi's homeless shelters and slums are being destroyed in preparation for the games. In many cases the destruction of shelters and slums is causing this already vulnerable segment of the population to freeze to death. A wide range of human rights issues are in balance here, including these children's right to education (Article 25 of the UDHR), their parents' right to an adequate standard of living (Article 26), and most fundamentally, the right of everyone to some kind of shelter - so that no one has to freeze to death.
Check out the photo essay, entitled "Bricks for Bread and Milk," here: http://tinyurl.com/ylgagho
Friday, February 5, 2010
Express Your Rights starts TODAY!
Sessions today start at 4 PM in the Pendleton Room of the Michigan Union. Sessions today include:
4PM-5PM: Carol Jacobsen: Women's Criminalization, Clemency, and Human Rights
5PM-6PM: Nick Tobier: Human Centered Design and How Collective Creativity Enables Change
6PM-7PM: Danielle Abrams: Burritos and Bulldykes: Performance Activity in the Gay Ghetto of the Mission District in San Francisco
7:30PM-8:30PM (Ballroom, Michigan League): Emmanuel Jal: WAR CHILD: A Story of Survival
Look forward to seeing you all today!
4PM-5PM: Carol Jacobsen: Women's Criminalization, Clemency, and Human Rights
5PM-6PM: Nick Tobier: Human Centered Design and How Collective Creativity Enables Change
6PM-7PM: Danielle Abrams: Burritos and Bulldykes: Performance Activity in the Gay Ghetto of the Mission District in San Francisco
7:30PM-8:30PM (Ballroom, Michigan League): Emmanuel Jal: WAR CHILD: A Story of Survival
Look forward to seeing you all today!
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Carol Jacobsen
"Carol Jacobsen is an award-winning social documentary artist whose works in video and photography address issues of women's criminalization and censorship. Her art has been exhibited and screened at venues worldwide, including New York's Lincoln Center, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Centre de Cultural Contemporanea in Barcelona, the Kunstforum in Bonn, the Brussels International Film Festival, Rome's Temple Gallery, the Photography Biennial of Wanganui, New Zealand, Human Rights Watch of Beijing, and by many grassroots organizations.
Jacobson has received awards and grants from organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts, the Paul Robeson Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Center for New Television, the Women in Film Foundation, Art Matters, Prostitutes of New York, and No More Nice Girls. Her published articles on art, feminism and politics have appeared in Art in America, Exposure, New York Law Review, Social Text, Lower East Side Journal, and other publications. Her work is represented by Denise Bibro Fine Art in Manhattan.
Carol Jacobsen is the 2005-06 Human Rights Fellow at the University of Michigan. In addition to her teaching responsibilities in art and women's studies at the University of Michigan, Jacobsen serves as Director of the Michigan Women's Clemency Project. In that capacity, she advocates for the human rights of women prisoners and seeks freedom for women wrongly incarcerated. Her projects have been sponsored by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, COYOTE, Women's Prison Association of New York, the American Civil Liberties Association, and other non-profit organizations."
Check out her "phototext essay" about women in prison: http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/terminals/jacobsen/jacobsen.html
Source: http://art-design.umich.edu/people/detail/carol_jacobsen
Nick Tobier
Nick Tobier answers the question "why do you make art?" Part of the Why Series now airing on Michigan Television and the Michigan Channel in between regular programming.
Danielle Abrams
"Danielle Abrams is an interdisciplinary artist who works in performance and video. She is a monologist, a talk-show host, a ballroom dance teacher, and a stand-up comedian of yesteryear. She channels a multiracial cast of family members, and incites participatory extravaganzas. Abrams performs at art galleries, museums, theaters, and performance spaces. Her characters also wax poetic from park benches, barbeque "butch burgers", and lead Conga lines through a Borscht-Belt mirage. Family and social histories are the material Abrams kneads to create real-time work about people, neighborhoods, and eras. Recalling a post-World's Fair Flushing; a Coney Island heyday; Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn; and a 1950's Harlem, Abrams utilizes the tropes of personae to inquire about social relationships and cultures. She challenges our reliance upon origin and biography through embodying characters of multi-gendered and cross-cultural kin. In Abrams' performances, she reveals the frolic, toxicity, poignancy, and revolutionary potential that is created at the intersection of diverse communities."
Source: http://www.danielleabrams.com/
"In Early Bird, Dew Drop Lady (performed by Danielle Abrams) converses with a community of seniors about Passover, Florida, and her lineage which is not only Jewish, but Black too. Less an Early Bird and more like a Canary in a Coal Mine, Dew Drop Lady surveys the toxic beliefs that lie latent in the minds of a homogeneous community."
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Michael Simons and Paul Shoebridge
This is what they look like:
"Michael Simons and Paul Shoebridge are award-winning creative directors, most notable for Adbusters magazine.
They have conceptualized magazines, books, television spots, and produced major international advocacy campaigns, including TV Turnoff, Buy Nothing Day, and the 'Blackspot Sneaker'.
They are co-authors, along with Mia Kirshner and J.B Mackinnon, on the book I Live Here (Pantheon, 2008):
"A visually stunning narrative in which the lives of refugees and displaced people become at once personal and global. It is a raw and intimate journey to crises in four corners of the world: war in Chechnya, ethnic cleansing in Burma, globalization in Mexico, and AIDS in Malawi."
They were creative collaborators, with Adbusters founder Kalle Lasn, on the book Design Anarchy (2006).
Co-founders of the I Live Here Foundation:
"Dedicated to telling the stories of silenced and unheard people through a series of books and other media projects about our world. We establish creative writing programs in areas where we work, building an artistic dialogue between strangers."
Illustration and art direction, including the 2008 season graphics, Ars Nova Theatre, "New York's premier hub for emerging artists and new work" and cover design for the Village Voice.
They have won international and national awards for magazine design, as well as a Webby award. Their work has been featured in more than 40 international publications, on CNN and MTV, as well as in documentaries for networks such as BBC, PBS and Dutch National Television and in numerous visual exhibitions.
They have spoken internationally on issues of politics, art and design."
Source: http://www.thegoggles.org/index.php?/about/#
"Michael Simons and Paul Shoebridge are award-winning creative directors, most notable for Adbusters magazine.
They have conceptualized magazines, books, television spots, and produced major international advocacy campaigns, including TV Turnoff, Buy Nothing Day, and the 'Blackspot Sneaker'.
They are co-authors, along with Mia Kirshner and J.B Mackinnon, on the book I Live Here (Pantheon, 2008):
"A visually stunning narrative in which the lives of refugees and displaced people become at once personal and global. It is a raw and intimate journey to crises in four corners of the world: war in Chechnya, ethnic cleansing in Burma, globalization in Mexico, and AIDS in Malawi."
They were creative collaborators, with Adbusters founder Kalle Lasn, on the book Design Anarchy (2006).
Co-founders of the I Live Here Foundation:
"Dedicated to telling the stories of silenced and unheard people through a series of books and other media projects about our world. We establish creative writing programs in areas where we work, building an artistic dialogue between strangers."
Illustration and art direction, including the 2008 season graphics, Ars Nova Theatre, "New York's premier hub for emerging artists and new work" and cover design for the Village Voice.
They have won international and national awards for magazine design, as well as a Webby award. Their work has been featured in more than 40 international publications, on CNN and MTV, as well as in documentaries for networks such as BBC, PBS and Dutch National Television and in numerous visual exhibitions.
They have spoken internationally on issues of politics, art and design."
Source: http://www.thegoggles.org/index.php?/about/#
Sunday, January 31, 2010
5 days until "Express Your Rights"!
Hello all!
There are only 5 days between now and the kickoff of the 4th annual HRTE conference! Be sure to REGISTER NOW at http://uuis.umich.edu/workshop2/workshopdet.cfm?wid=42
Additionally, please be aware that two of our speakers on Friday, February 5 have switched times. Nick Tobier will now be speaking at 5 PM about "Human Centered Design and How Collective Creativity Enables Change," and Danielle Abrams will be going at 6 PM with "Burritos and Bulldykes."
Finally, be sure to visit this blog in the next few days to find out cool info. about each of our speakers. You can already check out some cool links about our speakers' individual projects at our facebook event which is located at http://tinyurl.com/ye9uf48
There are only 5 days between now and the kickoff of the 4th annual HRTE conference! Be sure to REGISTER NOW at http://uuis.umich.edu/workshop2/workshopdet.cfm?wid=42
Additionally, please be aware that two of our speakers on Friday, February 5 have switched times. Nick Tobier will now be speaking at 5 PM about "Human Centered Design and How Collective Creativity Enables Change," and Danielle Abrams will be going at 6 PM with "Burritos and Bulldykes."
Finally, be sure to visit this blog in the next few days to find out cool info. about each of our speakers. You can already check out some cool links about our speakers' individual projects at our facebook event which is located at http://tinyurl.com/ye9uf48
Friday, January 22, 2010
Full EXPRESS YOUR RIGHTS Schedule!!!
We have a finalized schedule, complete with presentation names!
EXPRESS YOUR RIGHTS: THE ROLE OF ART IN HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISM
Conference Itinerary:
Friday February 5 (at the MICHIGAN UNION, PENDLETON ROOM)
3:30-4: Registration
4-5: Carol Jacobsen: Women's Criminalization, Clemency and Human Rights
Professor, U-M School of Art and Design. Award-winning social documentary artist whose works in video and photography address issues of women's criminalization and censorship.
5-6: Danielle Abrams: Burritos and Bulldykes: Performance Activity in the Gay Ghetto of the Mission District in San Francisco
Assistant Professor, U-M School of Art and Design. Former artistic director of BUILD, a performance space in San Francisco’s hub of queer performance - the Mission District and a founding Board Member of the Harvey Milk Institute in San Francisco.
6-7: Nick Tobier: Human Centered Design & How Collective Creativity Enables Change
Associate Professor, U-M School of Art and Design.
7:30: Emmanuel Jal (MICHIGAN LEAGUE): WAR CHILD: A Story of Survival
Internationally-renowned hip-hop artist, human rights activist, and former child soldier from Sudan
Co-sponsored by: U-M Office of Multi-Ethnic Student Affairs (MESA); MSA Peace and Social Justice Commission
Most seating reserved for U-M students, faculty, and staff; limited seating for general public
Saturday February 6 (at the MICHIGAN UNION, PENDLETON ROOM)
10:30-11: Registration/Breakfast/Breakfast
11-12: Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP): Human Rights and Art in Prison
University of Michigan
12-12:30: OyamO: Sensing the Censors
Associate Professor of English, U-M College of Literature Science and the Arts; Associate Professor of Theatre and Drama, U-M School of Music
12:30-1:30: Allied Media Conference (AMC): Create, Connect, Transform
Jenny Lee, Allied Media Projects Program Director; Diane J. Nucera, Allied Media Projects Allied365 Program Director
1:30-2: Reception
2-3: M1: From the Ghetto to Gaza
Hip-hop artist and political activist; one-half of hip-hop duo Dead Prez
3-4:30: Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons: Visual Activism: The Role of Designer as Author
co-authors, "I-Live-Here;" creative team and former creative force behind "Adbusters" magazine
Special appearance by Phoebe Gloeckner, "I-Live-Here" collaborator and assistant professor at School of Art & Design
Phoebe Gloeckner
Phoebe Gloeckner is the author of the novel The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2002), which salon.com praised as "one of the most brutally honest, shcoking, tender, beautiful portrayals of growing up female in America." Her work first appeared in underground comic publications when she was in her teens. A critically acclaimed collection of her comics, paintings, and etchings, A Child's Life and Other Stories, with an introduction by R. Crumb, was published in 1998.
During the period of her Guggenheim Fellowship, she worked on a "multimedia" novel inspired by the lives of several familes living within a four-block radius of each other in Ciudad Juarez. Ms. Gloeckner conceived the ideas for this novel while working on a short piece about an epidemic of violent crime in Ciudad Juarez, recently published in I Live Here (Pantheon, 2008).
Ms. Gloeckner is currently an assistant professor in the School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
http://www.gf.org/fellows/5443-phoebe-gloeckner
Check out some of her amazing work!
- http://www.ravenblond.com/archive/pages/stco1.html
Monday, January 18, 2010
18 DAYS UNTIL THE MOST EPIC CONFERENCE TO HIT ANN ARBOR BEGINS
...and that is not an exaggeration, my friends.
We love creative folks who are compassionate about human rights and we also think they play an integral role in raising awareness and creating social change. To show how much we appreciate their work, we've decided to throw this conference, Express Your Rights: The Role of Art in Human Rights Activism, together for others to learn from.
So check it out. The conference will take place at the Michigan Union on February 5th and 6th. Sudanese ex-child-soldier-turned-hip-hop-artist-and-activist Emmanuel Jal will perform the first night at the Michigan League and a concert featuring many great local artists will occur Saturday night. Details concerning the line-up for the conference are listed below:
Also, come back to this blog because from now until the conference, we will be providing bios of our speakers and artists. CHYEAH.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
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