We invite you, your students and colleagues to participate in an interactive evening of creative sharing and collective expression on the Courtyard / Sojourner Truth Library quad. Our intention is to particularly amplify and center underrepresented voices.
Thursday, October 14, 2021, 5:00-8:00 p.m.
(Rain date: Friday, October 15)
Sound your truth
Beat your drum
Pipe up
Call in
Make noise
Celebrate
Free your speech
Listen in
Parrhesiazomai*
*In rhetoric, parrhesia is a figure of speech described as: “to speak candidly or to ask forgiveness for so speaking”.[1] This Ancient Greek word has three different forms, as related by Michel Foucault in Fearless Speech. Parrhesia is a noun, meaning “free speech”. Parrhesiazomai is a verb, meaning “to use parrhesia”. Parrhesiastes is a noun, meaning one who uses parrhesia, for example, “one who speaks the truth to power”.
This time of upheaval has shed a harsh light on the social injustice that permeates our society, as well as the urgent need to shift our ways to avoid environmental and climate catastrophe.
What needs to be said right now?
What do we all need to hear?
How might our creative acts meet this moment?
How might we come together to celebrate being alive together?
How should the heart of our campus beat?
Let’s be courageous and show up for each other. Let’s have fun, let’s do things differently, for a change. Why not?
Rather than sequencing activities, we will layer different modes of expression, so they fluidly respond to each other and create an experiential whole.
REGISTER HERE TO PARTICIPATE AS PERFORMER or CREATOR (or just show up to observe and join in)
FREE FOOD!!
Plans in motion:
- Sculpture students will build a truth-speaking, truth-listening platform for all to use during the event (with Prof. Emily Puthoff)
- Black Studies students will perform spoken word (with Prof. Anthony Dandridge)
- Students will share the 400 Years of Inequality timeline displayed on the quad (with Prof. Andrea Frank)
- English Dept. students will read poems of joy & protest (with Prof. Sarah Wyman)
- Sonic cacophony by Sculpture students (with Prof. Michael Asbill)
- Designing questions Why- What if – How? (with Prof. Joshua Korenblat)
- Students will celebrate Sojourner Truth’s legacy.
- Ethan Barnett from African Roots Library will honor A.J. Williams-Myers.
- Contribute to a massive collective charcoal drawing with Art students (with Foundations faculty)
- Photography students will document the event (with Prof. Nadia Sablin)
- Printmaking students will crate linoleum prints to be displayed on the quad.
- Digital Media and Journalism students will interview participants and document the event (with Prof. Robert Harris)
All members of campus are invited to contribute and participate.
FACULTY: Please encourage your students to participate or simply attend and listen in.
Here are possibilities:
- Write a poem, a play or a story; make sounds.
- Share what’s on your heart and mind.
- Ask questions about what you don’t learn at this institution
- Listen deeply to members from all parts of our campus community.
- Reflect back what you hear, read, feel, or see.
- See Theater and Creative Writing students intervene, interact, and perform.
- We may have to dance…
- Listen to the trees, bushes, and blades of grass on the quad. They have lots to teach.
Please share your contribution plans with us on this wufoo form.
This event is hosted and coordinated by The Eddy at New Paltz in collaboration with the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, the Department of Black Studies, Black Lives Matter @ School @ New Paltz , the Faculty Development Center, and Sojourner Truth Library.
Contact: eddy@newpaltz.edu