Happening on campus
Archived article from Sep 23, 2002
Symposium showcases Jewish writers
An international panel of Jewish writers and poets will discuss their work at a Jewish Writers Symposium sponsored by The Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life.
"Passages: Encounters With Jewish Writers" will be held Sunday, Oct. 6, 2–6 p.m., in Trayes Hall A & B, Douglass College Center, New Brunswick. The program is free of charge.
Through individual presentations and a panel discussion, the authors will explore how their experiences have shaped their cultural identities in relation to the larger collective Jewish history of wandering, exile and immigration.
Participating authors include Norman Manea, Ronit Matalon, David Rosenberg, Marjorie Agosin and Michal Govrin.
For more information, visit the center's Web site at jewishstudies.rutgers.edu. R.S.V.P. by Sept. 27 to the Bildner Center at ext. 2-2033 or send e-mail to csjlrsvp@rci.rutgers.edu.
‘Lost Vehicles' steers students into Robeson Gallery
0 By Carla Capizzi
It was the laughter that told Paul Robeson Art Gallery Director Corliss Cavalieri that the gallery's current show was striking a chord. "I was in my office (adjacent to the gallery) and heard people laughing next door," he recalls. The laughter was coming from students who had entered the gallery — and then entered the installation itself, which Cavalieri describes as a room-sized "nautilus."
Laughter is a common — and welcome — reaction to "Lost Vehicles," a mazelike installation by Stephen Hendee designed specifically for the gallery in Newark's Robeson Campus Center. Its stark white Coroplast walls stand several feet high, and the first reaction of visitors is usually to walk around it. But the exhibition isn't meant merely to be looked at, but experienced.
Visitors soon discover there is an opening in the exhibit and find themselves on a dizzying trip, wending their way through one large open circle, which leads into a narrower one and finally a smaller one. The last circle dead ends in the heart of the installation. Visitors are then forced to either stare at the walls, retrace their steps or look up, where 21 lanternlike structures overhang the installation, illuminated by lights in a variety of soft pastels.
Newark-based artist Hendee studied the gallery carefully before spending several weeks over the summer assembling "Lost Vehicles." He created an installation that takes full advantage of the gallery's high walls and ceilings, large windows which allow for interesting shadowing and sunlight effects, and a second–floor viewing area that allows visitors to the Robeson Center to look down into the entire gallery. The spiral design of Hendee's installation is especially striking from the second floor.
"The space informed the creation of the artwork, and the artwork informs visitors about the space. Indeed, the installation views the people entering it as the ‘Lost Vehicles,' " notes Cavalieri.
Hendee, a graduate of San Francisco Art Institute who received a master's in fine arts from Stanford, has exhibited throughout the United States, as well as in Berlin and Tokyo. His works have been the subject of articles or reviews in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Spin Magazine, Artweek, Brill's Content, Artext, Artbyte, Time Out New York and LA Weekly, among others.
"Lost Vehicles" will be at the Paul Robeson Center Gallery through Nov. 1. Hours are Mondays through Thursdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Rutgers Theater Company performs "Thérèse Raquin"
1880s Paris is the backdrop for Emile Zola's probing study of the destructiveness of love and lust, "Thérèse Raquin," which will be performed by the Rutgers Theater Company Oct. 4–12. Performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. in the Philip J. Levin Theater. Tickets are $17 for faculty and staff and can be ordered by calling ext. 2-7511.
Fall film festival
For the past 20 years, central New Jersey cinephiles have been coming to Rutgers for the New Jersey Film Festival to see movies they aren't likely to see at their local multiplexes. The festival has established itself as the local venue to screen a quirky mix of films both old and new, Hollywood and independent, mainstream and avant-garde, American and foreign.
Presented by the Rutgers Film Co-op/New Jersey Media Arts Center, this year's festival will feature a screening Sept. 26 of the kinetic experimental films of Hungarian filmmaker Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, a leading member of the Bauhaus School and founder of the Chicago Institute of Design. The films will be shown in Room 024 of the Loree Building on the Douglass campus.
On Sept. 27–29, the festival will show "Ram Dass: Fierce Grace," a documentary about the New Age spiritual leader and lecturer. The movie will be shown in Room 123 of Scott Hall on the College Avenue campus. A candid and riveting portrait of adolescent obsessions and yearnings can be seen in "Chain Camera" Oct. 4–6 in Scott 123. Ten Los Angeles-area high school students were given video cameras to document their lives for a week, then passed the cameras on to another 10 students.
The film festival will pay tribute to the late director John Frankenheimer with a screening of "Seconds" Oct. 10 in Loree 024. The Faustian tale, starring Rock Hudson, chronicles a salesman as he sells his soul for a new face and body custom-designed by a malevolent corporation.
For a complete listing of this fall's film festival lineup, visit www.njfilmfest.com. All films begin at 7 p.m. General admission is $5, $4 for Rutgers Film Co-op/NJMAC friends.
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