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Performance-Lecture "Expositio, Iudicium, Lacrimae" and Conversation with Zach Blas and Pamela M. Lee

split image of two headshots. Headshot on left features figure with baseball hat, glasses and a beard. Headshot on the right features figure with long black hair and thick black glasses.
January 27, 2023
5:00PM - 6:30PM
Wexner Center for the Arts Film/Video Theater

Date Range
Add to Calendar 2023-01-27 17:00:00 2023-01-27 18:30:00 Performance-Lecture "Expositio, Iudicium, Lacrimae" and Conversation with Zach Blas and Pamela M. Lee Renowned artist, filmmaker, and writer Zach Blas will present a new performance lecture—Expositio, Iudicium, Lacrimae—as part of the Arts, Technology and Social Change Series funded by the Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme. Following the performance, Blas will be joined in conversation with renowned scholar Pamela M. Lee, to discuss his new book, Unknown Ideals, released in 2022 by Sternberg Press. A reception and book signing by Blas will follow in the Wexner Center’s lower lobby. Sanctum, Iudicium, LacrimaeIn this lecture-performance, Zach Blas explores a religious-un/conscious thriving in today's tech industry. Blas tells of a computational world of divine judgment, where artificial intelligence exists alongside corporate gods, mystical glyphs, religious icons, occult sigils, and captured bodies, and where emotional crying is a symbolic language of quantification.   Zach BlasZach Blas is an artist, filmmaker, writer, and Assistant Professor of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto. His practice spans installation, moving image, computation, theory, and performance. Recent exhibitions include the 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art; British Art Show 9; Positions #6, Van Abbemuseum; Uncanny Valley: Being Human in the Age of AI at the de Young Museum; The Body Electric at the Walker Art Center; and the 12th Gwangju Biennale. His artist monograph Zach Blas: Unknown Ideals (2021) was published by Sternberg Press and edited by Edit Molnar and Marcel Schwierin.Pamela M. LeePamela M. Lee is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art in the Department of the History of Art at Yale University. Previously she held the Osgood Hooker Professorship at Stanford University. Her recent publications include Think Tank Aesthetics: Midcentury Modernism, the Cold War and the Neoliberal Present (MIT Press, 2020) and The Glen Park Library: A Fairytale of Disruption (No Place Press, 2019). Lee is an editor of the journal OCTOBER. Her essay “When the Lizard King Met the Lizard Brain: The Doors” appears in Zach Blas: Unknown Ideals (2021).Arts, Technology and Social Change SeriesThe Arts, Technology and Social Change Series is a new initiative conceived by Ohio State’s Department of History of Art, the Department of Art, the Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Translational Data Analytics Institute that aims to extend and deepen campus and community engagement around social justice issues through the lens of artistic interventions in technology. Envisioned as a series of micro-residencies, the initiative brings artists and thinkers to working at the intersection of art, data, and social justice to Ohio State for exhibitions, workshops, performances, and public events. The micro-residency program acts as a cross-department platform to engage questions of technology and virtuality in relation to civil rights, sex and gender, indigeneity, displacement, migration, genocide, and environmental justice in our contemporary moment.  Wexner Center for the Arts Film/Video Theater Department of History of Art historyofart@osu.edu America/New_York public

Renowned artist, filmmaker, and writer Zach Blas will present a new performance lecture—Expositio, Iudicium, Lacrimaeas part of the Arts, Technology and Social Change Series funded by the Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme. Following the performance, Blas will be joined in conversation with renowned scholar Pamela M. Lee, to discuss his new book, Unknown Ideals, released in 2022 by Sternberg Press. A reception and book signing by Blas will follow in the Wexner Center’s lower lobby.

Artwork by Zach Blas - overall dark image with glowing green and red three dimensional shapes
Image credit: Zach Blas, IUDICIUM, 2022-2023

Sanctum, Iudicium, Lacrimae

In this lecture-performance, Zach Blas explores a religious-un/conscious thriving in today's tech industry. Blas tells of a computational world of divine judgment, where artificial intelligence exists alongside corporate gods, mystical glyphs, religious icons, occult sigils, and captured bodies, and where emotional crying is a symbolic language of quantification.   


Zach Blas

Zach Blas is an artist, filmmaker, writer, and Assistant Professor of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto. His practice spans installation, moving image, computation, theory, and performance. Recent exhibitions include the 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art; British Art Show 9; Positions #6, Van Abbemuseum; Uncanny Valley: Being Human in the Age of AI at the de Young Museum; The Body Electric at the Walker Art Center; and the 12th Gwangju Biennale. His artist monograph Zach Blas: Unknown Ideals (2021) was published by Sternberg Press and edited by Edit Molnar and Marcel Schwierin.


Pamela M. Lee

Pamela M. Lee is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art in the Department of the History of Art at Yale University. Previously she held the Osgood Hooker Professorship at Stanford University. Her recent publications include Think Tank Aesthetics: Midcentury Modernism, the Cold War and the Neoliberal Present (MIT Press, 2020) and The Glen Park Library: A Fairytale of Disruption (No Place Press, 2019). Lee is an editor of the journal OCTOBER. Her essay “When the Lizard King Met the Lizard Brain: The Doors” appears in Zach Blas: Unknown Ideals (2021).


Arts, Technology and Social Change Series

The Arts, Technology and Social Change Series is a new initiative conceived by Ohio State’s Department of History of Art, the Department of Art, the Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Translational Data Analytics Institute that aims to extend and deepen campus and community engagement around social justice issues through the lens of artistic interventions in technology. Envisioned as a series of micro-residencies, the initiative brings artists and thinkers to working at the intersection of art, data, and social justice to Ohio State for exhibitions, workshops, performances, and public events. The micro-residency program acts as a cross-department platform to engage questions of technology and virtuality in relation to civil rights, sex and gender, indigeneity, displacement, migration, genocide, and environmental justice in our contemporary moment. 

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