Date: Friday, July 31

Time: 7:00 p.m.

Location: Main Gallery

The MFA Student Creative & Performative Response: to mounir fatmi’s Modern Times

(Drawing Event)

mounir fatmi’s centerpiece video work Modern Times, A History of the Machine- The Fall (2010) is a response to Western industrial-revolution dynamism. Simultaneously, it also comments on the skyrocketing-explosion of contemporary construction throughout the Middle East. Modern Times hails us with an assortment of sounds and animated antique Arabic calligraphy meant to evoke machines or a locomotive, carnival midways, or even a children’s toy. Since it was produced, there have been many socio-political events throughout the world that can easily be projected upon the work– such as the 2011 protests and rebellions that came to be known as The Arab Spring. As a result, what has been revealed is that the video certainly does not have any one fixed meaning: it is all of these and likely many more.

It is in this spirit, that the MFA Drawing event has been conceived. The evening is meant to be an in-situ performative response to mounir’s video. Designed to be a long wall with one long sheet of paper…all of us drawing and collaging together. All of us perhaps finding new meanings and sharing the experience.