PASC | The Philadelphia Avant-Garde Studies Consortium
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    • Upcoming >
      • Past recommended events
    • Absurd
    • Illuminating the 'Invisible City' | November 2019
    • A very nice panel on 'Dionysus' | April 2019
    • The 'Vivifying Current of Science' | December 2018
    • Apolitical, My Ars! | December 2017
    • RE: ACT | March 2017
    • Re: Actions | December 2016
    • Locating the Avant-Garde | October 2015
    • Philadelphia à la Pataphysique | March 2014
  • Interviews | Blog
    • Taji Ra'oof Nahl Named 2024 Guggenheim Fellow | April 2024
    • Metafiction by Matt Madden | October 2021
    • Matt Madden's EX LIBRIS | September 2021
    • Slought Statement | March 2020
    • Black Women Make Art by Janyce Denise Glasper
    • Charles Bernstein wins Bollingen Prize
    • Cheryl Harper interview by John Heon
    • Slought Post-Election Statement
    • A Necessary Luxury by Tina Brock
    • Jim Brewton by Emily Schilling
    • Workshop Series at Princeton
    • Welcome to PASC
  • Partners | Presenters
  • Calls for Papers
  • Contact us
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Upcoming & current events we recommend

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Installation view of "Sketchbook, With Foreboding" by Renee Stout. 2019, oil and acrylic on wood panel, at The African American Museum in Philadelphia (AAMP). Part of the two-venue exhibition, "Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America." EXHIBITION DATES EXTENDED: Originally scheduled through Oct. 8, 'Rising Sun' is presented by AAMP through March 3, 2024; and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts through Dec. 31, 2023. Photo by Emily Schilling.

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If you'd like your event or project included in our listings, please tell us about it here. If you have logos, artwork or photographs that we may use with your listing, please let us know--all images on PASC's website are used with permission. Thank you for your support and participation.
Nov. 14, 2024-April 6, 2025: Exhibition: Making Strange: Sacred Imagery and the Self, curated by Han McCoy, Rhoden Curatorial Assistant. Samuel M.V. Hamilton Building, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. 

Through Jan. 31, 2025: Solo exhibition by Theodore A. Harris: Our Flesh of Flames by Theodore Harris and Amiri Baraka, Art Department, Parkway Central Library, Philadelphia. Opening reception: Monday, Nov. 25, 5-7:30 pm. 

Ongoing (Colorado): Buffalo Soldiers: reVision, permanent exhibition examining the complex legacy of the Buffalo Soldiers in the American West, and highlighting ethnic, gender, and racial identities in the landscape of the southern Colorado borderlands. Featuring works by eight artists from across the United States: Chip Thomas (lead artist); Esther Belin; Mahogany L. Browne; Rosie Carter; Gaia; André Leon Gray; Theodore A. Harris; and Tom Judd. Fort Garland Museum and Cultural Center, 29477 Highway 159, Fort Garland, Colorado.

Books and Essays
Essay: "Ballet Mécanique and Interwar Avant-Garde Cinema" by Sean Smalley, Library Technical Assistant II at the New York Public Library (NYPL). Posted Feb. 7, 2023, Smalley's study of a 16-mm print in the archives at NYPL's Library for Performing Arts, the Dadaist film Ballet Mécanique, is a fascinating look at an avant-garde film made in 1924 by Fernand Léger with George Antheil and Dudley Murphy.

'Pataphysics Unrolled cover
’Pataphysics Unrolled (2022, Penn State University Press), edited by Katie L. Price and Michael R. Taylor, explores pataphysics' "presence through modernism, postmodernism, and into contemporary experimental practices, capturing the imaginations of writers, artists, thinkers, and musicians," writes Price in her introduction.
EX LIBRIS copyright by Matt Madden
All images from EX LIBRIS are copyrighted by Matt Madden and used with permission.
PASC recommends Matt Madden's EX LIBRIS by Uncivilized Books. ​The reviews are glowing:
     Ed Park's review in The New York Times calls Madden “the stunt-man philosopher of American comics” and describes Ex Libris as a work with “virtuoso books-within-bookishness” in which “insider wit abounds.” Read The New York Times review here.
     Publisher’s Weekly selected Ex Libris as the only graphic novel on its 2021 Top 20 Independent Publishers list, calling it an “endlessly inventive work” that “is a metafictional master class in comics.”  

​     "A mind-bending journey through an wide array of genres and states of consciousness," says PASC's John Heon, reviewing it here.

PASC Symposium, “Avant-Green, Radical by Nature: Environmentalism, Ecology, and the Natural World in Avant-Garde Art and Thought,” hybrid event TBD in Philadelphia and online. For more about the topic, click here.  ​
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Crowd at Earth Week in Philadelphia 1970
An estimated 40,000 to 60,000 people attended Philadelphia's Earth Day event in 1970 at Fairmount Park. Photo © 1970 Earth Week Committee of Philadelphia, which grants free use of the images under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license.

Tina Brock hosts Into the Absurd
Every Saturday from May 2020 through October 2021, host Tina Brock (above) and producers Erica Hoelscher and Bob Schmidt brought us "Into the Absurd," online conversations with fascinating Philadelphians. They cheered our weary quarantines, gathering a wonderful collection of insights into many artistic lives. Click image for the episode archive.
OCCASIONAL: Online series, Into the Absurd: A Virtually Existential Dinner Conversation. Hosted by Tina Brock and produced by Erica Hoelscher and Bob Schmidt, The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium (IRC), these hour-long conversations took place every Saturday during the first year of the pandemic. The show will return occasionally, and the recorded archive serves as an inspiring glimpse into the lives and work of many Philadelphians--"interesting, funny and wickedly bright conversationalists whose work you've come to know and appreciate," says the IRC. "A dream for years has been to round up favorite creators and artists from the IRC and the broader community at the dinner table. And so, Into the Absurd, a Virtually Existential Dinner Party was born. ... We'll gather with a guest for the better part of an hour to explore what it means to live and to think about art in a brave new world -- how our thinking and actions are changing in our community and in neighborhoods and the country." 

​New episodes will be announced; in the meantime, dip into the archive on Youtube. It's a Philadelphia-centric delight.

Past events archive
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  • Home | About
  • Projects | Events
    • Upcoming >
      • Past recommended events
    • Absurd
    • Illuminating the 'Invisible City' | November 2019
    • A very nice panel on 'Dionysus' | April 2019
    • The 'Vivifying Current of Science' | December 2018
    • Apolitical, My Ars! | December 2017
    • RE: ACT | March 2017
    • Re: Actions | December 2016
    • Locating the Avant-Garde | October 2015
    • Philadelphia à la Pataphysique | March 2014
  • Interviews | Blog
    • Taji Ra'oof Nahl Named 2024 Guggenheim Fellow | April 2024
    • Metafiction by Matt Madden | October 2021
    • Matt Madden's EX LIBRIS | September 2021
    • Slought Statement | March 2020
    • Black Women Make Art by Janyce Denise Glasper
    • Charles Bernstein wins Bollingen Prize
    • Cheryl Harper interview by John Heon
    • Slought Post-Election Statement
    • A Necessary Luxury by Tina Brock
    • Jim Brewton by Emily Schilling
    • Workshop Series at Princeton
    • Welcome to PASC
  • Partners | Presenters
  • Calls for Papers
  • Contact us