[Phildelphia]

Screening, Reading, and Conversation with Cecilia Vicuña and Laynie Browne
February 7, 2019, 6:30 pm
at Penn Book Center

“Que prosiga,”—That it may go on—responds a passerby to the titular question of Cecilia Vicuña’s 1980 film, 'What is Poetry to You/¿Qué es para Ud la Poesía?'. Produced with a group of volunteers while the artist was living in exile in Bogotá, Colombia, the film collects responses from beggars, sex workers, and other inhabitants of the city, underscoring Vicuña’s interest in filmmaking, poetry, and the grand and small narratives of individual lives. Following the screening and a reading of her poetry, Vicuña will join Professor Laynie Browne in conversation. CECILIA VICUÑA is an artist, poet, filmmaker and activist whose extensive body of work spans discourses of conceptualism, land art, craft, and writing. She has exhibited at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. She is the author of twenty-two art and poetry books, including 'Kuntur Ko' (Tornsound, 2015) and 'Spit Temple: The Selected Performances of Cecilia Vicuña' (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012). LAYNIE BROWNE is a poet whose work explores notions of silence and invisible through the recontextualization of poetic forms, such as sonnets, tales, letters, and psalms. Her books of poetry include Practice (Split Level Texts, 2015); 'The Desires of Letters' (Counterpath Press, 2010) and 'Daily Sonnets' (Counterpath Press, 2007). She is a recipient of awards from the National Poetry Series, the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage and is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Pennsylvania. Free admission. Registration at Eventbrite here. Facebook events here and here. Hosted by the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Penn Book Center. Programming at ICA has been made possible in part by the Emily and Jerry Spiegel Fund to Support Contemporary Culture and Visual Arts and the Lise Spiegel Wilks and Jeffrey Wilks Family Foundation, and by Hilarie L. & Mitchell Morgan.