The Ammerman Center’s theme for 2020-21 is “Break Out,” a term that is at once generative and disruptive, focusing a critical eye towards structures of power in arts, technology, and culture in the present while highlighting the work of those who are actively crafting other possible futures and breaking out of old patterns. 

Our invited speakers are visionary artists, technologists, musicians, activists, curators, organizers and hackers whose work truly deserves being called “interdisciplinary”:

 

Fall 2020

Amelia Winger-Bearskin

Amelia Winger-Bearskin

“Wampum.Codes: Emerging technology and indigenous values”

Monday, September 21, 2020

5:15-6:45 p.m. 

Amelia Winger-Bearskin is an artist/technologist/storyteller whose work runs the gamut from playful to revolutionary. Her oeuvre ranges from directing citizen-design initiatives for urban communities, to being a Google and Sundance fellow for her VR and film work, to producing a podcast series focused on Indigineous artists and technologists, to working at MIT and Mozilla on new computer programming paradigms rooted in the values of her ancestral Haudenosaunee people, questioning and disrupting the ethos of Silicon Valley.

Website
Glenn Cantave & Idris Brewster

Movers & Shakers NYC: Glenn Cantave & Idris Brewster

“Reframing Historical Narratives through Augmented Reality”

Monday, November 2, 2020

5:15-6:45 p.m. 

Movers and Shakers NYC founders Glenn Cantave and Idris Brewster are activists, artists, and technologists whose work engages with racist historical narratives through direct action, performance, film, music, technology, education and social entrepreneurship.

Website

Spring 2021

Ingrid Lafleur

Ingrid Lafleur

“How to Think Like an Afrofuturist”

Monday, February 15, 2021

5:15-6:45 p.m. 

Ingrid Lafleur is a curator, artist, pleasure activist, former mayoral candidate for the city of Detroit, and Afrofuturist whose mission is to ensure equal distribution of the future, exploring the frontiers of social justice through new technologies, economies and modes of government.

Website
Seth Parker Woods

Seth Parker Woods

Monday, April 5th, 2021

5:15-6:45 p.m. 

Seth Parker Woods is a world-renowned cellist straddling multiple genres, who has performed cutting edge compositions and collaborated on performances and installations with a range of leading contemporary artists, seeking to change the face and the landscape in which music can be experienced. In one of his recent collaborations, Woods played a melting cello made of black ice, the performance itself serving as an ode to those lost to mental illness and violence in the African American community.

Website