FREE

Lucy Walker, Filmmaker (UK)
99 Is Not 100 – Documenting the Transformative Power of Art, or the Art of Transformative Documentary?Respondent: Claude Grunitzky, Chairman, True; Sloan Fellow, MIT (USA)

How do we observe or quantify the impact of an artistic intervention or the impact of a documentary film? Lucy Walker will be reflecting on the experience of making and showing the film Waste Land, a documentary about artist Vik Muniz’s collaboration with the self-designated recyclables materials pickers of Jardim Gramacho, the largest landfill in the world. The film has won over thirty international awards and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary. Lucy Walker has directed four award-winning feature documentaries: Devil’s Playground, Blindsight, Waste Land and Countdown To Zero.

Part of the Zones of Emergency: Artistic Interventions – Creative Responses to Conflict & Crisis Fall 2011 lecture series.

The Zones of Emergency: Artistic Interventions – Creative Responses to Conflict & Crisis Fall 2011 lecture series investigates initiatives and modes of intervention in contested spaces, zones of conflict, or areas affected by environmental disasters. The intention is to explore whether artistic interventions can transform, disrupt or subvert current environmental, urban, political, and social conditions in critical ways. A crucial question is how can such interventions propose ideas, while at the same time respecting the local history and culture.

The Fall 2011 lecture series is directed by Ute Meta Bauer and is part of the courses 4.365/4.366 Zones of Emergency: Artistic Intervention – Creative Responses to Conflict and Crisis (instructors Ute Meta Bauer/Jegan Vincent de Paul), 4.330/331 Intro to Networked Cultures & Participatory Media (instructor Gediminas Urbonas), and 4.360/4.361 Performance Workshop (instructor Joan Jonas).

The Fall 2011 ACT lecture series is free and open to the public, and is funded in part by the Council for the Arts at MIT.