Between Representation and Marginality

Between Representation and Marginality

Lucia Trimbur, James Newitt and Genève Brossard

24.11.2014, 6pm

Skylight Room (9100)

Graduate Center, CUNY

Repreentation representation 2

This panel discussion brings together three streams of research which independently explore the boxing gym as a complex site to discuss class, gender, race and social relations through investigations undertaken in New York and Lisbon, Portugal. Within the session Lucia Trimbur will discuss how pugilistic training can be used to answer back to forms of inequality, such as anti-black racism, class stratification, and gender subordination. Lucia argues that the boxing gym in post-industrial New York offers its members the ephemeral possibilities of new identities while at the same time packaging and commodifying their lived experience. James Newitt will present documentation and excerpts from his recent exhibition in at Lumiar Cité in Lisbon titled, A Sort of Shadow, where he explored shadow boxing as a form of choreographed movement that represents inter-personal struggle without direct conflict. Within his videos and text, the idea of the shadow represents the nonspecific image of the ‘other’ that the boxers negotiate through their own reflected image in the impossible ‘there’ of a mirror. Genève Brossard will further discuss the possible forms of representation of the boxer beyond the image of a static body, speaking from the perspective both as an artist and former competitive boxer.

Lucia Trimbur is an Associate Professor of Sociology at John Jay College, the City University of New York (CUNY) and Doctoral Faculty in Criminal Justice at CUNY’s Graduate Center. Prior to joining CUNY, she was an Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellow on Race, Crime, and Justice at the Vera Institute of Justice. She completed her doctoral degree in African American studies and sociology at Yale University. Her research and teaching interests include race and racisms, gender, urban sociology and inequality, the sociology of crime and punishment, sport studies, occupational health and mining in South Africa, and ethnographic field methods. Her book, Come Out Swinging: The Changing World of Boxing in Gleason’s Gym, was published by Princeton University Press in 2013. She is currently doing work on a class-action suit against the gold mining industry in South Africa on behalf of black workers who developed occupational-health diseases, such as silicosis.

James Newitt is an artist and lecturer in Fine Arts at the Tasmanian College of the Arts, where he completed a doctoral degree in 2008. James’ work explores specific social and cultural relations, often embracing mutability and paradox. His videos and installations investigate the spaces between individual and collective identity, memory and history, fact and fiction through personal, observational and performative approaches. James’ has exhibited extensively in group and solo exhibitions throughout Australia and Europe. He has been awarded international studio residencies in Los Angeles and Liverpool, UK through the Australia Council for the Arts. In 2012 he was awarded the prestigious Samstag Scholarship to participate in the Maumaus Independent Study Program in Lisbon. In 2010 he won the City of Hobart Art Prize and in 2009 he was awarded the Qantas Foundation, Encouragement of Contemporary Art Award. He currently lives in Lisbon, Portugal.

Genève Brossard is an artist/educator/researcher with an international record of exhibitions at venues such as Kentler Drawing Space and Frere Independent Miami/Paris. She also has work in the permanent collection of University Of London Women’s Art Library. She contributes to a variety of publications, including Texte Zur Kunste and N+1. She is a 2000 NYC Teaching Fellow and has been working in public art education for 15 years. She is currently finalizing a PhD in Art Practice at Goldsmiths College in London. Genève has competed internationally as an amateur boxer and is a two-time NY Golden Gloves Champion, a three-time Metro Games Champion, a three-time Empire State (NYS) Champion, and was Nationally ranked at #4. She is based in NYC and the Berkshires.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Place, Culture and Politics

It is open and free to the public.

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