NEW YORK – The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Public Humanities Initiative (SNFPHI) at Columbia University kicks off the spring semester with a full program of virtual seminars and workshops, a new video and residency program created by our awardees, and exciting news about its collaboration with the Institute for Ideas and Imagination.

Performing the Index takes place on Wednesday, February 17, 12-1:30 PM ET. One of SNFPHI’s missions is to collaborate with grassroots organizations and initiatives that promote public humanities in Greece for its public programming. This Wednesday, SNFPHI awardees and the fellows of Columbia's Institute for Ideas and Imagination join forces with the Temporary Academy of Arts (PAT) in Athens for the workshop "Performing the Index." The event is part of Waste/d, an ongoing art and radical pedagogy research project exploring how people, materials, and ideas are rendered unnecessary and disposable in times of extended crisis. Read more about the workshop online: https://snfphi.columbia.edu/events/performing-the-index/.

Cahiers: A new forum for SNFPHI awardees

Columbia's Institute for Ideas and Imagination’s online Cahiers now features creative work from SNFPHI projects. The first contribution, "Kisbam/Kisboum," is a video documenting the Resonate project prepared by Hypercomf in collaboration with Stylianos Dimou. Check it out and read an accompanying piece of experimental writing (on weather data, community-engaged art, and encounters with the supernatural in Tinos) online: https://ideasimagination.columbia.edu/cahiers/post/kisbam-kisboum.

Open Call: Hippodamia in Context

How might we develop a broadly applicable methodology for using contentious monuments and public art to facilitate consideration and conversation across diverse communities about history, identity, and belonging? SNFPHI has worked with Victoria Square Project to design Station One, a new art residency program. Eight Greek and international artists will engage in a series of visual, auditory, and discursive “contextualizations” of Johannes Pfuhl’s neoclassical sculpture of Hippodamia in Victoria Square. Read the open call online: https://www.victoriasquareproject.gr/open-call-2021.