James Harding to Chat THE FUTURE OF PERFORMANCE IN THE ERA OF GLOBAL SURVEILLANCE at The Segal Theater

James Harding will present a lecture titled "The Future of Performance in the Era of Global Surveillance" on Tuesday, September 20 at 12:00pm at The Segal Theater At The Graduate Center, CUNY (365 Fifth Avenue at 34th St.). Free and open to the public. First come, first served.

James Harding's lecture considers the future of theatre and performance in light of the expansive collecting and marketing of data by private corporations that cater to government agencies. Whatever its earlier forms, surveillance as a contemporary socio-political phenomenon is now less concerned today with real-time observation than with the collection of processable data that can be packaged as a commodity and marketed globally as a tool for manipulation, security and political control. Followed by a dialogue with Peter Eckersall.

James Harding teaches Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland. Recent publications include: The Ghosts of the Avant-Garde(s): Exorcising Experimental Theatre and Performance (Michigan, 2013).

James M. Harding is the author of The Ghosts of the Avant-Garde(s): Exorcising Experimental Theatre and Performance (Michigan, 2013), Cutting Performances: Collage Events, Feminist Artists and the American Avant-Garde (Michigan, 2010), and Adorno and "A Writing of the Ruins": Essays on Modern Aesthetics and Anglo-American Literature and Culture (SUNY, 1997). He is an internationally known scholar whose work focuses on the history of experimental theatre, on post 9/11 theatre and performance, on the intersection of surveillance and performance, and on performance studies more generally. His articles have appeared in TDR, Performance International, Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Modern Drama, and PMLA. He is currently finishing a new monograph tentatively entitled Performance, Transparency and the Cultures of Surveillance and a co-edited anthology entitled Center-Staging the Sixties: Mainstream and Popular Performance in a Turbulent Decade.

Hosted by the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at The Graduate Center CUNY and The Segal Center. The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center is located at The Graduate Center CUNY, 365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street, New York, NY 10016. For more about the Segal, visit www.theSegalCenter.org.

Photo by Peter Eckersall