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Reaching Out, Binding Together: The Inaugural Meeting of the People’s Immunology Committee

  • Center for Performance Research 361 Manhattan Avenue Brooklyn, NY, 11211 United States (map)

A net holding pieces of cloth and mannequin hands is suspended in front of two medical screens

In Reaching Out, Binding Together three presentations explore how we connect to each other and the world, and how and when we hold on and let go. A note about the venue: Masks must be worn at all times by audiences for public events and performances at CPR.

The People’s Immunology Committee convenes a post-patriarchal present where cells speak with and through the bodies that hold them. Featuring a performance, workshop and interactive exhibit workshop. Emily Bass (Associated Artist), creator of The Dendron Project, will lead this even. The Dendron Project is a hybrid experiment that uses text, art, gesture, individual and collective practice to render questions, ideas and understandings of the immune system that are alternatives to the commodified, militarized, capitalist science of pandemic times. The committee meeting will include a slide talk by Emily Bass, the Principal Investigator of the Dendron Project, with remarks by the Dendritic Cell. Participants will have the chance and choice to make, play, question and contribute to the project of making a people’s immunology.

Performance presentation and workshop starting at 6:00 PM, interactive exhibit open 5-8. For virtual participation in the presentation, use this link

About the Artist:

Emily Bass is a writer, visual artist, historian, and activist focusing on pandemics, the forces that perpetuate them, and the movements within bodies and in communities that recognize and resist them. Her book, To End a Plague: America’s Fight to Defeat AIDS in Africa (PublicAffairs, 2021), was a finalist for the 2022 Lionel Gelber Prize. A 2022–23 Culture Push Associated Artist, Bass received a Fulbright journalism fellowship in Uganda and a New York Public Library Martin Duberman Visiting Research Fellowship for her work documenting the history of transnational AIDS activism. She is a 2022-23 Creative Capital Awardee and a Culture Push Associated Artist. Collaborative action to redistribute power is central to her practice as an activist and inquiry as an artist and writer.