What does Bertolt Brecht have to do with workers’ rights in Abu Dhabi? Although politically engaged art and theater takes many forms, the recent Precarious Workers Pageant at the Venice Biennale took a Brechtian approach as it pointed out the solidification of global capital in architecture in Abu Dhabi and the precarious state of migrant workers who are building these future cultural sites. The pageant’s street performance offered a new public commons fabricated out of the deconstructed architecture of the avant-garde museum. Join artists, scholars, and activists in conversation for an evening of discussion, debate, and propositions as part of the Social Choreography seminar at the Center for the Humanities and in tandem with the exhibition by Zoe Beloff at the James Gallery, “A World Redrawn: Eisenstein and Brecht in Hollywood.” Following the Precarious Workers Pageant video premier will be another New York premier: a presentation of The Gulf: High Culture/Hard Labor, edited by Andrew Ross and published by OR Books, with contributions by Sholette and other members of Gulf Labor.

Organized by the Center for the Humanities and co-sponsored by the Social Choreography Mellon Seminar in Public Engagement and Collaborative Research in the Humanities, Center for Place, Culture and Politics.