Guest Lecture, November 25th, 2026, 17 h, SR 02 (OKPF, 3. OG)

Branden W. Joseph: On "Social Violence": BlackMass Publishing and Dan Graham

Organized by the Department of Art Theory

This lecture examines the photocopied pamphlet Ghetto Rock (2020), produced by Yusuf Hassan of the artistic collective BlackMass Publishing, as a rejoinder to Dan Graham’s video Rock My Religion (1980-84). Drawing on various theorizations of early British punk, it places Ghetto Rock within the extended lineage of artistic appropriation famously described by Douglas Crimp as “Pictures,” while interrogating the heretofore unrecognized role played by contemporary discourses surrounding race and racial violence within the art-critical positions of both Crimp and Graham.

Branden W. Joseph is the Frank Gallipoli Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art in the Art History Department at Columbia University in New York and a founding editor of the academic journal Grey Room. He is the author of five books, including Experimentations: John Cage in Music, Art, and Architecture (2016) and Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage (2008); editor of Carolee Schneemann, Uncollected Texts (2018) and Kim Gordon, Is It My Body? (2014); and a curator of the exhibitions Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines (2023) and Quickcopy Conceptualism: Bay Area Dada to Bay Area Punk (2026). He has published numerous scholarly essays within the fields of modern and contemporary art, music, and cinema.

The lecture will be held in English.


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