Performed and composed by: S. Jernberg 
Commissioned by Stockholm Jazz Festival, LIVE recording SRP2

Svalla, hack och strupe

American  Empire

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This panel discussion between a choreographer, Arkadi Zaides, dramaturg and performance scholar, Eda Cufer, psychoanalyst, Aleksandra Wagner, Middle East scholar, Deen Sharp, and curator, Katherine Carl will explore bodily gesture and the questions of self-sovereignty in the spatial and temporal territory of the archive.  Visit our site for more event information: http://new.centerforthehumanities.org/programming/sovereign-selves-choreography-and-human-rights-in-the-archive

Sovereign Selves? Choreography and Human Rights in the Archive



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The Graduate Center
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The Center for the Humanities Programming
Hope in a Time of Extinction
Wednesday, February 24, 2016, 06:30 PM – 09:00 PM
The James Gallery
About the event

This discussion with Ashley Dawson, Eben Kirksey, Julie Livingstone, Anne McClintock, Rob Nixon, and Jovana Stokic will probe imaginative horizons to illuminate concrete sites of biocultural hope. This conversation will orbit around two freshly published books: Extinction: A Radical History by Ashley Dawson and Emergent Ecologies by Eben Kirksey.
Visit our site for more event information: http://new.centerforthehumanities.org/programming/hope-in-a-time-of-extinction

Hope in a Time of Extinction

The widespread adoption of body-worn cameras by police officers nationwide has generated nearly equal amounts of kudos and critique. On the one hand, bodycams are hailed as a tool for restoring public trust and increasing accountability and transparency for law enforcement agencies, especially those with a history of civil rights violations. On the other hand, bodycams are decried as part of a slippery panoptic-society slope, invasive of privacy and ineffective as a check on state power. These debates invoke the two-faced Roman god Janus, patron of archives, doorways, and transitional states--and they also largely fail to engage the question of what it means to create and provide long-term access to public records in digital video and other formats that are challenging, costly, and complicated to preserve.

Participant: Amy Herzog, Candace Ming,​ Johanna Fernández, Nicole Martin, ​Samuel Sinyangwe, ​Snowden Becker, Yvonne Ng
Visit our site for more event information:http://www.centerforthehumanities.org/programming/on-janus-and-justice-archives-access-and-ethical-use-of-video-evidence

On Janus and Justice: Archives, Access, and Ethical Use of Video Evidence

In recent decades, few concepts have proven more fraught or more contentious than the concept of reason. To wit: in an interview during the late 70s, Michel Foucault provocatively asserted: "Reason is torture" (La torture, c’est la raison). In his thoughtful and challenging new book, Reason after Its Eclipse, (University of California, Berkeley) intellectual historian Martin Jay tackles a series of conundrums related to the recent debates over the fate of reason, utilizing the rich legacy of Frankfurt School thinkers such as Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, and Jürgen Habermas as a prism. In our discussion in honor of Martin Jay's new book, we will address these questions with an eye toward the way they have impacted the self-understanding of the humanities in recent years. Richard Wolin (The Graduate Center, CUNY) will be in conversation with Martin Jay.
Visit our site for more event information: http://www.centerforthehumanities.org/programming/reason-after-its-eclipse

Reason After Its Eclipse: A Conversation with Martin Jay

Join David Harvey and Robert Brenner as they discuss the roots of the present economic crisis and the way forward.
Visit our site for more event information: http://www.centerforthehumanities.org/programming/what-now-a-discussion-with-david-harvey-and-robert-brenner

What now? a discussion with David Harvey and Robert Brenner

This song is from the chamber opera Voir Dire (2009-10), my second collaboration with librettist Jason Zencka. The (pavane for a dead infant) which follows jailhouse serves as an epilogue to this tragic soliloquy.

The protagonist and narrator in this scene is a woman who is choosing not to post bail on a public intoxication charge, so that she can stay in the jail. She is homeless in winter and has nowhere else to go. She tells the story of how she got to this point: a previous terminated pregnancy, misplaced but very human faith in a man, deception, abuse, and infanticide. It is a story about a woman who has little left but her humanity.

This story, and many others inspired by real court cases, join to form a unique libretto inspired by Jason's experience as a crime-reporter in Stephen's Point, Wisconsin, U.S.A.

Recorded by SOFIA JERNBERG and ENSEMBLE NEO, 2009 Ljudvågor New Music Festival, Visby, Sweden

libretto (by Matthew Peterson and Jason Zencka):

I've never been so cold before, 
as in this jailhouse corridor. 
Remember, I'm from Florida.

Wisconsin isn't like the South, 
the winter turned me inside out. 
It took my fingers in its mouth.

It's not like I'm some kind of whore, 
but I'd been pregnant once before. 
I didn't want a kid, you know?

But Daniel said he'd marry me,
the words were planted like a seed. 
We drove for seven fucking days.

His kiss: a taste of cigarettes and breath mints. 
Not bliss, but I was pregnant and afraid. I was 
messed up, so when my sister asked I called it love.

Why'd I go? I don't know. Far from home, warmth won't find me.

He had a cousin here, he said, 
but someone caught him selling meth. 
We got a motel room instead.

But all that Daniel did was drink, 
smoke weed, and puke into the sink. 
I tried to leave; I did it for my kid.

But Daniel wouldn't let me go. 
He called me bitch, said I'm a whore. 
He punched me in the stomach.

One hit. I was pregnant maybe five months. 
One punch. My lungs were emptied. 
Still drunk, Daniel drove me to the hospital, then left.

My skirt became a bed of blood, 
they took my baby out in clumps. 
Each wore two pair of latex gloves.

Why mourn? The world is cold, we're better off 
stillborn, before our aching hearts become 
forlorn, before our grief begins to seem boring.

I think I'd rather be alone. 
I have no other place to go. 
I know I've never been so cold before.



'Jailhouse' and 'pavane for a dead infant' (from chamber opera Voir Dire)

Samtida-Ensemblen performed Terry Riley's In C in an extended version at Capitol in Stockholm 15 May 2010. I recorded the event, and got the go-ahead to publish the much appreciated recording here, from the present ensemble. The ensemble consisted, in 2010, at this particular event, of these members:

Rei Munakata (rehearsals, conductor)
Magnus Andersson (acoustic guitar)
Magnus Bunnskog (accordion)
Kim Hedelin (Piano pulse)
Andreas Hedwall (trombone)
Ola Hultgren (percussion)
Pascal Jardry (electric guitar)
Sofia Jernberg (soprano)
Eva Lindal (violin)
Peter Lindroth (keyboard)
Kicki Möller (violin)
Bo Pettersson (clarinet)
Kristine Scholz (piano)
Emil Strandberg (trumpet)
Fabian Svensson (melodica)
Peter Söderberg (acoustic guitar)
Johan Zakrisson (piano)

Svalla, hack och strupe

sofiajernberg

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