In this Research and Academic Program lecture, Anna Watkins Fisher (University of Michigan) examines artistic resistance in the twenty-first century, when disruption and dissent are co-opted and commodified in ways that reinforce powerful systems. This lecture weighs the gambit of artists who willfully abandon the radical scripts of opposition and refusal long identified with anticapitalism and feminism to embrace parasitism—tactics of complicity that effect subversion from within dominant structures. The talk explores their irreverent and often troubling artworks and what they tell us about the conditions for resistance and critique today.

Free. Accessible seats available; for information, call 413 458 0524. A 5 pm reception in the Manton Research Center reading room precedes the event.

Image: Kate Gilmore, Star Bright, Star Might, 2007, video still