The Library of Performing Rights Open

As part of a series of new developments for the Library of Performing Rights (LPR), we have instigated Library of Performing Rights Open events. The first LPR Open has been organised in collaboration with our LPR partner, the artist and researcher Elena Marchevska, and will focus on The Official Unofficial Voting Station: Voting for All Who Legally Can't, a project by the artist Aram Han Sifuentes.

There are 91 million people in the United States and its territories who cannot legally vote. Han Sifuentes and collaborators created Official Unofficial Voting Stations across the US and Mexico, which welcomed everyone to vote and offered spaces for the discontented and disenfranchised.  In the face of Brexit, this LPR Open event asks what it means to create work in response to Article 21 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the fact that the will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government. Whose vote counts more and why?

Han Sifuentes will talk about their work which will be contextualised with contributions from Amit Rai, (academic and organiser), Áine O’Brien (co-founder and co-director of Counterpoints Arts) and Ayça Çubukçu (Assistant Professor in Human Rights in the Department of Sociology and the Centre for the Study of Human Rights), whose research explores migration, human rights and creativity.

As well as The Official Unofficial Voting Station the January LPR Open will announce the first Library of Performing Rights Commission, introduce other new LPR developments, and provide opportunities to browse a selection of LPR materials handpicked for this event.

Aram Han Sifuentes uses a needle and thread as her tools to examine immigration, citizenship, race and craft, drawing on both personal experiences and shared cultural identity. Her work has been exhibited and performed at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in Chicago, Illinois; Chicago Cultural Center in Chicago, Illinois; Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Wing Luke Museum of Asian Pacific American Experience in Seattle, Washington; Chung Young Yang Embroidery Museum in Seoul, South Korea; Centro de Textiles del Mundo Maya in Chiapas, Mexico; and the Center for Craft, Creativity and Design in Asheville, North Carolina. 
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Aram was a 2014 BOLT Resident and 2015 BOLT Mentor at the Chicago Artists Coalition. She is a 2016 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow and a 2016 3Arts Awardee. She earned her BA in Art and Latin American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently a Lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Aine O’Brien is Co-Founder and Co-Director of Counterpoints Arts, London. She created FOMACS (Forum on Migration and Communications) in 2007 developing creative arts and public projects focusing on migration, including Moving Worlds and Learning Lab. Áine co-founded Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice (2005) aligning migration research with creative arts. She serves on the Advisory Board for Centre for Cultural Studies Research, UEL and her productions to date (across documentary film, print, exhibition and curation) explore global storylines linking migration with social justice. Áine is creative producer of a cross-sector participatory arts and design project on everyday integration, ‘Everyday on Canalside’ and the film and social action programme,  ‘Out of Place’.

Ayça Çubukçu is Assistant Professor in Human Rights in the Department of Sociology and the Centre for the Study of Human Rights. Before LSE, Dr Çubukçu taught for the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University and the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies at Harvard University. She is the author of For the Love of Humanity: the World Tribunal on Iraq, which will be published y the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2018.