Towson University: TU Arts Project On Truth, Reconciliation Launches With Virtual Fall Film Series

Press release from Towson University:

Rebecca Kirkman

October 8, 2021

CoLab directors Young, Pinkston present “Invisible Architectures,” a multiyear project
from the College of Fine Arts & Communication

The Towson University Department of Electronic Media and Film’s 2021 Fall Film Series, “Invisible Architectures,” runs virtually on Mondays at
7:30 p.m. through Oct. 25. This year, the films explore the concept of truth and reconciliation
across multiple cinematic genres.

“In this series, we spend four weeks dealing with versions of truth and reconciliation
as an opportunity to hear how they have been defined,” explains Kalima Young, assistant
professor of electronic media and film.

“One of the films, ‘The Forgiven,’ is about that process in South Africa. ‘Three Billboards’
is a conversation about truth and reconciliation within one person's trauma,” Young
says. “Our community can begin to engage in this conversation through the film series.”

In the virtual format, which began in 2020, attendees screen the films prior to joining
Zoom-based discussions with special guests each week. The Fall Film Series is free
and open to the public, but RSVPs are required to receive the links to the virtual discussions.

The film series is the first event within the 2021–24 College of Fine Arts & Communication (COFAC) CoLab theme of the same name, led by Young and art education lecturer Ada
Pinkston.

Launched in fall 2017, the COFAC CoLab is an incubator for ideas, projects and collaboration across the college as well
as with the wider university community.

Young and Pinkston describe “Invisible Architectures” as “a multiyear, interdisciplinary
container designed to create avenues for projects and programs that reinscribe the
voices of Black, brown, Indigenous and immigrant populations in the narrative of Towson
University’s origin story. It also aims to revisibilize the place-based strategies
and cultural frictions that have contributed to Towson University’s growth and development
as an anchor institution in Baltimore.”

Young and Pinkston will use a different framework each year—place, discipline and
architecture—to examine the theme.

In addition to the Fall Film Series, the CoLab directors plan to explore the theme
through the projection-based public art project “Critical Confabulations” in the spring
to round out year one, a special topics course and brown-bag discussions in the second
year and a conference and interdisciplinary art festival in the final year.

“Arts are a way to embody things that feel ephemeral,” Young says. “People are more
willing and able to sit with dark [concepts] when they know they are getting a creative
experience.”

Pinkston agrees. “Art is a tool that can be used to express what the written word
can't,” she says. “It helps to see around corners. To provoke an audience down a particular
emotional journey they might not enter through a denser historical archive.”

For more arts events, visit events.towson.edu.

This press release was produced by Towson University. The views expressed here are the author’s own.