Speaker: Aaron Landesman (MIT/Harvard University)

MIT-Africa and MIT-MENA invite you to a presentation on the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Moises Saman, focusing on his photography of the conflicts in Syria and Sudan.Saman blends traditional conflict photography with a deeply personal point of view. For more than 10 years, he has been concerned with the humanitarian impact of war in the Middle East, documenting both the front line of daily suffering and the “fleeting moments on the periphery of the more dramatic events.”Join us in the Vannevar Bush Room (MIT Building 10-105) on Monday, October 27th at 4:30pm for a talk by Saman, followed by audience Q&A. Light refreshments will be provided.RSVP for the event here. This event is open to the public.

The Cost of AI (2023), 52 minutes / Marjie Meerman (director)Introduction by Eric Robsky Huntley (DUSP)Topic: AI, Its Social and Environmental ImpactsGenerative AI is the latest buzzword in Silicon Valley. The Big Tech giants all launch chatbots and incorporate AI assistants, based on large-scale language models, into their products. The credo is: we are building the most powerful technology since the invention of electricity, and it is about to change everything. And all this happens in 'The Cloud'.Are we once again blinded by the shine of Silicon Valley and the promise of artificial intelligence? The recent success of AI comes with the use of even more raw materials, even more data, even more computing power and even larger server parks. If you zoom out, AI is a hungry beast that needs to be fed with the fastest chips, huge data sets and poorly paid labour. In the form of silicon mines, endless rows of power-guzzling servers or Syrians labeling data for the next generation of generative AI. AI turns out not to be a divine machine, but an industry that costs blood, sweat and metals. A system of extraction and exploitation on an industrial scale with major consequences for the earth and humanity.Cinema at the Nexus is an institute-wide film series which showcases films/documentaries that grapple with pressing issues of our day aiming to make sense of what we are experiencing today.Other events in the series:Cinema at the Nexus: Citizenfour | Introduction by Mariel Garcia-Montes (HASTS) and Michelle Spektor (SERC), November 4Cinema at the Nexus: Prisoner No. 626710 is Present | Introduction by Sana Aiyar, November 13Supported by the SHASS Dean's grant, hosted by the MIT Libraries.Pizza and light refreshments will be served.

Presented by Subha Xavier Associate Professor of French and African Studies at Emory UniversityAbstract: This talk will consider how China has been imagined by the Western imaginary since the Opium wars of the last century, especially in France, and how Sino-French immigrant writers and artists have responded to this misrepresentation over the years. Examining how empires rise and fall, and the role of fantasy and opioids in political strategy and literary representation, this presentation will argue for a longue durée approach to where China and France collude and collide in the migrant imaginary.Bio: Subha Xavier is Associate Professor of French and African Studies at Emory University. She is author of The Migrant Text: Making and Marketing a Global French Literature and forthcoming work on Sino-French Literary Exchange. She is a specialist of global French, with articles and essays on migrant writing and film in journals in several languages.Global France Seminar Fall 2025 | Website09/24/2025 Mohamed Amer Meziane (Brown University). “How the Fall of Heaven Overturned the Earth: Empire, Capital and the Secularocene” (MIT Hayden Library 14S-110 @ 5:15pm) 10/20/2025 Julien Gelas (Théâtre du Chêne Noir, Avignon, France). Live Performance in France 2025 (MIT 4-253 @ 5:15pm) 10/27/2025 Subha Xavier (Emory University). “From Opium to Fentanyl Wars: China in the Western Imaginary” (MIT 14E-304 @ 5:15pm) 11/19/2025 Tamara Chaplin (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign). Becoming Lesbian (MIT 14N-112 @ 5:15pm) 12/2/2025 Keith Baker (Stanford University). Jean-Paul Marat. Prophet of Terror. (MIT-TBD @ 5pm) 12/3/2025 Judith Miller (New York University). (14E-304 @ 5:15pm)

List Projects 33: Every Ocean Hughes features One Big Bag (2021) is a 40-minute single channel video.The video uses the “mobile corpse kit”—a bag filled with everyday objects doulas use to care for the newly dead—as both the visual structure and narrative driver of the video. With a matter-of-fact demeanor and intense physicality the performer guides the viewer into the largely uncharted waters of corpse care — practical, political and spiritual. The form of the video creates a tension between the subject matter of dying and the forceful liveness of the performance itself. Exhibiting artist Every Ocean Hughes will be joined by Suelin Chen to discuss the complications and complexities of end-of-life care drawn from themes presented in One Big Bag.List Center galleries will be open at 5:00 PM.Speaker BiosEvery Ocean Hughes (b. 1977, lives and works in Stockholm and New York) is a transdisciplinary artist and writer. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2023); Studio Voltaire, London (2022); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2022); Secession, Vienna (2015); and PARTICIPANT INC., New York (2015). Collaboration has been a central part of her practice: She was editor and cofounder of the queer feminist journal and artist collective LTTR, has written lyrics for several bands (The Knife, Colin Self, JD Samson & MEN), and has done costume design. Hughes’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and Kadist, Paris/San Francisco, among others. For over ten years, Hughes has taught art in Europe and the US and works as a coach for artists and creative producers as West Street Coaching.Suelin Chen is an entrepreneur and healthcare executive who was the founder/CEO of the largest website for end-of-life planning in the world (Cake), which has been visited by over 100 million people and was recently acquired by the second largest funeral company in the US. She is now doing corporate and commercial strategy for healthcare companies. She earned her BS and PhD from MIT, where she worked on medical technology and was also a visitor, intern (and, later, an advisory board member) of the List Visual Arts Center.5:00–6:00 PM - MIT List Visual Art Center open 6:00–7:00 PM - Artist Discussion in ACT CubeThis program is in collaboration with MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT).

Join us on Monday evenings for Argentine tango classes with outstanding instructors. Whether you are completely new to tango, or already have some experience, you will find a friendly environment in which to learn new things and improve your technique. You don't have to bring a partner, since the classes involve rotations with all participants.Full Series: Sep 15, 22, 29, October 6, 13, 20, 27, Nov 3, 10, 17, 24, Dec 1, 8, 15.For all info and registration, visit following link.