This conversation with Pedro Reyes, sculptor-artist-activist, is the final event in a year-long series titled Globalizing the Human. The series will invite colleagues from the humanities and social sciences (and cognate professional schools) to jointly explore questions that highlight the urgency of thinking globally about the humanities and humanistically about globalization. What can the study of human geography contribute to our ability to comprehend the origins and movement of artistic and literary creations? What parallels exist between the fraught identity politics of systematic wartime rape as a tool of genocide by procreation and the modes of cultural production employed by colonizing powers in erasing or overwriting the artistic and cultural achievements of colonized societies? Why do economic and political assessments of globalization vary so dramatically from those generated by critics within disciplines like literature and film studies?

Pedro Reyes studied architecture but considers himself a sculptor, although his works integrate elements of theater, psychology and activism. His work takes on a great variety of forms, from penetrable sculptures (Capulas, 2002-08) to puppet productions (Baby Marx, 2008), (The Permanent Revolution, 2014). In 2008, Reyes initiated the ongoing Palas por Pistolas where 1,527 guns were collected in Mexico through a voluntary donation campaign to produce the same number of shovels to plant 1,527 trees. The conversation will highlight his practice, focusing on three projects: Sanatorium, pUN People's United Nations, and Disarm.
 
This event is also sponsored by the Global Studies Center and the Humanities Center. For more information, contact Michael Goodhart at goodhart@pitt.edu.