The Drawing Center presents Bellwethers: The Culture of Controversy, a new series of public programs guest curated by Alison M. Gingeras in collaboration with the art magazine Affidavit, during which a prominent group of writers, cultural critics, and artists will to respond to a cultural “bellwether” and take it in their own interpretative direction. The third and last event of the series: CANCELLATION invites Anna Khachiyan and Natasha Stagg to respond to the new culture of cancellation. On the one hand, “cancel culture” has been used to swiftly punish perceived criminal behavior; on the flip side, it can operate as a means to extinguish nuanced debate and cast out public figures in trials by Twitter. How do we navigate this phenomenon that some see as inherently undemocratic and anti-nuanced and others praise as effective in a world in which the law is statistically proven to fail women and people of color? How does cancellation impact revisionist artistic and political histories?

Anna Khachiyan is a writer based in New York, and the co-host of the leftist podcast Red Scare.



Natasha Stagg is a writer based in New York. Stagg’s work has appeared in Affidavit, Artforum, Bookforum, The Brooklyn Rail, CR Fashion Book, DIS Magazine, n+1, The Paris Review, Spike Art Quarterly, among many other publications. Stagg’s debut novel Surveys was published by Semiotext(e)/Native Agents in 2016, and her book of critical essays will be published by Semiotext(e) later this year.

Other Bellwether events include:

MANIFESTO Tuesday, May 21, tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bellwethers-manifesto-tickets-60210121093

PANIC Tuesday, May 28, tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bellwethers-panic-tickets-60436783045





Bellwethers: The Culture of Controversy is a series of programs made possible by The Evelyn Toll Family Foundation.

Images L to R: Natasha Stagg and Anna Khachiyan