The launching talk between a scholar and a current activist will actualize and contextualize the notion of “occupation” central to protests, then and now.

As a “launch” event for the exhibit “Occupying Paris,” a French scholar who has worked on the “territories” of May 68 protests, Lilian Mathieu, will be in dialogue with the activist Srđa Popović from the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies.

Join CES for the opening of our new exhibit “Occupying Paris: 1968 and the Spaces of Protest” in the Jacek Giedrojć Gallery. This exhibit coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of the 1968 protests in Paris in1968 and leverages the spectacular collection of period protest posters held at Harvard’s Houghton Library as well as photos from Yale’s Beinecke Library. It maps out the spaces of protest along the Seine, from Nanterre to the Renault factory, from the École des Beaux Arts, which was transformed into a “people’s workshop” producing protest art round-the-clock, to the Sorbonne.

The gallery opening is preceded by a panel discussion on the ongoing legacy of the 1968 “occupation” of public space in contemporary politics. The program for the exhibit’s opening day is as follows:<

3:15 – 4:15 pm – Gallery open for a preview of the exhibit

4:15 – 6:00 pm – Panel discussion Occupying Paris: 1968 and the Spaces of Protest

6:00 – 7:00 pm – Opening reception and toast at the Jacek E. Giedrojć Gallery