The Intra-Disciplinary Seminar (IDS) Public Lecture Series presents a lecture by Jordan Scott. It is free and open to the public.

In April 2015, Jordan Scott was granted access to the Guantánamo Bay Detention Center, a visit which lasted five days. At Guantánamo he was allowed to take photographs and notes, as well as capture field recordings, while under constant supervision. His attention focused on the facility’s library, collection of inmate art, and surrounding landscape. All Scott's material was subject to military censorship during daily Operational Security meetings except for his poetry and field recordings which were of no interest. In addition to discussing paintings located in the detainee art gallery at Guantánamo Bay, and his engagement with the directionality of light and the ethics of witnessing, his lecture, Lanterns at Guantánamo, also explores connections between redaction and ambient sound; between the act of listening and the act of writing; and between, interrogation, and dysfluency, to examine the possibility of listening to redaction. Is it possible to access or listen to a system of state-produced and-induced dysfluency, silence, and absence? 

Jordan Scott is the author of Silt (2005), and from Coach House Books: blert (2008), Decomp (2013, a collaboration with Stephen Collis and the ecosphere of British Columbia) and Night & Ox (2016). Scott’s chapbooks include Clearance Process (SMALL CAPS 2016), and Lanterns at Guantánamo (Simon Fraser University). Both chapbooks treat his experience after being allowed access to Guantanamo Bay in April 2015. Scott was the 2015/16 Writer-in-Residence at Simon Fraser University and works with Broc Rossell at The Elephants.

The IDS Public Lecture Series, consists of lectures by artists, theorists, activists, designers, writers, curators and other practitioners involved in the arts from positions that embody an interdisciplinary approach or that imply new uses for disciplinary traditions.

The IDS Public Lecture Series is part of the Robert Lehman Visiting Artist Program at The Cooper Union. We are grateful for major funding and support from the Robert Lehman Foundation.