culturally, politically, as afghanistan, iran, turkey, indonesia, malaysia, saudi arabia. the first is respect we showed towards them, culturally was to take on the language of the rulers over there and the extremist and call them the muslim world. :

now, if you read through the alternative i eyes of persian literature and the history you discover they have come up with a wonderful book cleopatra. egypt was in fact along with persia ancient cultures of changed and is long with all these cultures team also out of the post islamic culture and if you knew iran to the core, what you would know is that a thousand years ago another great

poet brooch this amazing love poem which is basically was envisioned is one of the most subversive books that you can read on loved. the women are some of the most independent and essential women who not only choose who they marry, they choose who they make love to. ye in the iranian poetry, the agnostic, ye in have these poems is a communion with god, and six years ago mentioned [inaudible]

so, if i as a woman want to go back to culture would you think i want to be independent because i have read a few books at? no [laughter] i go to my own culture. but the egyptians go to cleopatra, they go to these amazing women at the turn of the century in egypt, lebanon, iraq, iran and turkey who said we want to be free. so what i am saying is if you want to understand our culture, you have to go and build a serious work to understand that culture and once you understand the amazing thing is not how

different we are the tower of like we are. the literature is the shock of recognition as shakespeare said [inaudible] and that is -- i went and talked to the u.s. embassy who sponsored my program in my recent book on matt duraid and that is what we had come and you have to remember that when you go to spain or saudi arabia or iran or afghanistan you have to have a sense of culture. you have to remember span not only produced this but [inaudible] said that is the point to immerse yourself in who the other is.

>> but one of the great changes of the last 50 years in literature is that americans are reading more globally. we look at the people [inaudible] and any number of people who we are no longer bound only by -- and reduces it just as we might look at the muslim world whereas american culture, american literature the country you described that we are not just the girls, while. [laughter] that is not aware culture. we have a lot of variety here

which is a discrepancy when we think about people criticizing the more overt american culture. what is american culture? american culture is a lot of different things. >> i'm so grateful you brought this point up. first i think americans should start understanding we need cultural diplomacy for inside america. americans should understand their culture. let me say something, michael, as an immigrant. i just became a citizen in 2008 and i definitely didn't come to this country to get my book published or to be trey my children so they go to wall street and live happy ever after. i came to this country because it is one of the most poetic countries in the world where the creation of independence. that is why people genuinely,

quote on quote come e illegal immigrants come here because we have founded this passion and desire and what i've discovered here is that because now that passion is not being replaced, it's being dominated by something very shallow on idealization of everything and because we are not pragmatic but we ask stupid questions like why should the congress pay for them and the congressman who says that smiles and says i am on the side of the workers. i have not seen in many of this kind coming to the national reality. who does he think the crowd is with? every book festival, the book festival here on the mall, who

are the people who come here? not even the elite, it is the people. and we need to appreciate our own culture in order to be able to communicate this to the world, and i agree with you that is reductionism of good and legal and exists among the right and the left and elite not just in this country but that has gone vital. that attitude is what you and i should fight against. >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> i am. i am not a fan any way but i started thinking about the decisions in 2000 he sees the world to the in alternative eis and we need to do that. >> that is sometimes diplomacy

in the largest -- in a transactional way we want something back in return. well i think we went through simply in the riches of the world and so rejoiced these things are now available to us that we have the means to read books from other nations through translation but we can watch movies from around the world, that we can visit and see from every culture and every period. these are the things that humanize us. >> one last thing, a lot of people about iran tell me what can we do for iran i sometimes say ask not what you can do for iran but what iran has done for

you and i mean it. young people in iran are being accused and put to jail and even murdered because they want democracy. they think that america has, which is the best weapon is without paying lip service a culture of democratic democracy. a democratic imagination. the recent shows have to come and confess the weather corrupted here. max weber is not only censored but dangerous what threatens. it is not your weapons that threatens them it is a mind set people that their children are taken. so if our kids are back at home, if i want to go back home

[inaudible] came to iran they were treated by the young like rock stars. if people over there and are ready to risk everything they have to read sao belo and -- we really should understand that every day of our life we have to fight for this gift that is given to us from the countries that are fighting for the same things that we fought for. >> a critic eustis es the function of education is to make one feel adjusted to ordinary society. [laughter] it goes with your idea of not being at home. you want to question, you want to be uncomfortable. you don't want to feel as, your words, smug, and think that you

alone have truth. >> that is the whole point and that is why our academia -- we are losing humanities and liberal arts are being so underfunded, and actually we along with the independent colleges are going to have a symposium on that. but the whole point is that we're -- where do you go to rediscover the meaning and the humanities and the liberal arts and that is one of the things i'm very scared of even when we talk about education we are not talking about the content of education. i'm so happy that bill and melinda gates as the cetron "60 minutes" are spending so much education and they are wonderful people but was when to take care of the attitudes, you know? is black and white literature where literature has become handmaid to politics. i had been called all sorts of

names because i'm not supposed to talk about lolita and if i talk about lolita i am encountering liberalism. it is so preposterous and yet it comes to us as a new thought. >> this is part of what some people have felt was a kind of increasing shallowness. young people are reading -- often the internet and various media that encourages quick searches for answers rather than the kind of slow attentive focus on the text, that interaction which is the truth reading that leads to the understanding and the kind of wisdom that we are talking about. and if we are going to think about culture we need to really engage more fully with it than we do. >> very bright. our enemy is not our political opponent. it is our attitude.

i think imaginative knowledge is not just something that you need today and discard tomorrow. it is a way of perceiving the world, relating to the world said the most important thing that no one should feel smart. this is about the literature. we cannot impose literature. it is like life, you drive from the experience of reading something. i don't want to reveal my age, most of you can probably see it any way, but when i was going to college in the 70's, reading lionel trilling or edmund winston, it was a new experience , it wasn't your eyes and and demolishing. but encountering the world that you encounter in life, and that is what makes you uncomfortable because life is complex and complicated. so i hope we treat literature and go back to the complex thinking, which is fun.

it is really fun. >> i see that i have ignored the site where i was supposed to ask for questions. we just kept going on. >> i'm so sorry. >> but before we end, as you said, persian of literature is written poetry. would you agree site a few lines of persian poetry for us? >> i -- >> i put you on the spot. >> no, which one jul choose? the book amazingly in possible with words. [speaking in native tongue] basically he says that you should go against the flow of habits to be able to survive. and i think it is a good ending to what you're talking about, not feeling at home. >> thank you, everyone. [applause]

>> we are crafting the delicate balance between keeping on track with this very ambitious schedule and we will hopefully have time for questions over lunch with dr. nafisi. now, i have -- this is -- i'm multitasking because i will be introducing myself as moderator and be miced up but it's my pleasure to introduce the next speaker, the internationally acclaimed artist, paynter, eric fiscl which joined to -- agreed to join today. you know me by now, i'm the director of the phillips collection. art historian, a specialist in modern art and eager to have the opportunity to talk with my dear friend and colleague, eric

fischl. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> how about now? anyway i can make my commentary

and if i get too loud you will all be very cross with me. i love the idea is that camel in the last discussion. that's fine. have a seat, eric. put your mic on. the idea of crisis, imagination and vision but it's one thing we keep coming back to, it seems to me, is the importance of precision of language. one of the projects that alfredo presented to us yesterday was his project on times square, which was about america and the gist of the project, which was in the newspapers and caused a lot of controversy was the idea that week, the people of the united states, have appropriated america much to the disadvantage and the perplexed reaction of the people of the americas of the rest of the continent.

but anyway, did you hear when dr. nafisi gave us our kluge when she said what we need is cultural diplomacy inside america and i thought thank you so very much because when dana came to us with a beautiful opportunity to collaborate with the aspen institute i couldn't help but think of your project, america now and here, and then i want to also have time to turn to eric as a practitioner as an artist for that very special perspective. it was important for us to have elizabeth the dillard, to have eric fischl, because we want to hear the authentic voices of the visual artist. so let's start off with telling us a little bit about this ambitious project of cultural diplomacy within our borders.

>> am i miced? okay. let me say i hate following a writer. [laughter] they are so articulate. there was a great talk you just gave, very inspiring. i've been working on a project dorothy referred to called america now and here and it's a project started a few years ago and was an attempt to try to use hour to, the language and experience of art as a way of redirecting conversations we have with ourselves in this country about who we are. and what i did was i felt that

america was suffering an identity crisis that the defense over the last many years have thrown us off our center, and 9/11 was a catalytic event that confirmed that sort of spin off of our center and threw us into a kind of world of fear and uncertainty, self doubt, etc.. and the country was becoming more and more polar honest, more and more tribal, and losing what our foundations are. i thought because it's a national crisis we should turn to america's greatest artist,

poets, playwrights, musicians, filmmakers, etc.. it turned into the people that are generally recognized as the leaders of our cultural life. and ask them if they would create a work of art specifically about america. i sit make it something post 9/11, something the reflects on where we are using my 9/11 using one of the murders. it doesn't have to be about nine a legend but where would you like us to think about experience reexamine etc america actually when i started out i was asking visual artists and grow over a period of time to be the other arts, and the idea was

we would take this and put it into trucks, specially designed trucks that would become mobile museums. we would travel them around the country going to small towns to mid-sized cities, military bases, state colleges with inner-city to try to engage a population of society that this either doesn't use art as part of its daily life or disaffected or alienated from it one way or another economically, socially, geographically and then and what we would do is go into those communities and engage the creativity within those communities to respond for the work in the programs daughter in

the exhibition so that it would create a creative dialogue. something would bring a local perspective on to the national stage. and so we've been doing that. the artist responded surprisingly quickly, emphatically, i say surprisingly because modernism has moved so much into the culture of an dillinger of the and the idea of a commission of sharing response and stuff at first i thought i

would meet with a lot of resistance especially from a sort of super star but instead i was incredibly surprised they were. >> duty mant -- >> i'm going to drink out of the bottle, is that all right? >> that's fine. every detail counts. the demand from the artist the adhere to a kind of iconography? i noticed the american flag. was this when you said we were having a crisis of identity khator project be accused or misconstrued as something sort of patriotic? is that what you intend? >> first full, you don't go to the great artist and say do this and it's got to be like this,

this and this and these but a lot of cream or something like that. [laughter] you know, i went to them to ask them for them to give me what i wanted, to give me, knowing that it would be a crapshoot, that it could have come back as, you know, very confrontational, very politicized, overly intellectual, you know, i mean there are all of these things that are aspects of contemporary art that have been part of it. i didn't preconceived the fanatics. i left it open, i sifted back after i sent out the call to see if it would be self organized. and i was really surprised and delighted to see that one incredible generosity of spirit

on the part of the artist that gave work that it wasn't confrontational and in a simplistic sense that it wasn't provocative in a sensational sense, it was stimulating, sensitized. i also was amazed and frankly relieved to see that there was a self organizing thing taking place, which was fanatically it seemed like artists fell into the categories of america as an iconic place, and iconic reality. >> here's some of the images while we are talking. >> i actually like to say something just briefly about this, but let me do this first. the second theme seemed to be about america as a place, and

that was a sense of place within a landscaped, region, since of place as a home, and the third was america as people. it was a focus on identity, a focus on diversity, it was a focus on family or friend should come community, that kind of bond, and these themes were sufficiently broad enough to include tremendous variety of approach. this first one is a print that he gave that seemed absolutely appropriate didn't fit into the category of america's laconic laconic.

so it is initially you see it as a jasper johns iconic image which he's done since the 50's using the image of the american flag as a painting motif that, as an iconic motif etc. what's different about this one than others he's done in the past as he added a flagpole which i don't know how well you can see it but there's a very delicate line drawn that anchors the flag to this orange field, and both seemed to evoke for me that image of the american flag planted on the moon, which was one of our triumphs, and also there was a vulnerability to

that pure lewicke act when you see that flag in the vastness of space and he kind of recalls that in this, but at the same time he is also saying that america needs to be anchored that he no longer feels the confidence that he had in his past and had the ground in some ways so there's a tremendous contemporary vulnerability and i think that is a poignant image. >> how do you think this product would translate, and obviously i'm jumping the gun. it hasn't even yet hit the road in america but how will it translate abroad do you think? >> let me just say something.

it's interesting that as this show becomes more and more known and people begin to respond to it in the project becomes more and more known some people view it as a kind of patriotism which has a pejorative aspect because it implies nationalism, takes us down the road to fascism, etc., so the patriotism to something like that. but at the same time, this is such an embrace, such an outreach from the unity to words we all consider home that we have to see as patriotic in a small sense of it. and where this show to go abroad, the criticism would be towards ultra imperialism so

that's -- that is the tight rope we would be going out and trying to convince other cultures of something about ourselves without engaging the other culture. the only way i think this would be successful outside of this country is if we must publish it as a way of getting other perspectives to comment on their sense of what america is within the creative language and then i think it would be very important. >> you articulated very important and lofty goals and was a good article in the nation that i was looking at last week's then you talked about and i am assuming that this is your fundamental goal you talked about creativity as a form of

literacy so the idea of the artists coming together and jumping over the sort of isolation of the individual practice to part eight, but also what are you imagining will happen in terms of the communities that you go to? you're going to have poets and musicians. >> as this program expanded to include these other artists, one thing that struck me was the poets, playwrights, the musicians, the film makers all insisted they had to be seen in the same context as the visual art. they didn't want us to go into a town and the police go to the library, the movies to the art house, a little please go to the

theater, etc., etc.. they wanted the context of the trailer to be conclusive of all of the art and have them working together simultaneously, which is obviously is really interesting problem. but the poet's did some things that is historical. first they came up with a way of doing it, participating, which is based on the japanese conversational form of poetry and our poet's idea was to begin the palm and give it to the next poet who would respond and rather than go back to the first it would continue and 54 of america's greatest poets, etc.,

have collectively created an epic american home cullom. for the first time in history they've done that certainly on that scale, 549. it starts with robert pinsky who was ready to go and we have to obviously schedule. we gave them three days to write. i don't know if you have ever tried to get poets' to do anything. [laughter] but it doesn't even describe. by the way, dana was invited but there was a conflict. we were hoping we would get his place in there. but it started with robert who happened to be in massachusetts

on the land to coast and he begins the poem. but that in and of itself is an american epic journeys that embraces. it's quite extraordinary. the playwrights came up with an ingenious thing of the invited i should say first of all carroll and bob were the poets who treated terrie -- currated. they came up with a form to allow playwrights to write freeman and dialogues that will

be performed on announced in the exhibition mike conversations and wherever we went we would pick up local actors and use the play in a kind of random fashion and they felt their room was ripe enough for a good audience. >> i want to get to you as a painter. if we flows through the images i'm hoping that we will come to your work. you sent some paintings inspired by a trip to india. >> i am obviously more wrapped up in the american project in my own work. >> that is rare for an artist to say that. >> i just want to -- first of all we are talking about visual

year literacy and when you are all participating in now is something that needs the visual literacy. you are looking at a slide and not only a slight everything if you're looking at the slide of a painting in really crappy light so there's very little chance that what is the experience of the painting could ever be conveyed to you even go in your mind you've seen the the painting. now this is something -- this kind of thing is something that is pervasive in the culture. we receive images on our iphone, ipad, computers, televisions, advertising, etc. and we assume they are all the same even though they are from small, medium to large. it's the def painting because painting is a semantic

experience and when you stand in front of a painting, the painting puts your body into a very specific relationship with the lifting the you are viewing and in doing that, it changes your interpretation of what you thought of this is a tool painters use. i'm going to talk about this painting which is my wife's painting she did for the american show. i think it is an incredibly poignant painting and something that hopefully once you see the real painting you will have the same kind of revelation i had. it's a large painting. it's larger than the span of my arm, said it is a grand scale

painting and you're standing there looking out at this ocean, looking to the fore in her eyes and found one thing you'll notice is your of the edge of the ocean. she put to the edge of the ocean which is a boundary and you look past the waves to the koln horizon to the distance but when you don't know when you're looking at this painting is whether you are looking east over the government because if you are looking east over the atlantic, you are looking where we came from as a country or you may be looking out over the

pacific and assured looking out over the pacific you're looking west which means you are standing on the edge of how far we have come so within this one simple image, she, too, has collapsed america into an incredibly poignant experience that puts the whole country into your sense of self. >> what is the response been? you said earlier that you are struggling with fund-raising which is a terrain that i am somewhat familiar with. how is it going in terms of realizing this? >> we are actually doing very well. we are going to launch the show in kansas city in april, 2011. we haven't been able to raise enough money to fabricate the trucks yet so we are going to start without the trucks, find

interesting places in the cities to put the works, draw attention both to areas that the city wants to increase in engage and do that for probably two of the three stops and hopefully by then raise the remainder of the trucks. the trucks are very essentials for mobility into areas like salles towns, military bases, but the area regions like the central valley in california which is one of the most complicated and shows up at the lowest end of the social and indicators has been an important area to engage in the conversation.

this begins my work that doherty asked me to put in. i guess because you want to talk about artists abroad or artists who paint broads. [laughter] >> i am stunned to have an artist on stage who is resisting talking about his work, but no, i just think that's important for people to know your painting and hear a little about the impact when you talked extensively about the notion of home that runs counter to the notion of home floated in the previous conversation and i just wondered about the impact of your interaction with the broad moral as an internationally

renowned painter. >> i started off with this painting from southern france. here's another one. i started off with them because in the early 80's i went to southern france as an american abroad and i came into a direct kind of confrontation with otherness inouye i hadn't anticipated and was the kind of hedonism, i can't say self-conscious because they are very self-conscious about it, but very open about their self consciousness about hedonism and the beaches of southern france. what i came in direct confrontation with was my own sort of puritan, all of the

issues around public and private in a relationship to the body and the center of the, eroticism, said schiraldi, but not, came into focus. as i sat on the beaches watching people be naked and socially interactive i became riveted by that and took a lot of photographs and went home and made my paintings and stuff. and i was kind of feeling like, you know, i've gone to southern france what david did to l.a.. i named it. but when i showed the work to the french they thought these were paintings from long island. [laughter]

>> you know, i'm going to be a good moderator and because we divide our audience q&a last time, i think i should open it up if you don't mind. >> i don't mind. i will thumb through these. >> when do you go to india? >> i went to india in 1987 and i was invited by a family -- i actually never had a fantasy even when i was a hippie i never had a fantasy about india and the other way and hated the smell of the oil, etc., but because of the way the family had invited me i would be taking care of it because it seemed like pure chaos which in fact it is. and i didn't think i would go

that i would be inspired by it turned out of the most extraordinary experience in relationship to otherness i had ever encountered and as someone who works with the body for example, and i pride myself on the ability to read body language. i went to india and i could not tell, i couldn't tell whether this was a good situation, that situation. i mean it was like signals -- >> another language. spec may i ask if anyone in the audience has questions for eric. we are going to ask you to get up and go to the microphone.

>> thank you so much. it was interesting. cynthia snyder from georgetown university. i am curious -- i'm curious about your america project i wonder what you hope to get out of it and when you hope will had many troubles around the country. or any of the artists and to travel with you? the would be interested if you would collect and writing and maybe you have already done that, by the artists wanted to do this because i don't think patriotism is of a bad word, i think it is a good thing and the idea of artists to bring something patriotic runs counter to i think the traditional american idea about artists but other people outside america look to our art as what embodies what america is. for some strange reason we don't

do that and so i just would love to hear what you hope this will accomplish and also how you decided to start in kansas city. >> the last question is the easiest answer. that's where the money was. actually kansas city is the perfect metaphor for what we are trying to do. if you fold them up this way and that way, kansas city is right in the middle. it's dead center of the country. if you look at maps of trails blease across the country to the discovery, etc., there's like to lines that go from the east coast of kansas city and then 1,000 grout. sifry was a place that generated, sponsored, brought together the exploration and

unification so it works on all those levels. also it's interesting and talking to the people of kansas city wheat been talking to they saw it as patriotic. they got it and got excited about it because was patriotic. anyway, we are collecting the artists that are in the show we have been collecting. these will be part of the web sites. we are doing a very kind of robust sort of social media and a web programming and stuff like that to try to be able to be inclusive as much as one can. within the trucks we are limited to whatever the show is as it is now so to get the local responses into the context we have to find other venues but

also try to apply to all this stuff savitt interim ingalls -- so it intermingles. dalia so the question? >> i actually have to shoot out for questions. you don't have to answer them all. i work for the smithsonian and i've heard of the project through various colleagues but my first question is to throw out to you think art museums are failing across the united states because you are creating a container that is going to go and travel to. you talked about the lack of a visual literacy i think for those of us who worked in the regional small museums, national museums, international -- i am a curator and most of confess that as was administrator -- the whole thing is trying to get people to see the museum as a library for visual ideas. the fact this is coming from the artist's gives you the freedom this isn't an obvious stance it

seems like there was this loose aspect but i guess i'm asking what is the sort of long term goal or hope that you will come out of this because i think you can have these interventions and artists are fantastic about interventions in the way the project and produce these things. you talked about containers but hell are you going to connect with those places and i think the power you have is to validate the creativity that's already going on because when you leave how is that going to continue? i challenge you to think about the community involvement and even at the smithsonian this is something we struggle with the of thousands of people shuffle through. what do they do when they go back and held as it connect with their lives? you have the capacity to do that in different ways but also to engage in the institutions. >> sorry about this. we think about this a lot here. >> first of all, i -- a

disclaimer. i am not a curator. i did a shout out to do this, so it really isn't a curator show in the strict sense of the word. also, when i started to come see of this program, it went against something that i had believed in about that was important for people to make pilgrimages to great art and i think the pilgrimage is something that is a social cultural glue. islamic i'm just distracted by your work.

>> i believe in that and certainly with work that's like painting and sculpture that are unique objects you can't really experience them accept in the presence. bendixen portend for people to make that connection, that commitment. so here i am organizing an exhibition which is about us going to them. >> [inaudible] i'm not seen chairs, tables -- the concept of think it's beautiful you brought in poetry because you talk about containers and i thought that's right museums are containers i'm just struck by the diversity of disciplines which it's kind of the theme for the diplomacy and awareness but i don't see the

sensitivity to other materials that in body -- embody that petraeus bernanke asked about the program and went from being an immediate response to a price that had a particular sort of a thematic america post 9/11 up until now but in the process of organizing this, we began to develop the sense that in fact this isn't a show this is a program and so the trucks will rollout frequently every two years, three years, whatever it is, with a fresh perspective on aspects of america whether it's it goes out and it's about ecology or design, etc., different ways that we can

approach so it is an ongoing program, not static. and the other thing is in terms of leave behind, museums do this, too, but we are trying to make it happen. everything in the show is imitated as a form and so we are doing is we are going to start with school groups and then people, the arts community and the mom artists to try to use those for expression as well. what we are looking for is people come back to us with whatever perspective they have but it has to be housed within a creative expression and when we

pull out of town that's what's left behind is something that demystifies creativity on one hand the doesn't separate people so that only specialized people can do this thing etc., etc., begins to see the act as something that can be self generated, fund, so we come fabulous. >> i think we have run through our time so i am going to call this session to a halt and first i want to thank you, eric. >> i'm sorry i talked so much. >> that's why we brought you here. [applause] its a great pleasure being with you and hearing you. we are going to break now for lunch. we will reconvene as you've experienced at 1:45, and i think

that's all i need to say. thank you, so much, everybody for your attention this morning. [inaudible conversations]

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