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Aaron Levy is the founding Executive Director of Slought, a small Philadelphia-based institution whose programs focus as much on histories of cultural experimentation and political advocacy as on the creation of social practices. Levy has developed an approach to the curatorial which mobilizes historical models and imagines small organizations as agencies that produce new correspondences, relationships, and practices of engagement. These practices privilege a responsive approach, and include Into the Open, the U.S. representation for architecture at La Biennale di Venezia (2008), which recovered American histories of architectural experimentation and activism. More recently, Architecture on Display (2009-11), a research initiative and publication series with the Architectural Association, explores architecture's vexed relationship with its publics and the way architecture problematizes its own display, while Mixplace (2010-) will transform Slought Foundation in coming years into a site of collaborative knowledge production and civic engagement for Philadelphia neighborhoods.

Levy is also a lecturer in the Departments of English and the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his PhD from the School of Fine Art, History of Art, and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds. His specialization is the cultural politics of memory and display, as well as non-governmental politics nationally and internationally, as demonstrated by the Perpetual Peace Project. An advocate for inter-cultural dialogue about art and activism, Levy has worked with practitioners and institutions in Europe, the Americas, Pakistan, China, and Rwanda. He has also served on several public and private sector committees, including the planning group for the 2011 Warhol Foundation convening of small non-profits, and the Federal Advisory Committee on International Exhibitions (FACIE). He regularly lectures and facilitates workshops nationally and internationally.

His publications include: Cities Without Citizens (2002); Rrrevolutionnaire: Conversations in Theory (2006); Helene Cixous's Ex-cities (2007); Evasions of Power: On the Architecture of Adjustment (2011); Architecture on Display: On the Living History of the Venice Architecture Biennale (2010); and Four Conversations on the Architecture of Discourse (forthcoming, 2012). Artist monographs and multimedia publications include: William Anastasi's Pataphysical Society (2005); Tooth and Nail: Film and Video 1970-1974 by Dennis Oppenheim (2007); Vito Acconci in Conversation (2008); On the Ecstasy of Ski-Flying: Werner Herzog (2008); Democracy and Disappointment: Alain Badiou and Simon Critchley on the Politics of Resistance (2008); Blood Orgies: Hermann Nitsch in America (2008); Braco Dimitrijevic's Tractatus Post-Historicus (2009); Peter Weibel, Rewriter (2009); John Cage / How to Get Started (2010); Perpetual Peace (2011); and On the Political Equator: Sergio Fajardo in Conversation with Oscar Romo and Teddy Cruz (forthcoming, 2012).

Slought Foundation (http://sloughtfoundation.org)
Perpetual Peace Project (http://perpetualpeaceproject.org)
How to Get Started (http://howtogetstarted.org)
Architecture on Display (http://architectureondisplay.org)
Into the Open (http://intotheopen.org)
Fairytale Project (http://fairytaleproject.net)

Domus magazine (http://www.domusweb.it/en/op-ed/towards-a-politics-of-evasiveness/)
Bodega - Seven Reflections on Reconstructing the Civic (http://bodegaphiladelphia.org/seven_reflections)






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