In Situ at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine: How to Reasonably Believe in God

Creative Time and The New York Public Library are proud to announce a new collaborative venture, In Situ, a site-specific series of conversations pairing leading artists and public intellectuals to address critical topics of our time.

The premiere event of the In Situ series will feature visual artist Janine Antoni and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek exploring the question of “How to Reasonably Believe in God.” The conversation will be moderated by Sister Helen Prejean. A performance by Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir will kick off the event.

The event will be hosted at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, a nearly 130-year-old house of prayer and the largest Anglican cathedral in the world.

For guests further interested in the site and speakers, a limited number of Behind The Scenes tickets are available. A Behind the Scenes ticket grants guests unique access to a 30-minute tour of St. John the Divine's ambulatory and chapels before the talk. The tour will offer insights to the space's stunning architecture, and finish in time for guests to take their stage-side seats. Following the discussion, this ticket also grants guests entry to a wine reception with the speakers in the Cathedral's ambulatory.

About Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir

The Church of Stop Shopping is a project directed by Savitri D. The radical performance community has sung their secular political gospel music in Redwood forests, in the middle of traffic jams in the Holland Tunnel and out in Ferguson, Missouri and Standing Rock. Directed by Savitri D, their direct actions include cash register exorcisms, retail interventions, and cell phone operas. The choir is a diverse array of economic, ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds and has members from every continent except Antarctica (but they’re working on it!), and has toured in Europe, Africa, South America and throughout North America. Music director is Nehemiah Luckett.

About Janine Antoni
Janine Antoni is a visual artist born in Freeport, Bahamas 1964. She received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She is known for her unusual processes. Her body is both her tool for making and the source from which her meaning arises. In each piece, no matter the medium or image, a conveyed physicality speaks directly to the viewer, giving rise to emotional states that are felt in and through the body. She exhibits her work nationally and internationally and is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, Anonymous Was A Woman Grant, Creative Capital Artist Grant and the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage. For ten years she has studied various forms of somatic movement modalities to inform her sculpture. Presently she is collaborating with choreographer Stephen Petronio and legendary movement artist Anna Halprin.

About Sister Helen Prejean
Sister Helen Prejean has been instrumental in sparking national dialogue on the death penalty and helping to shape the Catholic Church’s newly vigorous opposition to state executions. She travels around the world giving talks about her ministry. She considers herself a southern storyteller. Sr. Helen is a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph. She spent her first years with the Sisters teaching religion to junior high school students. Realizing that being on the side of poor people is an essential part of the Gospel she moved into the St. Thomas Housing Project in New Orleans and began working at Hope House from 1981–1984. During this time, she was asked to correspond with a death row inmate Patrick Sonnier at Angola. She agreed and became his spiritual adviser. After witnessing his execution, she wrote a book about the experience. The result was Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States. It became a movie, an opera and a play for high schools and colleges. Since 1984, Sister Helen has divided her time between educating citizens about the death penalty and counseling individual death row prisoners. She has accompanied six men to their deaths. In doing so, she began to suspect that some of those executed were not guilty. This realization inspired her second book, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions, which was released by Random House in 2004. Sr. Helen is presently at work on another book - River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey.

About Slavoj Žižek
One of the world’s most prominent and provocative intellectuals, Žižek is a philosopher, cultural critic and political activist. In his youth he was engaged in fighting Communist regime in his country, while now he declares himself a committed Communist. Žižek has authored more than 75 books on subjects from Lacanian psychoanalysis, Marxist theory, Christian theology, and critique of ideology to cinema theory, but the core of his interest is Hegelian philosophy. Žižek has taught and lectured at universities across the globe and currently holds posts at NYU, Kyung-Hee university in Seoul and the European Graduate School in Switzerland.

A note to our patrons: In Situ events will begin promptly at 7PM. We recommend arriving at least twenty minutes before the scheduled start time to get to your seats. Please note, we may not be able to accommodate latecomers.

Event partners: Creative Time, The New York Public Library, The Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

By registering for this event you are agreeing to share your personal information (first name and last name only) with our event co-sponsor, Creative Time. The New York Public Library takes your privacy very seriously and does not share address information (including email addresses) or use your information for commercial purposes.