The Death and Life of the Avant-Garde

image by Swoon.

Graffiti has been co-opted by advertisers and even the most out-there tastemakers are susceptible to corporate sponsorship. Can art still have a countercultural voice without a MySpace page? Today Stephen Duncombe, a professor of media and cultural studies at N.Y.U.; Hugo Martinez, a gallery owner and founder of the United Graffiti Artists collective; and the street artists known as SKUF and Swoon discuss the state of radical art and activism, and, presumably, wheat paste recipes and the price of spray paint.

6:30 p.m., CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue (34th Street), Manhattan, (212) 817-2005; free.