a READING of the NOITUTITSNOC & panel discussion

About

Audience participation encouraged! Chan will perform pieces of the Constitution backwards to give a new approach to this document. A panel discussion will follow. Calling The People…. You are cordially invited to a Performance and Panel Discussion WEST COAST PREMIERE PERFORMANCE: A Reading of the Noitutitsnoc A Performance by Christy Chan In a poetic questioning of who gets to have the agency, power and presence to interpret the U.S. constitution, artist Christy Chan deconstructs our nation’s founding document by reading it “backwards” at the Berkeley Public Library. Hearing the constitution read from back to front – in Chan’s voice – may prove to be no less loaded in emotional meaning than to hear it from left to right. In a time when the fundamental liberties of immigrant communities and BIPOC Americans are once again under siege, Chan invites us to ask: “To whom do these historic words, and by extension, our human and constitutional rights, get to belong?” Chan’s performance is a response to the 250th anniversary of the founding of America. PANEL DISCUSSION: Whose Constitution? Moderated by author Jeff Chang, panelists will explore the question "What should our relationship to the constitution be in this moment of time, as both individual citizens and as members of our communities?" Featuring historian Michael Castañeda and legal expert Nicole Ozer as panelists. DETAILS: Saturday, October 24, 2026 Performance: 1:00 - 1:30 PM (30 minutes) Break: 1:30 - 1:45 Panel Discussion: 1:45 - 2:45 PM (one hour) Location: Berkeley Public Library — Main Branch 2090 Kittredge St, Berkeley, CA Historic Lobby, 2nd floor, Mystery Room Standing room with a few chairs provided for accessibility. Admission: Free and open to the public Presented by Berkeley Art Center, in partnership with Berkeley Public Library and Meet the Moment ABOUT: Christy Chan is an artist and film director working across video, performance, installation, narrative film, object design, and community-driven public art. The recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and Creative Capital Award, Chan’s work uses both minimalism and tragic-comic approaches to question the everyday power structures that normalize racialized violence in the United States. www.christychan.com Jeff Chang Jeff Chang’s first book, Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, was called one of the best nonfiction books of the last quarter century. His latest, Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America, was listed as one of 2025’s best by Publisher’s Weekly, NPR, and Vogue. He authored the award-winning Who We Be: A Cultural History of Race in Post Civil Rights America, and We Gon' Be Alright: Notes On Race and Resegregation. He is the host of KALW Public Media’s Notes From the Edge. Michael Castañeda is Assistant Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies in Fairhaven College at Western Washington University. His research uses social movement history and Comparative Ethnic Studies to explore how communities of color in the United States have both questioned and crossed racial boundaries. His teaching interests include critical/comparative ethnic studies, anti-racist social movements, histories of capitalism, Asian American/Native Pacific Studies, and the Black Radical Tradition. Nicole Ozer is the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org) and a legal expert on artificial intelligence, privacy and surveillance, and digital speech. Before becoming Executive Director of EFF in 2026, Nicole launched the Center for Constitutional Democracy at UC Law San Francisco as its Inaugural Executive Director and was the founding Director and longtime leader of the Technology and Civil Liberties Program at the ACLU of Northern California.