CREATIVE TIME: Sarah Cowan

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Sarah Cowan, PhD Candidate in History of Art at UC Berkeley.

Keyword: Memory

With the one year anniversary of the birth of the Occupy Movement this fall, I have been contemplating how the movement's legacy will continue to grow and how its memory will eventually come to be passed down to the next generation of activists that follow. Our daily lives, increasingly subject to the recording and archiving of our own doing and of an established global network of media forces, newspapers, blogs, television, become ostensibly ripe with the promise of memory -- a memory that knows bytes, a memory that is spontaneous and prosthetic to these daily lives. It seems to be no accident that the most characteristic form of the Occupy Movement laid bare the daily goings-on of the activist and the activist body in an extreme form; as if to say, mediatize this. But this rhetorical gesture belies a real threat. What do we remember from a year ago? This memory serves as our foundation for continuing the work of last fall. It contains the kernel of the movement's reason and force. Without it, must we be constantly reinventing the movement and our involvement in it? Is this progress?

CREATIVE TIME: Tali Weinberg

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Tali Weinberg, MFA Candidate at the California College of the Arts.

Keyword: Making

On September 12^th I woke up to the news that hundreds had died in a factory fire in Pakistan. It took me a moment to realize that the report was not about the all-too-similar tragedy that took place 101 years earlier in New York.  The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire killed 146 workers, mostly young women from immigrant families who either burned or jumped to their death from the 8^th floor of the building since the workers had otherwise been locked in. In Pakistan as well, many workers—who had been making consumer goods bound for export—jumped to their deaths from one of the few windows that wasn’t barred shut. Workers later reported that managers actually prevented people from leaving so that they could save the clothing destined for European consumption. Feminist geographer Melisa Wright writes of the “myth of the disposable third world woman… who, through the passage of time, comes to personify the meaning of human disposability…[even as] she simultaneously produces many valuable things with her labor.” What could be more proof of the perpetuation of this myth than these continuing acts of violence against laborers around the world?[1]

Scholar Ethyl Brooks cautions against the problems that arise in representing laborers in the anti-sweatshop movement—representations that tend to reproduced the problematic social relations within global capitalism that they otherwise denounce while perpetuating race, class, and gender stereotypes through the images and narratives of workers portrayed as victims.[2] In my art practice I struggle over how to address the entanglement of labor and violence against women without reproducing the social relations that drive exploitation. As a maker of objects, this raises any number of questions: How are tactics shaped by gender? Who is able to put their bodies on the line? And what line? What does it mean to consider material production as an activist sphere? What does one learn from the bodily experience of making? What possibility comes from transforming the intangible and incomprehensible (economy, struggle, violence, pain, grief) into something tactile?

In her recent ethnography, Thuy Linh Tu suggests that there are possibilities for moving beyond Brooks’ concerns: “There is much to be gained in recognizing that creative workers share some commonalities with supposedly noncreative workers. This recognition makes it possible to see interconnections, to imagine a common cause and perhaps even collective action. [S]howing us how the lines that divide us can move… lead[s] us to new languages and perhaps even new politics. At the very least, they can show us what is to be gained by forging intimacies.”[3] As I further mine this idea in my own work, I am interested in hearing the responses of colleagues.

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[1] Wright, Melissa W. Disposable Women And Other Myths Of Global Capitalism. CRC Press, 2006

[2] Brooks, Ethel C. Unraveling the Garment Industry: Transnational Organizing and Women’s Work. University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis. 2007.

[3] Tu, Thuy Linh Nguyen. The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion. Duke University Press, 2010. Pg 62

CREATIVE TIME: Christian Frock

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Christian L. Frock, Producer and Curator of Invisible Venue.

Keyword: Tactics - Publicizing Private Space

In response to rampant privatization of public space, cultural producers in the Bay Area increasingly publicize private spaces (apartments, marginalized real estate, etc) and, in doing so, radicalize notions of public space, even when these spaces aren’t conventionally “public.” While these largely DIY actions underscore autonomy in the face of bureaucracy and increased corporate interests in the public realm, these gestures also represent a shift in the cultural landscape that coincides with the decline of conventional nonprofit art organizations. The increasing number of publicized platforms within the Bay Area and the use of private resources in the realization of these projects raise questions about sustainability and access at the same time that these gestures serve a need for experimental and alternative venues at the grassroots level. What relationship, if any, is there between the rise of private/public enterprise and the decline of conventional arts non-profits—and how do these shifts bode for the future of arts organizations, non-profit or otherwise? Recent points of consideration, among others: the forthcoming closure of San Francisco’s Museum of Craft and Folk Art, the 5M Project facilitated by Forest City real estate developers in partnership with non-profit arts organization Intersection for the Arts, and “Manifest Destiny” a temporary public art project realized on private property by nonprofit arts organization Southern Exposure. To what extent are we able to critically evaluate the inter-dependence of public organizations on private funds, while also examining private/public partnership models for potential solutions to questions of sustainability with integrity?

CREATIVE TIME: Leila Grothe

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Leila Grothe, Curatorial Practice graduate student at California College of the Arts.

Keywords: Inequity, Making, Occupation, and Tactics

My thoughts on inequity, making, occupation, and tactics are currently entangled. I am thinking through a recent paper by Daphne Plessner published online via Art & Education. At the moment, I cannot say anything better than she, so please forgive the cheap trick of supplying a quote and a link as my application into the Summit viewing party.

"[Artists engaging in activism] construct creative, interactive strategies that promote a citizen’s autonomy, rearming us with the informational tools needed to help us understand and decide what it means to be equal, free and, most importantly, to resist the debasement of human relations, identity, and sense of belonging to the commons." - Daphne Plessner

http://www.artandeducation.net/paper/political-activism-and-art-a-consideration-of-the-implications-of-new-developments-in-practice/

CREATIVE TIME: Scott Tsuchitani

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Scott Tsuchitani, a socially engaged artist based in San Francisco who co-teaches a UC Berkeley Arts Seminar with Prof. Gregory Levine, "Socially Engaged Art and the Future of the Public University.

Keywords:  racial inequity, occupy whiteness

One of the keyword statements for ARC's "Occupy as Form" last February, "Occupy the Hood -- We are the 99%" by Gina Acebo, eloquently spoke to the need to center a racial analysis within the narrative of the Occupy movement because people of color are disproportionately affected by the issues that the Occupy movement raised.  In response, one commenter expressed thanks while at the same time questioning how this focus on race could potentially displace Occupy's focus on class—as if the two are somehow mutually exclusive—in other words, thanking the author while at the same time casting doubt on her basic premise:  that given the linkage between racial inequity and economic inequality, racial discourse deserves a place in the narrative of liberating the 99%.  

The denial that racial inequity remains a glaring issue well into the 21st is, to me, itself an expression of the same white privilege or whiteness behind the false notion that we have arrived at a "post-racial" or "color-blind" social utopia.  "Color-blind" is easy to say when one is in a position to continue benefiting from historical privilege; not so for those of us expected to accommodate that privilege on a daily basis.

If "post-racial" were true, then why would radically inclusive movements such as Occupy be dominated by white folks, for example, in progressive San Francisco where whites are a minority?  Based on the most recent census data, "We are the 49%" would have been more accurate.  The fact that one of the most popular and iconic posters of the OWS movement featured the slogan "Occupy Everything" speaks to a normative disavowal of genocidal history that reinscribes colonial power relations in the present, disenfranchising people of color while reaffirming white supremacy in the process.

Racial inequity only gets worse when you look at the art world.  Last week I attended a panel on "Social and Subversive Practices" hosted by Yerba Buena Community Benefit District, where the entire panel was white, as if there are no socially engaged artists of color in the Bay Area community.  Is it by accident or mere coincidence that the present Creative Time event at ARC here in Berkeley features a select group of nine facilitators and respondents who, outside of a token exception, appear to be about as racially diverse as the Republican National Convention?

If one of the aims of social practitioners is to address social inequity, how can we expect to do so through structures that marginalize those most disproportionately impacted by the very inequities we seek to address?  What changes need to take place in order for the most privileged and entitled among us to learn how to take direction from those most impacted?  These are kinds of questions that a group of artists and activists of color aim to explore through a project called Occupy Whiteness.

CREATIVE TIME: Nicoletta Rousseva

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Nicoletta Rousseva, Art History graduate student at UC Davis.

Keyword: Inequity

During a panel presentation at a recent conference in Los Angeles, Andrea Fraser presented video stills from Official Welcome first performed by the artist in 2001. The images on display showed Fraser standing at a podium, reciting selections by notable critics, intellectuals and collectors who warmly praised and introduced well-known artists. Being somewhat familiar with this piece I was not shocked by images of Fraser removing her clothes in front of an audience, unabashedly bending over in a Gucci thong, or mimicking the shenanigans of well-known critics. Rather what struck me during the presentation was her frank account of the work.  Straightforward and vulnerable (both in the nakedness of her body captured on film and the openness of her dialogue), she described Official Welcome as recreating what she wanted critics to say about her work, and as redirecting the praise often received by male artists toward the work of a woman. As an artist, Fraser felt she was not receiving recognition from her colleagues. And thus in Official Welcome she made a point to recite statements written by her former mentor Benjamin Buchloh that were often directed to male colleagues and rarely to her. 

As if revealing a long kept secret, Fraser turned to the scant audience scattered throughout the conference room and proclaimed that academics, artists and intellectuals are competitive and envious of each other’s work. Instantly feelings of embarrassment swept through room. But this wasn’t an embarrassment laden with shame. Instead it yielded a lightness, a sense of relief among audience and panel members who blushed and then filled the room with an affable laughter, affirming that they too shared Fraser’s feelings of competition, envy, and strife. That they too have felt jilted by critics, colleagues, or professors who failed to grasp the promise of their work, of something close to them, something that in many ways is a part of them. 

As Fraser laid bare her envy, her competitiveness and her desire for recognition from something like the Boys Club of academia, her words resonated with an audience who saw parts of their own struggles and vulnerabilities in her performance. To be certain, the recognition that Fraser sought is not only shared by academics or artists but also by people who simply want to belong to a community or regain a sense of self. By displaced by poverty or by war. Or people who over the past three decades have felt increasingly alienated and are no longer able to relate to the aspirations or ideologies of their nation or their institution. They seek if not crave equality, recognition, and the ability to belong. 

When Fraser, speaking to a room of academics, artists and intellectuals, stated that we are competitive and envious of each other’s work, for one moment it seems that the individuals scattered throughout the conference room all felt the same. That at one point or another they shared Fraser’s experience. And in that instant, they glanced at their colleagues across the room and felt somehow imperfect, somehow human, and somehow connected. What I’m suggesting here is not to valorize inequity as a normalizing or homogenizing agent, but rather to talk about issues of injustice openly and candidly. To risk exposure, scorn, contempt or pain in order to give voice to otherwise hidden moments of struggle. And in doing so to make the shift from an individual to a group, from a moment of vulnerability to a moment of empowerment, belonging, and being.    

CREATIVE TIME: Ana Labastida

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Ana Labastida, Community Student Fellow at California College of the Arts.

Keyword: Tactics

I propose that we consider the work of Donna Haraway on interspecies relations as a viable theoretical framework from which to elaborate strategies. Haraway defines "the world as a knot in motion" in which the interactions between species at all levels shape the world. I find that this perspective can provide a great tactical advantage: we can see ourselves within a pattern of relation. This calibrates our perception of our role in this planet. I find that this perspective addresses the vital need to participate in tactics that are coherent and complex enough to engage with the way our planet works not just our species. While sustaining all that is human, Haraway opens the discussion to the realm of all those others who live and die in this planet and with whom we are inextricably dependent. Haraway's ideas go beyond biological systems though and speak of the roles other living beings have culturally within human systems. I propose that rethinking histories and societies from this interwoven, agency-filled perspective of the world could allow us to be healthily demoted from our superior and lonely self-imposed exile which could maybe liberate some mental space to act responsibly.