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[Music] [Applause]

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[Music] [Applause]

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[Music] [Applause] cyrus thank you so much for hanging out

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with us this afternoon we deeply appreciate your time and was wondering if we could start in the broadest

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strokes if you could introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your practice great yeah thank you so much for the

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chance to have this conversation my name is cyrus marcus ware i’m an artist and

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an activist and a scholar and a parent and a twin and

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somebody who likes to be sort of involved in a lot of different things at any given time as an artist i’ve been

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practicing for about 25 years and have been making work that is explicitly about

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activism and about organizing and about different kinds of justice movements

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that i’ve been involved in um uh as a way of doing what tony cade bambera encouraged us to do to make the

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revolution irresistible through our artistic practices so um i’ve been

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working in a lot of different mediums i mean i started mostly working in painting

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and then shifted into doing a lot of drawing practice i’ve been making these very large scale portraits of activists

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that are you know 12 feet tall 10 feet tall that kind of celebrate their labor their

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organizing their love all of the things that they’re involved in um and then i have been working in

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performance art as well and through performance art uh got involved in

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organizing in theater uh and uh have now uh written several plays and uh

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performed them and you know it’s been a really exciting to get to work across different mediums and then

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as an activist and as a scholar you know i’ve been able to bring creative methods into those

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disciplines and so i’ve been an activist for 25 years as well and have always used creative methods in my organizing

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and so making banners and making textile art and you know sowing the revolutionary messages that need to lead

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the mart or need to be protection for the activists because we use our banners for a lot of reasons including to

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protect ourselves um you know that’s been part of my practice and then as a scholar writing about active empathetics

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and really trying to think through what it means to bring art and activism together in beautiful ways in order to

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be catalytic and spark and inspire revolutionary change uh both in the individual and in a

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system so yeah that’s sort of what i’ve been uh what i’ve been up to and what i’ve been

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working on is just this big idea of trying to figure out ways of

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supporting movements that are already ongoing that are trying to make the world a more just place and doing so

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using a variety of different methods and mediums that employ creativity and activism

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[Music] um i hope that this doesn’t take your

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introduction of yourself into a place that you don’t want to to go to but you

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and i worked together for a very long time at the art gallery of ontario and you were an educator working

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specifically with with youth and i wonder if you can talk about um

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that experience and how it intersects or not with um the way you just described yourself

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as an artist and activist yes i worked uh working primarily with

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youth uh for almost 15 years you know 14 years or so at the ago

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running the youth program and that grew out of my work um

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working in youth fields so i was working as an activist as an abolitionist uh

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working at places like patan the prisoners with hiv aids support action network and also act the aids committee

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of toronto doing inreach programming in jails and institutions and i talked

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explicitly about that in my interview for my job at the ago and i i think that

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they were like okay well this person is definitely offering something different than everyone else we’ve heard from um

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so anyways i i grew into uh working with youth in the arts out of that initial work around abolition and

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you know i was somebody who very i very much at that time believed and still very much believe

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in dismantling the the system of age segregation that

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creates um these sort of pockets of uh of of communities that are that

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are disconnected and so i really wanted to question

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why we were so fixed on age as a category of um

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sort of discernment in our society in ways that made it that youth were often discounted because they were

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generalized as one group and their ideas weren’t seen as valid and they were seen as future

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visitors or future leaders or future something not as full whole brilliant

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beings that are currently alive that have a lot to say you know and i can remember listening when i was an

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activist in the 90s i can remember there was okay this was dating me but there was this cassette tape that we got of

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this rally in new york and um it was around the war and around climate change

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and around uh indigenous resurgence at that time and um the the the key speaker that had

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blown everybody away which which is why there was that tape of her robert speech was 13. you know she was leading this

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you know massive massive rally with thousands and thousands and thousands of people in new

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york and she was 13 and she had so much to say and i knew in that moment that we

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were doing a real disservice by creating these sort of fixed categories

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of age that were relatively arbitrary and that were really rooted in capitalism and couple of ideas of

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productivity and availability and so all of this is to say i came into youth work

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questioning why we were doing youth work as a thing that was somehow separate

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from other work so i really tried to create the kind of youth program

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that gave a lot of autonomy and authority and power

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to the youth participants to be able to self-direct to be able to be seen as colleagues to be able to be seen as

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artists to be able to be engaged with with respect and with um

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consideration and really fought for um [Music]

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for their work to be considered inherently valuable because it was you know and not to have it just discounted

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or somehow dismissed because it was being made by somebody under the 18 to 35 capitalist

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productivity range you know um and similarly you know i was working

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with other colleagues and and and organizers at the ago like jillian

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mcintyre around some other things that were happening around older adults so adults who were available in the day

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because they were retired were also being kind of grouped into one lump and talked about as one thing and not seen

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as individuals and also not seen as contributors because they were seen as after a period of productivity and so

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really trying to dismantle these age categories while at the same time trying to create

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a really meaningful experience for these young people who had come and were excited about being in this youth

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program and were excited about engaging in art so you know there was a little bit of

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activism involved in that work you know i was bringing my art my activism and my

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creative approach to activism into that work and was saying you know how do we create a semi-autonomous zone you know

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in this youth center where magical things can happen where where up is down

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and down is up where the young people have are holding the reins where they are the ones who get to decide

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their destiny and what it was that they were meant to do with us you know and i think that it was really exciting to be able

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to create those kind of conditions even if they were temporary or they only were able to

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exist within a certain bubble they existed and that was really magical

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oh i love so many the things that you’re saying and i have a number of different sort of sparks and trajectories that i want to

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go but staying with you here in your response about thinking about the you know in some ways

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the arbitrary categories around clusters like youth

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or seniors or the way in which institutions tend to pod people of course academia and teaching and

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university is another space where this kind of work happens and where power and hierarchies are reinforced and

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i wonder how you think about your role as a professor artist activist along similar lines or with similar

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themes absolutely it’s so interesting being um i’m so thankful

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to be working in an academic environment that is really supportive of these kind

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of questions of questioning power questioning um you know questioning what we know to be

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true and questioning you know these kind of systems um so i feel i feel really

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supported in my institution to do this kind of exploration but i’ve been similarly you know thinking about

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that idea that chinurayapara talks about about creating these semi-autonomous zones in our classrooms as active as

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scholars and i love that uh if oh i i can i say one more reading to read but

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kara readings on activist scholarship is so

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incredible and i think has really guided a lot of my work but this idea of creating a semi-autonomous zone in the

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classroom where there are different conditions than normally exist in the academic industrial complex so i you

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know prior to the pandemic would have classrooms that had food you know i would have classrooms where we where we

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would collectively share uh responsibility for bringing in food to eat together or we would do

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creative projects as alternatives to written format projects where we would even in a non-art class you know where

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there were these different kinds of ways of engaging with each other that redistributed power

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in a different way and also this idea of risk and responsibility you know and what we were willing to do in

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the institution to push for the kinds of changes that needed to happen and how we could share that risk uh from doing that

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work um so i was really uh very thankful for that and then now in

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this virtual environment where we’re trying to learn in these you know most unlikely of conditions you know

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i’ve really been you know trying to think about uh how to [Music]

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engage with my students in a way that uh allows them to be fully embodied in this moment you know

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that allows them to uh feel supported and engaged with um

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uh as a peer you know who is also going through a pandemic who is also struggling with the reality

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um and really trying to disrupt some of the pressures of the academic industrial

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complex and its you know insistence on marking and grading and trying to think you know are there other ways that we

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can assess what is being learned um you know in ways that are more generative

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you know for the actual students involved so i think that there’s always room for activism to sprinkle some

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activism into our institutions and activist scholarship is something that is very uh

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great i’m very passionate about it for sure

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i’m wondering um you know given how

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obvious it is that um you question categories and you question

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our assumptions about um the way

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everything is defined or understood what did you think when you received the invitation to

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participate in something that we were calling a feminist art field school

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was that a a moniker that made sense to you or

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you had me at all of the words but you had me at field school

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you had me at field school because one of the things that i

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have been able to do that i feel very fortunate to have been able to do is defend the lab

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you know 18 to 20 years studying active history and i used to do a community

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radio show called resistance on the sound dial where i interviewed artists and activists i did that show for 17

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years and you know got to engage with so many incredible folks

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like artists like octavia butler activist lecture georgina buyer and you know you know artists like ursula

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wrecker like just really engage with artists and activists who were doing this kind of radical work and

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um you know i just feel very thankful for the chance to have been able to sort of

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study and learn about activist history yet there’s this incredible poster

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series that comes out of just these which is the print making collaborative and cooperative that’s uh across turtle

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island and they have um sort of an activist poster series and i

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have several of the ones that they have about the different field schools that sprung up in you know the 50s and the

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60s and 70s as a way of uh teaching communities in particular ways you know

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in ways that they weren’t learning in the traditional school system as a subversion so the idea of a field school

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is very appealing to me as an activist because i’ve seen the revolutionary potential of what a field school can do

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and then when you bring in the idea of in you know imbuing it with feminist

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politic and an art and art right and art and to be able to

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bring all of those things together it feels very uh very revolutionary you

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know and i think that we’re in a moment uh when you asked me initially

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we were in the beginning of uh the uprisings you know the uprisings hadn’t really begun yet of of that summer that

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would fall a couple of months later and very quickly it became apparent that we were in a revolution you know because

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revolution is not a one-time event but a process and we are in the middle of a revolutionary moment so

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um now is the moment for those principles of each one teach one which grows out of black revolutionary thought

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you know now is the moment for field schools now is the moment for feminist research now as a moment to

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dedicate ourselves to learning and knowledge together because literally everything is at stake in this

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moment because we are you know we are we’re in it now we are we are in this battle

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and a change is assured and assad shakur reminds us that we are going to win this

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so it’s just a moment to really we gather so very excited about the potential of what

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a feminist field school could do that was rooted in a creative application

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i wonder if you might think out loud with us about the role of space and

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place in your work so i know that you work in public in private in galleries

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on streets on screens in audio spaces and i know it’s a little bit of a

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chicken or an egg question does the project produce the space does the space produce the project but

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can we talk about space and place as it relates to your activism and your art

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yeah i’m very interested in this idea of public space and i think about i was

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just talking with a friend um the other day about those reclaim the street

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marches that used to happen in the 90s where we would gather it was warm so maybe it was june i want

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to say it was june someone can correct me but we would gather and do a snake march through the streets to

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you know who street bar street you know that that we were sort of reclaiming public spaced from the state even again

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even if it was just in the confines of the three hours of the march you know and

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the idea of public space being contested the idea that we’re living in a moment

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of incredible fights for indigenous resurgence where there are so many questions about

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land and about space you know where we’re seeing visibly seeing the presence of

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encampment in all of the parks you know all throughout the city that i’m in in toccaronto

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and you know the city not responding to the fact that there isn’t space or that they’re not creating space

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for people to be able to be housed and to be sort of cared for um so all of this you know leads me to understand

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that space is contested you know and then like this idea that space is the place space is you know such an

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essential question so i was able to work on a project um i’ve done several

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projects in public space but most recently did a project called radical love which

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was a project that grew out of an activist moment and became this sort of monument

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series that was exhibited at the benway and commission as part of their safety and public space project and i was you

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know commissioned to do a work about uh public safety and and i

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immediately thought of trans people and i immediately thought of

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this idea of these monuments because of course it was coming right at the end of the summer of uprisings where we had

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seen arrests because of paint splattered on statues you know

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uh that these statues were given more care than the activists who spent the night in jail and you know who had

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um [Music] experience such violence at the hands of the state so i was thinking about

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how the state was so intent on protecting these monuments to slavery and

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colonialism and how activists were so intent in taking them down and i was watching all

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over north america all over turtle island you know these monuments being pulled down and tossed in the river you

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know or institutions taking them down like the amnh in new york taking down

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the the teddy roosevelt uh statues so you know really interested to see toronto’s

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response of arrest and detainment uh rather than you know engaging in this

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question of what what should we do with these monuments um so i was really thinking a lot about that and i thought

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well what would happen if we did take these monuments down and what would we want to have if anything

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in their in their place you know and so in its place and so i started thinking

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about who i would love to see celebrated and honored in public space and of course that would be

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some of the activists who have really been fighting on the front lines and i think always of trans women of color

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um and i think of what sylvia rivera you know talked about about how trans people were often on the front lines because we

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had nothing left to lose um and i thought about the incredible labor

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of black trans women in our movements and uh the incredible

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labor and organizing of black non-binary folks and so i decided to create a series of monuments that were

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dedicated to black trans women and black non-binary folks and and black and

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afro-indigenous as well and i did these monuments that had portraits of monica

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forrester who’s a long-time sex worker activist and street outreach worker um

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portraits of a young lawyer to be named chris who’s been a

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longtime activist with blm and who is now trying to uh you know get involved

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in uh being able to advocate for people in their cases and portraits of raven wings who again is a long time organizer

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and activist and co-founder of black lives matter canada and so i did these portraits that were designed to light up

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they were like these shapes geometric shapes that lit up at night time because i had done a bunch of research

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before working on the project and i had interviewed trans people about their experience in public space and so many

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folks talked about not feeling safe in the daytime because there was more people

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more chance of transphobic encounters so there were people who talked about walking at 2 a.m and saving their

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their journeys for really late at night because there was less people so i thought well what would it look like

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i’m upon these things that were lit up just for you so that at 2 am there was a beacon of hope or light that you could

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sort of encounter as you were walking through the streets so that’s what they did but they also glowed in the day as well and um

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you know i’ve been really thinking about these kind of things with interventions in public space you know um we also did

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a um a 7 500 square foot mural on college street uh in front of police

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headquarters that fed defend the police you know right at the beginning of the uprisings and i designed the mural

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um i had to measure it out in this particular way that was not very obvious because i was right in front of the

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police station and i was like you couldn’t just get a measuring page and start measuring and to do it in this

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very surreptitious way but measured it out and designed this mural and just hoped that my you know grade 12 math

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was right you know that i could sort of extrapolate the drawing to 7 500 square feet and

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and it did in fact work and we created this beautiful very pink very queer mural that took up public space again

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you know and in that particular location and said you know this is the message that the people are bringing uh you know

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it’s time to get rid of these monuments to slavery and colonialism

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and the largest one being the police and prison system so um have really enjoyed

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working on these kinds of projects that make us think about public space in different ways that

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our uh pleasures to come upon as activists and

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organizers in the city to come and see an image of another activist or another

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trans person or to see a message that is close to your heart you know

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with an offering right i’ve been really interested in that and i love the idea

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of bringing creative elements into the city and out of the gallery for a variety of reasons

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i mean the gallery space is essential and i know that there’s a lot that needs to happen and i’m thankful

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always for the chance to show my work uh in galleries i’m very thankful but i really think about

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what emery douglass was doing as a revolutionary artist for the black panther party where when he created his

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artworks that were largely reproduced in the black panther magazine he would also

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do wheat pastes of them up in uh in neighborhoods

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where black people lived and he would make sure that the work that he was creating was exhibited in the street as

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well as in these other mediums so that it was more accessible to people and importantly he would write at the bottom

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how he made it because he what materials he used and how he made it because it was the school too he wanted to make

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sure that other people would be able to use the means of production to be able to make their own creations to be able

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to also put messages up on walls and i think that you know that

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idea of the public space being a potentially catalytic space for change making i

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really embrace that so i’m i’m i’m really excited about the chance to work in public space

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thank you i’m i’m going to try and make a link between um the public monument and the

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archives so we can talk a little bit about um the text that you’ve shared with us

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all power to all people and um you know thinking about the um

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the colonizers represented in those old style monuments

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um sir john a mcdonald and and the like um

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an argument made about uh leaving the

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the monuments in place is that um you know they are they’re

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markers of a history good and bad and that that they should be there so that we can engage with that history and of

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course a bronze sculpture of a man doesn’t

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tell the complex story um and one would assume that you could

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go to the archive to get the full story um

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that one one might assume that archives are um

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uh objective and that all of the information is there um but in your your article it becomes

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clear how um archives are also um

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failures of history telling as well can you talk a little bit about

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your experience working in archives and what what brought you to write that

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article yes absolutely i was uh very fortunate

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to get to work with dr jen harita warren on the project marvelous grounds which

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was the sort of queer counter-archiving project that looked at

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cutie bypak’s contributions in history in tacoronto and

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through that project got to really engage with what i had

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known for years to be true which was these huge gaps and holes

27:29

in local archives of black queer history so i spoke at the first ever querying black

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history month event which happened in maybe 2006 um you know back

27:43

at x university and um at that uh event there was this

27:49

discussion about the need for a black queer archive because there was so little trust

27:56

in places like what was then named the lesbian and gay archives when we talk

28:02

about an exclusive name they’ve since renamed themselves of the archives with a queue but you know just that there was

28:08

a lack of trust with uh the ability for that archive to

28:13

understand and interpret our material to be able to engage with the content to

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know how to preserve and care for it to understand uh how to program it

28:25

like there was just such steeped white supremacy within that archive uh that had and

28:31

other things that had led to to these issues of trust with the community that there was a need for something different

28:38

and so um you know i had been really engaged with this idea of trying to figure out

28:45

why particular things were being collected and why other things were not because of

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course archives are responsible in large ways for literally deciding who and what

28:56

we consider to be inherently valuable and who we consider valuable enough to be remembered

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you know and i uh i think about this story i heard of a trans woman um artist

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who is well known who has this incredible body of work who brought her work to the archives

29:16

to to donate it to the collection and then maybe a year and a half later

29:22

uh you know needed to borrow something back for an exhibition and went to the archives to find out if she could borrow

29:29

it back and they hadn’t even opened the box you know and there was just this lack of attentiveness and lack of

29:35

engagement with anything other than white gay males history and that was because of who was working

29:41

there that was because of the conditions and you know i was really concerned by that

29:47

but i had also had my own experiences being told that our memories were not

29:54

the memories and our stories were not the stories that were going to be

30:01

recorded uh about queer history in toronto so i had had this engagement to talk about in

30:07

the end of the article with um a self-proclaimed proclaimed uh sort

30:12

of elder community elder who had been there at the bath house raids and had been there in the organizing in the days

30:19

after and had played a pivotal role in organizing and even though

30:25

in the video that nancy nichols shot uh that documents the bathhouse raids you

30:30

can see the video of indigenous two-spirit activist billy moraspi

30:36

running up the stairs of the legislature and rattling the doors and being physically there so that that person is

30:43

the person who had that image that everyone will remember even though we actually have it on video

30:51

this elder was like you know there were no trans people of color there i know i

30:56

would have remembered so it was like it didn’t matter that monica forester exists it didn’t matter

31:02

that she was doing all this incredible work in toccaronto at that time that she’s a real human being this person

31:08

didn’t know notice her or know her so it she didn’t exist her contributions were erased and i think that that largely was

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my experience within a lot of white queer organizing was that uh the contributions and the stories of

31:23

racialized people were being disregarded and when we were working on marvelous grounds we had uh you know this idea of

31:31

doing this in a different way of counter archiving and um you know one of the ways that we did

31:36

that was by collecting stories in an alternative format so doing interviews and you know doing and having people

31:43

write narrative stories and there was this uh reviewer who reviewed our work

31:48

before it went to publication and they questioned again it was a white queer

31:53

um an elder who questioned an article by a queer elder of color who talked about

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uh her experience in this early queer group and how there was this you know

32:06

there were there were women of color in the group and the elder was like no there weren’t i would remember so you should take it out of

32:13

the book and and just so dismiss it right so just this way where the white

32:18

memory becomes the memory and anything else is somehow erased from history so

32:24

um to me that’s outrageous you know that’s just absolutely outrageous and so i’ve been very interested in the archive

32:31

the radical potential of counter-archiving of the stories that we tell in retail when we’re together on

32:37

the corner of the ways that we uh you know archive our community every time we

32:42

gather for blockarama of the ways that we tell our stories and you know these underground community radio shows and

32:49

and things like that the ways that we sort of capture these things because we know that if we just rely

32:57

on these mainstream archives that are allegedly neutral they are not going to do the job of capturing our stories i

33:04

had interviewed monica forrester about her early organizing and she said and i talk

33:11

about this in the article she says oh i wish we had taken pictures or i wish we had saved pictures as if it was somehow

33:18

her responsibility to collect and archive this movement

33:23

when other people’s stuff was being rapidly collected so it actually wasn’t on her it was on

33:29

whoever was in power at that time who was deciding who was inherently valuable so anyways

33:35

here we go in this revolutionary moment where everything is up in the air where the fires are burning where change is

33:42

coming i’m really interested in how we capture this moment and how we remember

33:48

who was involved in organizing in this moment who was at the front lines and who was doing the underground or the

33:54

background work and who was doing like just how are we going to capture this moment and how are we going to record it

34:00

so that you know people aren’t being erased you know so that the contributions of all of these different

34:06

communities aren’t being erased from this magical time that we find ourselves in

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thank you you know thinking about capturing and recording and remembering i’m returning to

34:19

a sentence that you offered early in our conversation about things being beautiful in order to be catalytic

34:25

and so i was wondering if you

34:30

might reflect on the role of beauty in social

34:36

movement building or the role of beauty in your art making yeah i mean

34:42

one of the things i’ll talk about is the activist portrait series that i’ve been drawing you know because it was just

34:48

this opportunity for me to show this outpouring of love

34:55

to these activists right um because i get to draw them at their

35:00

absolute most beautiful best you know where they’re in a moment i you know i interview them and i ask them these

35:06

questions and i take photographs and then draw from photographs and so i capture them when they’re

35:12

you know in that moment of reverie where they’re you know talking about love or they’re talking about change and uh and

35:19

i get to draw them you know as as their beautiful whole selves you know

35:24

and part of why i do that is because there was the reaction to using a super realist

35:31

approach an aesthetic and capturing someone in the middle of a

35:36

movement or in the middle of speech and drawing it at that large scale is that

35:42

it creates i’ve experienced it creates a response in the viewer where they want

35:48

to get to know the person better which is fundamentally if that could be a good outcome of this project that is

35:54

so that would be such a wonderful outcome that we want to care about these activists more that we want to make sure

36:01

that they survive that we want to get to know them we want to support them that we want to engage with them you know so

36:09

using these drawings as a way of ensuring a connectivity and a support

36:15

for these organizers seems uh really essential um and so doing it through

36:22

beautiful drawings that kind of draw you in and you’re like oh come look for the drawing and then stay for the activism

36:28

and like learn about this person and find out more about them and want to know um you know that’s really a big thing

36:35

and i think that with you know our activist aesthetics you know the way that like i’m so in love

36:42

with banners you know i’m just so in love with banners i just think about them

36:48

i they’re such an underestimated tool of the revolution because of course we use

36:53

them to set the stage we use them to block traffic we use them to literally hide

37:01

people when the police come in so that people can kind of get behind them and get away we use them in all of these

37:07

beautiful ways and it’s that moment where the artist has finished making the banner they’ve dropped the banner off or

37:14

they’ve you know shown up in the morning with the banner and we’re setting up for the press conference we’re setting up

37:19

for the rally and the banner gets unfurled and everybody is just like oh

37:25

you know because it’s this beautiful thing that has this message that we’re all about to to get behind and quite

37:31

literally get behind and march with and i just think about that there was this incredible banner that jenna reed made

37:38

for this gathering that we did in ottawa uh uh of black uh and indigenous families who had been affected by police

37:45

violence who had lost loved ones because of police violence and she had made this banner that said black and indigenous

37:51

families matter and it had these in each of the letters it had both um sort of

37:56

african print fabric but also sort of indigenous uh um

38:01

um sort of symbols and messages that were significant like there was like a medicine there’s these different things

38:07

that sort of told this story again with bright neon red and colored

38:13

gorgeous just such a gorgeous and when the family fathers and not only saw that they were going to get to stand in front

38:20

of it but that someone had made this for them you know to support them to support

38:25

their family to support this fight that they were in it was so powerful and then the power of that artistic moment just

38:34

can’t be underestimated so you know beautiful banner also goes quite a long way you know it is literally used for

38:41

everything so i i teach banner making workshops all the time uh because i really think it’s a skill

38:47

that everyone should know because it’s i mean they’re really fun to make but also they are so useful in the revolution

38:53

they are so useful in our organizing you know ratatat you spread it out put a table press conference in the middle of

38:59

an introspection baby you’ve got it you know you block traffic you’ve got a visual you know a really beautiful

39:04

banner can do a lot so i think a lot about um how to

39:11

you know so much of what we do with the kind of blm style organizing that we do

39:17

it’s very much about how do you grab people’s attention how do you do something that is unexpected how do you

39:24

go bigger than you’ve ever imagined how do you sort of surprise people along the way so

39:30

you know grabbing people through uh an awe-inspiring show of beauty is a

39:35

big part of what we do there’s a reason why that mural was neon pink you know there’s a reason why that

39:41

mural was at scale you know it’s it’s it’s absolutely to be seen from from

39:47

the sky from faith this beautiful message um [Music]

39:53

so beauty is a big part of it for sure

39:59

um now is the time in the conversation where we start to talk about um

40:06

institutions and what role institutions have in in social

40:12

justice and activism and ensuring better futures for us all

40:17

um from everything that you’ve said this is clearly something that you think about a

40:23

lot um it’s also clear that um you know our

40:29

um we were probably infusing that question with an understanding of the institution

40:35

as the museum or um academia because of of uh this partnership between uvic and

40:44

and the art gallery of greater victoria um but you think you are thinking about all different kinds of institutions so i

40:51

don’t know if that that question is too too wide open um in that in that form

40:58

um and i will ask another question which is um a more specific question

41:04

just thinking about the way you described um banners and

41:10

uh the kind of um kind of what’s the word i’m looking for i was gonna say aesthetic that’s not

41:17

that’s not quite what i what i mean but the sort of um

41:23

visual and process driven things that you’re thinking about when you’re building

41:29

a protest you talked about like going big attention grabbing beauty

41:36

um those all seem like things that would make a really exhibition and really draw

41:42

people in so on a on a more practical level what does activism have to teach

41:50

to museums and exhibition makers i think the biggest thing that activism

41:56

has to teach to museum and exhibition makers is that

42:01

taking risks can be can have really incredible outcomes but

42:06

it is okay to take a chance to try something bold

42:12

um you know that’s that’s one thing and the reason why big and bold works for us is because we

42:19

put trust in community and we work with community to pull off anything that we do so we’ve never done

42:26

anything on our own we’ve always done it with community by community for community which is

42:31

something that museum and institutions could learn don’t be afraid of working with community embrace working with

42:38

community and bringing more community in to decision making and into can you know

42:45

and into into these kinds of uh rules it really strengthens the work and

42:51

it balances the out over many shoulders and it allows uh more things to be

42:56

possible when we did that 7 500 square foot mural we worked with 80 artists 80

43:02

community members uh coming together who had to be trusted with a plan who had to be trusted with you know very you know

43:10

trust we had to trust our community and we were able to do huge risky things

43:16

because we could trust in our community because we had built that trust so that’s another thing is you know really

43:21

learning to lean into and learn and work with your community [Music]

43:28

and building that as core to your work i think a lot of institutions think of

43:33

community engagement as something that only ever exclusively lives in education if at all

43:40

and i think that bringing community into all sorts of decision making um like if

43:46

there was community advisories around everything from the menu and the restaurant to who we picked for the next

43:53

board member you know like wouldn’t that be so different it would just and and the community would trust you so much more

43:59

because they’d be invested they’d be like oh i’m involved here like this is my space too so um that feels kind of

44:06

like something that we could kind of learn from activism i think that there’s you know this idea that it’s okay

44:14

and in fact beneficial to really take a strong stand on a

44:19

particular issue rather than trying to um

44:24

just appeal to everyone you know like that it is okay and in fact beneficial

44:30

to be bold and to talk about social issues that are happening in the world to be part of change making you know

44:36

that’s something that uh you know could definitely be learned um

44:42

and then i think that you know that there is just uh

44:48

responsiveness that activism brings where you know uh rapid response um

44:57

a way of engaging with social things that are happening in the

45:02

world quickly rather than having say being so married to a 12 month or a 36

45:10

month or 48 month calendar that you can’t respond to say a summer of

45:15

uprisings that are coming that you can’t be like let’s do a show about uprising oh we can’t we booked it we’re booked

45:21

until 2023. you know like activism is very much about uh rapid response and

45:27

leaving the moment and using each moment to be able to talk about bigger and better things um

45:33

and i think that figuring out ways of being agile um and being responsive

45:39

um would really behoove it you know it would really do well for

45:44

institutions in terms of seeming more relevant and seeming more engaged and connected to social issues

45:50

and so um you know we’re not in a moment where politics and political art is going to

45:58

go out of fashion or die down because we’re in a revolution and so it’s you know the best indicator of future

46:04

behavior is past behavior and you can kind of study the way that you know art responds in moments of

46:11

social unrest and you know susan kahan’s mounting frustrations really talks about that and so we know that we’re in this

46:17

for a moment so why not get involved in the in the conversation so in order to

46:22

do that you’ve got to take the risk in order to do that you have to have the trust of the community and in order to do that you have to actually be you know

46:29

able to respond and wiggle your calendar in order to respond to things that are

46:34

happening um [Music] yeah i really think that we could think about

46:41

abolition in our institutions and the way that abolition offers us an opportunity to

46:47

reimagine our community and say what do we want this to look like and feel like in 20 years you know how do we want to

46:55

be together how do we want to relate to each other how do we want to respond to conflict crisis and harm how do we want

47:01

to experience love you know abolition questions as you know they they have us

47:07

question all of these things when we start to talk about abolition and if we brought that into an institutional

47:12

format and said well what are the conditions here how do we want to feel i mean i worked in institutions for years

47:19

and i know that they could feel better than they do it could feel better being in the environment where we’re working

47:26

together we could feel more like a cohesive team than we do often and i think that we have a lot to learn

47:32

about this rebirthing uh regrowing uh this new society that abolitionists are

47:38

dreaming into being that is rooted in collective care that is rooted in this idea that we take care of each other

47:44

that is rooted in love you know we have a lot to learn from that and imagine if our institutions started to transform in

47:51

the same way that our social world is starting to transform to reorient a little bit more towards taking care of

47:58

each other towards care as a principal you know maybe institutions wouldn’t

48:03

feel so institutional maybe they wouldn’t feel so cold maybe they would feel more like a lifeblood maybe they

48:10

would feel more like a community like you would be joining a community when you started to work in an institution

48:17

because you know imagine you’re you’re joining a team of 500 people sometimes in these institutions and yet it doesn’t

48:23

feel like a community you know so what what would it what would it take to make that happen and how beautiful would it

48:29

be if you were in a team of 500 and you felt like you trusted each other and like you could do anything because you

48:35

had that trust big bold you know so yeah

48:40

this is the perfect opportunity in this moment for institutions to listen and

48:45

learn and and really pay attention to how activists are doing it and

48:50

getting it done because some pretty radical and magical stuff is happening right now

48:57

those are some pretty extraordinary concluding thoughts and i wonder if we might close out our conversation

49:04

with a question about what is most exciting to you these days where are you going

49:10

next what are you doing and how can we find you as we continue these conversations yes i mean amazing i’m so

49:17

currently completely obsessed with uh my longtime love speculative fiction

49:23

and i’ve been writing a lot of plays that are speculative fiction so i’m working on a new project that’s uh part

49:30

two of a project i did called antarctica that was at the biennial for 2019 in

49:36

toronto in tacoronto and so i’m doing a follow-up to that project for the 2022

49:41

biennial and it’s called uh mary birdland or freedom which is mary berlin

49:47

is the name of the one free territory in antarctica that hasn’t been claimed by anyone um so the the project is a film

49:54

and installation and it tells the story about what happens to these three bypoc

49:59

antarcticans when they reach the free territory and try to set up their own space

50:05

um and a spoiler alert nothing is what they expected so it’s been really

50:10

amazing working on film uh working with um a film crew working

50:16

with michelan lao on camera which has been amazing and then the actors reprising

50:21

their roles yusuf kadura danke smith and raven wing but then also adding keith

50:26

salazar um as uh one of the characters which i i don’t want to give it away but that is another

50:33

character and it’s been amazing we’ve been really having a lot of fun and getting to talk about colonization and

50:39

getting to talk about white supremacy and getting to talk about climate change through the storytelling and again

50:45

bright you know elaborate textiles there are these geodesic domes like there’s just it’s

50:51

been really really beautiful so i’m really excited and working on that and

50:57

that will be at the toronto biennial starting in march 2022 and you can find out more information at

51:04

my website which is myname.com

51:10

thanks cyrus fantastic thank you so much thank you

51:17

such a pleasure as always i must say that uh i in our conversation in chicago now a

51:23

few years ago we were walking through a frank lloyd wright house i think and we were talking

51:28

about you know the onstage versus the off-stage conversations that we have in a variety of institutional contexts and

51:35

you had casually mentioned you know institutional resource extraction that’s something we do where we’re repro you

51:41

know repurposing departmental funds or moving things around in ways that the institution might not know i have to

51:47

tell you how many times a month i use the phrase institutional resource extraction and

51:53

cite you without fail but i really do feel like it’s it’s its own method and deserves

51:59

its own time and space and in another conversation at another time

52:04

it’s the light it’s it’s how you get anything done [Laughter] exactly well thanks for hanging out with

52:10

us today we will link you up to the field school it you know these conversation pods will live online

52:16

through the aggv hopefully for a long time and we hope to keep adding to them long after

52:22

the frame of this first iteration and that we keep the initiative malleable and ever transforming and we’re grateful

52:29

that you’re a part thank you good luck with everything thanks

52:35

thank you

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