Land, Life, Liberation (part 4)
This is the forth in a series of five conversations with Decolonize This Place and their friends, comrades, and collaborators, presented in conjunction with their initiative When We Breathe We Breathe Together hosted by the Art Gallery of Guelph from January 21 – April 25, 2021.
Taking its lead from the collective’s newly-released Decolonial Operations Manual, the series serves as the first step in building out When We Breathe We Breathe Together as a platform for organizing and action – not only taking stock of the multiple crises currently affecting the world of museums, but also thinking together about how movement initiatives can activate cultural institutions as sites of struggle and transformation. For more information: https://artgalleryofguelph.ca/exhibit…Land, Life, Liberation (part 4)
This is the forth in a series of five conversations with Decolonize This Place and their friends, comrades, and …
Key moments
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Sally Frater
Sally Frater
6:11
Sally Frater
6:11
Spatial Justice
Spatial Justice
31:29
Spatial Justice
31:29
African Colonial Photography and Outlaws of History
African Colonial Photography and Outlaws of History
50:24
African Colonial Photography and Outlaws of History
50:24
Black Animals
Black Animals
52:54
Black Animals
52:54
What Is the Role of Artists
What Is the Role of Artists
1:02:46
What Is the Role of Artists
1:02:46
Black Portraiture
Black Portraiture
1:29:45
Black Portraiture
1:29:45
How Do We Create Spaces of Decolonization
How Do We Create Spaces of Decolonization
1:34:34
How Do We Create Spaces of Decolonization
1:34:34
Last Thoughts
Last Thoughts
1:59:52
Last Thoughts
1:59:52
Use CTRL+F to find key words if it is a longer transcript.
0:05
okay good afternoon and welcome to land life and liberation part four my name is sally frater and i am the
0:12
curator of the decolonize this place exhibition when we breathe we breathe together
0:18
at our gallery of guelph i’m going to begin our time together with the art gallery of wealth’s land acknowledgement
0:25
today guelph is home to many first nations metis and inui people from across turtle island as we gather together we would
0:32
like to acknowledge that the art gallery of guelph resides on the ancestral lands of the atawanderen people
0:38
and more recently these treaty lands and territory of the mississaugas of the credit we recognize the significance of the
0:45
dish with one spoon covenant to this land and offer our respect to our anishinabe
0:51
haru nashane and neti neighbors as we strive to strengthen our relationships with them
0:57
we express our gratitude for sharing these lands for mutual benefit although we are convening virtually it
1:04
might individually be located in different places it is useful for us all to remember that
1:09
wherever we are in what we are currently referred to or what we currently refer to as the
1:15
americas we are on indigenous land and that we should move forward in the spirit of mindfulness
1:20
and reciprocity before we begin i would just like to
1:26
take a moment to acknowledge the i guess recent
1:32
but not new rise of anti-asian violence that is happening in canada in
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the us and i just wanted to mention asian americans advancing justice
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that’s that organization is offering free bystander intervention training as is stop aapi
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hate and in here in canada there is fight coveted racism all of these organizations are great
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resources for information before we begin some brief housekeeping
2:04
notes since we are in a zoom webinar everyone’s microphones are turned off you’re welcome to submit questions
2:10
throughout the conversation using the chat function and we will share them with the participants following the close of the
2:15
conversation i’d also like to say a quick thank you to shauna mccabe and jenna brownlow for their technical support
2:21
for this series land life and liberation is a series of five conversations
2:27
that have been unfolding as an accompaniment to the decolonizes place exhibition when we breathe we breathe
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together which i guess is technically still on at the art gallery of guelph until april
2:38
25th but now it will be accessible mainly um by online because of the recent
2:46
um closures which have been mandated by the province of ontario the exhibitions and
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conversations center the d colonial operations manual which can be downloaded on the websites
2:59
of decolonize this place and the art gallery of guelph as a starting point for reflection and
3:05
action the d colonial operations manual embodies the principle of movement-generated media
3:12
and is a document offered as a tool of study reflection and action the manual is grounded in five years of
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collective thinking art making and organizing undertaken by decolonize this place with dozens of
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groups in new york city then ap hoking and beyond with numerous references to
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movement work preceding the establishment of decolonizes place in 2016.
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the scale material quantity and distribution form of the manual underscores the importance of freely
3:44
shared printed matter in the work of movement building our conversations will explore a number of
3:51
threads related to the confluence of land sovereignty liberation and resistance
3:57
for today’s conversation decolonize this place will be joined by amwam abkha latanya otri
4:03
harry burke and yours truly sally froeder abbam abkha is a professor of drama
4:10
social and cultural analysis at nyu abu dhabi and is the author of theater and post-colonial desires
4:18
from routledge to from 2003 he is the director of film documentaries
4:24
and the curator of visual and performing arts has written several articles on
4:30
representations in africa and its diasporas representations and modernisms in theater
4:36
post-colonial theater and black atlantic films latonya s otri has organized exhibitions
4:44
and programming at the museum of contemporary art cleveland yale university art gallery
4:49
art space new haven mississippi museum of art and other institutions through her
4:55
graduate studies at the university of delaware where she is completing her phd in art history
5:00
latonya has developed expertise in the art of the united states photography and museums
5:06
her dissertation the crossroads of commemoration lynching landscapes in america which
5:12
analyzes how individuals and communities memorialize lynching violence in the built environment
5:18
concentrates on the interplay of race representation memory and public space
5:24
harry burke is a british poet critic and curator he was a curator at art of space new
5:30
york where he organized a performance in reading program he collaborated on the exhibition of
5:36
whole king man and hani lippard at saltz basil co-organized
5:41
the precious with precious goku human the segway reading series in new york
5:47
city poetry is practice for the new museum in new york and random house for arcadia misa in
5:53
london he curated exhibitions at the cell project space in london
5:58
and at the contemporary arts center in venezius his writings have appeared in tex
6:04
zorokunst art in america spike art quarterly moose and several artists anthologies
6:12
sally frater is interested in decolonization space and place black and caribbean diasporas
6:18
photography art of the yes every day and issues of equity and representation in physiological spaces she has curated
6:26
solo and group exhibitions for institutions such as the art gallery of guelph bellridge museum of art mccall center
6:32
for art and innovation the glaselle school of art at the museum of fine arts houston the justina and barney gallery at the
6:38
university of toronto project row houses and center three for artistic and social practice
6:46
she is a member of the association of art museum curators and is an alumna of independent curators international
6:53
and is currently the executive director of hotel galleries so i am going to turn things over to you
7:00
i mean natasha take it from here
7:09
um hi everyone sorry i was a few minutes late i’m in delhi right now and we have a curfew uh
7:14
going on so there’s like a cab rush that happens so i got really i’m trying to um get that but i’m really
7:22
excited about this conversation and thank you uh you know harry latonya um and sally to
7:28
join us today uh this is actually really exciting and actually you know we’re a little late on having this conversation specifically around
7:35
uh curio like curatorial roles within you know the movement for uh liberation
7:41
within the arts and that how that moves on to movement spaces as well um some of the things that we on our own
7:46
have been thinking about is how can art be a space for century and how can art institutions or galleries
7:53
really work towards that and something that you know is within the colonial abolitionist and anti-imperial frameworks um one of
8:00
the things that you know we’ve been struggling with specifically in the context of art institutions is
8:05
um that when you have movements like this especially this was a struggle with the whitney uh museum because you know we kind of uh went in
8:12
at the same time when the binaural was opening right and and when during the biennial uh one of the things that we um faced was that
8:18
it was the first time this is a biennial which is really diverse in terms of you know people of
8:24
color indigenous black brown queer you know trans folks for the first time you have more than 50
8:29
of the bioneer being that um but when it comes around movement lines right
8:34
that that almost automatically seems to be like a reverse cricket line like as if you’re going you know when you start
8:40
talking about uh you know what’s happening at the institution there’s often this this notion that we like you know that
8:46
the people around the movement are not seeing how this is also important and so from our side i think a lot of
8:52
times what we’ve said is there isn’t a binary between being inside the institution and outside we are part of some institution or the
8:58
other but you know um one of the things that we’re really interested in is like how do you heighten these contradictions and how do
9:04
you further push you know decolonization abolition frameworks and how do you actually
9:10
start thinking about these structures now and not wait for any institution to accept this process right um being like okay
9:16
now finally officially we’re going on to a deep global process versus how can we uh work on it already like it’s already
9:23
happening as well um so those are some of the questions i think and it’s not just you know for it’s not just a question for curators
9:30
but i think this is like as artists as curators as art historians or as academics
9:35
or as movement people you know um who do see who that sits on these boards and how these things impact their communities
9:42
this is a really urgent question in terms of what are our institutions today and and how can they be actually uh
9:48
pushed further to be these spaces of century so um yeah that’s all i want to say
9:55
and then i can just add just some things to kind of bring into the room you know um
10:02
to the extent that decolonize this place has has done things kind of um against museums but
10:09
also kind of with museum workers and curators and these kind of things we’ve always
10:15
tried to not not acknowledge the inside and outside and see the diversity of tactics and
10:20
strategies and positions that could be held and the relational organizing that
10:26
can happen and the type of conversations that can emanate and i think that we’ve entered galleries only twice this
10:33
is the second time and the first time we’ve used it with the intention so both curators at that
10:39
moment are with us today and you know we’re also happy to kind of think uh alongside you of like what how do
10:48
things like this happen and how can curation and exhibition and whatever kind of be in
10:54
service of people and struggles and movements versus you know people that are in control of
11:00
these institutions and i think that’s the last point if if people can think about
11:06
representation and inclusion inclusion and assimilation in contrast to kind of liberatory
11:13
frameworks liberatory institutions institutions that are kind of um on the side of people against fascism
11:20
against these kind of things and if that’s just an aspirational thing or there’s something really there
11:27
um so yeah uh so uh excited uh latanya you take it from
11:33
here yeah thank you so much for this invitation to be in discussion
11:40
and um i’ve been following you know dtp for years and kyle
11:46
um thank you for reaching out to ask me to participate in this i had the pleasure of working with both
11:52
kyle and by moana numatello on a show i did last year called temporary spaces of joy and freedom
11:58
and that was a really important show for me it was really small um a small show but i actually feel like it
12:03
was where i started kind of really figuring out some things about myself and i’ll just start with like i’m
12:10
somebody who has this very traditional training in art history i’m trying to finish a phd at university of delaware
12:16
it’s a very conservative very white program um i found that i needed a whole lot of
12:21
other things for the type of work i wanted to do so i started studying a whole lot of other areas you know finding things and
12:29
doing a lot of black studies actually in particular and then later finding the decolonial studies and things like
12:34
that and so some of my aspirations originally for curatorial work
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and i wasn’t actually i’ve just admit this for real i being a curator has been kind of like
12:46
a it wasn’t the first thing for me going into museums i was studying the museum so being in the space was a way for me
12:52
to unpack and understand how racism operates through the institution um while i was in it i happen to also
12:59
get experience to learn how to curate shows so that’s been like a plus point but it also has come with like you know a lot of
13:05
emotional baggage being in the heart of the beast so i’ve worked in these very white institutions as often the only black person that
13:12
always the only black person but also almost always the only person of color in these spaces and it’s been just
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it’s been really grueling so temporary spaces and a joy of freedom worked with um liam batas masaki simpson scholarship
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and it was really wonderful to try to find artists that i thought
13:30
not just represent but their practice is doing these kind of things that leanne
13:36
talks about um how she she’s thinking about you know decolonial work
13:41
that was a joy to work on our show and i felt like i was really in tandem with the artist the show i
13:47
have up now i have to say i have to admit you know while i like a lot of aspects of it and i think it’s doing some important work
13:53
and i want to talk about it more with you um i feel like this is kind of feeling more like a representation show
13:59
um it feels very different and it’s kind of funny it was a show i had in mind but it was maybe my older version of myself
14:05
that i went back to to do this show called imagine otherwise i i’ve been really struggling with it to
14:10
tell you the truth i think a lot of times the different scholars so um i mentioned leanne uh so i’ve been
14:15
thinking a lot with fred moten’s work from the under comments to be in but not of that concept
14:20
i’ve been trying to think of my role when i was in those institutions as that like i was trying to you know
14:26
steal from the institution and put the resources in the community where it should be or with artists
14:32
the artists who do the work not just representations that look like whatever that can be really beautiful and great
14:37
but it had for me it’s got to be about the practice i have found that being the person who’s in
14:42
with no support has been a nightmare it’s very hard and i had to get out and i recently
14:48
finished in mocha cleveland um also a big idea i’ve been thinking a lot about is working in
14:55
collaboration with people who talk about transformation of museums for me the
15:01
transformation involves an abolitionist decolonization kind of perspective
15:07
although a lot of the people who are kind of even saying they’re about transformation they’re still talking about reform and that’s been um
15:14
that’s a lot of people in this whole kind of museum field sphere even though they think they’re doing something more you know whatever they
15:21
think they’re being more progressive but i still find most of them are into this kind of gradual approach and that we’re going to fix these places
15:27
you’re not going to fix them that’s they’re actually working as planned there’s nothing really broken about them
15:33
they are what they are um it’s hard i don’t know what the answer is i i’m pretty much happy to get out of
15:38
those institutions and now trying to collaborate with more of the things that i think are on the right
15:45
you know zone and trying to figure out how to put funding there i’m more about divesting from those
15:51
other institutions and just putting the money in other spaces and building up more activities
15:59
thank you um [Music] hi good evening and thank you for giving
16:05
me this opportunity to be part of this conversation no let me just come into it from
16:11
two angles one with a story last week i was actually on a panel um
16:19
in rome where museums are coming to terms in europe anyway about restitution
16:24
and returning artifacts the art forms that were stolen from africa
16:30
during the colonial times in fact the museum in brussels went as far as authenticating those artifacts by
16:37
getting congolese people to videos into sparse with the exhibition to show that
16:43
listen they’re okay with it being there and so on and um i’ve been there i keep getting troubled by those
16:49
invitations because and i always respond by saying i’m not gonna be the confessors for those
16:55
museums and and so on and uh the other point there i always made to them
17:00
because they always say well africans cannot actually afford to maintain those now the main the issue
17:07
there is of course a lot of those works were at different historical moments motifs of um there were textual systems
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right there were motifs and some of them actually because of the materials that were built in degeneration is part of the aesthetic
17:23
right so this museum spent a lot of money conserving preserving and so on and thereby taking the discursive
17:31
essence of most of those works and i used to say things to them like if if you sold me those words today i
17:37
would not buy them they just don’t have they’ve lost their significance um
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in fact what’s going on across europe now is museums are trying to re-signify those by trying to claim
17:48
they’re liberal they’re talking to africans they’re considering returning some of them etc but i feel
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that’s just a way of augmenting the lost value of those works
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rather than any laboratory or generosity to uh the sites they stole them from and
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the other part of them i thought telling the story of um benko’s famous film pichote where this
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little street kid from sao paulo um found this expensive cars packed
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in his uh perch uh and he started scratching these expensive cars with his coin
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and the policeman stopped him what are you doing and he just said what i do with my money is my business
18:29
uh it’s a way of telling them that you know if you sell those words if the africans
18:35
like they can eat them they can burn them they don’t it’s not your business what they do it’s theirs so just return that so um
18:44
for me the idea of decolonization also matters because it matters that it’s not imagined as a
18:50
moment as an event it matters that it’s it’s really recognized as a permanent
18:56
process of reinvention of asking questions about social inequities and adjusting and
19:02
strategizing against them it’s really supposed to inaugurate
19:08
counter-hegemonic attitudes with which people produce what i will call like a accountant
19:15
metaphysics right it’s a way of being a way of being in a reality that’s so historically
19:22
staged against the people uh that are looking at these works and so on or from
19:28
whom these works were taken uh so that i i for me as a curator i
19:33
staged my exhibitions and the exhibition space as a contested space i
19:39
don’t assume people will come and like the work i actually want to state it to show that these works as textual systems
19:47
are contestatory and i want to actually encourage the contestary narrative of
19:53
place but also narratives of spaces so that people are really not just saying well this place is great
20:00
they’re doing more progressive work etc but it challenges the historicity of the
20:05
place it challenges the selection process it challenges the hegemonic way with
20:10
which a textual system and conventions of reading them had historical approaches are instituted etc
20:18
and so um but it also makes the counterpoint that uh the assumption that people who
20:25
are misrepresented in this art forms in these spaces in galleries and museums
20:30
the assumption that that’s enough to traumatize the people and and it’s really
20:37
underestimating the contestatory innate energy that people live through every day uh trying to
20:44
negate um different kinds of domineering uh ways of being right so so so
20:52
for for me what happens is that um it’s a kind of a contested uh theory of
20:58
reality where one is hegemonic and the other it’s a counter-hegemonic
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energy that’s permanent and it’s always what it does it’s almost like as a way
21:09
of seeing it fragments the meaning that it’s that we see and
21:14
we create bricolages and we reassemble them and we break them down again
21:20
that permanent process of reinvention is what people whose works of people who
21:25
are textually summarized and symbolized in museums and galleries and so on
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that is what keeps those people actually alive and in a permanent state of decolonization and in some of those
21:39
some of the ethnographic assumption that these art forms actually tell the real story of these
21:45
peoples they ignore the various opacities that are included in the cultures of people
21:51
you know it’s like they’re like anthropologists or ethnographers assuming just because they interviewed some native people
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that gave them all the information right and so that kind of assumption which is so very
22:03
arrogant is one of the things that i try to make sure that the stage when sometimes the artists that are put
22:10
in dialogue they’re contesting the place they’re contesting this uh um the the text they’re producing a counter
22:18
uh um archive they say see what it is well see us fragmented see us read
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turn it into bricklage see us re-energize it and the reception does not finish in the
22:29
gallery of course the discursiveness of these sexual forms happens outside the gallery
22:35
it feeds into social movements it feeds into ways by which people actually articulate
22:41
history so for me it’s important to also stress that for people who are in a permanent state
22:47
of decolonization you spend your entire life your subjectivity
22:52
as being in excess of any one place right so that there’s not enough place
22:59
to occupy to corral and to dominate and that defiance suggests that that
23:05
these folks whose histories are in excess of the institutions that are trying to tell their stories
23:11
and that excess is where the energies of decolonization lies uh so for me um the the whole
23:19
conversation is that these institutions exist they’re hegemonic mostly or sometimes
23:25
they try to welcome oppositional perspectives only to incorporate them
23:31
um they’re more cosmetic than real and when they do that their readership uh what people do with
23:38
the readership in other words the discursiveness of the work is where the real ideas of
23:43
interpretation happen not just in the textual coherence of the world is the ways of being with this work
23:51
where people are expressing a permanent state of becoming and that those textual forms that simply
23:58
summarize them at moments of being right or even places of belonging they’re saying no we’re in
24:04
excess of those ideas and symbolisms of our being or when excess even of the places we
24:10
belong right and and and that contested catastrophe
24:15
attitude is what i try to invoke when i even stage the work and also the kinds
24:21
of people that are encouraged to engage the work so that for me it’s a conversation
24:26
that’s endless and open-ended and that’s not fema it’s not based on thesis but really it
24:33
begs the questions
24:39
thank you alan thank you um uh we have sally
24:48
um i wasn’t actually ready to go first i thought maybe harry could go yeah i’m sure harry is good
24:57
um thank you for having me here today it’s really a pleasure to get to talk to you all
25:04
um i think so it was kind of amazing to see the
25:10
colonial operations manual how that shows the timeline of dtp’s development
25:15
over the last five years and it kind of made me think about working with you all out of space in 2016 and
25:24
actually how that that kind of created a shift in my own practice like a huge one
25:29
and um actually like a lot of what
25:37
off that point i um well like since since that point i’ve taken a step away
25:42
from working curatorially in an institution um realizing that a kind of deeper
25:48
engagement with study and reading and thinking was kind of necessitated in order to like
25:53
be truly accountable to the kind of work that was being created um in these movement spaces um
26:01
so i’m doing a phd now in history of art and thinking about the colonial histories and collective
26:08
formations of contemporary art in southeast asia but also in relation
26:14
to black dysphoric practices and histories of the plantation
26:22
i i guess as as i’ve been doing a lot of reading recently i kind of wanted to
26:28
just share share a few a few notes from from a few texts i’ve been reading recently because i thought they tied to
26:34
the kind of frames and themes that that that are being discussed in this
26:40
um in this panel um so the first observation emerges from
26:46
a racial capitalism and the classroom state reading group i’m part of and much love to my comrades in the rccs working group for providing
26:54
a generous context for collective study um a couple of weeks ago dr charisse
27:01
bernstelli joined our group to talk about modern modern us racial capitalism
27:07
a recent article in the independent socialist magazine monthly monthly review and in this article bud
27:13
and steli uh building on the intellectual production of 20th century black anti-catalysts theorizes quote modern us
27:21
capitalism as a racially hierarchical political economy constituting constituting war and militarism
27:27
imperialist accumulation expropriation by domination and labour super exploitation end quote
27:36
so within this political economy blood and sterling identifies the structural location of blackness
27:41
defined as african descendants relationship to the capitalist mode of production as a site of an irresolvable
27:47
contradiction she writes that quote blackness is a capacious category of surplus value
27:54
extraction that is essential to a range of political and economic functions including but not limited to
28:01
accumulation disaccumulation debt and plan of planned obsolescence at the same time
28:07
she knows blackness is the quintessential condition of disposability expendability and devalorization
28:15
so in this analysis u.s racial capitalism is rooted in anti-blackness and anti-radicalism
28:21
and for bird and sterling anti-radicalism is quote the physical and discursive repression
28:26
and condemnation of anti-capitalist and or left-leaning ideas politics practices and modes of
28:32
organizing that are construed as subversive seditious and otherwise threatening to
28:37
capitalist society these include but are not limited to internationalism
28:42
anti-imperialism anti-colonialism peace activism and anti-sexism end quote
28:50
so drawing from burden studies argument that anti-blackness and anti-radicalism function as the legitimating
28:56
architecture of modern us racial capitalism i’ve been reflecting on the extent to which these legitimating architectures
29:03
are reproduced in and by cultural institutions so despite making space on certain
29:09
occasions and typically in limited ways for radical art practices to reach a public
29:14
many dominant modern institutional forms from commercial galleries to the non-profit and philanthropic industrial
29:21
complexes nonetheless exist at a nexus of anti-blackness and anti-radicalism
29:27
and i wanted to name this tension because i think it suggests a dialectical relationship that is critical to our discussion
29:34
so i’d say that a lot of the most significant aesthetic work today is being done by artists and curators working in the
29:40
black radical tradition when institutions platform this work the
29:45
irresolvable contradiction that is internal to us racial capitalism is reproduced and this is the kind of
29:52
key one of the key contradictions we’ve i think has come up already um but yet by addressing this as a
29:59
dialectical struggle the black radical tradition points to methods through which contradictions can be framed as sites at which the con
30:06
conditions of social possibility can be transformed so because of the irresolvable nature of
30:12
the contradiction of u.s racial capitalism it cannot be accounted for through strategies of representation or
30:18
inclusion broader historical forms and categories must be critiqued
30:23
so i think one question that we can discuss today as we consider this critique is what transformations my abolitionist
30:29
museums and abolitionist universities make possible i don’t want to just note at this point
30:35
that strike momo initiated by the international imagination of anti-national and anti-imperialist
30:41
feelings is posing this question an abolition may a month-long series of actions on
30:46
campuses across turtle island to demand the removal of all campus police is doing likewise
30:53
an abolition may for those who haven’t heard of it is it begins with a call for a nationwide day of refusal
30:58
on may 3rd and is organized by crops of campus coalition an abolition network to get crops off
31:03
campuses and cops off the planet and i’ll drop a link in the chat once i’ve stopped talking
31:11
um so that’s this kind of that’s that’s a like a dialectical approach to this this contradiction um
31:17
that that we’re all dealing with in various ways that i think could be helpful to deframing kind of the discussion today
31:25
and this is the second analytic that i want to quickly um introduce is is that of spatial justice
31:31
which is something that i’ve been discussing in a seminar led by lisa lowe so i must acknowledge my gratitude to professor lowe and the discussions in
31:38
our seminar for the conversations we’ve been having and in this seminar we’ve been thinking
31:43
about geography we recently read writings by two indigenous scholars nachie blue band
31:50
and mishwana gomen in her book natives
31:56
battles colonialism from 2017 wand analyzes quote the ongoing and
32:01
conflicting practices of space making inhabiting resulting from colonial processes
32:07
and the complex modes of presence and prescribed inclusion end quote despite these processes
32:13
indigenous geographies quote have quietly overlapped and coexisted in tension with the geographies of the settler colonial
32:20
state they have been submerged but not eliminated
32:25
end quote so bond attends to indigenous spatial practices to show how they operate as crucial acts of
32:31
self-determination and cultural continuity and serve as analytics for rejecting native
32:36
disposition and the interlocking logic of incorporation within the multicultural nation state
32:43
in in her book mark my words native women mapping our nations from 2017
32:48
goemon emphasizes the role of gender within spatial production criticizing the heteropatriarchal
32:54
representation of national space for constricting native mobilities and pathologizing mobile native bodies
33:00
and goemon introduces the method of remapping which she describes as a profound alternative to the unjust facial
33:06
imaginary of the global colonial present but i think they’re taking together band and goldman’s texts after julian records
33:13
call for visual sovereignty in contemporary art production by contending with the possibility possibility of spatial sovereignty in
33:20
cultural contexts and to quickly tie this back to the kind of material the kind of activities that
33:27
that we’re working with today um in moma’s recent abolitionist imaginary’s one day
33:32
symposium dylan rodriguez shared the following words which have been circulating on social media
33:39
i want to be working with you all i want to be a guest of yours in an art world which is dancing on the rubble of the anti-black colonial art world
33:46
that still remains hegemonic dominant so it strikes me as intentional that
33:51
rodriguez’s choice of metaphor was not only choreographic but spatial and rodriguez’s words
33:57
underscore the argument that radical modes of relation reciprocity and recognition require to
34:02
again quote gomen the production of alternative spatialities not mired in individual liberalism
34:11
um so yeah like this this this strikes me as important because
34:17
again looking at strike momo i think that the project constitutes a remapping of modern arts features and a
34:23
remapping of moment plazas and the associated sites of imperial and financial extraction
34:28
surrounding the museum and so i just want to introduce the thought that
34:33
given that curators are custodians of spaces as well as artworks i wonder in what
34:38
ways can the field engage with spatial justice and spatial sovereignty as critical modes of curatorial practice
34:46
and i think this is related to this question of how can institutions become places not a curation but of collective care
34:53
which gtp um introduced in the colonial operations manual um so yeah thank you for um
35:02
listening as i introduced you then i’m excited to talk more with you all about these ideas thanks harry
35:11
how you feeling sally you’re feeling good um yeah so i’m just i’m thinking
35:19
about um a lot of the things that the fellow
35:26
participants have have shared today and i thought i would just talk a little bit
35:31
before we move on to other topics to talk a little bit about how i got to this um particular place that i’m
35:38
i’m in right now and um my sort of foray into curating
35:43
was it was informed by studying photography
35:49
in university and as a student i was very interested i was very invested in
35:54
issues of representation and i think i was trying to make sense of my experiences of actually being an
36:01
undergrad student at the university of guelph which is where um when we breathe we breathe together
36:07
is being held on this campus and and i was very intrigued by the medium of photography because it has
36:14
this very problematic history it was used as a tool of oppression but then i was very conversant of
36:22
um the ways in which various marginalized groups have been able to
36:27
use the medium in order to create their own narratives and to create their own um ways
36:35
of of representing themselves to the world at large and also the ways in
36:40
which in many in many instances it’s a very democratic medium
36:46
regardless of people’s ability or their um financial standing they have some access
36:52
to engaging in this medium either as creators or as as as viewers but at any rate
36:59
the concerns that i had as a student studying they shifted into my curatorial practice
37:05
and when i first started curating i was interested in what we would term as issues of identity
37:11
i was interested in people sort of articulating where they were located and what they stood in relation to
37:17
and that was something that i sort of carried through but then when i went to study abroad in england i started thinking
37:23
more about how i identify and what it meant for me as someone who has
37:28
several layers of colonization in their lineage to be studying in that space what it meant for me to actually be
37:35
having to pay for a visa to study in a country that has plundered so many places where
37:41
i currently live where my ancestors are from etc and then again when i was working in
37:46
the states as a curator what it meant for me to be in these spaces what it meant
37:52
for me to be working in a place like texas where i was there as the descendant of people
37:57
who were enslaved that is a former slave state that is indigenous terry territory that
38:03
was a place that was once a part of mexico so these were things these were the ways in which i was loosely thinking
38:08
about plays and i’m just thinking about some of the work that i was doing as a curator um
38:16
as latonya referenced i was usually either the only black or the only person of color working in
38:23
spaces and that is something that i’ve been thinking of more recently what that
38:29
means in terms of the work that i’m doing as as as a cultural producer as an organizer
38:36
and working in institutions that um where we’re not necessarily having discussions
38:42
about the fact that the field that we work in stems from this history of colonization it stems from a history
38:48
of plundering it stems from a history of misrepresentation what does that mean
38:53
then to be inviting racialized practitioners artists into that space what does it mean to be
38:59
bringing their works into collections um what are what are as
39:05
i mean as you’ve referenced what are my debts to to other people when i’m working in that
39:10
space and usually what i do is i try to move forward with the sort of mindset of
39:16
you know i got through the door like who else can i bring with me and one of the things that i
39:23
wanted to sort of address at the outset was when i’ve been working in these spaces
39:28
and as latonya has mentioned they do take a toll and they affect your
39:33
ability to produce work to work creatively there are all sorts of things that i think people are
39:39
alluding to the ways in which um our work gets absorbed or claimed
39:44
within these institutions the way in which they are able to leverage and um acquire capital
39:51
which is based on our labor in ways that don’t really acknowledge what the production of that labor means um
39:59
when i was doing the work in these spaces and sort of not necessarily being able to have that
40:05
distance to articulate what was happening to me in terms of doing the work that i was doing um
40:11
i first heard about dtp from the exhibition that harry did with you all at artist space and
40:19
i went to a conference in pittsburgh and someone was wearing a museum’s are not
40:24
neutral t-shirt right and that was when i first learned about the work that latonya was doing
40:30
and this was something that mark mentioned in the last discussion um mark i have mentioned that when you’re
40:35
doing this kind of work and you get discouraged you sort of get burnt out like i wanted to acknowledge that all of
40:41
you all are producing work that helped to sustain me and help to motivate me and help me to keep going and it’s been um
40:49
you know so it’s really again i’m very excited to hear about all of the work that you all are doing but at any rate at this particular
40:56
moment what i will kind of draw attention to was after the events of last summer
41:02
not just the pandemic but particularly um the murder of george floyd and the up
41:07
risings that occurred on a global scale it was very sort of incongruous
41:12
for me to be witnessing all of this work um all of these protests um
41:20
and and to see how institutions many organizations were
41:26
rushing to issue solidarity statements but then weren’t doing
41:31
the work of saying well how do we perpetuate these behaviors how are we contributing to this
41:36
by the way that our institution functions so spaces that were issued quick to issue these statements
41:42
of solidarity about anti-black racism but they had no black people working in their spaces
41:48
the ways in which we were quick to kind of abandon the work that we were doing towards
41:53
re-centering indigeneity to be seen as being in support of black people not realizing that they can
41:58
happen in tandem the silence that a lot of these same institutions are maintaining now
42:04
when we are seeing rising violence towards um asian-american and asian-canadian
42:11
people who are working in these institutions who are amongst our circles who are in our communities right so i think
42:19
in terms of what i’m doing i’m kind of like again what are how am i being accountable to this how am i how
42:26
is my silence around these things and the spaces that i occupy how is it contributing to these
42:33
inequities what are my responsibilities and so one of the things that i try to do um
42:39
when i am in institutions if um i’m not in a place where i feel that
42:45
my voice is being heard where it’s literally being written over or silenced i can work with artists who share
42:53
similar politics or similar similar values and they can voice some of the things i
42:58
can turn over my platform and that’s beneficial to the institution because it’s bringing in outside
43:04
voices and perspectives it’s beneficial um to me because of the work that i’m
43:10
doing is predicated on other people’s labor so how do i give space
43:16
for those for for those voices and those conversations but also um this is the way in which
43:23
you can act as the way in which different people can can work as i guess the terminology
43:30
we’re using now as accomplices how do we show up as accomplices for each other in order to do this work
43:36
and when i was thinking about this conversation i read an interview with with rolando vasquez-malkin and he was
43:42
speaking about the institution he was he was talking about different decolonization
43:48
like processes of decolonization that we can do within this work in terms of the language that we use who we’re
43:54
showing who we’re collecting um how we categorize our i mean our systems
44:00
of categorization of of tracking artwork databases they’re so problematic right so he was
44:08
acknowledging all of these these threads all of these elements that are problematic at their core but
44:14
then he put forward the sort of um like metaphor of of a
44:19
dj using the turntable and how that becomes an instrument and he was proposing that we can use
44:25
these these spaces as instruments to help us on the path to decolonization so we can
44:33
acknowledge all of these fraught histories um and but use them as platforms
44:40
to moving towards spaces of liberation or um liberatory
44:48
contexts thank you sally that’s really great um so we’re gonna just try to do another
44:55
round because this is how they you know the conversation can happen things that we say what they kind of
45:02
emerge from us um back to i think
45:11
yeah there were so many good things in here i was like taking all these notes um one of the things i wanted to kind of
45:18
speak speak to this kind of well it connects with actually everybody what they were saying but um and going back to liam batas masaki
45:25
simpson the show i did last year um it’s called temporary spaces and joy of freedom and it was
45:31
from a discussion that she had with dion brand and that was a phrase that leanne said in in their
45:37
discussion and um i just like fell in love with that the conversation they had and then i tried to create a show that
45:43
hopefully felt like a conversation as well um one of the things in there is that leon said is how we
45:49
need to have scaffoldings of care for the people on the front line she’s talking about activists and
45:55
and i think so often i mean i’ve had artists that will reach out to tell me you know we need you to stay in those
46:01
spaces we need you to stay in those those white museums as a curator because you know that’s the only way we’re going
46:06
to get it we’re going to get our work shown and we need someone who will care for our work and not just be co-opting
46:11
it and stuff like that and i said you know i hear you but okay one i was here actually just
46:17
just to study the racism of the institution mainly that was the main reason to be in there and i wasn’t really planning to stay in
46:24
these in these white museums ever and that was what gave me power to actually speak in a very um
46:29
you know just speak very directly about what’s going on because it wasn’t my goal to move up as a chief curator one
46:34
day or a director of a white museum i’m like no um but i understand like from her side in a
46:41
way because she’s like it’s hard to sell our work it’s hard to you know get the right scholarship and have people pay
46:46
attention so we need you to stay in that space and i said you know the problem is there ain’t nobody over here catching us
46:52
you know so we’re getting hit left and right from um you know these people inside it’s a constant battle all
46:58
kinds of stupid stuff that you don’t have no idea the layers of foolishness with the writing the edit editorial process they
47:04
keep sending stuff back and they’ve changed all the language and it’s just constant fighting about everything
47:10
um and that’s just like one example it’s about all of the pieces people who won’t you know install the
47:15
work properly or won’t touch certain work because they don’t see it as good enough for them or
47:21
you know i split up my show and had it so that the current show so two two sites are um
47:27
outside the museum to force the museum to have to put money into black cultural spaces to try to pull money out of
47:32
and that’s my goal now trying to figure out how to pull money out of these white institutions um it wasn’t nearly enough money but it
47:38
was like you know i’m trying different things out almost like experimenting of what to do but the thing is nobody is really
47:44
supporting me in this place so while i have certain support from people who know museums are not neutral across the country across
47:51
the world but in this city i have no support and i’ve actually had people kind of call me up and go off on me on
47:58
the phone and everything it’s like it’s horrible and this is what i’m talking about so when we do we build these things
48:04
i knew what i was doing i knew that it was going to create these as obama was talking about these contradictions or um
48:11
also and harry talked about this right the contradictions um and the work and and how that can create something
48:16
else so you know you’re doing that you know it’s going against the thing you’re in that hegemonic structure
48:22
but you’re going to need some protection and i kind of felt like as a strong
48:27
individual i could take the hits but i’ve been doing it a long time by myself in volatile horrible spaces
48:35
and really people got my phone number you guys they call me up and go off the custody and everything um it is horrific and we do not right
48:43
now have enough network set to support one another through this process because really it’s
48:49
a it’s a thing where you have to kind of get in and get out like you have to keep for me i mean i’m like there’s no way i
48:55
was gonna like stay in a white institution for like 30 years or something but it’s like i’m gonna come in here i’m gonna try to do what i can do how far
49:00
can i go how you know do i hit this thing where they will not let me go any farther then i’ll flip and i’ll just do something
49:06
else and then i’ll do you know keep doing it but we need to have things that also support one another we
49:12
have to realize there is emotional cost to this work um we are draining like we see that across
49:18
in many sectors other activists are being really hit hard and um you know black folks is dying at
49:25
really high rates we have hypertension we’re getting this covet like we do don’t have enough care
49:31
networks for one another so that’s something i want to stress
49:37
alum yeah thank you for that i yeah i think one of the things that
49:44
for me is to always assume that those institutions they’re not church they’re
49:50
they’re really contact zones and as contact zones how you
49:55
engage it and attacked the guile the various strategies of engaging it
50:01
matters um they will not give you they will not be the final arbiters
50:06
for expressing the politics that you first want to deconstruct and so on
50:13
so it’s always um it’s always a paradoxical space i i
50:18
remember i did something else called there’s an essay called um african
50:26
colonial photography and outlaws of history where basically make the same point that
50:32
photography simplified and flattened africans right he told
50:37
the story of africans as simple people one-dimensional and they were late comers into modernity
50:46
but when african photographers learned the skills they got themselves into what you may
50:53
call the caliban complex right where they got they’ve used the skills against
50:58
the same discourse to begin to tell stories of alternative subjectivities so they
51:04
educated themselves in a kind of deconstructive way to get those tools reactivate new
51:11
literacies and new practices that will contest what’s already in the museums
51:17
and in the textbooks and i think there’s that educational mandate for curators that
51:23
it’s not just in the space it’s really the kinds of discursive spaces that
51:29
you can where you can extend the conversations and the issues etc the space is not enough to actually uh
51:37
express this dynamic history which i talked about earlier as a history of excess
51:43
right in other words it defies simplification in one space it defines even a textual codification
51:50
of a people so the people are in excess even of the code of their representation
51:56
and that excess matters in trying to define or produce counter texts etc
52:03
it also challenges the idea of just belonging right that sometimes the way people talk about
52:09
belonging it almost feels like we people sprouted from the soil right and it is so
52:15
talk to us right and but the point is to really talk about how people contest they migrate what
52:21
constitutes culture is not about just purity it’s about what you become after
52:26
encounters with others and and there the theme of equity of symmetry
52:31
etc matters and so for me my exhibitions are obsessed about the histories of asymmetries both
52:38
thematically and also in the modes of representation and also talk about the kind of
52:44
contested conventions of re-reading these works and so on so in in italy i did stuff around
52:52
the this collection of things called black animals which is and so on and it’s very big you
52:58
see them in italian in fact it became the motif for 17th century bourgeois mansions and you find them in
53:06
some movies etc some people still own them but what i did was a show called
53:11
re-significations right where we had to show but we brought artists in residence to contest them
53:16
and we posed the question where there are contestary works riffing off that particular
53:23
collection and what happened in the city of florence was that the mayor of the city which was weird
53:30
wasn’t expected decided to adopt the exhibition um to host a conference of
53:38
culture mayors across europe to address the question of migration and citizenship and representation and
53:45
so on now i wasn’t expecting that expecting that to happen but that’s the nature of institutions
53:52
right they appropriate things strategically so in other words you just
53:57
if you if i held on too tightly to that work i would have been so heartbroken and in
54:03
despair but i just moved on to say well that’s the nature of that space otherwise
54:09
we will just be in an existential language all the time and it will take us away from the
54:15
ultimate responsibility of always producing culture that
54:21
contests asymmetries uh and for me that’s just the marker with
54:26
which i select the even the theme of what i do the places in which i do them and the way i want audiences to respond
54:33
to them to respond to them etc and the other point for me is also that
54:39
that there are lots of um uh uh foundational things that you see but you
54:45
know what i was referring to that caliban complexes you all know that ideas like i need to learn the language of the master so when
54:52
i insult the master the master understands it that i’m not just shouting right and so so that’s you’ll find that
54:59
in a lot of black art forms you find that because we’re socialized in institutions where we are not
55:07
subjects but objects of that institution its history and so how do we find subjectivity in
55:13
those spaces right without just going into a state of despair and and so there you really take
55:20
rigorously the historicity of the conventions of what you are seeing and and also the likelihood of
55:27
demystifying them and actually repurposing them etc to make a statement
55:33
so for me it’s that that that the text the art form as a text itself should permanently be put in a state of
55:40
instability rather than frozen and valorized and
55:45
canonized etc uh it should constantly be in a state of instability and in fact
55:51
that state of instability is what invites contested interpretations of the world rather than
55:57
put all the bells and whistles and arrests work in history and so on and assume it’s a
56:03
representation of culture it’s really to say no culture is always contestatory and
56:10
cultural practices must also reflect that contestatory energy and because of that the texts that we
56:17
show should also be the contact zones for these contexts or contexts of history and subjectivity
56:25
um and and that’s why people should use should use these art forms in a kind of
56:31
a more uh decolonizing way where we also know that decolonization
56:37
is not just one moment in history but actually the foundation on which
56:42
subjectivity is built it’s a permanent state of becoming in which you’re constantly reviewing
56:48
revising and encountering asymmetries and adjusting to that
56:55
thank you thank you um harry yeah i i’d love to pick up on latanya’s
57:01
um comments on care because i think this is really important and like deeply i mean
57:07
i think it’s deeply felt um to many people who’ve worked with institutions or felt that sort of sense
57:13
of isolation and silence um isolation has only compounded in the
57:20
time of quarantine and social distancing um so it’s more it’s more than it’s something that’s happening not
57:26
just in arts and cultural institutions but um a broader experience
57:32
um but i think i in my mind this sort of sense of isolation
57:37
um that that needs to be sort of rectified through networks care
57:43
is also mirrored by kind of compartmentalization on the level of um discourse discourse
57:51
on art um it’s and this this kind of
57:56
you know the theme of silence that we raised a few times today it makes me turn towards a part of the
58:04
colonial operations manual um which i i highlighted because i i thought it was
58:10
really salient so i’m gonna quote it um it’s it’s in the section about the whitney
58:16
and the author is right artists and commentators alike remain silent about the second demand
58:22
put forth by community groups and co-signed by hundreds of prominent artwork figures in the open letter
58:27
to eject to eject candice that the whitney participate in the formation of decolonization commission that would
58:34
include community stakeholders and be guided by a variety of urgent principles indigenous land rights and restitution
58:40
reparations for enslavement and its legacies the dismantling of patriarchy workplace democracy degentrification climate
58:47
justice and sanctuary from border regimes and state islands generally
58:52
the silence around the commission demand raises questions about the role of artists and struggle
58:58
it continues um that i appreciated that
59:05
because i’ve been thinking about this this kind of dissonance that i ever observed over the
59:13
last few years in in that there’s been many activists and organizers who have addressed
59:18
contemporary arts reproduction of cholesterol and settler colonial geographies but their cause to action are often
59:24
compartmentalized in contemporary art discourse as if as if they are distinct from aesthetic
59:30
criticism um so yeah it makes
59:35
makes me wonder about the ways in which um what edward gleason called a grammar of liberation and poetics of relation
59:42
can be engaged with through aesthetic discourse and and the ways in which art criticism
59:47
can be stretched and expanded to to think about relation and care like the aesthetics of care
59:53
the aesthetics of building movements um together um i think fundamentally the
1:00:01
current political political economy of art is rooted in a valorization of property and objects
1:00:07
and that there is so much space for this to be challenged and um and relation and relationships
1:00:14
nurtured instead so i think this ties kind of our criticism to curation into our discussion today as well
1:00:25
um sally yeah um i think the i think it’s really
1:00:32
interesting and i really um appreciate that harry continues to return
1:00:37
to this idea around care because that is what the definition of of uh the curator is you’re a steward
1:00:45
right you you um extend care to the way that we understand it care to
1:00:50
objects character collections and i’m thinking about this in relation to
1:00:56
um when we talk about re-centering indigeneity and that often um leads to a lot of
1:01:03
institutions having a land acknowledgement so there’s that kind of acknowledgment of place and acknowledgement of space and
1:01:11
but i was thinking about how those same spaces that we work in this is going to some of latonya’s
1:01:16
points we won’t necessarily have safe space like declarations of safe spaces what does that mean who are they
1:01:22
saved for and one of the things that i was thinking about you know sort of again this is kind of what foreground
1:01:28
was my experience like i was thinking about how those spaces are often not physically safe like how
1:01:34
do you exit a space if we think about the kinds of violences that are erupting
1:01:39
in public space and museums and galleries or public space how how is that a safe how are these
1:01:45
safe spaces for people with disabilities people who are differently abled if you need to remove yourself from a
1:01:50
space how are they safe spaces for people of uh
1:01:55
who are at different levels of literacy how are they safe spaces for people who um belong to different
1:02:04
i guess class economies but i was also thinking about um the ways in which not necessarily
1:02:13
to adopt or extract or appropriate um indigenous modes of governance
1:02:20
but if we think about reciprocity what does that mean right and this idea of of acting as
1:02:27
guests and thinking about guests and destabilizing our positions
1:02:32
our relationships or how we stand in in relation to a lot of these spaces these are things that i’ve been thinking about
1:02:38
and that are circling through my mind again today and one of the points that latonya raised in
1:02:44
the chat was was what is the role of artists right this is not to call out artists but she was mentioning how
1:02:51
a lot of artists are taught and this is something that i’ve been thinking about too when we want to work
1:02:57
in certain institutions what does that mean what is our investment in those spaces
1:03:03
and and as she was saying who is there to catch curators who are doing this work and i think this
1:03:08
is something like i’ve had conversations with separate artists saying when i’m in the states and i’m advocating for artist fees for you
1:03:16
that there’s a cost for that and it’s directed towards me i’m the one who pays that cost as the
1:03:21
curator in this space um when i am advocating for this when i am enacting a particular type of care so
1:03:28
that you are treated well within this space and you’re shielded from some of the politics or some of the
1:03:33
violences that exist the curator is often the one who absorbs it right and not
1:03:39
not the artist and when we’re thinking about one of the things again like i’ve been
1:03:44
following a lot of the actions that dtp has been involved in other and other as well as other activist groups
1:03:51
um when um the actions uh around warren um kander’s um
1:03:58
position on the whitney board when they were kind of being we’re calling that out and a lot of
1:04:04
artists but not all were withdrawing from from participating in that year’s winning biennial
1:04:10
and there was michael brockowitz who refused to even entertain the idea of entering into that space
1:04:17
like he didn’t even offer his work up to be removed because he just refused to engage in that year’s um
1:04:24
biennial um sort of again what are our debts that we have to to one another right so these are
1:04:31
these are things that i’m i am also thinking about and also again if this idea or these this idea
1:04:39
around criticism and writing how do we respond within it with an ethics of care
1:04:47
to the objects that are in the possession so i think of of these institutions that are in the collections if we’re showing
1:04:54
less than 10 of a collection how is that how is that
1:05:01
um acting within an ethos of care um and there was one other thing that i
1:05:08
was thinking about just in terms of it being a sanctuary space i think one of the things that’s really interesting
1:05:14
is that we work in a creative field and that we and we have the potential as album
1:05:22
reference for really rhizomatic thinking around all of these issues they don’t have to be fixed that doesn’t
1:05:28
have to be a scary place of not being anchored to either a history
1:05:33
or a methodology or a practice but yet we insist on doing things in the
1:05:39
same way this is not how it’s done this is not how we do this these are this is not the type of work that we
1:05:45
show in these spaces and i think it’s incumbent on all of us not just you know some
1:05:50
renegade or or um however you want to term it curator
1:05:55
to be invested in that that’s something that your registrar needs to be invested in as well
1:06:01
that is something that we need to um really kind of empower our docents like who are who are we
1:06:07
bringing in to kind of interpret the material these are things that the education department needs to
1:06:13
be thinking of and again it’s sort of like can we transform the space can we transcend
1:06:18
this space but there are things that we can do to trouble the ways in which we do things in these spaces that lead back to
1:06:26
that i think would move them closer to being spaces of sanctuary spaces where we can hold care for one
1:06:32
another and i think um this is just the one one last thing i’ll say before we move
1:06:38
on i think it’s really interesting when we’re thinking about i think there are a couple of things i want to say
1:06:43
because we often speak about um you know art as institutions and
1:06:48
universities as institutions and for many of us we work at at we work in spaces or we work at
1:06:53
spaces who are at the nexus we’re at the intersection of both of these spaces so what does that mean
1:06:59
um but you know what i kind of lost the threat so i’m just going to end it there just end it there
1:07:07
thank you i think we can uh you know perhaps just bring in a couple of thoughts from experience from like dtp’s position
1:07:15
and how we’re thinking about the same things as part of like generated from what’s been said already
1:07:20
and i can just start with a few you know a lot of our knowledge comes from doing
1:07:26
things and then you know having failures and successes and then learning from their you know um about what to do next and i
1:07:34
think the thing that has carried with us in the work that we’ve done is us
1:07:39
and i i pose this more of like just to kind of inform the conversation like for us we don’t really think of
1:07:46
ourselves as activists and the stuff that we do we don’t think of it as protesting you know and i think that
1:07:52
the reduction of a lot of the work into actions uh and then documentation is part of
1:07:59
like the containment strategies almost or even the mythology around the whitney
1:08:05
the whitney started with organizing on the inside but it didn’t start with
1:08:10
activists on the outside you know that’s what was that was the calling for that moment and
1:08:16
in fact if you look at the manual and you remember the history we were wondering why people were silent
1:08:23
like it’s one thing to kind of you know raise hell from the outside it’s another thing when
1:08:29
120 people put their jobs on the line to say something meaningful about how
1:08:37
the institution is not being accountable to its own workers right and and that issue with the
1:08:43
whitney was money and funding so if we’re talking about
1:08:48
institutions we’re also trying to understand how they’re complex and how they rely on money
1:08:53
and who’s money and how does that impact our strategies our analysis or whatever and if curation is about
1:09:00
care it’s care for whom i understand that it’s a category of like that’s what you’re a steward of
1:09:06
something but if you’re getting paid and you have parameters then ultimately your job of care is for
1:09:12
what and for whom and i doubt it’s for movements and for justice and so you’re trying to navigate that
1:09:18
stuff right so in the process of navigating that stuff we found and i i say this from a
1:09:25
position of like teaching at nyu as an adjunct like i don’t see myself as like an
1:09:30
educator as much as i see myself as having a job and trying to engage and study in more of the undercommons kind of way
1:09:38
against with alongside underneath about whatever that kind of thing
1:09:43
now in the context of the whitney again natasha alluded to this and i also want
1:09:48
to open it up for a lot of other dtp members to share from this experience because i think it informed
1:09:54
the conversation artists were silent an artist and
1:09:59
and and there was this thing around oh artists are either supposed to withdraw
1:10:04
or not and there’s a million other ways of engagement that don’t require withdrawal or boycott
1:10:12
but somehow there was this kind of barrier and i think that this is something that
1:10:18
maybe harry is is mentioning but i’ve heard it from like fred milton and so forth how deep
1:10:24
liberalism runs in our organizing spaces in our thinking
1:10:29
and how much identity becomes the thing that you fight for
1:10:35
as if like the identity of blackness in an institution the identity of palestinian and
1:10:41
representation of palestinian institutions as if we if we get that things change
1:10:47
so again i’m just kind of saying from from this vantage point what we’ve tried to do with dtp is kind
1:10:53
of challenge these binaries and open up space multiple spaces and extend the
1:11:00
geography outside the walls of the museum and reject these walls as containment for
1:11:05
how we address problems and solutions and build power and unsettled things
1:11:11
and yet when something happens people are quick to tell the story that
1:11:17
excludes the workers that organize on the inside that reduces the all the work that’s being done the aesthetics the thinking
1:11:23
the the organizing the care the the generosity how much time it takes how much
1:11:31
work it takes to do the that we do that isn’t funded by anyone
1:11:38
this is something that we try to pass on to other people because if more people think this way now what is it how does
1:11:44
it get how does it get kind of distilled we talk to people about reorientation
1:11:50
from the institution to each other it’s not about leaving it or staying you’re always leaving it
1:11:55
right but you need a lot of people to leave it together that’s the issue of care but beyond the idea of leaving
1:12:03
how can we unsettle and create more spaces and educate and teach and learn
1:12:09
from and fail and do all these things where we recognize an aesthetic and this is where strike
1:12:15
moma is really important and i’ll just end on this point yesterday some of us were in front of
1:12:20
momo no one went into mum two banners got put up on a monument of
1:12:26
a poc person jesus morales who kind of indigenous you know it’s
1:12:32
almost like granite from the ground making uh a sculpture outside very few changes to
1:12:39
it put two banners on it that were beautiful that were sheer amy and natasha worked on
1:12:45
and several workers from inside came out one worker works in the archives another
1:12:53
worker works in the library currently and another person works at the ticket
1:12:59
booth they all had read what got put out on strike moma and they
1:13:05
had printed the terms into their operations room that now hangs right now
1:13:11
and they’re in solidarity with what’s happening outside of the museum they didn’t email because they were
1:13:17
afraid where the email would lead but they came out and they met people
1:13:22
and they talked i think that the work that’s being done
1:13:28
is about how care in my mind care is showing up at the institution’s door
1:13:35
and breaking down that wall and seeing what kind of relations can develop that
1:13:40
undermine and challenge and create space
1:13:46
uh nit if you want to go and then anyone from dtp and then we’ll go another round
1:13:55
you’re all mute knitting it um i think i i just have mainly have a question for
1:14:01
everyone around aesthetics um that’s something that i’ve been thinking about a lot you know in terms
1:14:06
of uh you know when you’re exiting the institution or when you are you know in any of these frameworks abolition
1:14:12
decolonization anti-imperialism um you know you you once again you have this binary of like you know if
1:14:18
something is contemporary art or it’s under modernity like you know you can like there’s a certain aesthetic that looks like that right
1:14:24
and if something is not looking like you know modernity or western empire and it could
1:14:30
be modernity of a different place it could be indian modernity it could be african-american it could be you know it’s not necessarily
1:14:35
there’s so many different modernities and each one has its own context so you know it could look different and so
1:14:40
you have that situation and then there’s the other situation of like oh if it looks like uh you know it could look very cultural
1:14:46
right that’s the other term that’s your like cultural being or these are cave paintings from let’s say
1:14:52
laura like in south india or like these are you know these are mughal empire like paintings or whatever
1:14:57
right so there is this kind of um separation that’s created very immediately and so i guess the
1:15:04
question that i’m going at is like how has everybody been thinking about aesthetics basically especially
1:15:09
you know with what obama was saying and i think andrew has a similar question which is when a lot of these things are not meant
1:15:15
to stay for a long time right a lot of these you know as you mentioned a lot of these aesthetics
1:15:20
are not meant to stay for a long time and another thing uh you know dylan rodriguez was brought up he also you
1:15:26
know kind of kind of pointed the fact that uh you know aesthetics of abolition are basically aesthetics of combat
1:15:32
right it’s like they are aesthetics of combat um and you know and really and if you kind
1:15:38
of go more into kind of decolonial ways of thinking about it when you center land water and air you know in all your practices it’s
1:15:44
a different sense of aesthetics right um so i mean i feel like this this this
1:15:49
kind of uh struggle that exists is is is is very much on an aesthetics plane right we’re sensing
1:15:56
feeling like not cared for um wanting to assimilate into a certain mode of thinking or like objectifying your own
1:16:03
work as an artist just so that it can be part of this kind of institutional framework um so my
1:16:09
question is really more around like how can we liberate aesthetics from a lot of these
1:16:14
you know different uh parameters that it has been kind of found itself stuck on um and
1:16:20
uh or if there’s any reflections or thoughts on it or you know any poetry on it anything i’m just thinking a lot
1:16:25
about aesthetics and thinking about how we can incorporate them even in our kind of actions and in everyday life
1:16:31
um yeah that’s it andrew
1:16:38
yeah just just adding to what natasha said about aesthetics and and also what you said i mean about the
1:16:44
whitney uh the responses around the whitney uh i’m thinking back to the earlier moment
1:16:50
when many of us this is pre-dtp when many of us worked under the aegis of golf
1:16:56
the global ultra luxury faction and we developed a lot of our tactics
1:17:02
in taking on the guggenheim specifically over the labor conditions
1:17:08
in abu dhabi and we were very careful about
1:17:14
you know stepping over that inside outside divide by insisting that we were producing art
1:17:20
as part of the the actions and the occupations and it was part of a high standard that we put on
1:17:28
the walls and all of the materials that were produced were supposed to be in sync with the
1:17:34
exhibitions that were actually up and running at the time in the guggenheim
1:17:39
so we were very careful about the aesthetic parallels there and and how we were
1:17:45
adding value to these exhibitions in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way but at the same time
1:17:51
when when the work was seized and ultimately we assumed destroyed
1:17:57
uh we also insisted that that was a you know that ran counter to the very
1:18:03
ethics of the museum that they were destroying the art of artists who were part of the community who were trying to add value
1:18:11
and uh just at the last point there the the artists were not silent around these
1:18:17
actions art the art world was very very uh vocal and uh and and joined the boycotts
1:18:26
and um and and resonated uh the messages in in all sorts of ways
1:18:32
whether they were appearing under the aegis of the guggenheim or not um
1:18:37
so i i think the difference between these institutions to some degree helped explain the different responses
1:18:45
but also um we didn’t we didn’t in both cases we really didn’t have curators to
1:18:51
work with sympathetic curators and in the case of the guggenheim we had curators
1:18:58
and an administration that was always trying to co-opt us they they generated encouraging
1:19:05
responses but we knew all along that the the ultimate effort was to co-opt
1:19:12
so it would have made a big difference in both cases i think and we’re talking about big museums and not galleries of
1:19:17
course it would have made a big difference if there had been curators
1:19:23
who who we could have worked in sync with in in both instances
1:19:32
anyone else from dtp yeah um i want to make some comments
1:19:39
around fugitivity and flight um just to echo some of what’s been said
1:19:44
before like uh latonya was talking around like the idea of you know being black and not being able
1:19:50
to stick around in white spaces for too long um i totally feel that
1:19:55
just yesterday i was like you know i did have this dream of being a bartender i could drop out of it my phd i could
1:20:04
drop out of my phd program at nyu and just be that bartender just be you know i i
1:20:09
that’s i was literally like having that moment so there’s this like fugitivity and flight that comes from white spaces
1:20:15
or the fear of getting co-opted you know um uh you know museums right now you know
1:20:22
you’re like decolonization land back and they’re like did i hear land acknowledgement is that
1:20:28
what you want you’re like no i’d like you to repatriate they’re like but we’re on lenape land i said it you know and
1:20:34
you’re like okay now we got him we gotta push past that right there’s always this sense of not being able to hold on to something
1:20:41
even if you nurture it and build it up and do something because the museum either co-ops it or um or you lose your mind
1:20:49
um so i i was that made me wonder like where do we stop for some sense of
1:20:56
belonging you know thinking of like what is the opposite of fugitivity um some sense of belonging um how do we
1:21:03
build these kind of care zones or safety zones or comfort zones that folks were talking about and then i
1:21:09
really started thinking about that we’re maintaining two spaces we’re maintaining a fugitive space of refusal
1:21:15
um but then we’re also maintaining a communal space of affirmation which is uh an abolitionist problem to
1:21:21
have right um thinking of on both the yes and the no the refusal and the affirmation um and then lastly i
1:21:29
was just thinking of you know it’s really hard to keep those two spaces separate um even mentally um they’re two separate
1:21:36
ways of relating two ways of being in the world um and it made me think of what happens when we become
1:21:43
you know kind of uh fond of of of being fugitives or or the ways
1:21:50
that like you know when i’m in white spaces i’m very just like on edge i’m very like you know don’t
1:21:57
come for me unless i have sent for you i’m very like you know um
1:22:03
uh yeah like paranoid almost even like who’s coming at me why are they coming at me and then you go into like a communal
1:22:09
space and you have to kind of like relax your shoulders you kind of have to like it’s a whole new mode of being
1:22:16
and a lot of it comes with trauma and being in white spaces and then we bring that over in those ways of being into into
1:22:23
our black communal spaces or our poc or our women or queer spaces so
1:22:29
um yeah you know how do we bring that fugitivity and that flightiness and that kind of on edginess and that
1:22:36
like third eye open at all times into communal spaces and let me know how do we navigate that
1:22:41
um in our movements those are some of the thoughts i was having
1:22:47
anyone else from dtp before we go back to latonya
1:22:54
before we go well actually i was going to direct a question to latonya just in terms of like
1:22:59
thinking uh about what mars was just describing and discussing um maybe you could talk a
1:23:06
little bit latonya about the black liberation center that you’re you’re building within mass moca
1:23:12
cleveland but also extracting it with you when you
1:23:18
leave yeah thanks for that um yeah i came up with this project black liberation
1:23:24
center last summer um you know i just i was like this place is just insane it’s really bad hurtful
1:23:31
place and so i decided to i was there under a fellowship a curatorial fellowship
1:23:36
and um i restructured that fellowship into a residency um because i was just like the people
1:23:42
who are supposed to be my supervisors are incompetent and racist um and you know the racism is
1:23:49
not a surprise it’s i’ve experienced that at every white museum i’ve worked at but the degree of incompetence was a
1:23:55
little like whoa it’s really bad here um so yeah i restructured my fellowship and made it into a residency and i
1:24:01
proposed that i would do this project black liberation center project while i was there so i would stop
1:24:06
actually um reporting to the institution as like a regular staff member i was like no
1:24:11
i don’t report to this this person anymore i just have a project like an artist coming in with a project they’re going to work on
1:24:17
and mine would be this liberation center and it was a series of programming and um it did like a teach-in last
1:24:26
december yeah december we did a big teach-in and you know thinking about the care like yes i was trained to do
1:24:32
this kind of focus on care for objects through this art history training you know and like i said i was more just kind of
1:24:38
trying to understand a museum and using a critical race theory lens applying that to museums
1:24:44
institutions um but yes in this very traditional way our history program their idea of
1:24:50
curating was like yeah we’re taking care of objects i started thinking like in the process while getting all this training
1:24:56
in these places that you know it was leaving out um and sometimes they’ll talk about caring for the artist sometimes you know
1:25:02
like contemporary institutions will pretend to do that maybe and maybe um but i started thinking i
1:25:08
needed to be working with my community more which has really nothing to do with this this place so i started thinking how to
1:25:16
work again breaking past that idea of the inside outside but just always working with my people i come from
1:25:21
working class background i’m a you know descendant of enslaved people thinking about the people who are typically pushed out of these
1:25:27
institutions how do i continue to work with them so um black liberation center i was
1:25:32
thinking like here at mocha cleveland they just did some really horrible stuff to miss samaria rice the mother of tamir
1:25:38
rice um last summer it was just it was just embarrassing to know i worked at such an
1:25:44
institution that would do treat this woman like garbage um i reached out to her
1:25:50
you know with this email address from this institution and i didn’t know she was gonna respond but
1:25:55
you know i was like i’m just gonna write to her and um try to see what i can
1:26:00
you know say what what can i do um we ended up collaborating she did respond back and said she almost didn’t
1:26:07
open it when she saw that address but she did open it because we had met one one time previously
1:26:13
um separately so she opened the email we started talking she ended up participating in this teach-in that i
1:26:19
did it was pretty fantastic it was showing me other ways to operate and again pulling
1:26:25
money from this like trying to in a way you know but this is a thing again about how the institution then co-ops work so then they’re like oh
1:26:32
they did it and they didn’t it was me who worked with her after they had already insulted her
1:26:38
treated her really badly um i was able to draw funds from the institution and then put
1:26:43
gift to her so she could do what she needs for her work as an activist um it has been hard
1:26:51
but i do think the black liberation center for me has been my future i called it a maroon society that i created for myself and this white
1:26:57
institution a way to save my life and um continue to adhere to my own
1:27:03
beliefs my own ethics and beliefs and anti-racism work and yeah the project is something i’m
1:27:10
continuing on like i finished up at mocha cleveland on the 30th march 31st and liberation center hope to have that
1:27:17
keep going it’s working with ideas audrey lord and you know it’s just a thing that i care about a lot it’s just a way to make a
1:27:23
art center and getting away from those spaces i do think i think it’s something that can
1:27:29
collaborate with you know other organizations artists
1:27:34
maybe institutions it depends on the place you know just finding people with the right kind of politics with the liberatory kind of focus
1:27:43
thank you maybe kind of recalling uh natasha’s a question and harry’s
1:27:50
questions but thinking about aesthetics is like one of the things to think about and and you know i think in relation to that
1:27:56
funding but um they’re also separate thinking about money um alarm if you wanna yeah i mean
1:28:04
firstly i’m just lucky i i i teach and my curatorial practice is
1:28:10
part of my work as a scholar and and i came from
1:28:16
a theater performance background where staging was very important to me so um that’s why the energies into staging
1:28:24
the cure the curatorial work in visual art matters to me as well
1:28:30
but i mean let’s not i mean um forget that these museums or
1:28:36
institutions there are places that produce orthodoxies of presentation orthodoxies
1:28:42
of interpretation and they want to socialize or assimilate people into those orthodoxies and even artists look
1:28:50
at those orthodoxies and try to reef off and produce work that could make them legible in those spaces
1:28:56
as well so um that’s what those institutions are there for
1:29:01
and there shouldn’t be any kind of illusion that they’re suddenly going to be revolutionary spots
1:29:08
but then that once in a while there are that loose moments where they don’t even have
1:29:14
projects that are that constantly coherent once in a while they’ll just open things up
1:29:20
and it sometimes spirals out of control for that and then they recoil and reappropriate them and so on
1:29:27
so they have their good liberal liberatory people and they have their bad laboratory people they just grow
1:29:33
look through the rolodex and so on and for i guess for me being lucky enough to
1:29:39
teach in a university where and i we we my colleague deb willis and i do this big thing called
1:29:45
black portraiture is where we bring scholars and artists together we roll in travel to different parts of the
1:29:53
world actually to engage this uh subject etc so this is kind of um our space of
1:30:00
dealing with all of these questions as they emerge and i think um what i’m
1:30:05
saying maybe crystal or mars mentioned earlier it’s really just a description of what
1:30:11
coloniality means right so imagine people for whom um the borders of history crosses them
1:30:18
where even their ways of thinking speaking and imagining the well being in the world is already predetermined by the very
1:30:26
language and discourse that objectifies them so you you you’re put into that what’s
1:30:32
franz fernando called instead of nervous condition right and that’s why and and it can do
1:30:38
two things it can just make you freak out and be in a state of despair or
1:30:43
it puts you it forces you you have no space for being neutral i mean even people who are conservative
1:30:50
um they immediately are reminded the place of the long game right so it’s
1:30:56
a black con like the idea of a black conservative yes they very much go through a process i remember that
1:31:03
image of alain key is being arrested for protesting not being in the republican um debate he was
1:31:10
arrested and he was maltreated as any other black man who was being
1:31:16
quoted disruptive in a television station because the republicans didn’t want him to be a candidate and so on
1:31:22
so even he learned so soon that the honorary space he had
1:31:27
in that circle was really a temporary one and that so the point then becomes that
1:31:35
how do we not get carried away by moments where we get recognition and forget the
1:31:41
responsibilities of the places we came from uh and i think that is a common occurrence where
1:31:47
you can easily do that so for me i feel for curators who professionally
1:31:53
they have to work in these institutions and they put in this permanent state of nervous condition where they
1:32:00
don’t want to be appear to be too disruptive they have to be um acceptably good citizens of that space
1:32:08
and when occasionally permitted to take into those discursive riches of doing
1:32:14
more important community work they it’s just a little license to do that so i i
1:32:21
understand the limitations that are imposed with those institutions that are working for me i just
1:32:26
because it’s not my day job i’m able to just go into those spaces and engage with those spaces but i also
1:32:33
in my case um i start out with the artists not with institutions
1:32:38
so there are artists whose works i like who’s in depth they fit into what i’m trying to do and
1:32:43
i put it in that space rather than working for an institution i don’t know for anyone i use museum
1:32:49
whatever it is or wherever it is so i don’t work for that so for me it’s just i walk in two departments in new york and here and
1:32:57
that’s what i do i just tell stories and engage audiences in those spaces with the kind of themes that i want to
1:33:04
do but the aesthetic issue then becomes critical like right that’s there’s no aesthetic that is permanent
1:33:11
there’s a situation it’s situational ethics right
1:33:17
and in most cases even when those aesthetics start out being quite radical and so on they can easily
1:33:23
be incorporated to become passive objects in those spaces and so on so it’s really the moment
1:33:29
in history when social inequities are being questioned and
1:33:35
addressed and the textuality of these art forms at that moment that really is much more interesting
1:33:42
than a universal historicity to the aesthetic itself because so
1:33:47
so for me the aesthetics of the work is really really like what andrew was describing and that it was so situational right and
1:33:54
it was it had its moment um even when it was destroyed the memory of the text
1:34:00
participates in the the what was going on and so on if those works were suddenly
1:34:06
bought and put inside they got they’ve lost their significance and so on so
1:34:12
the moment of signification is more for me that what will determine um the
1:34:18
significance of their statics and for me if it’s kind of a liberatory moment that’s great
1:34:24
but the coloniality of our everyday life is also an important point to make and i
1:34:30
think that was the point being made earlier that in that coloniality of everyday life how
1:34:35
do we create spaces of decolonization right how do we create the language and
1:34:42
conventions ways of seeing and being that actually constantly limits the uh dominance
1:34:49
of the coloniality of everyday life and i think for me that’s the bigger theme
1:34:55
of uh that that makes our work important right that as curators are as artists it is the fact that we’re
1:35:02
contesting uh or contending with this the coloniality of everyday life and who
1:35:08
speaks for whom and the legibility of what we do
1:35:13
what conventions of representations do we deploy to do them and where do they perform them and so on
1:35:20
and what kinds of discursive groups do we use them to motivate to
1:35:25
deal with social inequalities for me those big questions will determine what makes good art what makes
1:35:31
good uh spaces to present those work and what makes um even the catalog that
1:35:38
you produce for those audiences
1:35:43
harry this this is really beautiful i’m really enjoying how themes are building and the
1:35:49
exchanges between people and um yeah i just like hearing mars really thinking
1:35:56
about how healing is really important in dealing with these spaces that have been traumatizing spaces for so many
1:36:02
people um i think i want to pick up on natasha natasha and andrew’s points about
1:36:09
multiple modernities um the question that andrew drops in the chat
1:36:14
i think this is a critical point because actually it really speaks and this you know this ties to money into
1:36:20
financialization because it really speaks to the way in which there’s a growth mindset that’s endemic
1:36:25
to cultural institutions um you know it seems like
1:36:31
almost all museums and even non-profit spaces have to grow in order to be relevant
1:36:36
um and this this is tied to this notion of multiple modernities um
1:36:42
because as museums like moma expand and diversify their collections they
1:36:48
they kind of tie this to their ongoing growth and expansion um and so the recent rehang a couple years
1:36:54
ago for example involved a expansion of their footprint at development of the real estate at the
1:37:01
museum so of course this necessitates financial growth and a continuing dependency on
1:37:08
on philanthropy and financialization and against that paradigm i think i
1:37:14
really want to see deep growth um i think d-growth could involve the
1:37:21
re-maturation of objects equity and living wages staff redistribution of resources and
1:37:27
platforms provincialization and therefore de-universalization of the modern museum
1:37:34
and other strategies um so kind of in answer to the
1:37:41
to andrew’s question of how can curators balance between different obligations to different to
1:37:46
multiple modernities i think that d growth is one strategy that this can happen
1:37:52
um and it like d growth requires accountability to communities
1:37:58
rather than privileging the tastes and aesthetics of donors multi-million dollar climate-controlled
1:38:03
artworks are an extension of the climate chaos that is driving people away from their homes and lands
1:38:09
um so d d d growth um d growth address is a kind of climate
1:38:15
the climate issues of climate justice um and i want to shout out to hillman and
1:38:21
ricky from country study forum and collective and dracada indonesia who i see in the audience i know it’s
1:38:28
very late there so it’s amazing at joining us and their work in georgia and the other collectives and groups
1:38:34
in indonesia southeast asia elsewhere are examples where these questions of
1:38:39
cultural preservation and liberation are being are being addressed in ways that de-center european colonial frames
1:38:46
um so i see i see this work being done and i think that de-growth and
1:38:52
abolitionist museums can be platforms where connections can be made between abolition and landmark movements
1:38:58
in turtle island with archipelagoes of collective study and art making elsewhere in the decolonizing south um
1:39:05
so i think you know this is this is a manner in which we can re-enchant curatorial work and really creative and
1:39:11
liberatory ways um so yeah i see that as one as one
1:39:17
exciting kind of front for cultural work and a kind of integration of aesthetics in in
1:39:23
in our organizing and relationship building
1:39:29
sally yeah so there were a couple of things that um have have been floating through my
1:39:37
mind and one of one of the points that i actually want to go back to is something that natasha mentioned in their introductory remarks
1:39:44
where we’re at this moment and i guess we’ve been at these moments for i think the past 40 years where
1:39:53
the platform for who we hear from whose voices are being represented is
1:39:59
expanding at moments when there are calls to kind of turn out to invert these spaces
1:40:07
these types of spaces whether it’s the institution of the museum or the university or even
1:40:14
a health care system right and so at a moment when you know there is more representation
1:40:19
in terms of racialized and indigenous curators in these spaces and more of a consideration of how
1:40:25
different musiological spaces operate throughout the world beyond the us beyond
1:40:31
europe what this means we’re talking about dismantling them so it’s interesting and that’s kind of a
1:40:38
tension that um i for one is a cultural practitioner that’s something i need to navigate with
1:40:44
i need to contend with um in terms of aesthetics for me personally
1:40:50
i’m someone who started working in artist run centers and then went on to work in university
1:40:56
museums and kind of shifted back and forth between the two so my aesthetics in terms of my tastes
1:41:01
what i show etc it’s informed by those spaces so by the same token it’s like i can ask
1:41:08
someone who’s a more established artist who the way that we understand moving through these systems is that you
1:41:13
progress you start out in artists run spaces then you go to baby municipal museums then you go to these national institutions
1:41:20
and on a global scale someone who’s showing say at a moma or a whitney
1:41:25
they’re not going to be interested that’s what we understand they’re not going to be interested in having a certain type of conversation or
1:41:31
presentation in a different type of space well why can’t we invite those people
1:41:37
to show in those spaces why can’t they we invite them to meet us there why can’t curators go to meet people in
1:41:43
those spaces and the inverse of that is people who are used to showing in those spaces who
1:41:49
produce the types of aesthetics that show in those spaces why can’t we show them
1:41:55
in larger institutions right so that’s something that i’m thinking about in terms of aesthetics etc but then also these
1:42:03
aesthetics around modernity it’s interesting um because
1:42:09
the way that we understand modernity that’s something that’s kind of infiltrated many different audiences
1:42:15
many different intellectuals many different individuals on a global scale so what does what does it mean to kind
1:42:21
of inherit those those legacies but also what are the ways that we can refuse them
1:42:27
and for me it’s sort of like i don’t know like i think there are other curators
1:42:32
who work in this way where it’s sort of like we have these histories we can be in certain spaces but we don’t necessarily
1:42:38
feel that we need to engage with them or we’re interested in talking around them or talking beyond them
1:42:44
and i’m going to shout out kelly morgan who is on this call this is maybe not necessarily directly
1:42:50
answering what um natasha has proposed to us but i was reading an essay that she
1:42:57
wrote shortly after she left the indianapolis museum of art in newfields and one of the things that she was
1:43:04
speaking about um and this goes in relation to the recent controversy around that space where they
1:43:10
you know want to maintain their core white audience while diversifying who goes into that space
1:43:15
um kelly mentioned i don’t recall the artist’s name but it was an african-american it was a black artist who was showing in that
1:43:22
space and kelly and i believe other people in these in the institution they did the work in advance of that
1:43:28
that exhibition taking place there they went to churches they went to different community groups etc
1:43:33
and at the opening of that exhibition they saw i think their largest numbers of black audiences within that
1:43:40
space so i think those are things for us to think about like how do we move outside of the space and
1:43:45
how do we invite people into the space um and again thinking about
1:43:52
thinking about these idea ideas around binaries and i apologize if i’m mishearing what people are saying
1:43:59
because i think that when we’re talking about like curators having politics of radicalism
1:44:05
we don’t know whether they do or not right there are only so many things you can do inside these spaces
1:44:10
people may be um in allegiance to what we understand as being radical
1:44:16
and and actually what does that actually mean right what does that actually mean how are we defining that what does
1:44:21
radicalism look like in the space of the of the classroom the university classroom or in the space of the museum
1:44:28
it’s not necessarily something as drastic as what we might understand or expect it to be
1:44:34
but also when we’re talking about um communities and and um this was something that like
1:44:42
sort of i was thinking about this when mars was talking about this there are spaces that i’ve worked in that are built around
1:44:49
this idea of community and there is this idea of like um like community is something that’s
1:44:56
homogeneous or monolithic and there are violences that you can still experience within those spaces so when we’re
1:45:02
talking about say the black community that’s a term that’s often used and that’s not a space that necessarily
1:45:09
allows for um you know broad spans of like
1:45:15
of education of class of sexuality right and these are all of the things that i think we need to be thinking about
1:45:22
because curators are also members within these outside communities and it’s not
1:45:27
that even if you are whether or not you sort of make an
1:45:32
uh conscious decision i am going to adhere to the methodologies the expectations
1:45:38
that this institution demands you don’t necessarily abandon all those parts of yourself when you enter into those spaces um so
1:45:46
that was just something that i wanted to bring up and again when we’re talking about artists um and i mentioned artists
1:45:52
earlier on me personally not to call out artists but because the work that we do is predicated on the labor of artists
1:45:59
these institutions exist to showcase the work of of artists right it’s not that they’re
1:46:05
they’re um their um their artistic production is not being co-opted or misrepresented etc that they
1:46:13
have a lot of power in some instances they have more power than curators do or interpreters or other types of
1:46:19
programmers and again if we are making work a lot of us who belong to various marginalized groups
1:46:25
the work that we are doing is usually informed by our membership in those groups right
1:46:31
there is a reason why we want to talk about you know different racial or ethnic representations the reasons why we need to acknowledge
1:46:38
indigeneity why we’re insisting that within the americas right why we’re talking about ability so
1:46:44
it’s disingenuous to be making work around those issues and then to be
1:46:49
getting grants or funding because you are a member of these groups but then not taking that out to the
1:46:55
street and so when we’re talking about yes i was very impressed by the fact
1:47:01
that i’m going back to the whitney again that curators within that institution they put their livelihoods on the line
1:47:07
they made things uncomfortable for themselves working in in that space by signing that letter
1:47:13
condemning candace right and calling out their institution as well but when we want to be in these
1:47:20
institutions are working in them like these are conversations we have to have with ourselves what does it mean
1:47:25
when we are adhering to um i guess the exhibition of certain types of aesthetics
1:47:31
and and and we contribute to the reproduction of certain types of aesthetics what does it mean
1:47:37
when we are going to showcase or we want to showcase our work or work in a space
1:47:42
that has a history or has a collection that’s amassed around stolen artifacts and reproducing
1:47:48
misinformation in relation to them um this idea around longevity that goes
1:47:53
back to care which i’m gonna go back to um uh i think again it’s i think the way
1:48:00
that um harry is speaking and is pulling out all of these sort of attendant issues is very critical it’s very important to be
1:48:07
speaking about climate change and what it means to be um
1:48:12
caring for objects which we don’t which often don’t see the light of day right
1:48:17
that’s something we should be talking about as well but when i’m thinking about care and this idea of
1:48:23
temporalities or something that is temporarily you’re temporarily in engagement with
1:48:29
i think that’s a way of kind of showcasing respect that can be replicated on many different
1:48:35
levels so when even the care that it’s taking um that can be enacted within repatriating
1:48:42
an object returning an object i think those are things that are very
1:48:49
important to be to be mindful of moving forward but i think we can do all of that those
1:48:56
things in the moment in which we are engaged in dialogue with a practitioner with a maker etc
1:49:02
but then also realize that these things are not going to be preserved for for posterity i think i think that’s
1:49:08
okay i don’t think those two things are in contradiction with each other and um
1:49:14
and again in terms of thinking about artists there i’m going to shout out a couple of artists that are
1:49:19
all based here in canada there are people like shelly nero and sandra brewster and maria hubfield
1:49:26
who i’ve i’ve worked with all three of them but they will exhibit their work in different types of
1:49:31
spaces and i know sandra brewster in particular and i’m kind of talking out of turn here
1:49:38
as is someone who is interested in in showcasing in different spaces but doesn’t necessarily
1:49:43
value an exhibition at a larger type of institution over say showcasing in an artists run
1:49:50
center she will approach them both in the same way with the same level of respect and and care for this for this opportunity
1:49:56
for engagement and she’s also someone who is very invested in i’m showcasing this work
1:50:01
here these are the kinds of dialogues i’m having here but what kind of what kind of conversations
1:50:06
can i be having with communities that exist outside of these spaces how can we have those conversations
1:50:12
with particular um residents both inside and outside
1:50:18
of these of these institutions and i think that’s something that this is kind of what i was thinking of
1:50:24
in terms of how kelly has been working i’m kelly morgan i’m i’m referring to here both how do i engage
1:50:31
with these dialogues or how do i kind of unleash these dialogues within the space and outside of this space
1:50:37
so that you’re kind of moving acro across these boundaries however invisible or visible they may be
1:50:47
thank you i want to acknowledge time it’s 153 so i think i don’t think we got any questions
1:50:53
um and so if not then we can just um wrap up uh through
1:51:00
um hearing you all one last time and then we can have some closing remarks and then this will feed into the fifth
1:51:06
conversation in two weeks so i think latonya latonya if you have
1:51:12
any thoughts and then we’ll just do one last round yeah thank you um yeah i think it’s
1:51:19
definitely i’ve been thinking a lot about this what sally was just talking about the value of the spaces that we’re in in relationship to care um
1:51:27
this concept of fugitivity and i was i was writing down
1:51:32
the relationship between fugitivity and care like that’s something i i felt like maybe that should be just a
1:51:38
whole talk about that so i’m going to just stop there
1:51:44
thank you awam thank you for this opportunity and um i i think for me it is just that
1:51:51
curatorial practices are never finished they’re open-ended questioning processes and the places
1:51:58
we engage our work will challenge us and um the exhibition is not going to be
1:52:06
the sole way of changing the world but it will contribute some words and
1:52:11
that prominent act of engagement with the text with the artist with the
1:52:16
context which produces them is what actually will make the work uh an
1:52:22
active um process rather than a very passive process and i think the
1:52:27
decolonized the the colonial aspect is also critical that even as we
1:52:33
work in in institutions that have colonial histories etc
1:52:38
um our presences there are textually decolonial as well but we have to activate them so
1:52:46
that we are in excess of those places and i think that for me is the camera
1:52:52
from the thing that as curators or as professors or whatever we just want to show that we the place
1:52:59
is not enough to cover broad spectrums of subjectivity
1:53:04
that we’re looking at or that we’re signaling even by our practices as curators or as artists
1:53:11
so i think that for me that’s where i’ll kind of live it that it’s it’s really a permanent process of
1:53:17
inquiry encounters criticality and that we’re not supposed to be simply
1:53:25
providing stories for the status quo but we’re constantly
1:53:31
destabilizing and uh the status quo and its artifacts and that energy is what will make the
1:53:37
artist also get into the groove of producing works that are not finished but are open-ended
1:53:44
texts with which they want to engage the world
1:53:49
gary um i really just want to say thank you um brilliant conversation it’s really nice
1:53:56
to be talking with you all um to be building relationships together and i know that i and i i recognize i
1:54:04
think that talking is a form of doing i also just want to say that i want to do more of the doing with you all
1:54:10
because um i believe there’s a really important practice here that that is being discussed in terms of um
1:54:18
creating care building other um imaginaries and structures so really
1:54:23
excited to continue that work with you all um moving forward so thank you
1:54:29
thank you sally yeah i think i was just listening to what other people were saying and i
1:54:35
wasn’t thinking about how i was going to summarize this um but yeah i guess to build on
1:54:41
what what harry was saying that at the end of the day i feel very
1:54:48
fortunate and privileged in some ways that i’m able to do
1:54:53
to engage in a line of work where it um is kind of psychologically or
1:55:01
emotionally um fulfilling and invalidating and and energizing and
1:55:09
um through the engagement of art objects but more with the people
1:55:15
who produce them and having these kinds of conversations
1:55:21
and engagements um i find them to be very expansive and validating to the work that we are
1:55:28
doing that it can have it has a value for the people who are attending these spaces
1:55:35
and for the people who are working within these spaces but also the people who are calling us
1:55:41
to be accountable to think about how we are creating work
1:55:48
that that basically exists as a portal to all of the spaces
1:55:55
i.e the world that exists around us and so i think um someone made a comment in in
1:56:02
the it was more of a comment in the chat section about ethics i think you know there’s an ethics of care
1:56:07
and ethics of accountability um and ethics of responsibility that i think all of us who are working within
1:56:14
this field um need to be mindful of and that i think again i’m going to i’m going to thank
1:56:20
the other participants but for dtp because these are the ways
1:56:25
in which you work you kind of call us to account but also move beyond that you’re moving within
1:56:30
with an ethos of care with an ethos of love calling us to think beyond how we
1:56:36
function within these spaces so i’ll just leave it there i’m thankful for this um
1:56:42
yeah thank you all i think that you know my my last thought on this to kind of think
1:56:48
about is like again it’s something that i carry with me from yesterday but being in front of
1:56:54
moma and not inside of moma was so empowering once you find others and once people
1:57:00
walk out of the institution and find each other and then all of a sudden the type of aesthetics and the ability to breathe
1:57:07
in what is beautiful and possible just just the idea like you can you can represent care and feeling and
1:57:14
all the stuff or you can just experience it and you try to find the words for it right and i
1:57:19
think that something that i left uh yesterday with
1:57:24
is that the the light the people that were working in the library and people that were working in the archives and
1:57:31
then the people that were working at the tickets and one of the curators they all had similar politics and feelings to what we
1:57:38
have and the questions we have but they haven’t been able to talk to each other in the same institution right
1:57:46
so then creating other spaces both geographically psychically spatially is really important and i
1:57:53
think that the work that we’re doing is that we have to find ways in excess outside of you know
1:58:00
that that can allow us to uh to create other relations and that’s what’s that’s
1:58:07
ultimately what will be unsettling what we found my experience has been because
1:58:13
i left thinking moma’s really at risk
1:58:18
when you’re able to be outside and to meet and to organize you’ve solved an organizational
1:58:24
issue for them you’ve created a crisis and this is the same technologies that they use
1:58:29
to divide and control and conquer they use it with the migrant workers when they put them
1:58:35
in the same you know in the same camp unable to speak the same languages from areas that are geographically conflicted
1:58:42
around borders colonial borders so so the work that we can do um and that we’re doing together is is
1:58:50
and what we’ve managed to do because of curators that took risks that’s the other thing you know and i
1:58:57
think to awam’s point you know it was a fluke that we got into artist space
1:59:02
an absolute fluke because the director was leaving and he didn’t tell anyone he was leaving and he
1:59:08
kind of just wanted to leave with a bang or didn’t care something was going on there that was like you know harry can speak more to it and
1:59:15
then harry did all the work you know but also harry was there and you know and and we
1:59:20
the idea of like curator and artist really dissolved and we were trying to and we went in
1:59:25
there not with the show because we didn’t do a show but we went in there thinking how can we
1:59:31
redistribute resources and how can we create power in a decolonial formation in the city
1:59:37
and if you look at the decolonial manual that was that journey that resulted in being able to do ftp in
1:59:43
the city way outside of the walls of the institution right um so that doesn’t recognize these
1:59:50
divides thank you all so much nick do you have any last thoughts i just wanted to say this was really
1:59:56
beautiful i mean i feel like you know there’s care degrowth like aesthetics is an open document so
2:00:01
his uh arch art should be open document i mean i feel like so much of what we do in our movement is
2:00:07
constantly learning and learning and moving uh within the time and space right and and and
2:00:13
resisting coloniality through that so i feel like it all kind of connects together so it was really nice to hear
2:00:18
everybody thank you all and thanks everyone for coming in two weeks from
2:00:23
now same time saturday at 12 eastern time thank you thank you all
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