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um good afternoon everyone my name is susan lewis and i’m delighted to say a

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few words in advance of our closing session here at the university of victoria it is

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my honor to serve as the dean of the faculty of fine arts and this semester

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as acting associate vice president academic planning in the office of the

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provost i want to begin our final session by acknowledging with respect the la

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cuangan peoples on whose traditional territory the university stands and the

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songies esquaimault and with saanich peoples whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day

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and i look forward to continuing my work with colleagues here at uvic and with

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our partners like the aggv and local indigenous communities as we consider

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the role of the arts and education in responding to the calls to action of the truth and

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reconciliation commission what amazing few days as professional

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artists practicing buddhists and scholars from a wide range of disciplines have come together here to

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better understand buddhist influences in contemporary art in north america

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and i know the collaborations and conversations that have started here over this weekend will continue

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to foster further inquiry research and artistic creation in the

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coming weeks and months i want to take a moment to thank aggv

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curator jema savannahsen and linda gammon professor emerita in the department of

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visual arts for their vision and leadership in bringing this research convening together

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and it’s it’s really wonderful to have such champions in our local community

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i also want to thank the research convening advisors external advisory committee curatorial assistant

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volunteers and documentation team this convening is one of many examples

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of collaborations underway between the university and the art gallery of greater victoria and i thank

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its director john tupper for his desire to build a strong connection between

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uvic and the gallery and through this partnership we’ve helped create many opportunities for

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student learning research and artistic collaboration that have been of great benefit to both

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organizations and our community i also

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want to acknowledge the orion endowment in the art this is a very generous

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donation to the faculty of fine arts that enables us to bring 40 guest artists and scholars every year

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to our community and of course supported many of the events this weekend and now

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i’ll turn things over to linda gammon to introduce our presenters thank you

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thank you thank you susan and thanks again

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you’re pointing okay and thanks again to the uh orion fund it’s uh an amazing

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amazing that we can bring people to the university so um the lecture or the

3:32

conversation today beautiful trouble a conversation on activism art and buddhism with suzanne lacy and jody

3:39

evans um i’m just i’m going to be here to introduce both of them and i want to begin by introducing suzanne i just want

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to say that i’ve taught at the university for 30 years and as many educators all over the world i have to

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say you have never been far from our lips over all of that time and i want to thank you

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suzanne is a totally a pioneer in terms of um social the social activism social

4:04

work that she’s done in terms of social practice and in terms of performance art being a performance artist and social

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practitioner in art before the term was invented so to speak um she was all she’s she’s been there um

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um she’s based in los angeles and uh uh also a very strong very important

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feminist artist and and leader for us women who are struggling in the arts uh in the 70s and beyond

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i just want to say a few things about her prolific career it includes performance video photographic

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installation critical writing and public practices and communities her work ranges from intimate body explorations

4:44

to large-scale public performances involving literally hundreds and thousands at times audience members her

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work has been reviewed in the village voice art forum l.a times new york times

4:58

art in america and numerous books and periodicals she lectures widely and we’re so

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fortunate to have her here in victoria she’s published over 70 texts of critical commentary and has exhibited at

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the tanks at the tate modern the museum of contemporary art in los angeles the whitney museum the new museum and ps1 in

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new york the bilbao museum in spain and the san francisco museum of modern art

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recently some of you may have been there for that exhibition i know hema was her scores of fellowships include the

5:31

guggenheim foundation the henry moore foundation and the national endowment for the arts her book mapping the

5:37

terrain new genre public art now in its third printing and available in both english and chinese languages was

5:44

responsible for coining the term and articulating the practice leaving art performances politics

5:52

politics and publix the collected essays of suzanne lacy was published in 2010 by

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duke university press a monograph suzanne lacey space between by sharon

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irish was published in 2010 by the university of manis minnesota press and lacey was founding

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chair of the mfa in public practice at the otis college of art and design she holds a doctor of philosophy from gray’s

6:16

school of art at robert gordon university in scotland she currently teaches at the university of southern

6:22

california arosky school of art and design i know you wanted me to keep it short but it’s rather difficult

6:30

and the same goes for you jody such a long people want to know

6:37

jody evans jody has been a peace environmental women’s rights and social justice activist for 50 years she is

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co-founder and director of code pink a worldwide network committed to working for peace and social justice that began

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in 2002. in her various roles as a producer and global activist jody has had the

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opportunity to work with his holiness the 14th dalai lama and the zen master

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han who advocated for a notion of engaged buddhism during the vietnam war jody is the co-editor of two books

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twilight of empire responses to occupation and stop the next war now

7:15

effective response to violence and terrorism and a contributor to beautiful trouble a toolbox for revolution

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jody’s commitment to social change is evidenced through various um several documentary films she has produced

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1999 films stripped and teased tales from las vegas women the people speak

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based on howard zinns a people’s history of the united states and the oscar-nominated documentary the

7:42

square which captured the the profound two thousand two thousand twelve democratic uprisings in egypt in

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2015 she executive produced the climate change documentary this changes

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everything and also the brainwashing of my dad a film that turns the lens on the

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rise of the right-wing media apparatus jody served on the board of directors of numerous organizations that foster

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environmental charitable education sociopolitical and health care causes she is also a

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tireless advocate of the slow food and slow money movements supporting local production and local consumption and

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encouraging economic development in the local regional economy please join me in welcoming

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both of you thank you so much for coming

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thank you for coming today we have been in conversation for many years

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together occasionally in public but mostly in private and we were going to attempt

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something today which is to talk to each other without a moderator and so we’ll be sort of quizzing each other

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as we move forward and the first question and we’re going to try to move forward fairly quickly because

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interspersed we’ll show you a little bit of our work but the first question is when did you become a buddhist

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so i was raised a mormon and i ran away from home at 12 thinking they were pretty out of their minds

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and became a maid in las vegas and in 1970 was making a dollar

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87 an hour and we were organized to march for a living wage and we won

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i maids make 70 000 a year in vegas still

9:37

25 miles away they make eight so but what it did for me is put me on the

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path of a lifetime of activism i was an anti-war activist and in the mcgovern campaign and there i met jerry brown

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and i i think because i ran away from home and had to support myself

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since i was 12 i could make anything happen pretty much and so jerry took me into his

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administration which was partly run out of the zen center in san francisco

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and it was there that um gary snyder taught me to meditate and peter coyote taught me the the

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dharma and so my buddhism is pretty audacious and radical

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and has seen a lot um and my son is a buddhist priest

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so the past has been like was mentioned the dalai lama asked

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me to help produce this idea that he had as we came to 2000

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of that music could be the way to peace and so it was the world festival of sacred music north america

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uh that was a two-year project that lasted fourteen um

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and then um tiknot han i was producing a radio show

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for jerry brown after i’d run his presidential campaign and i had ty come on the show and i

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started with so many of the roshi’s that i know as monks in the san francisco zen

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center i mean even roshi joan who’s the lineage my son is part of roshi joan halifax was just you know uh married to

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a guy who was giving a sell at st at the time so i’ve literally watched the lives of

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many of the teachers now come from this place of monk and tai was that um also

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in san francisco and he came to be on the radio show and he was really provoking jerry um about

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where was his engaged buddhism and um so

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at the time he was doing his annual trip to san francisco at spirit rock

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which is a center for meditation in northern california but it’s a lot of white elites that can get there and so i

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challenged him that when jerry became mayor he should do his walking meditation in northern california around

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the lake in oakland which he did for eight years which then spurred um

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in oakland a real commitment to mindfulness in many many communities that lives on today

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so um when did your relationship with buddhism begin suzanne

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well i want to say first when my relationship with jody began which was around the time that jerry brown came to

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oakland and i’d been involved with the last mayor working with youth development through the arts and

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jerry and jody invited me to be part of jerry brown’s inauguration

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and i was part of i think the first time you walked around the lake with tiknot han

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and we we’ve been talking ever since i i became a buddhist um through my teacher alan capro he was

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probably through the lineage of john cage uh but a lot of my friends like pauline oliveras eleanor anton a lot of

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us were buddhists at a certain point in time and many of us studied with jokobek in san diego that’s sort of uh how i

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became a buddhist but instead of so much when i’d also just like to talk a little bit about why

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i was as a child uh grew up in a working-class family like jody did and

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um was always interested in kind of spiritual slash ethical with an emphasis

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on the ethical issues so by the time i was eight i’d read the bible cover to cover because i had seen that there were

13:39

some things in christianity that really had to do with right living but of course by the time i was 18 or 19 i’d

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figured out that there was a lot of men in that narrative and not many women so i sort

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of diverted and for years it wasn’t until i began to uncover and

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understand buddhism mostly through the lens of women teachers that i was very

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excited about something that continually unfolded that i could never figure out

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quite that kept revealing itself to me that had a deeply embedded sort of sense

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of of ethics and why we are alive and how we could

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live so those things were were super uh uh kind of how i uh came to be a buddhist

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jody i would love to hear from you and i can never hear enough

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about how you are an activist this is the real part of our relationship with each other is the activist and the

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artist although that itself is an ongoing conversation and critique of each

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other’s position and how we describe each other so i’m going to take you to some visuals

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so code pink was founded in o2 as a response to bush’s

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color-coded alerts frightening the american people to war he was color coding red orange and yellow so we

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called code pink for peace and it started as a vigil outside the white house that went on for six months

15:29

every day all day and people came from around the world and around the country to sit with us and

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then went back and started vigils in their own community so suzanne wants me to show you what it

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looks like to be an activist um

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my banner says no racism no hate [Laughter]

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hmm

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and that photo was the photo of the year in the new yorker with my hands my peace hands coming out of that flag

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post-traumatic slave syndrome is an explanatory theory that really looks at multi-generational trauma what happened

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[Music] one of the things that’s difficult for people is their first response oh my god that happened so long ago we’re talking

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about people being captured shipped sold beaten raped experimented

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on and then you have to ask the question did the trauma continue yes so 300 years of trauma no help freed no help more

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trauma if it’s a sustained trauma then the the impact of that okay

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we’re back um and also no racism no hate is core to

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our work at code pink because it is hate that drives us to war how we’re told a story to hate the other

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and it’s racism because our bombs drop on people of color

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um being present and responding each day to what happens is what we do we listen and we witness

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and we go to where the gaze is and so um you know from choosing the

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color pink to being bold and audacious not as bold and audacious or as big as

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suzanne would like whenever i call her for coaching i’m always falling under her bar

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but in the united states uh when you lose a job you get a pink slip so we were giving members of congress’s

18:07

pink badge of courage if they said they were going to vote no on the war and pink slips in the form of lingerie um as

18:14

their pink slip that became things we would wear into the congressional office or i threw my pink slip at

18:21

hillary clinton um but then we kind of blew it up into two stories and it was

18:26

off of bridges and buildings and inside the halls of congress

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so the other thing is non-violent activism is something that you do to expose the violence of the culture that

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you’re living in so showing up also in pink in in the moment of whatever’s happening is

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a way to really show what that violence looks like and we try very hard to be disarming to

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not be the other to be against or to be in resistance but to be in

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invitation and the presentation of an offering of another way

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and we like humor it’s core to our work

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we also like to change the story so this is outside of hillary clinton’s office

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and at rallies we labeled the shoes of children with

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the name of an iraqi child their age and the date they were killed as we were trying to talk to members of congress to

19:31

tell them not to vote for war and then one day i called suzanne and said we have a big rally coming what

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should i do she could oh get like a hundred thousand shoes at the rally which was impossible

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so i built a small box uh four by uh eight feet of acrylic

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and people brought their shoes and labeled them and that box sat outside of busboys and poets in dc for three years

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became the backdrop for op-eds and conversations and articles reminding people that it was real people that were

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being killed with their bombs um also culture jamming is something we

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do often and here’s the gals in seattle telling their own story

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and then obviously using our bodies in all the ways we can we can’t go to

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congress with signs but we can go where you know like we’re always in a t-shirt with a message

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but this is an example of messages on beaches of thousands of bodies expressing a

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message and then here we are um this was a day that condoleezza rice was going to

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testify congress asking for more money for war and bombs and we got together about 20 of us at

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the codepink house because there’s a lot of anger at condi rice and congress for

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what the what we were feeling was the loss of life the violation of a country

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and really to ground people so that they could feel that anger first and transform it in

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to go through to love before we got in the room and so we had painted our hands red we

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were ready to sit down and just raise them in the back of the room that the power of we felt the power of just our

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presence from the space of love would be enough in the back of the room but condi walked past

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a local librarian named desiree and dez having been you know really deep

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in that moment stood up knowing that she couldn’t touch her and said you have the blood of the iraqi

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people on your hands this is something the media would not print this is not something anyone will

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say but when you do it in congress it becomes the story and this story went around the world because of course in

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the united states nobody’s going to say that but around the world everyone knew that and it became a story for a long

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time and that picture continues to live on you can see us in the back with the

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hands as it was planned but we’re in congress pretty much every day

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and again we’re showing up to tell another story if what is

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happening in congress and the voices that are speaking aren’t telling all the truth or any truth

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we try to raise another point of view and i always felt that standing out front of the white house i was somehow

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standing there for the people that were watching the conversation and saying this doesn’t feel right to me so that

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they could recognize someone else that felt also it wasn’t right for them either

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[Music] [Applause] actually the woman is medea benjamin

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co-founder of the anti-war protest group report some in washington should spend more time responding to the warnings of our

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commanders on the ground and less time responding to the demands

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of moveon.org bloggers and code pink protesters we saw every night code pink activists

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inside the convention hall and only a feet away from the speed code pink traveled to charlotte after protesting

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at the republican national convention in tampa time to get corporate money out of politics and it’s time to end the wars

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abroad we need to hold the obama administration accountable for all the wars that he is perpetuating what about

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the hundreds of innocent people we are killing with our drone strikes in pakistan

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and in yemen and somalia i speak out on behalf of those innocent victims they

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deserve an apology from you mr brennan yeah well how many people are you willing to sacrifice why are you lying

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to the american people and not saying how many innocents have been killed

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[Music]

26:14

[Music]

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that gives you a sense of the creativity

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so suzanne how do you express your art

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well uh first i have to say that the box is pretty good with the shoes

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i had sort of thought that she should have a giant truck that would sort of throw all these shoes kind of dump them

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at the front of what congressman was it was um lebowitz yeah and uh but um but i think

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the box looked good jody uh so um what what i’m gonna do is show you

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also just a very short in very short order two projects um as an artist

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i don’t consider myself a buddhist artist i am a buddhist and i am an artist and

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what i’m going to show you is not something that i would explain necessarily in terms of buddhism though

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we can talk about it this is for jody di tu pune eletra um by

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my fist in my hand or uh that’s a an expression in um south america that i’m

27:43

in in ecuador this is in quito ecuador that is a kind of double-entend about

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writing and about um i don’t know why this is doing this but

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it shouldn’t maybe okay maybe just the image got misplaced

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in the so let me just say uh this is an image of a woman writing and um

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and this is based on letters written by over 10 000 women in ecuador on

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experiences they personally had on violence when i got to ecuador asked to do a project on violence against women

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having worked in that area for years i was interested with my collaborators of

28:25

whom there were many there in the idea of the deconstruction of masculinity or what’s now called toxic

28:31

masculinity so we decided to engage men in the conversation and to make a

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project that sort of modeled their movement into a public conversation did

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the light still lowered yeah okay um and uh so these are uh workshops that

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we did for men with a man named ken kroger who was doing uh work on

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masculinity workshops this was when i go into a town i work

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or an environment i sort of do a structural analysis of government nonprofits schools and so on to sort of

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see where centers of interest around the topic lie in this case we really focused on

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a series of of projects where men went into communities and educated other men

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and then became part of a performance we chose a bull ring because we wanted to

29:26

use the because it’s theatrically quite wonderful and we also wanted to use uh

29:32

sort of the notion of male valor the courage to stand up and be part of this

29:38

conversation we engage the mayor’s wife the city the mayor and so on just as a

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way of kind of disseminating and legitimizing the conversation and then of course performatively or

29:51

aesthetically there are lots and lots of of people engaged and this is

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this is over 10 different directing stations that’s on the third floor of um

30:05

this bull ring so there were sort of three levels the audience level the performer level and the directing level

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and the performance begins i would like a little bit more lowered light because

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as an artist i’m kind of into videos thank you so let’s see if i remember how to do

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this okay

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foreign [Music]

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[Music]

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[Music]

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[Music]

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[Laughter]

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is [Music]

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is [Applause]

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[Music]

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[Music] [Applause]

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carter [Music]

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[Music] my

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[Music]

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so in case you didn’t see this performance took place first in the

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bullring with men reading actual letters from women

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and the then moving into the audience and then at the very be end reading

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the letters to small groups of people

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there were performers in the audience so there was a mixing of audience and performer

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that ended with everybody engaged in the project [Music]

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so i want to just show you one other work these are two relatively recent works since 2015. this one’s in

35:14

lancashire england and is a little less i think

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i think that that project is sometimes hard to handle the level of violence and

35:26

i just want to acknowledge that that is a difficult project

35:31

sometimes to listen to this is in lancashire where

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in the 60s pakistani immigrants moved and became a part of the culture of the

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textile mills and those mills have now been that that industry has gone uh

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other places and still a very large pakistani community

35:56

in that area has become increasingly separate from the white british um i

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wouldn’t say british born because many of the pakistanis by now are british born but have become separ um the the

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white community and predominantly christian and the muslim and predominantly pakistani communities

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have become segregated as there are no common gathering places they don’t meet in

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churches they don’t meet mosques they don’t meet in any place other than the local walmarts

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and so i did a three-year project there with many collaborators including ralph

36:34

bashir here and brought in a friend from appalachia

36:39

ron penn who is a shape note singer and over a series of engagements dinners and

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so on over the course of a year we we instigated cross-religion cross-cultural

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conversations and ended in well it hasn’t exactly

36:56

ended yet but uh but in 2017 i think or 2016 we had a

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performance and that performance was in one of the local abandoned mills that

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was in the process of redevelopment as a bedroom community in manchester and

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the way the forces were setting up there was to separate the literally by a railroad track the

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pakistani community from the now they had hoped would become the white professional community who would occupy

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this mill so we uh used the mill as a site for a performance

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and um opened it up over the course of three days to tours we did interviews with

37:42

over 75 former mill workers and uh talked about racism and and the

37:49

shift in economy and their hopes for the future and then over the course of these three

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days we also opened up the um the mill to people uh kind of looking at

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watching the installation getting ready for a performance and this

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is the performance that took place

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oh

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i [Applause]

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[Music] uh

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[Applause]

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[Applause]

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hey [Music]

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uh

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[Music]

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uh uh [Music]

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[Music]

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[Music]

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[Music]

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[Music] thank you

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hey [Music] [Applause]

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[Music] [Applause]

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[Music]

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[Applause] hey

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[Applause] [Music]

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[Music]

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[Applause]

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[Applause]

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[Music]

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[Music] [Applause] me

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[Laughter] [Music]

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so in case you miss that the square is called shape

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note music people sit in a square it’s a democratic form of music that originated people think in lancashire but came to

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america the circle is sufi chanting so

41:56

jody where here here’s our the first thing we want to discuss

42:02

where do art and activism intersect this is one of the major

42:07

uh sort of subjects of our ongoing conversation and kind of

42:13

underlying that is our our interest in and practice in buddhism

42:19

so the conversation starts because as a witness to suzanne’s work and a big fan

42:26

from the 70s for me her work is activism

42:32

she creates a container for something hidden to be to emerge

42:38

for everyone to be engaged in that and have their experience of it

42:43

and to provoke um in the room the conversation

42:48

but whenever i say you’re an activist she gets very mad at me she goes no you’re an activist

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um but i come from eight generations of potters and so i wanted to be an artist and then

43:04

realized that at 18 i couldn’t afford to be an artist i didn’t have the luxury of time i had a family to support

43:12

and so i always feel that in my art i’m creating container for something to happen because as a potter container is

43:19

my form um so i think i i hold on to

43:27

the dream of that that could have happened and then surrender to

43:32

my form as an activist and i think for me um

43:38

my belief that i’m not an activist i’m an activist artist and i certainly care i read much more in politics than i do

43:45

and which is why i love talking with her she always fills me in on um things that i haven’t figured out yet um but i i

43:53

think that it’s really critical for artists to uh particularly those of us who talk

43:59

about social engagement and i’m i’m not talking about the contemplative making practices i’m talking about

44:05

socially engaged practices i think it’s important at least for me to hold myself

44:10

up to the uh standards criteria of of activism and

44:16

i think that um you know to be very honest my goals my

44:22

objectives when i’m making art are not the same as your goals when you do

44:30

an action and i also think the things i attend to

44:35

are or or i will give energy and and time uh to are maybe off purpose like i would

44:42

probably end up collecting a hundred thousand shoes uh and jody would just go out and you

44:48

know dump whatever shoes she had uh as a way of i think we do share media

44:53

literacy and media critique and and the use of media imagery for social ends but

45:00

i also think one of the big issues for me um as an artist and i consider myself

45:07

a professional artist and we haven’t talked at least today much about that well yes actually you talked about it a

45:14

lot about this all of you did on the last panel about sort of this issue with

45:20

the field and so so as a professional artist i see a lot of people who i would

45:26

take issue with who are holding themselves up as engaged but are really

45:32

catering to the demands of the profession for being

45:37

hipper than thou better than now and and so i think it’s you know when i say i’m not an activist

45:44

what i mean is really in admiration for those people who commit themselves to a life completely of activism and of the

45:52

end goal of social change and i think i’m a split i’m a split person on that so

45:59

so i think in a sense i’m an activist artist but i am not an activist

46:06

and i’m not an artist um but i think also in my activism

46:14

there’s the ways that we’re the same is using witnessing

46:20

taking the moment and bringing the spotlight on it so there are ways that is that

46:26

informed by our practice of buddhism is that informed by your underlying activism and is

46:33

my need to to go to the visual to like understand the power of the visual come from

46:39

my study of art and so the the threads are there um

46:45

but you know when you said what we expect out of our work

46:50

um

46:56

i say a lot to the activists it’s

47:01

i have to deal with a lot of grief and pain and anger because of what i witness

47:07

and how closely to the bone i witness what’s happening in the world

47:14

and um and where people enter the world of code pink is

47:19

usually from that broken open heart place of oh my god what do i do how do i end

47:26

the bombing of children in yemen or the drone attacks on innocent people in pakistan you know it’s endless

47:33

right now it’s what do i do for the kurds and that’s the starting place of what

47:40

someone where you enter into codepink and that’s the starting place of our work every day

47:47

what what do we answer and long ago i had to look at it and go

47:53

i didn’t start this and i’m not going to end it but what i can do is stand up in the

47:58

face of it and give break down the space of fear

48:04

if everything i’m looking at is driven by fear and greed and

48:09

then how do i find a way to not be that in the face of it not be afraid of it not

48:15

have to react to it and how do i find my way to be in relationship with it

48:21

and that becomes the way code pink operates is that when we started it was like just a place

48:27

where people who wanted to be engaged against the war could come and have the

48:33

tools they needed and that includes the tool of how do you be disarming

48:39

how do you not in the conversation about resist how do you not be the resist that

48:45

persists but be instead a witness without need for the end

48:51

and that space of um you know like right now the thrill of

48:57

watching lebanon and chile and ecuador and it’s it’s that i am i am

49:04

one of those people in the street it’s kind of why making the film in egypt

49:10

it’s that we’re all just one and we’re all of it and so that it fits

49:16

the right action it’s kind of the part of code pink it’s like in the face of it and you’re feeling the grief and you’re

49:22

feeling the anger what in this moment is right action and i think that’s why you see the humor and

49:27

the color and the space of what how our job we say is to educate

49:34

and that’s to bring what is hidden forward so people can make a decision from more information than they’re usually

49:40

given and to activate which is to really inspire that place in the heart

49:46

that instead of closing it down because it’s overwhelming to let the heart opening space of

49:52

compassion engage and then that creates activism we don’t have to activate the activation comes

49:59

from that process and then to get out of the way because

50:06

when when you’re in that space the creativity happens the response seems to happen and

50:12

when in the film it’s like we harvest ideas locally it’s

50:18

it’s a container of thousands hundreds of thousands around the world and around the country

50:23

where an idea can come into fruition where there’s enough it’s like oh can we and then it’s like

50:29

yes i mean there are women across there’s this woman in kansas that sits outside the

50:35

state house once a week and um cross stitching the most

50:40

profoundly painful images of what we’re doing on the border

50:47

but the process of watching her cross stitch the beauty of the process who she is

50:54

where she’s sitting is kind of like greta sitting outside of you know her state house

50:59

it’s that space of witness and then what arises from that space of witness which is what i see you do in your work

51:08

well i i do think art um i liked what you said last night um where she was she

51:14

was talking about if you imagine two circles and they sort of move together and intersect and go out again and that

51:21

is art and that is activism and how you can do a completely in what i would

51:27

call a completely activist work and i guess that’s quite challengeable and hopefully you’ll challenge both of

51:34

us later but but i i think that when

51:39

wit witnessing is the one place that art and activism come together

51:45

and witnessing in art terms i think is translated into deep listening and most

51:52

people who are engaged in social practice understand that that’s what we do we listen very deeply and we then try

52:00

to make images one of the things that i think as as an artist i think about in terms of buddhism and

52:07

engaged art is how do you um how do you witness and then

52:15

you know bernie glassman just witnessed right and and and maybe sat and witnessed but

52:21

an artist would want to sit and witness and then do and it’s

52:28

it’s that and then do that i think is one of the big challenges

52:34

between engaged buddhism and engaged art and maybe even between engaged buddhism

52:39

and contemplative buddhism and and what i mean by that is to do as an artist to make in at least in western

52:47

culture as somebody as i guess mali mentioned today to to make is to exert some form of

52:55

the self the perception so and i don’t mean that an ego as in

53:01

you know egotistical i mean that is in the exertion of the way you

53:07

construct images is the way you see reality now i

53:13

may have the best you know motives in the world for doing that but i’m fully aware and it comes up

53:18

a lot in my work um not so much lately but like when i was doing all these projects in oakland

53:26

kids would say to me um you know well we don’t sit in cars why should we do

53:31

your project sitting in cars that’s not what we do and i would really spend a lot of time

53:37

thinking about why they should sit in cars and not on a bus or in their bedrooms

53:42

and and so there was this real sort of struggle to eventually i said to some of my

53:49

colleagues well you know i um you guys go ahead and do the project in the bus i’m not going to spend the next two

53:55

years of my life because i’m not feeling the bus on the other hand so these negotiations

54:02

finally one of the teenagers said look the lady wants cars let’s do cars no big deal

54:08

it was the colleagues that i had that were fighting with me but but i do think it’s an important fight

54:15

because it’s the conversation about when you manifest

54:20

an image as an artist i think that image comes from a self

54:27

and i think that’s to me one of the big challenges of of buddhism is

54:33

how do you or can you or do you simply acknowledge it which is what i do in my work

54:39

you know i am indeed i had a thing going for shape note and

54:45

sufi chanting in the middle of that mill and it’s not like i can’t be diverted

54:51

because i’m diverted a lot like with the ecuador project a lot of feminists challenge me like why

54:57

are you now doing this with men when we’ve been working on this issue for 15 years so at the end you see that women

55:04

got incorporated into the project so so you know there’s a give and take

55:10

and an ongoing negotiation and i see it as the negotiation between

55:16

two forms of reality so another problem i have around buddhism and witnessing is

55:21

is uh it’s one thing to witness in auschwitz you know like bernie glassman does but

55:28

it’s another thing to sit on the train tracks outside of um

55:34

livermore and block the trains so it’s that kind of again it’s a nuance

55:40

of not to you know when you are setting yourself up as an activist

55:45

against something and i know you try to do it lovingly

55:51

but to me it’s still too i’m just curious

55:59

as a mom uh that’s the same action for me is not letting my kid run in the street

56:06

so um you know i remember one of my buddha’s teachers

56:12

is that you the right action isn’t something you’re supposed to think about it’s the practice gets it so it’s no

56:18

different than the dog gnawing on the bone what we’ve had that conversation last night

56:25

about gnawing on the bone oh no oh no no mine is that you that the

56:32

right action comes like being a mom or like the dog gnawing on the bone or the way you grab a pillow in bed

56:39

that it’s not through thought it’s that the practice it becomes the way you respond like as a

56:46

mom and the kid running in the street so um

56:52

the arising of watching that violence i mean it’s no different than i love

56:58

bringing up greta because she’s my my new favorite thing um watching her yell at the un from that

57:05

place of truth was just so awesome right greta

57:12

and um why you know can i just say

57:17

women from africa for the last 30 years have done exactly that i can show you speech after speech after

57:24

speech at the u.n of women getting up and yelling and i keep trying to like know what

57:31

happened in that moment that that the greta could do it is it that

57:36

she’s 16 years old is it that she’s white and comes from something that people can recognize and identify with i

57:42

mean i don’t want to get in the whole you know like conversation about that

57:47

but what i want to get in the conversation about is that space of witnessing

57:53

something so horrific being a child and being alive to grown-ups destroying the world every day

58:02

and just having that space of like i can’t let this happen anymore

58:07

and i think a lot of young people think where is everyone

58:14

you know why does this get allowed so it does get experienced

58:20

when somebody sits on the track outside of liverpool is kind of violent

58:25

um i can get up inside of congress and ask a really kind of nice question

58:30

it will be experienced as violent because when you’re in the status quo

58:37

move forward this is what’s normal and someone wakes you up

58:42

that wakes you up to your responsibility to guilt to like all kinds of things that no one wants to fill including fear

58:49

and that we buy into this story of that we’re all safe i mean security is my least favorite word because it’s what

58:56

takes us to war because we all want to feel secure right but if you look at the world like how

59:01

secure have we made the world the planet what we live on our sources of water and food and

59:08

um so but you try to provoke it

59:13

well you know i think we have such different perspectives and i mean we’re

59:18

obviously quite aligned in terms of our practices but i i think just as characters

59:24

um i tend to try to trouble things you know so for me the reason i was such

59:30

a a follower of capro is he just set up the most kind of you

59:35

know is it life or is it art questions and i think it’s those questions that

59:41

intrigue me so it’s not that i i would in any way not

59:46

want to stand up and protest in congress with you i do think though philosophically if you look at buddhism

59:53

and the kind of way in which buddhism tries to make meaning and help us think about why we’re doing what we’re doing i

1:00:00

i think that that there is something in

1:00:05

and it like i said it acts out socially when you think you should sit in a car

1:00:10

and i don’t or vice versa and and then it is how that gets made is it force of

1:00:18

will is it um privilege uh white privilege is it being an adult

1:00:24

is it having access to money you know what how what creates that

1:00:30

manifestation of reality because we don’t all equally manifest reality we might in our lives but we don’t on on

1:00:37

the popular culture stage um so i i wonder if we this we’re kind of

1:00:43

leading into um the the notion of social change

1:00:49

and how do you think of it with respect to your art your work i was going to say your art because i do want to say i

1:00:55

think in a sense you operate almost more like an artist than i do and

1:01:00

i want to say that we really need to um i think have a conversation together

1:01:06

all of us about what we mean by being creative and what we mean by being an artist and

1:01:13

what we mean by being a professional artist you know what are those terms and how do we each define those because i

1:01:20

think when it comes to being creative you dress more creatively than i do you know

1:01:26

you kind of like have a ton of ideas i have a ton of ideas but i’ll implement one you know what i mean

1:01:32

i’ll work on it for a year and a half to make sure the hundred thousand shoes are there so so kind of what do we

1:01:40

mean when we’re talking about art and activism and how do you think about

1:01:46

social change hmm

1:01:53

well i think i kind of touched on it earlier in that sense of i don’t

1:01:58

uh i didn’t start the syrian war i’m not going to be able to end it but somehow i can be that butterfly wing

1:02:06

moving us in a direction that um starts shifting culture because we

1:02:13

always have this conversation about culture and that um clearly

1:02:18

for change to happen culture has to shift and that’s a story shift and how does that happen

1:02:24

so i want to use a couple of examples um

1:02:31

it was 2005 we had just passed the 2004

1:02:36

elections in the united states and bush won i mean unfrickin believable i no

1:02:42

longer had any credibility in iraq i had promised he would be gone and they just

1:02:48

laughed so that was just like okay how does that happen where do we live that’s when i go

1:02:53

change um so yes i can move a congressional vote kind of at that level

1:03:00

but i i had the sense that the country was tired of the war and i was i made a film

1:03:07

about wounded soldiers so that they could see what was really happening i mean trying to make something up every day i

1:03:12

i like try to make something up every day is something’s not working what’s the next thing how do you change the story

1:03:18

and we had been working with this mom cindy sheehan whose son had just died in iraq in 2004 and we’d been taking her

1:03:25

around in 2004 and she was coming for the vets of peace conference in dallas and i said you know

1:03:31

bush lives like an hour and a half away let’s take the bus down to dallas and knock on the door and say what noble

1:03:37

cause did my son die for let’s you know that’s a good story the press will love that it’s august they’re bored out there

1:03:45

um so we get down there she knocks on the door and no one will talk to her

1:03:51

this is a mom whose son died in a rock

1:03:56

a white mom from sacramento this is the united states

1:04:02

so like i said just let’s sit down

1:04:10

and we started blogging on like daily costs and going on radio shows and people

1:04:16

started showing up and in four days there were hundreds of people there the story had blown up she

1:04:22

was the peace mom and i didn’t get it until

1:04:28

this cowboy with the hat and the boots and comes come walking up the hill and like

1:04:33

oh god he’s going to yell at me and he comes to me and he goes that’s so wrong

1:04:39

that’s just so wrong you don’t send a mom’s boy to war and

1:04:44

not answer her question and i knew that we had flipped over the

1:04:50

story and that’s always my problem it’s like to get over a story even ourselves if we

1:04:55

think to get over the story you kind of have to pull a trick because otherwise if you have to do it

1:05:01

like through the mind it’s the arguments the resistance persistence thing happens

1:05:07

so having the story of cindy sheehan being denied dignity by the president

1:05:14

who’d send her son to war on a lie the country went against the war in a

1:05:20

month so so i think that’s a really good example of

1:05:26

when you do your action and this is what i mean by activism you have certain kind of goals in mind and you may not even

1:05:33

know what the goal is right well i’m i’m thinking actually maybe i’m wrong about this um

1:05:40

you you want to change but then i’m also thinking because i would always say that’s a different outcome than when i

1:05:46

make an artwork but now i’m thinking maybe that is also my outcome it just maybe takes me a little

1:05:52

longer to get to the outcome this is an ongoing conversation

1:06:01

what about rape in los angeles like you’re awakening in the 70s what happened i mean

1:06:08

the conversation you were able to make happen well i did but i mean not just me

1:06:14

you know i mean i think that that’s okay so this comes to a very important point and why i don’t claim

1:06:22

social change because i have seen since the 70s people

1:06:28

claim social change as the result of an artwork generally it’s somebody claiming it as

1:06:35

the result of their artwork so i i would never say

1:06:41

that when you look at patty giggins and peace over violence in gala barbanel and blah blah blah blah blah i would never

1:06:48

say that i started the dialogue or changed the dialogue on rape in los angeles i would simply

1:06:54

never even imagine that that is the most unactivist thing i can imagine

1:06:59

not to acknowledge your role within a very complex cultural system so i think

1:07:05

a lot of when where you’re speaking from the position of somebody constantly engaged in activism i’m sitting in the

1:07:12

position of somebody who’s for years watched artists say look what i did over there

1:07:18

i single-handedly brought the the oakland police department

1:07:23

into the conversation with young people in oakland and that is so erroneous and

1:07:30

hubristic that i think that um the conversation and maybe we should

1:07:36

sort of end with this to me the the conversation between the artist and the activist

1:07:44

just like a conversation i have with pilariano from colombia who actually teaches at ubc in vancouver

1:07:51

but we’ve had an ongoing conversation for years that’s the conversation between the artist and the anthropologist

1:07:58

and she introduces to me in my work a kind of level of authenticity and

1:08:04

critique and challenge that anthropologists have already been through with respect to their listening

1:08:09

practices and i think it at the conversation between artists and activists is really critical for artists

1:08:17

probably not so much for activists but for artists it’s critical because

1:08:22

we need to hold ourselves to a much higher standard of

1:08:27

what is needed for social change and and jody and i talked about ending

1:08:33

and then opening it up to questions for you but we want to end with

1:08:39

her telling you about something that is just beginning and i’m still trying to wrap

1:08:45

my brains around it the idea of the local peace economy

1:08:51

so yeah just on the change piece so it didn’t change anything except people could feel more comfortable being

1:08:57

against the war because iraq is still like witnessing war so there was a great uprising

1:09:03

yesterday with the women in the streets but cultural

1:09:09

social change that is that’s the long arc that’s the martin

1:09:15

luther king arc and um it’s one that

1:09:23

it it’s almost for me it’s that i know the

1:09:28

arc bends and that my shoulder is up against it and i would say my action is that

1:09:33

shoulder against the heart that i hope everyone’s shoulders against

1:09:39

but i also have an enormous amount of patience and i don’t let the knot happening

1:09:45

stop me from my shoulder against the ark and um because we’re not we’re a far

1:09:52

long way from peace or justice um [Music]

1:09:59

but i do try to stay witnessing listening to what’s needed what works what doesn’t

1:10:06

work where we’ve hit a dead end and could paint morphs all the time um and sometimes with some nudgings

1:10:14

um jon stewart the daily show made fun of us screaming in congress and so we don’t scream anymore we hunt we hold up

1:10:20

signs because it looked really bad um

1:10:26

it’s good when they like show you how bad it looks and then go okay no more of that um [Music]

1:10:32

so i went to the hague about four years ago and heard that 1.4 trillion dollars

1:10:38

of weapons is sold each year and i sat there with that and

1:10:44

i’m already dealing with global climate change global inequality but adding the 1.4 trillion dollars i

1:10:52

literally wanted to crawl in a hole and it was so dark and somehow all of a sudden it fell down

1:10:59

my knee was like oh right that’s water oh we’re in a flood

1:11:04

that mythological flood all i have to do is figure out how to build an ark what’s the ark what could

1:11:09

the ark look like that gets us through this flood because i’m also really like people when they

1:11:14

look out and it closes them down it’s because they moved to the worst story

1:11:21

um and that just that shut down and i felt it it was just like there’s nothing i can do to affect this

1:11:27

so part of code pink is our remedy for everything is engagement and activism and creation it’s that

1:11:35

constant engagement that keeps us out of the grief and the hopelessness

1:11:41

so the arc for me became the witnessing of oh i’m not going to end war

1:11:48

until the war economy ends it’s just serving the war economy it’s a tool for the war economy that extractive

1:11:54

destructive oppressive economy but there’s this other economy it’s the peace economy the giving sharing caring

1:12:01

thriving relational resilient economy without which none of us would be alive but we think we’re alive because of the

1:12:07

war economy but it’s actually killing us and our communities and the planet but we’re all addicted to the war

1:12:12

economy and it is it’s the culture we live in the water we swim in and so

1:12:17

coming into that realization i started to kind of walk around and go oh my god

1:12:23

everyone’s transactional okay i’m just talking from the u.s i just came from iran and let me just

1:12:29

say they’re not transactional they’re very relational very beautiful or if you go to venezuela or cuba so i’m just

1:12:35

going to say the world that violates the rest of the world the united states of america they are very transactional and the co

1:12:41

and the war economy is thriving and the disease we’re spreading globally

1:12:46

and um sometimes i have conflict about the countries we have sanctions on because they’ve been able to remain so beautiful

1:12:53

and peace economied um but it and then trump won and then it became

1:13:00

like okay he’s teflon there is no way to affect this that i’m not i’m not

1:13:05

somebody who likes climbing up hills um let’s

1:13:11

look at the relationship of the war economy and the peace economy and that the economy the word originally

1:13:18

meant to create home and how are we creating home if we look

1:13:24

at the war economy and the thing we are attached the world to and frame it around and think

1:13:29

it thrives on but it’s only 300 years old and then there’s this peace economy

1:13:35

which is the core of beautiful cultures that get squeezed and starved and

1:13:42

squeezed and starved and you think of education and healthcare and the privatization of water

1:13:49

and it became actually taking my buddhist practices into the practices

1:13:55

of how do you cultivate your local peace economy how do you recognize

1:14:00

your addiction to the war economy we have a ton of practices that we have 21 days that you can find on the website

1:14:08

of mindfulness practices of how do you get mindful about your community and how it’s

1:14:15

engaged in the war economy um and then we have 21 days of how do you divest from the war economy

1:14:22

and one of the hardest ones everyone has is the transaction relationship to that

1:14:29

and it could pink it so hard like how transactional have we become is kind of scary

1:14:36

that how we relate to each other and when you try to deconstruct it and you really pay attention to it we have 21

1:14:43

of them and we can do them weekly and you start to recognize wow inside i i did a year of

1:14:51

daily things to help people kind of wake up to the relationship and at the end of it everyone was just like oh right i

1:14:57

love that that was wonderful i got tons of notes and no one changed their behavior so i decided the thing was is we need to

1:15:04

practice it’s the same thing as buddhism is nothing changes without practice and

1:15:10

that doesn’t happen without your sangha or your community so across the country

1:15:16

and the world people have started coming together in community really recognizing together the

1:15:22

addiction to the war economy and how that plays out in their lives because with everyone it’s different

1:15:28

and then depending on where you are in the spectrum who in your community

1:15:34

is at the hardest effect of the war economy and in my community that was

1:15:40

a hundred a thousand five hundred homeless youth um in venice california

1:15:45

and then how do you take love and how are they dealt with in my community

1:15:50

fear what’s the you know what are we gonna do was love and

1:15:55

over three year period the love of these fifteen hundred now two thousand five hundred because

1:16:01

homelessness is growing in los angeles has inspired the whole city

1:16:06

and has been a model for um how to really have a relationship with

1:16:12

homeless youth but more than that and the thing that i hoped it would be

1:16:18

was that it has brought people back into relationship with their community with themselves and what’s happening in a way

1:16:24

that is relational not transactional and not fear-based so the la’s run on neighborhood councils

1:16:31

in the last election all the other neighborhoods 6 000 people showed up to vote and venice 38 000 showed up to vote

1:16:38

why because all those people that been engaged in somehow in the process of loving these youth

1:16:44

stood in the face of that voting block that said they were gonna make venice safe and get rid of the homeless people

1:16:51

so um it it does them and i can tell you a gazillion stories you can read them

1:16:56

that do three a week of how this happens and that you know asheville north carolina a peace economy

1:17:03

itself did not foreclose on anyone’s house and no one lost their job in 2008. why

1:17:09

because you don’t fire people you know and you don’t kick people you know out of houses and the more relational you get and you

1:17:16

know the transaction takes us away from that relationality the more you do create the space that can be the arc

1:17:23

that gets us through what’s coming um so i invite you all to check it out

1:17:31

and we’d love to open this up to questions now [Applause]

1:18:00

or comments by the way many of you are activists and artists and buddhists and

1:18:05

we would love to hear from you about your work i think you use the term culture jamming

1:18:13

did i hear that correctly i did could you elaborate on that please

1:18:21

sure that’s taking an image the culture rep recognizes and jamming off of it in

1:18:26

some way torquing it and using it for people to see it in a different way so

1:18:32

the one i use it on is it’s a image from world war ii

1:18:38

in an island on japan i think where the soldiers you know like we won at the victory and instead it was a peace flag

1:18:46

of women that were activists saying no um it’s about peace

1:18:51

and we actually have bumper stickers i have some if anybody wants one where in the us you see um support the troops

1:18:58

bumper stickers but we have support the peacemaker bumper stickers um so in in some way to torque an image

1:19:05

um and have people look at it in a different way

1:19:17

by the way there’s a whole canadian magazine called adbusters that’s awesome and was the

1:19:24

kind of one of the spurs to occupy um that it’s you know if you want back issues

1:19:30

you they’re wonderful to to read i founded the latest election um there

1:19:38

was very little conversation on the environment like no one stood up to

1:19:44

say hey we’re gonna do this we got three seats across the entire country for the green

1:19:50

party um you know in the face of things like 30 percent of our bird population is gone

1:19:57

and we’ve got some big big species decline it is very much business as usual

1:20:04

right it’s it’s not coming up

1:20:10

i don’t i’m sorry i’m kind of naive about the elections up here um

1:20:15

but uh if the fight was right uh the left fighting to not lose to the

1:20:22

right i’m sure like really important issues got silenced in that process

1:20:28

i just want to really recognize that some of my favorite activists for the planet are canadians

1:20:34

and um there’s just a rock star group of women up here that have done amazing things to

1:20:39

save the forests and that work and the indigenous communities up here that work hard on

1:20:46

fracking and um i just my my hats off to just the

1:20:52

fearlessness and fierceness of the canadian activists for the planet

1:21:09

hi um i’m just curious with so many issues facing the world how do you

1:21:15

choose your subject matter because i personally as someone that would like to create art as well i just feel

1:21:21

overwhelmed by how many issues there are so could you speak a bit about that please are you an

1:21:27

artist i’m working on a documentary film on first nations uh

1:21:34

totem pole artists right now and trying to highlight the work that they’re doing and i’m also working at the bateman

1:21:40

foundation which uses art to promote nature conservation so i have a need to contribute and but i

1:21:47

feel like i’m still not doing enough at all well i i actually think you know

1:21:52

that your generation has in a sense a harder road to hoe than mine did because we

1:22:00

actually thought that you know with just you know a couple of three artworks and

1:22:05

a lot of you know foundation founding of women’s shelters and stuff that we would

1:22:10

stop rape and we pretty much learned 20 years later that that probably wasn’t

1:22:16

going to happen and i think you’re you know in a sense you inherited our

1:22:23

sense of that that that it was going to take a whole lot more work than we ever thought and

1:22:29

i also think that the world is bigger now for you you know and i think that with social media and media and gender

1:22:35

in general you know in the 70s artists had a real role to play in uncovering

1:22:42

things i think there’s not so much left to uncover that isn’t being uncovered by

1:22:49

journalists and activists and so on so i think that artists have to think very

1:22:54

strategically about how they can contribute having said that the way i advise what i

1:23:00

say to my students is go through the newspaper and pick out things that interest you just clip out things

1:23:06

put them on a wall and then figure out why that draws you and

1:23:13

generally this is the person that’s political from feminism often there is something and it may not

1:23:19

be the obvious thing i was right therefore i’m drawn to rape you know the issue of dealing with with violence

1:23:25

against women because i personally for example was never raped um and and and yet i was really drawn to

1:23:32

that subject and looking at it very deeply looking at racism and why that is so important to me

1:23:40

and i don’t get involved with environmental issues but i get very involved with racism and classism and so

1:23:48

looking at where that comes from in my own sensibility and my own experience i think is what will make the the deepest

1:23:55

work the most meaningful work i also think it’s how they win is

1:24:02

overwhelming so whenever i feel overwhelmed i just like okay i have my work to do

1:24:08

and that we’re it’s being able to do our work

1:24:13

and not feeling more responsible for the whole world is part of the discipline that everyone needs to have because

1:24:19

there’s a lot of distraction and especially for us in the us it’s like how to

1:24:24

not let the circus that’s going on in washington distract us from what needs to happen

1:24:31

but there’s also one other thing that i think we work out and could paint because

1:24:37

we call it the horizon and i think i call it because we’re human and because

1:24:43

we’re driven by compassion there’s gonna always be this thing out here that pulls us

1:24:48

so we we have these horizons where this is our work this is what we’re responsible to to the movement we’ve

1:24:54

taken on this task we have to stay here and if we get distracted we’re failing

1:24:59

the bigger team because it’s a huge team globally uh and then there’s those things we work

1:25:06

on in coalition where you know when the coalition needs it we show up and they show up it’s that bad

1:25:13

thing and then there’s the things we really can affect but we sometimes just have to do something about it just

1:25:20

so that we can go to sleep at night and and so that’s kind of how we do it

1:25:25

and we’ve developed it over the years realizing we’re human and we we can’t just shut off things that

1:25:31

break our hearts we have to write a letter or do something small so that that part of us can quiet

1:25:38

i just want to say one quick thing also i think what draws some of us certainly me to art is that that is one place

1:25:45

where you can have some level of control so you can deal with an issue you can make a work you can make it as perfect

1:25:51

as you can make it and and at least at least you’ve contributed in a way

1:25:57

that is i think fulfilling another question

1:26:07

um hi i just want to hear your thoughts on

1:26:13

the longevity of a project um

1:26:18

especially when going to other communities or countries uh

1:26:24

and for instance the ecuador peace and men and women talking about toxic

1:26:29

masculinity and violence so just your thoughts i mean with funding

1:26:36

bodies or funds that you know often you get a month two months three months maybe six

1:26:42

um you can eventually move towards projects that are maybe a couple of years but eventually often we leave and

1:26:49

we’re on to the next project or the next subject matter meanwhile we opened up

1:26:54

people into a really vulnerable space can you talk about

1:27:01

what is left what what what do you leave behind how do you deal with that

1:27:06

yeah because obviously i’ve thought about it a lot and that was an argument that was raised in

1:27:12

the 90s called parachuting in the art theory field but i have to tell you

1:27:18

that we actually brought it up i deliberately brought it up in the 80s

1:27:23

and because you know a lot of social practice is constantly questioning itself and is it authentic is it

1:27:29

political is it you know self-aggrandizing what so so for me the way

1:27:36

i’ve developed that an answer to that question uh is is that

1:27:43

a couple of things terms of community organizing and i work a lot with organizers as well

1:27:50

in terms of community organizing you don’t go in organize and leave you go in and work with people and empower them

1:27:57

and develop their own resources so that when and and work with institutions that

1:28:03

are empowered to become empowered so that when you so call leave if you ever do i’ve been working on projects for

1:28:10

over 10 years and just recently we had a big conversation in san francisco with

1:28:15

people that i worked with in 1980. so um you know those relationships

1:28:23

often continue and the the work continues

1:28:28

whether it’s in their community or in mine or in somebody else’s but i think strategically which is part of your

1:28:35

question what is i think really critical is to work with and through people like

1:28:42

when i worked in oakland i worked with and through teachers counseling systems in almost every project i do now there

1:28:49

are hidden counselors in that ecuador project there were counselors sitting around the edge and there were spotters

1:28:55

there were 40 people making sure that if anybody had an issue in the 2 500 people

1:29:00

no excuse me 2 000 people in the audience they were watching the audience in order to

1:29:06

extract them to have counseling to connect them to services and so on so

1:29:13

it’s in a sense classic community organizing you can’t go in as an artist do an art

1:29:18

project leave you need to know how to organize

1:29:24

yeah i just want to double down on that when we go to iraq or gaza or you know anywhere pakistan we

1:29:31

don’t ever go anywhere that we’re not invited and that it’s it’s an offering that’s

1:29:37

that they desire to have happen not that we do

1:29:45

i wonder if it’s possible to talk a little bit about more about the differences between art and activism and

1:29:53

um suzanne you you’re quite adamant about not being afterwards but

1:30:00

um i think about this a lot of my own work what are some of the things that art can do better or differently

1:30:07

and why we choose to do that in in that arena rather than activism

1:30:13

i i don’t um i think this is a much muddier

1:30:19

area than we sometimes make it for sake of conversation between us

1:30:25

that some of the work that i liked the best was salalinsky’s performances a

1:30:30

community organizer in you know northern part of the united states it was quite famous in the 50s

1:30:36

and 60s i guess and um i love greenpeace back in the day

1:30:41

harpooning the toyota you know i love those kinds of things that are actually very much like what you did

1:30:49

uh or or do and and i think that um

1:30:54

you know that that so i wouldn’t and when i go do work i always

1:31:00

figure out what we can leave what we can do where the points of engagement are

1:31:07

that’s very much part of my strategy in ecuador we left a curriculum in the medical school so that all doctors now

1:31:14

have to go through a training on recognizing family violence when they see it in the clinic

1:31:20

we um you know supported um the mayor’s office and taking certain

1:31:27

positions and on and on and on and and and i don’t talk about that a lot because it does sound like i’m an artist

1:31:33

and look what i did you know it’s more um and i think you can do that as an activist you could say

1:31:39

i’m an activist look what i did but again i have that issue with i’m an artist look what i did

1:31:46

it it but i think that the differences there is a strong difference to me in

1:31:53

the x in the desire to execute the way it’s executed

1:32:00

and i think that drive to make form that we have as artists in all kinds of ways

1:32:06

whether it’s a drawing or a sculpture or an action or a performance i will

1:32:13

spend a lot of time time and money uh making sure that something i remember

1:32:21

in minneapolis there’s a piece i did called the crystal quilt and i worked on it for about three years

1:32:29

and at one point we tried chairs we tried renting chairs for this

1:32:35

big quilt that miriam shapiro designed and we couldn’t get enough black chairs

1:32:41

identical so we tried different ones and we put tape over it we tried to figure out how we would paint the gold arms and

1:32:48

all of that and i kept looking at it and finally i said you know what they’re gonna order chairs and my friend bunny

1:32:55

himmelman who’s one of the organizers of the projects started yelling at me

1:33:01

she said you mean i’ve been begging for bagels all week long to get women food for the

1:33:07

performance and you’re gonna spend seven thousand dollars shipping chairs in from

1:33:12

you know tennessee and it’s that difference that i was willing to spend seven thousand dollars

1:33:19

now this is aside from the question of how you get the money but i was willing to spend money on chairs

1:33:26

and the critique of that position is you should be spending money on

1:33:33

lunches for senior citizens and they’re in is and i take that

1:33:38

criticism quite seriously and i don’t have an answer for it it’s kind of like okay do it you probably have an answer

1:33:45

for it right the 7000 no i have another answer and as an

1:33:51

activist art is taken more seriously um so

1:33:56

yeah yeah [Laughter] um well i would say you know there’s a way

1:34:05

there’s a there’s a gravitas that you can have as an artist that um you’re dismissed as an activist

1:34:12

and um [Music] i mean i i look at what banksy did for

1:34:18

gaza i went to gaza i took a thousand people to gaza they came back and they told stories

1:34:24

they made it real but somehow banksy getting into gaza and making that happen

1:34:31

and really exposing it and then having the hotel across from the wall like shifted a group of people that i

1:34:38

couldn’t shift um [Music] i

1:34:44

i choose form sometimes when i which may be the artist part of me

1:34:49

um when i’m trying to do something i do think of the form that it could take it to be effective and

1:34:55

i was in a rock i was watching the torture i was hearing the stories i was watching the violence it was insane

1:35:02

and i happened to know dan ellsberg and all of a sudden it was just like

1:35:09

oh my god i need a whistleblower and everybody forgot that there was such a thing as whistleblower so i have to make

1:35:14

a movie about whistleblowers so people can remember because i need a whistleblower

1:35:20

and so i went in front of audiences and i raised the money and made the film most dangerous man in america

1:35:27

and when dan ellsberg went to russia to see ed snowden ed grabbed dan by the arms and said when i saw most

1:35:34

dangerous man in america i had the courage to do what i did

1:35:39

so you know that me like begging in front of congress that i needed a

1:35:45

whistleblower was not gonna affect ed snowden i promise you it was gonna repel him

1:35:51

but him seeing a person he could recognize somebody also who you know a cia kind of person

1:35:57

who was there for the right reasons who could then be you know turned because he saw something

1:36:03

didn’t work that story got him somewhere and it couldn’t like it wouldn’t happen any

1:36:09

other way um there’s something about as suzanne says

1:36:14

the time you take with art that an activist doesn’t have we’re in response to usually it’s the thing is happening

1:36:21

and where we can matter is in the face of the story happening we we get into the story

1:36:28

we’re not creating the story usually um even your favorite greenpeace pieces and they’re in the story

1:36:34

um where an artist can actually create and reframe the story so that it can be

1:36:39

seen in a different way and there’s something in that gravitas that gives it more

1:36:45

authority and power but are you a visual artist

1:36:50

yeah so i i do think that you tend to conflate a film music theater and visual art into the

1:36:59

arts and and speaking to visual artists it is more difficult

1:37:04

um film has a kind of a an audience

1:37:10

and an narrative form that is traditional in as is theater in

1:37:17

documentary documenting you know social injustice and inspiring us to change and i think

1:37:23

visual art is and somebody asked earlier today about the question about making

1:37:30

sculpture versus time-based work i think one of the reasons social practice

1:37:35

artists tend to do time-based art is because it fits more easily into that

1:37:41

sort of witnessing uh you know documenting social change activism type of format so i think i

1:37:49

think it is more difficult we are also often held up as the

1:37:54

villains of the art world you know you i’m always struck by the fact that visual artists

1:38:00

are more protested and there’s more protests going on at the whitney than there is in front of uh you know

1:38:07

sylvester stallone movies i don’t know why but but there’s there’s just more

1:38:13

kind of it’s easier to go after a visual artist we sort of are are

1:38:20

not known except in very rare instances for our political manifestations

1:38:26

so are there other questions

1:38:33

hello i’m an artist but um my question

1:38:39

isn’t specifically about art about 10 years ago i went with a friend

1:38:45

of mine who’s an environmental activist a workshop given by the buddhist teacher

1:38:51

joanna macy and she a lot of her work

1:38:59

works with activists who’ve had burnout and vary

1:39:04

and tries to empower them inter in many ways so i was wondering have

1:39:12

either of you because artists ex experience burnout activists experience

1:39:18

burnout and then you need the fuel to go on and i was wondering if you

1:39:24

what you guys you have with your buddhist practice when you have that

1:39:30

and how you re-energize yourself great question

1:39:37

so um i think a little bit the

1:39:42

culture we live in creates the burnout and there’s this awesome new practice

1:39:48

called somatics and by the way joanna is has been a lifesaver to many of us and often

1:39:55

it’s that space of knowing i’m responsible to step back because i got even when i go to war zones i come back

1:40:01

and get ptsd work remembering that i can’t do my work effectively unless i’m in a space of

1:40:07

equanimity um but there’s this great new practice and it’s really big in black lives matter

1:40:14

and a lot in the anti-war movement and it’s it’s actually making its way into

1:40:20

even um foundations to even and it’s it’s a interesting physical

1:40:27

practice of how we all aren’t in our bodies so it’s a little in in a buddhist sense

1:40:33

and i um forgot its core work came out of um aikido i believe

1:40:40

but that space that we all come out of an imbalance in the relationship and that’s the place where we get exhausted

1:40:47

or trashed or overwhelmed or our own sense of our own sense of guilt or pity

1:40:52

or the things that you know roshi joan halifax would say get in the way of of compassion

1:40:59

and so it’s it’s an interesting practice that now is wait making its way through a lot

1:41:04

of communities and it is the space where you practice

1:41:10

and witness how you respond and react and in that practice you start to find

1:41:16

the place of equanimity inside yourself and which gives you the experience of

1:41:21

being able to be in the presence be useful in a different way and also

1:41:27

less trashed but i work a lot in um

1:41:33

in communities of color and um

1:41:39

i can’t imagine being able to respond out of the space

1:41:44

of being violated every day and had my i went to ferguson as soon as

1:41:50

i saw a young black boy pick up the gas canister and throw it away from the crowd i had never

1:41:57

seen that in all my activism that someone would know that that’s bad pick it up and throw it away

1:42:03

and so i went to try to meet the person who did that and there were quite a few and so up close and personal got to

1:42:10

learn how on the backs of their own money they were being violated and so that is how i learned about

1:42:17

somatics is the women who created it came to ferguson and worked with these youth that um literally it saved their lives

1:42:24

but it is something i think we all need to be aware of um just living in what i call the work economy is a

1:42:31

ptsd itself and how much we live out of fear um and the anguish of like there’s so much

1:42:38

to do and what do i do having practices like our buddhist practice help us find that space of

1:42:44

equanimity to be able to take all that is being thrown at us

1:42:49

and my answer is quite simple i get massages and i make art

1:43:05

we owe you both an enormous debt of thanks so it’s been wonderful to listen to you

1:43:11

i have a feeling that

1:43:16

left culture i’m generalizing i’m quite aware particularly in the us

1:43:22

is caught up in something analogous to what uh suzanne said the

1:43:27

not hipper than thou but woker than thou that that there is a kind of perennial

1:43:33

attempt to show your creds by having the more precise analytic

1:43:40

frame mastering the newest lingo for

1:43:46

whatever might be the issue i don’t want to trivialize here

1:43:51

but i think it’s eating people up precisely the people we need most to be

1:43:57

on the front lines not against themselves but against the issues that need to be addressed

1:44:03

my my is that you both have immense gifts to offer this particular dimension of love

1:44:10

culture particularly out of your buddhist practice so um i

1:44:17

i’d like to invite you to say just a bit more about how you navigate those waters i suspect you felt the

1:44:23

wrath of walker than thou upon your bodies as well so i suspect you have much to offer i

1:44:29

have a feeling that imagination is key to this i think critique

1:44:36

is something that many of us on the left have mastered we can detect where something is off

1:44:44

i’m not sure we know how to envision what’s next and i think that’s also what you both

1:44:52

are trying in some way to do both in your activism and your art you’re trying to imagine new possibilities beyond just

1:44:59

the space of critique and i think in both that work both those kinds of work i think your buddhism my intuition is is

1:45:06

going to play in a massive and helpful role so i i just like to hear you both about

1:45:12

that

1:45:17

i’m a professor i get it worse um i i think that um

1:45:24

i’m gonna go back to somebody i’m sure you know as well bernice reagan and sweet honey on the rock and and

1:45:31

bernice was one of the people in the early late 70s early 80s who was really

1:45:36

starting to bring out the notion of coalition and i think at that moment in time we didn’t understand coalition and

1:45:43

coalition building and i was just recently we were in a project around um

1:45:48

a piece that that i worked with other people on in 1982 called freeze frame and it was intersectional feminism

1:45:56

essentially now that that word has become popular we didn’t know what that was at the time we just knew that

1:46:02

coalition building relationship between people was more important than

1:46:08

difference between people and i recently however um did experience 2015

1:46:15

experienced being attacked at in by a a young woman it was a specific young person um

1:46:23

in um in creative time a project i did in new york and um i was critiqued for not doing

1:46:30

child care and a couple of other things like that and i was really surprised because coming from

1:46:37

an outsider position which i always have in the art world i was almost never critiqued for the

1:46:44

kinds of work i did but at this moment in time appearing to be more in the art world because it was

1:46:51

creative time i was seen as a possible person to attack when right across the

1:46:57

bay paul mccarthy who is a friend of mine i have to say was doing this gigantic two

1:47:03

million dollar p i think it was a million dollar piece in the the park armory on um

1:47:10

you know that had people being raped and it was just like it was just like this kind of onslaught of

1:47:15

of uh sort of depravity which is paul’s work and i was kind of like why is this young woman who could be one of my

1:47:22

students attacking me particularly after i explained to her you know how we and i realized that and

1:47:29

i i see this with my students they don’t know how to build coalition

1:47:34

and i don’t think it’s just left i think it’s now cultural they see around them all they see is antagonism they see the

1:47:42

democrats and the republicans and you know they see a culture where egoism and by that i mean real egotism

1:47:50

this the presentation of the self and the aggrandizement of the self is um uh

1:47:56

it necessitates the constant defense against the other

1:48:01

and that is the stupidest thing for political people and there i go back to

1:48:07

activism that is so unactivist it may be on buddhist okay but it’s an activist to

1:48:13

tr and and the art world fosters this because the art world promotes originality

1:48:19

and so the visual art world in particular but the more original you are in the visual art world so every student

1:48:25

i have has a real um advantage to saying i thought of it

1:48:31

first i did it you know and and and that is really again

1:48:37

unpolitical it is not a very smart thing to do when you you need to gather

1:48:43

together the people that are at least going to start furthering

1:48:49

a common goal instead of creating separate goals

1:48:55

so yeah um it’s

1:49:01

i i have a lot of ways that i that i look at it first of all as someone’s finding their voice i’m

1:49:08

gonna let them find their voice and you know i i think

1:49:14

i got attacked for something once and i called my my friend’s daughter and i said like teach me i don’t i don’t know this part

1:49:22

you’re 25 like i’m 65 tell me what i should know and she said oh don’t worry about it

1:49:27

they’ll grow out of it we’ll grow out of it so it was a really great advice

1:49:33

because i just was like yeah they’re finding their voice i’m not going to tell them how to find their voice

1:49:39

i know that it can get co-opted and that’s when i can kind of enter and say are you sure this is serving you

1:49:46

but when it’s first happening it’s like i’m so excited there are so many people that are trying to figure it out and

1:49:52

they will i can trust them i was i think of myself at that age i was just naive and you know did crazy too

1:49:59

so um i try to show up when it’s hurting

1:50:07

and um one of the ways of doing that was um my husband and i created a space in new

1:50:12

york city for young people of color because realizing that if you can start working together

1:50:19

then you can find out when it’s being co-opted and i think my concern is that

1:50:25

when you see the siloing it’s usually the powers that be trying to silo

1:50:32

and separate and most activists pretty much if you start to talk about it and get everybody in a

1:50:38

room you can break it down pretty fast and especially like with the new form

1:50:44

everybody’s looking for these new forms to be able to be in the room together knowing we’re up against a lot

1:50:50

and knowing the last thing we want to do is separate or like take anybody out of the circle like we’re small you know

1:50:56

it’s like the left is really really small and you don’t want it to be smaller and i would say

1:51:02

that for most that’s the wisdom and then you know you’ve got the folks that are

1:51:07

going to get co-opted and you kind of watch them and not you know you just have to keep open-hearted about all of

1:51:13

it um but i just caution that it’s not i

1:51:18

you know having been in the left for the last 50 years of my life actually right now it’s

1:51:24

the best i’ve really seen it um well like i guess it was the best when i answered it and then it went

1:51:30

underground after everybody got killed and now it’s arising again and the multi-generational nature of it

1:51:37

the curiosity uh um the

1:51:43

in the way of watching my grandkids who are in their 20s wake up in the same way i did to the structures where there was

1:51:50

like a whole space between that kind of went underground and everybody bought the kool-aid i’m kind of heartened by the curiosity

1:51:58

and how much is out there and how deep and wise it’s gotten and that all these manifestations can

1:52:04

show up and there’s enough of a of a strong container to hold it and let it in that moment learn

1:52:12

yeah let me add a caveat that um i’m accepted universities

1:52:17

yeah that’s the caveat i’m um

1:52:22

i’m going to listen a lot differently on the subject of race from a person of

1:52:27

color than i am to a white person i’m biased in that way and i think my role as a white person

1:52:35

and a working class person in a university that has a lot of uh upper middle class and and upper class

1:52:42

people and a lot of white people i think my role is to really challenge

1:52:48

the the division that exists however the critique from a

1:52:53

person of color and having worked a lot in mixed racing class and and

1:52:59

monoracial cultures i developed a practice over the years

1:53:05

that is a hard practice for me but it’s not to be defensive and that’s what i teach

1:53:11

my students if a person of color says to you this is reality or or you are oppressing

1:53:18

me i don’t say no i’m not and i’ve even learned to not say

1:53:23

oh but i didn’t mean to you know that’s a good one so by paying really close

1:53:29

attention to my relationality with people i can coach students through and

1:53:35

challenge them in those more work that i although i don’t really

1:53:41

bother with the more woke than now folks i figure like you do great they’re being woke uh to some

1:53:48

degree at any rate but but i think that the critique of the left and of young

1:53:53

students and art students of everybody else in the world is is a problem of

1:54:00

uh it’s a problem of politics to me we haven’t taught them how to behave

1:54:05

politically and i learned it in the 70s i learned coalition building and communication and

1:54:12

forming alignments and stuff and they don’t have a place to learn it except maybe in code pink

1:54:19

so i think it’s 5 30 should we yeah we should stop now thank you for your attention

1:54:48

wow so thank you so much jody and suzanne

1:54:54

for such an incredible inspiring conversation and thank you both so much for accepting

1:55:01

our invitation to come to victoria i think we’ve all i could actually kind of hear the gasps in the room

1:55:09

when you were showing some of your work so thank you it was amazing and what a way to conclude our

1:55:16

weekend this weekend i think many of you have been here

1:55:23

yeah friday saturday sunday [Applause]

1:55:29

so i would like to thank all of you for coming out this weekend and many of you spent the whole weekend here to think

1:55:36

through these various questions of art buddhism practice activism and i thank

1:55:42

you all for your participation and contributions to the conversation

1:55:47

i’d like to thank all of the artists that spoke and showed their work and

1:55:55

inspired us in so many different ways and i’m going to be looking forward to

1:56:01

the next phase of this project eventually hopefully in the not too

1:56:06

distant future realizing an exhibition i can hear my director laughing so

1:56:11

i hope that’s a good laugh um so this research convening has been a good

1:56:18

year and a half two years in the making and there are many many people to thank and i’m not going to be able to name

1:56:23

everyone um but to all of you who’ve been part of this process in big and small ways i’d

1:56:30

like to extend my sincere thanks i’d like to thank the faculty of fine arts at uvic the

1:56:37

dean susan lewis and acting dean uh for their keen support of this project

1:56:45

and for coming on board as a partner i’d like to thank of course suzanne lacy

1:56:52

and kay larson for accepting the uh the invitation to victoria under the orion visiting artist

1:57:00

program and i’d like to thank the team at the dean’s office who helped us work through the various

1:57:05

administrative aspects of this partnership um i’d like to thank paul wald the chair

1:57:11

of the visual arts department for letting us take over his um his building

1:57:17

christopher butterfield who i think is here actually the director of music for

1:57:23

working with us uh in such a fantastic way for the lecture on nothing performance on

1:57:29

friday um i’d also like to thank paul bramadat

1:57:34

at the center for this study of religion and society and i know he’s there

1:57:40

and paul has been such an enthusiastic early supporter of all of this so i’m very grateful

1:57:47

and also to henry locke and sergey mcmurcie at the interfaith chapel we’ve really been able to kind of take over

1:57:53

the campus so it’s been it’s been great um i’d like to thank all of my colleagues at the art gallery of greater

1:57:59

victoria it’s not possible to take on a project like this without the full support of your home institution so i’d

1:58:06

like to thank john chopper our director and our head of department michelle

1:58:11

jakes so this project is very unusual in terms

1:58:17

of the protracted timeline and and and the way that i’ve kind of

1:58:22

constructed this whole thing so um i’m very appreciative um last but not least um i’d like to

1:58:31

acknowledge and thank um you know an event like this won’t happen without the

1:58:36

dedication of a number of people but there are two people in particular who i really want to thank um marina de mayo

1:58:44

who has worked very closely with me over the past year and proven herself to be an incredible

1:58:50

event planner and administrator and she’s done an incredible job

1:58:57

[Music] and i’m so pleased that we were able to have her

1:59:03

um she’s been working with me uh with the support of the british columbia arts council early career development grant

1:59:09

so i’d like to i don’t know if marina’s even in the room right now but

1:59:15

thank you so much [Applause]

1:59:24

and also my very sincere thanks to linda gammon emeritus professor in the visual

1:59:30

arts department at the university of victoria and also a board member at the art gallery of greater victoria she’s

1:59:36

been such a wonderful mentor and supporter and

1:59:41

in so many ways she’s she’s done so many things for this project and i’m incredibly grateful um her enthusiasm

1:59:48

her patience her encouragement everything um so thank you all so much it’s been an

1:59:54

incredible weekend and i hope um that you know i’m sure that you will all have

2:00:00

so much to take away with you and think about and and practice um

2:00:06

um i want to extend an invitation to all of you

2:00:12

we are going to go for some drinks and to enjoy linda’s exhibition at the

2:00:17

victoria arts council which closes this evening and so we i am going to extend an

2:00:24

invitation to all of you to to come along with us to the victoria arts council on store

2:00:30

street in the va value village building for those who don’t know to

2:00:37

hang out have a drink continue these conversations

2:00:42

and see you all there

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