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Questions to ask

Here are some questions you may want to ask when creating a socially engaged art project:

who do you want to engage? why?

what message you want to convey? why?

where does your project take place? what does the space symbolize? how does the meaning of the space impact the message?

when will you know your project is successful? how will you evaluate it?

how can you become the message, not just the messenger?

why do you think this work will be impactful? for whom?

Here are a few socially engaged projects.

Haircuts by Children invites the pubic to get free hair cuts at a salon run by 8-12 year olds.

All the Sex I’ve ever had is a project by Mammalian Diving Reflex featuring older adults courageously divulging stories of first crushes, turbulent affairs, unexpected pregnancies and deaths of loved ones to an audience of fellow participants and strangers.

Invisible Borders was a road trip by young African artists, writers and photographers across the African continent .

Pocketology is the study of pockets. This exploration enables a discovery of the potential significance of even the most seemingly forgettable moments, using commonplace items as a medium for storytelling.

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard.

The 1000 Journals Project began in August 2000, when an artist who refers to himself as “Someguy” began placed a thousand blank journals around San Francisco — dropping them in bus shelters, park benches, even bar bathrooms. Each book was stamped with only minimal instructions for adding to, sharing, and (eventually) returning the books

Operation Paydirt is a project created by Mel Chin to raise awareness of childhood lead poisoning in response to his encounter with 86,000 contaminated homes.

#socialpractice #socially engaged art #performance art #art

My colleague Maria Juncos told me about the “overview effect”. The term was coined to describe the astonishing view of the earth from outer space by astronauts and their spiritual awakening to the realization that we are all one and this is our home. Here are a few of their comments:

“When we look down on the Earth from space we see this amazing, indescribably beautiful planet. It looks like a living breathing organism, but it also at the same time looks extremely fragile…. It really is striking and it really is sobering to see this paper-thin layer and realize that that little paper-thin layer is all that protects every living thing from the harshness of space.” Ron Garan, Astronaut

“Intellectually, I knew what to expect. I have probably looked at as many pictures from space as anybody…so I knew exactly what I was going to see…. But there is no way you can be prepared for the emotional impact… It brought tears to my eyes.” Don L. Lind, Astronaut

“There was a startling recognition that the nature of the universe was not as I had been taught… I not only saw the connectedness, I felt it.… I was overwhelmed with the sensation of physically and mentally extending out into the cosmos. I realized that this was a biological response of my brain attempting to reorganize and give meaning to information about the wonderful and awesome processes that I was privileged to view.” Edgar Mitchell, Astronaut

Today I’m trying to summarize ENVS 1000 a course taught by Peter Timmerman that I TA. Here is the premise of the course in a nutshell:

“Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth,’” (Genesis 1:26-28).

This mindset of domination has resulted in a series of ontological assaults on the earth that has altered the very fabric of life itself. The predominant approach to solving environmental problems was to point and shoot but this no longer works. We are now living in an infinitely complex mystery because we are embedded within the issues we face and we can’t solve them without transforming ourselves.

In a public square in Turkey a man stood still in protest for 8 hours. People began posting his photo on social media. News spread. Others joined him until the whole square was full and his action spread across Turkey.

“I believe in the power of independent, individual actions. We should not always have to wait for a collective action. If you are against something, maybe you should just act out of the truth of who you are. Who knows what might happen. I happen to be a performance artist, so I stood silently for eight hours, and look what happened. Who are you? How will you stand up?“

A pioneer of “Afrofuturism,” bandleader Sun Ra emerged from a traditional swing scene in Alabama, touring the country in his teens as a member of his high school biology teacher’s big band.

Now this is an awesome score. Thanks Andrea Fatona of OCAD University for sharing it with me. Afrofuturism offers a vitally needed perspective that enables us to stand in the future and backwards engineer the present!

africandiasporaphd

ARTICLE/JOURNAL/DIGITAL: Social Text Special Issue on Slavery, Freedom, and the Archive

[Susie Sharpe Family]” in Durwood Barbour Collection of North Carolina Postcards (P077), North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, Wilson Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. As seen here: http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/nc_post/id/774/rec/8 Special Issue of Social Text (33:4, 2015) on “The Question of Recovery: Slavery, Freedom, and the Archive,” including a roundtable on slavery,…

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afrofuturist

This article caught my eye as it is in line with the research I am about to tackle on bringing the history of transatlantic slavery on Canadian soil into public memory. Excited to discover a whole community of artists interested in the same issues!

Remapping Our Food

I think I’ll try this class activity today. I found it on the climate justice website sent to me by Ronak.

http://teachclimatejustice.ca/the-lessons/module-2-reimagining-our-food-system/#part1

I’m going to ask my students to draw the food system at york, mapping where the food they encounter comes from then reimagine the york food system from a food justice lens. Curious to see what they come up with.

#food justice #healthy food #climate justice #climate crisis #climate chnage #globalization #economics #food security

We're gathering the most promising and contagious strategies for building a just, democratic, and resilient world.

Its easy to become overwhelmed with the weighty issues that we face as a species bent on destroying the only planet we have. I love this website that invites us to pose solutions. This solution is more of a suggestion of a direction that we need to demand. This solution takes action on our part. Demanding and protecting the commons!

So excited to be introduced to some great teaching resources on Climate Change. This great website was shared by my friend and colleague Ronak Ghorbani editor of Shameless magazine.

Today in NEW 114, a course I teach at University of Toronto, we will watch the NFB documentary Speakers for the Dead. Created by filmmakers Jennifer Holness and David Sutherland, the film follows unfolding story of the town of Priceville, Ontario where Black settlers preceded Europeans.

Questions to consider: Why was this story buried? Who wanted to unearth this story? Why? Who wanted to keep the story hidden? Why? What role does forgetting play in mainstream settler narratives? What is revealed when this story is revealed?

#Black settlement #Canada #Black Canada #historic landmark #injustice #Historical amnesia #land #deed #racism #Priceville #grey county

This video explains climate change in basic terms, looking at both natural and human causes and examining why certain scientists may deny the human effects on the planet. It explains why even small temperature changes can have massive effects. It asks the question "Are we too addicted to our way of life to change?“

I am reading a synthesis of a report on Climate Change. It is full of charts, graphs and scary numbers referencing the global impact of a sharp and sustained rise in greenhouse gas emissions. The resulting rise in sea levels, acidification and warming of the oceans is leading to the disruption and extinction of large numbers of species. No one knows where the tipping point is at which point the damage will be irreversible. Most interesting to me, is the issue of equity and imperialism at the heart of the matter.

Because of enviornmental issues, the most vulnerable people on the planet disproportionately face a decrease in food production, hunger, poverty, loss of income leading to economic instability, violence and mass migration in search of food, clean water and safety. Folks who contribute the least to the problem suffer the most.

According to anthropologist Wade Davis, the causes of climate change are human but it is not humanity on a whole that is the cause of these problems. The problem arises from unsustainable and wasteful practices that are caused by the Western mindset.

This is a critique of Cowspiracy, a film that looks at the impact of animal husbandry. In the critique they show a clip from the movie where the filmmaker argues that the animal agriculture industry wastes water. Watch him back these people right into the corner armed only with statistics.

#Here is the website for the movie so you can download.

How Monsanto controls the food system.

Afronautic Research Lab

On Saturday February 6 the Afronautic Research Lab is open to citizen researchers. The Afronauts invite you to join them on their mission to uncover buried truths to heal the planet.

Part one of a two-part performance series curated by Life of a Craphead in conjunction with Showroom exhibition. Performed by Camille Turner, Karen Turner and Lee Turner. This is an Outerregion production.

When: Saturday Feb. 6, 2016, 2 – 4pm Where: University College Room 253 Meet at University of Toronto Art Centre, 15 King’s College Circle Cost: Free

All life depends on water and Canadians are blessed with 15% of the world’s fresh water supply. Water is necessary for life yet this most precious substance is denied to some of the world’s most vulnerable people. We are watching the issue of clean water become front page news in Western newspapers as problems in Flint, Michigan continue to be uncovered. This is not a new or emerging issue. This is an issue that most of the world has been facing for some time.

40% of the world’s population has no secure source of water 34,000 people die every day from water -borne diseases Almost 50% of first nations communities in Canada have to boil their waterIn underdeveloped countries water contamination results in 80% of diseases and 33% of deaths

Michael Moore offers a great summary of the Flint Michigan case here

This museum was built by the hands of enslaved people. John Cummings, a retired trial lawyer spent millions of dollars to transform it into a museum to tell the stories of the enslaved people who were born, lived, worked and died here. It surprised me that there were few places like this that told the story of America from the point of view of enslaved people. Most American museums prefer to focus on the story of freedom to avoid acknowledging the extent to which slavery was central to the building of the American nation.

Even though historians have uncovered pieces of Canada’s buried history of slavery the story of humans that were bought, sold and given away as gifts by Canada’s elites is neatly sidestepped to foreground the nation as a refuge for enslaved Americans.

medievalpoc

Maybe this is a crazy question, but how did Europeans know what Africans looked like? I know that some of the paintings here are of North Africans/Middle Easterners, but others clearly depict people born south of the Sahara. I've heard of Prester John but I never imagined that medieval Europeans were aware that Prester John would have had brown skin. Am I missing something?

Like. There are a lot of things I could say here. But I’m just going to do my best to answer your question, and the answer is either very simple or very complicated, depending on your current point of view.

1. “They” knew what people with brown skin looked like because people with brown skin had been there literally THE ENTIRE TIME. Some (and father back, ALL) of “them” had brown skin themselves.

2. “People with Brown Skin” and “Europeans” are not separate and mutually exclusive groups.

3. No matter how far back you go, the mythical time that you’re looking for, when all-white, racially and culturally isolated Europe was “real”, will continue to recede from your grasp until it winkles out the like imaginary place it is.

We can just keep going back. In every area, from all walks of life, rich and poor, kings and peasants, artists and iconoclasts, before there were countries and continents, before there were white people.

Russia, 1899:

Switzerland, c. 1800: [fixed link here]

Netherlands, 1658:

Poland, 1539:

Germany, 1480s:

Spain, 1420s:

France, 1332:

Scotland, England, France, 1280s:

France, 1220s:

England, 1178:

Belgium, 1084:

Greece, c. 1000:

Spain, 850s:

Throughout Europe, 800s-500s:

England, c. 300 AD:

Scotland, c. 100 AD:

Italy, 79 AD:

Greece, 170 B.C.:

Greece, 300 B. C.:

Greece, 400s B.C.

Greece, 500s B.C.:

Egypt, 1200s B.C.:

Crete (Minoan), 1600 B.C.:

Crete (Minoan), early 2000s B.C.:

Romania, 34,000 B.C.:

The time when “EVERYONE” in Europe was White does not exist. They knew what people with brown skin looked like because they were there. They knew what “Africans” looked like because they were there, and they weren’t “they”, they were us, or you. I think what you’re missing is something that never existed.

afrofuturist

A very interesting post on the representation of Africans in Europe. According to the writer, Africa was always a part of Europe and the concept of an all White Europe is a fiction.

I teach NEW 114 Art and Community at University of Toronto’s New College. This week we’re reading the introduction to Sherene Razack’s book Race Space and the Law: Unmapping a White Settler Society. The title of the chapter is When Place Becomes Race. Razack explains that space is not neutral. it it is socially produced to maintain inequality...in this case, racial inequality. In our class we use art as a tool to analyze space and to reveal, disrupt, confront and transform unequal geographies. Today we will check out the Ogimaa Mikana Project, an artistic intervention that brings attention to Anishinaabemowin place names in the city of Gichi Kiiwenging (Toronto). transforming a landscape that often obscures or makes invisible the presence of indigenous peoples.” This project is a clear reminder of the power inherent in naming and claiming space.

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