Education and Community Programs

Julie Mehretu at Edison High School, September 26, 2002. Photo: Cameron Wittig

I know from experience how cool photography can be in community artsprograms. I experienced the power of this medium in two community arts projects: Minneapolis and St. Paul are East African Cities, the outreach program in conjunction with Julie Mehretu’s 2001-2002 residency; and Portraits of Peace, a documentary photography project created by the Walker Art Center’s community programs departmentand the Peace Foundation. So, I was quite pleased to learn that the International Center for Photography is making available for download its new publication Focus on Photography: A Curriculum Guide. “Designed to inform educators about the many possibilities and interdisciplinary applications of photographic education in school and after-school settings,” Focuswas written by former ICP Coordinator of Community Programs, Cynthia Way. Congratulations and thanks to Cynthia.

This extraordinarily in-depth guide covers visual literacy, the links between photography and other disciplines such as literature, history, social studies, and writing. This landmark tome willquickly becomethe key reference for educators and arts-based community development folks looking to deploy the camera in their projects. So, hop over there and download your very own copy.

Sankai Juki, aParis based Butoh company will performas part of the Walker’s dance season, Friday, November 3, 8 pm at Northrop Auditorium on the University of Minnesota campus. Image: Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images.

Writing for the New York Times, Claudia La Rocco, asks if “Is Butoh’s Big Season Good for Butoh?” As I eagerly await the Minneapolis appearance of the Paris based company Sankai Juku at the Northrop on November 3rd,the article serves as a timely reminder of the breadth and diversity of this ineffable and visually stunning dance form.

Excerpt:

“People tend to think of Butoh in terms of aesthetic markers: white body paint, shaved heads, slow movement gained through intense muscular control, and a way of manipulating the body that is at once beautiful and grotesque, tragic and absurd. Influenced by German Expressionism, it tends to be imagistic rather than narrative. But while these elements often appear, defining Butoh in stylistic terms is dangerous. There is the beautiful, highly stylized theatricality of Sankai Juku, or the mad kineticism of Mr. Kasai, or the creaturely abstractions of Yumiko Yoshioka. Like contemporary American dance, Butoh is no one thing, but it always has, at its center, a fragile transformative spark. You can’t always describe it, but you know it when you see it, and you know when it’s missing.”

Liza Politi (L) and Malindi Fickle (R), makers of the documentary BY THE PEOPLE sit down in the Star Tribune Foundation Art Lab for a chat with the Walker’s Reggie Prim, about their experience as filmmakers and the precarious state of the US electoral system. Their film screens this evening at 7:30 at the Lagoon Theater in uptown.

Yesterday as I returned to the Walker two young women were hanging out on the steps outside the Barnes building. One of them asked me what I was doing that evening and if I’d like to come and see their film “By the People” at the Lagoon “about who and what it takes to put on an American election.” Intrigued I sat down to talk with them and discovered two very dedicated filmmakers, touring their film across the country, connecting with local electoral boards and working to raise Americans’ awareness about the precarious state of the American electoral system. In short, with the average poll worker at 72 and many polling places unable to open on Election Day because there are no volunteers to work, the U.S. electoral system is almost at the breaking point. Inspired by her younger brother’s disheartening experience working for the Indiana election board in Indianapolis, Malindi decided to chronicle one election boards’ preparation leading up to the 2004 election. What she discovered is a system so starved for participation that on the eve of the election desperate election board workers were searching the streets and approaching homeless people to be poll judges and monitors. “The bottom line is that our democracy is built on the foundation of people participating beyond the vote,” says Malindi. Their film is dedicated to educatingyounger Americans about the current state of the country’s electoral infrastructure. Their documentary BY THE PEOPLE will be screened tonight at 7:30 in Uptown at the Lagoon.

From the LA Weekly’s “Must See Art” section: Bring the War Home” at QED Gallery. Here, finally, is a group show about an idea that is relevant and participates in and ignites discourse between artists, critics and curators about the art market and the current political climate. Titled after the Weather Underground’s slogan, the exhibition features work by many artists, including Walead Beshty, Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker, Matthew Brannon and Mai-thu Perret. Sifting through so much work can lessen the power of the message, but three cheers for the effort. 2622 S. La Cienega Blvd., L.A. | (310) 204-3334, www.qedgallery.com | Through Aug. 12

Here are some strong words from the press release:

“The current market boom, to mention only the most obvious example, is a direct product of neo-liberal economic policies. It belongs, first of all, to the luxury consumption boom that has gone along with growing income disparities and concentrations of wealth — the beneficiaries of Bush’s tax cuts are our patrons — and secondly, to the same economic forces that have created the global real-estate bubble: lack of confidence in the bond market due to rising national debt, low interest rates, and regressive tax cuts……In this art market, we {the artists} are its direct material beneficiaries. Every time we speak of the “ institution” as other than “ us”, we disavow our role in the creation and perpetuation of its conditions. We avoid responsibility for, or actions against, the everyday complicities, compromises, and censorship – above all, self-censorship – which are driven by our own interests in the field and the benefits we derive from it. -Andrea Fraser, 2005

To see images from the show click here.

Top of the head questions that this brings up for me….

“How do we both work in the art world yet dialogue/challenge ourselves and the institution to question and examine our collusion with the dominant/domineering political and socio-economic systems?”

“Can the art center be a site for honest dialogue about the role of art/artists in “neo-liberal” systems or does the museum – as site – already/forever compromise/co-opt this speaking?”

Reading in yesterday’s NYT that the Tate Modern is planning a $397 Million dollar expansion by (who else?) Herzog and de Meuron gave me a distinct sense of dejavu. Aren’t those the guys who…exactly? Click here to catch all the echoes yourself.

A couple of choice bits I could not pass pulling out of the article: Sound familiar? “The novelty in the Tate Modern annex is that it will turn the museum’s face away from the river and toward the borough of Southwark.” hmm. I wonder if it’s “face” will resemble a visage as much as the new walker does?

And check out this computer generated image of the new Modern interior. Hmm. Can you say townsquare?

ODD Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

I was so sad on Friday night because violence marred the beginning of PEACE Across the Northside, an initiative to inspire peaceful coexistence and nonviolence in North Minneapolis. Walker community programs staff were on hand for the launch of PEACE Across the Northside, a communityrally and symbolic act of linking along one of the most gang and violence infested streets in Minneapolis. Ironically, at the conclusion of the event a youth was shot in the back after having water spilled on him during the performance by HouseSquad, a twin cities Hip Hop dance troupe.

This past Friday also marked the beginning of a documentary photography project called Portraits of PEACE – organized by the Walker’s community programs staff in partnership with the PEACE Foundation, Minneapolis Park and Rec and The Folwell Center for Urban Initiatives.Portraits of PEACE was inspired by the work of Diane Arbus and Sharon Lockhart. Lead by Walker Community Programs Coordinator and documentary photographer Megan Leafblad and Io Palmer, artist in residence at the Folwell Center, youth participants will photograph and gather stories at community events of residents who have sustained relationships across differences of race, geography, ability and culture. PoP is the visual arts component for The PEACE Games, the sports and cultural component of PEACE Summer 2006.

Although the event was marked by violence, it reminded me of the importanceand difficulty of Peace work.Moreover, it would be pollyannaish of us to think that by organizing one feel-good event that violence in an economically marginalized communitywould miraculously disappear. Despite violence that sought to derail what was otherwise an extraordinarily hopeful event, attended by over 1500, we remain even more committed to exploring ways that the arts can help support peaceful and vibrant communities.

To see photos from the event go to photographica

Artist Mankwe Ndosi led Matakwe, a group of young African American artists and activist in a critical and performative response toOPEN-ENDED(the art of engagement)

Tonight, for the first time since it opened, I began to sense what Open Ended is all about…not that I could articulate it clearly. But, seeing Tish, a young African American poet, read a poem about the difficult and moving relationship between a daughter and her battered mother in the Rirkrit corner; hearing a poetic response to the Ralph Lemon installation by another young poet; piling into the video booth to catch a poem inspired by Nakasako’s freedom piece; or listening in on a young dreaded kid dialogue with a silent James Baldwin and ask, “Help me out. You’re an artist. Tell me how I’m supposed to look.”…revealed some evanescent and fleeting aspect of engagement and dialogue. It is precious because it comes and goes. We make pictures ourselves in the galleries, as we move among the artworks. Tonight, I’m thankful to the Walker for the dialogic process that gave birth to this extraordinary exhibition but also to these brave young people who so selflessly gave themselves over to interpretation and engagement.Bravo Matakwe.

Dipankar Mukherjee and Meena Natarajan. Photo by Jim Clifford

Today on the Community Arts Network website, writer John Townsend profiles Minneapolis-based Pangea World Theater.

Townsend writes that, “Pangea has evolved from being a group that began presenting imaginative interpretations of plays and adaptations of other literary forms to a stunningly experimental [group] that successfully integrates various talents across cultural boundaries for innovative new work that reflects the post-9/11, post-Katrina reality – something most theaters have barely begun to acknowledge.

Founders Mukherjee and Natarajan envision Pangea as a forum, “to bring people of different backgrounds and ethnicities together… to dialogue together. [And] respond to the times we live in?” It’s clear from the mission statement and their track record that arts-based civic engagment is part of the institutional DNA of this extraordinary theater group. We’re lucky to have them here in the Twin Cities.

Pangea World Theater’s Mission Statement: “Pangea World Theater is committed to international works, styles and traditions that illuminate the human condition, end divisiveness and celebrate differences. We strive to bring communities across the world together through theater productions, workshops, and speakers. We view the stage as a powerful international forum and podium for discussion. Throughout our work we employ a cross-ethnic vision of tolerance and human rights through excellence in the arts.”

(Here’s a nice tidbit from Today’s ArtsJournal newsletter courtesy of the BBC)

“A computer has been used to decipher the enigmatic smile of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, concluding that she was mainly happy.

The painting was analysed by a University of Amsterdam computer using “emotion recognition” software.

It concluded that the subject was 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful and 2% angry, New Scientist magazine was told. “

Rachel McIntire and Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein: “What good was any of this gorgeous theory without recognizing the way it interplays with life beyond academic borders? ”

From the CAN Network:

Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein, a community writer and educator from Chicago, and Rachel McIntire, a muralist and multimedia artist from California, spent a year immersing themselves in theories of Arts in Education at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. At the same time, they embarked on a collaboration with Bread Loaf writer Mary Guerrero and her mostly Latino after-school writing group at Oliver Elementary School in Lawrence, Mass to use body-mapping and poetry to explore cultural crossroads.

During the Mapping Within workshop, young artists compose an interpretive dialogue about identity through an exploration of text, performance, world maps, audio and photography.

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“The idea of a map emerged as the ultimate metaphor for the journey of understanding self as influenced by fluid geographical, spiritual, political, academic, social and emotional landscapes. We decided to use maps as a central part of the art making because it was both visually and metaphorically powerful. By sharing notions of both interior and exterior maps, we hoped to express identity as organic as opposed to fixed. We also hoped that…artists would begin to notice the ways in which they construct and narrate their own stories and that identity is often in constant conversation with place and space.”

Outline of McIntire and Lichtenstein’s “Mapping Within” process:

1. Begin with Questions like: Who am I? Where do I come from? and Where am I going?

2. Connect with bodies, breath and memory through theater exercise and warm-up.

3. Explore the “ shapes” of different emotions and transform those shapes in slow motion

4. Discuss memory, movement, migration and change, and identify significant personal memories.

5. “Locate” these memories in your body.

6. Participants make full-body cut outs of their bodies using butcher paper and maps that they later manipulate through collage and text.

7. Explore movement and change through creative writing.

8. Break into pairs and embellish the “body maps”. for example: visually locate text within body cut-outs.

9. While students work in pairs with their “ body maps,” record students reading their favorite poetic lines from the writing exercise.

10. Students take digital snapshots of one another as “ portraits of the present tense.”

11. Create an “exhibition” of the body maps, poetry, photos and recordings

For here for the full story