EVENT DETAILS

Taking Space/Making Space: How Art Can Serve Community in the Borderlands

Part of a 2012/2020 Speaker Series organized by University & State, a Humanities Commons Research Group

Friday, December 6th

Workshop on Community Building and Organizing
with
Claudia Perez of Resilience OC
UCI Cross Cultural Center, Dr. White Room
2-3pm

Presentations and discussion
Humanities Gateway 1341
4-6pm
with
Amy Sanchez Arteaga and Misael Diaz of Cog•nate Collective
Sarah Williams and Nicole Kelly (NK) co-founder and Programming Director of Women's Center of Creative Work
Moderated by artist Farrah Karapetian

We would like to think about how locally-oriented and site-specific work can challenge or evade the kinds of representation offered by traditional and State institutions, which come with particular expectations and demands. For example, when grant funding brings with it expectations of what diversity, advancement for women, or national identity might mean, is it possible to strategically use those resources while resisting their conceptual frames? Maintaining autonomous spaces for cultural production has become more difficult in urban spaces in recent years. In Tijuana and Juárez this might have to do with militarization, migration, drug-related violence, and the kind of cleansing and gentrification again for tourists that is still going on now. Maintaining autonomous spaces in cities like Los Angeles and El Paso is also difficult, due to the pressures of gentrification, urban expansion, institutional power, and the requirements that must be met for organizational legibility and sources of funding. It is both possible and necessary to think about the line between community and artistic work in this context. This series will also offer reflections on the specificity of negotiating the line between the State and the University in Latin American contexts.

Organized by Ana Baginski, Comparative Literature, University & State and
Gosia Wojas, Visual Arts