MANIFESTO: A Moderate Proposal

MANIFESTO: A Moderate Proposal is an exhibition of the ideas, wishes, and demands of scores of citizens with something to say and a need to be heard. It is our current climate of discord that created MANIFESTO: A Moderate Proposal. It was conceived to give citizens a soapbox and to amplify their voices. These voices are many, and these voices belong to people from various walks of life. In our current climate of discord, it is essential that we reexamine just who we are and what we stand for. MANIFESTO: A Moderate Proposal has joined the conversation as have the voices in this symposium.

9:30–11am
Panel: We Come from Your Future: Creating and Defending Community Against Gentrification
The anti-gentrification movement in Los Angeles is composed of numerous protagonists–groups large and small. Many of these groups have self-organized to build up and defend working-class and poor communities against social cleansing. This panel brings together individuals from several Los Angeles-based anti-gentrification groups. Located in relation to different communities, each participating group has chosen to remain autonomous from the nonprofit-corporate complex. Their strategies and tactics are as diverse as the panelists themselves. The groups share an understanding that gentrification is not natural nor the result of individual greed. Nor are its complexities immune to study or resistance. Chinatown Community for Equitable Development, Defend Boyle Heights, and School of Echoes Los Angeles will discuss their decisions to remain autonomous, their strategies for meeting the scale of the gentrification crisis, and their practices of solidarity. The panel is facilitated by Ultra-red.

11am–noon
Conversation: The Artistic Culture of the Incarcerated
Conversation between Tom Skelly, who developed the award-winning Arts In Corrections program in correctional facilities over the past 30 years; Wayne Kramer, who, upon leaving prison, built the nonprofit, Jail Guitar Doors, an organization that provides songwriting workshops to inmates; and Community Resource Manager, Ronnie Shupe, from California Institution for Women, Chino. Skelly, Kramer, and Shupe will discuss the role of art in prisons in relation to improving mental health conditions for those incarcerated.

Noon–12:30pm
Performance: The Great Transformer: The Impact of the Internet on Economic Growth and Prosperity
Carlin Wing, in collaboration with students from Theories of Interaction: Games as Media class, will collaborate with Robby Herbst to stage his performance The Great Transformer (2016).

12:30–1pm 
Lunch and book signing with John Burtle and Elana Mann
John Burtle and Elana Mann will launch their publication, Propositional Attitudes: What do we do now?, a collection of activist manuscripts and scores submitted by the public through an open-call.

1–2pm
Lecture: “Why do People Write and Paint on Walls? Reflections from the War in Northern Ireland”
Tony Crowley, professor of English at the University of Leeds, UK, will discuss the specific relations between aesthetics and politics in the murals painted in Northern Ireland from the late 1970s to the present. He will focus on the political motivation that underpins the murals and attempt to analyze why art became such an important medium in the context of a violent conflict.

2–3:15pm
Panel: immigration | imagination
The immigration | imagination panelists will share their creative, critical, and community practices in response to the policing of borders in the global north and south, and the ongoing vestiges of violence. These artist-activist-teachers speak of their embodied ties to Berlin, the Bay Area, Manila, Boyle Heights, Seoul, and in between. Interwoven topics include “post-Chicano”/ post-identitarian representation, transnational adoption, incarceration, as well as two print projects: White Gaze, a post-colonial reframing of National Geographic archives, and Myriad Modernities: Southeast Asian Visual Cultures, a special art+academic double issue. The panelists include Michele Carlson, Michelle Dizon, Carlos Jackson, and kate-hers RHEE and is moderated by Việt Lê.

3:30-4:30pm
Lecture: “Cure Park”
Dutch curator, Theo Tegelaers, will discuss his recent project Cure Park, which took place in the Amsterdamse Bos, a park on the outskirts of Amsterdam in 2017. During this five-week outdoor exhibition, artists, non-art professionals and the public came together to examine what it means to take care of oneself, others, and the environment. Projects included Live, Love, Death, alternative therapies for those physically challenged, and radical ideas concerning food production.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Additional support is provided by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Swedish Arts Grants Committee, and Pitzer College’s Teaching and Learning Committee and Frederick J. Salathé Fund for Music and the Cultural Arts/Campus Life Committee.

This event is free and open to the public.

The exhibition MANIFESTO: A Moderate Proposal is curated by Ciara Ennis and Jennifer Vanderpool.

About Pitzer College Art Galleries
Pitzer College Art Galleries’ mandate is Education and Advocacy through the Pitzer College core values—social responsibility, intercultural understanding, interdisciplinary learning, student engagement, and environmental sustainability. By following these precepts, the Pitzer College Art Galleries engage and interrogate contemporary and historical issues of importance to expand our audiences’ understanding and contribution to our artistic, intellectual, and social culture.