Podcasts about nato thompson

This week Bad at Sports favorite art world wanderer, Nato Thompson. We chat through all of Nato's current diversions such as independent curationg, building the 21st Century Museum and AI's role in that work, the Alternative Art School and the value proposition of contemporary arts education, and Dreaming in Public. https://thealternativeartschool.net/ https://www.dreaminginpublic.com/

Nato Thompson is a curator and the founder of the Alternative Art School. Before setting up this experimental education project, Nato was the artistic director of Philadelphia Contemporary and a key figure at Creative Time, New York's influential organization focusing on art in public space.You will listen to Nato reflecting on that shift, from working within institutions to setting up one's own. His insights on the inner workings of the art industry are totally thought-provoking. And it's the first time we are talking about NFT's at Ahali! This conversation really shows the many blind spots, or things we tend to overlook about the status quo.EPISODE NOTES & LINKSNato Thompson is an author, curator, and self-proclaimed “cultural infrastructure builder”. www.natothompson.com/aboutThe Alternative Art School (TAAS) is an affordable learning program run by a stellar faculty offering intimate class sizes. TAAS emphasizes group work, community building, and dynamic modes of socializing and art-making. www.thealternativeartschool.net/how-it-works-1Philadelphia Contemporary is an independent and free-standing venue that celebrates the abundance of genre-bending, multidisciplinary practices that make up the field of contemporary art. www.philadelphiacontemporary.orgOperating since 1974, Creative Time is an influential public arts organization in New York. creativetime.org/about/Growing out of a major exhibition that had occurred in Creative Time, Living as Form contains commissioned essays from noted critics and theorists who look at Socially Engaged Art practiced between the years of 1991-2011. mitpress.mit.edu/books/living-formMASS MoCA is a contemporary art museum located in North Adams, Massachusetts. massmoca.org/about/Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the 21st Century (2015) www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/214258/seeing-power-by-nato-thompson/9781612190440/Culture as Weapon: The Art of Influence in Everyday Life. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/545444/culture-as-weapon-by-nato-thompson/Part of the TAAS faculty, Paul Chan is an artist, writer, and publisher. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Chan_(artist)Trevor Paglen is an artist, geographer, and author whose work critically deals with mass surveillance and data collection. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_PaglenA fierce political figure of our time that operates within (but not limited to) the field of contemporary art, Tania Bruguera's work pivots around issues of power and control, and several of her works interrogate and re-present events in Cuban history. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tania_BrugueraSimone Leigh is an artist who reflects on the black female subjectivity through her practice. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_LeighBlack Lives Matter (BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement protesting against incidents of police brutality and all racially motivated violence against black people. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_MatterStar Trek is a science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_TrekJanine Antoni is an artist who focuses on process and the transitions between the making and finished product, often portraying feminist ideals. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janine_AntoniMiguel López is an artist, researcher, and writer. www.bakonline.org/person/miguel-a-lopez/Yael Bartana is an artist whose work focuses on political or feminist themes. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yael_BartanaMotivated largely by political, cultural, and social circumstances, Mel Chin is an artist. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_ChinHito Steyerl is an artist, theoretician, and educator. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hito_SteyerlMarinella Senatore is an artist. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marinella_SenatoreMia Yu is an independent researcher, curator, and educator. portal.cca.edu/events-calendar/curatorial-practice-lecture-mia-yu/Mario Ybarra Jr. employs his multi-layered artistic practice to e various components of Mexican-American identity. www.otis.edu/faculty/mario-ybarra-jrKathrin Böhm is an artist whose practice focuses on the collective re-production of public space; on the economy as a public realm; and every day as a starting point for culture. Check out Ahali Conversations Episode 13 to get inspired by Kathrin's way to build diverse economies within, out of, and around the field of culture. www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-13-kathrinbohmJ.K Gibson-Graham is the pen-name of Katherine Gibson and the late Julie Graham. As feminist political economists and economic geographers, they have extensively written about diverse economies, urbanism, alternative communities, and regional economic development.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Gibson-GrahamSmashcut is an online learning platform built for real-time, media-based education. www.smashcut.com/aboutPedagogy of the Oppressed is considered one of the foundational texts of critical pedagogy and proposes a pedagogy with a new relationship between teacher, student, and society by Paolo Freire. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy_of_the_OppressedBlack Mountain College was an experimental college founded in 1933.John Cage (1912 – 1992) was a composer, music theorist, artist, and philosopher who was a teacher at BMC."Merce" Cunningham (1919 – 2009) was a dancer and choreographer who was a teacher at BMC.Gezi Park Protests occurred in Turkey in 2013 to contest the urban development plan for Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gezi_Park_protestsThe Arab Spring was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_SpringOccupy Wall Street (OWS) was a protest movement against economic inequality and the influence of money in politics that began in New York City's Wall Street financial district, in 2011. It gave rise to the wider Occupy movement in the United States and other countries. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_StreetSotheby's is a multinational corporation headquartered in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewelry, and collectibles. www.sothebys.com/en/Christie's is an auction house like Sotheby's known for its involvement in high-profile private transactions. www.christies.com/enSAHA is an association that seeks to support contemporary art from Turkey. www.saha.org.trProtocinema is a cross-cultural art organization that commissions and presents works and exhibitions of contemporary art. www.protocinema.org/aboutFırat Engin is an artist based in İstanbul and Ankara. firatengin.com/cvVahap Avşar is an artist based in New York and İstanbul. vahapavsar.com/bio/DC hardcore, sometimes referred to in writing as harDCore, is the hardcore punk scene of Washington, D.C. Emerging in late 1979, it is considered one of the first and most influential punk scenes in the United States. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C._hardcoreBad Brains are a rock band formed in Washington, D.C. in 1977. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_BrainsMinor Threat was a hardcore punk band, formed in 1980 in Washington, D.C. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_ThreatFugazi is a post-hardcore band that formed in Washington, D.C. in 1986. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FugaziThe Nation of Ulysses was a punk rock band from Washington, D.C., formed in spring 1988. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nation_of_UlyssesMinecraft is an influential sandbox video game with a major impact on popular internet culture. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MinecraftRed Dead Redemption is a Western-themed action-adventure game. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dead_RedemptionGrand Theft Auto (GTA) is a series of action-adventure games. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_AutoThe Sandinista National Liberation Front is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandinista_National_Liberation_FrontJust google Google. g.co/kgs/2CdUks

On episode 202 of The Quarantine Tapes, Paul Holdengräber is joined by Nato Thompson. Nato's most recent project is The Alternative Art School, an online arts program launched in 2020. Paul and Nato talk in depth about Nato's history in the art world and this thrilling new endeavor.Nato explains what excites him about the possibilities this online-only school creates and discusses their mission to approach art as a life project. They discuss some of the artists Nato has worked with, from Trevor Paglen and Tracy K. Smith to Werner Herzog. Paul and Nato dig into the issues with existing structures in the art world, from museums to non-profits, and go back and forth about the problems and potential of virtual space. Nato Thompson is an author, curator, and what he describes as “cultural infrastructure builder”. He has worked as Artistic Director at Philadelphia Contemporary, and Creative Time as Artistic Director and as Curator at MASS MoCA. He is currently the founder of an online global art school titled The Alternative Art School which began after the summer of 2020.Thompson organized major Creative Time projects including The Creative Time Summit (2009–2015), Pedro Reyes' Doomocracy (2016), Kara Walker's A Subtlety (2014), Living as Form (2011), Trevor Paglen's The Last Pictures (2012), Paul Ramírez Jonas's Key to the City (2010), Jeremy Deller's It is What it is (2009, with New Museum curators Laura Hoptman and Amy Mackie), Democracy in America: The National Campaign (2008), and Paul Chan's Waiting for Godot in New Orleans (2007), among others.He has written two books of cultural criticism, Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the 21st Century (2015) and Culture as Weapon: The Art of Influence in Everyday Life (2017).

Helena Hawkes; a Los Angeles-based writer/director and a self-proclaimed Cinephile, Painter, and Soul & Disco Enthusiast. Helena has worked in Hollywood with the likes of Jason Blum of Blumhouse Productions and Leigh Wannel of the Saw and Insidious Franchises. Helena joins My Pop Five to break down Big Fish, Rene Magritte, Meshes of the Afternoon/At Land by Maya Deren, Master Blaster by Stevie Wonder, and Culture as Weapon by Nato Thompson. Helena discusses her relationship with each of the items on her "Pop Five", growing up in small-town, leaving the nest, her relationship with writing, and her "Yours, Mine and Ours" family. Support the show! Rate and Review on Apple Podcasts! 

The Rothko Chapel's biennial Óscar Romero Award has been given every two years since 1986 in recognition of courageous, grassroots human rights advocacy. The award is named in honor of Archbishop Óscar Romero of San Salvador who was assassinated on March 24, 1980, because of his vocal opposition to the violent oppression of his fellow citizens. Building upon climate change topics addressed at our 2019 Spring Symposium: “Toward a Better Future: Transforming the Climate Crisis,” the Chapel honors three recipients who are committed to climate justice, and together represent the Chapel's intersection of art, spirituality and human rights. 2020 Awardees include: Gérman Chirinos, Founder of MASSVIDA (Honduras); Bernadette Demientieff, Executive Director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee (Alaska); and Jorge Díaz, Co-Founder of AgitArte (Puerto Rico). The virtual ceremony was led by David Leslie, Executive Director of the Rothko Chapel and an invocation was given by Myokei Caine-Barrett, Shonin, the Resident Priest of Myoken-ji Temple in Houston. This year's Nomination Committee included Cassandra Carmichael, Executive Director at the National Religious Partnership for the Environment; Guillermo Kerber, former Program Executive for Climate Justice at the World Council of Churches; Cara Mertes, Project Director for Moving Image Strategies at the Ford Foundation; Marianne Møllmann. Director of Regional Programs at the Fund for Global Human Rights; Bryan Parras, Healthy Communities Campaign Organizer at the Sierra Club; and Nato Thompson, Artistic Director at Philadelphia Contemporary. About the Awardees: Gérman Chirinos is a land and water rights activist from Honduras. Over the past 10 years, protected and publicly held lands in southern Honduras have been privatized, and large-scale energy projects and logging have limited access to water and land. Motivated by this growing environmental crisis, Gérman joined other activists in 2014 to found the Southern Environmental Movement for Life (Movimiento Ambientalista del Sur por la Vida) or MASSVIDA, an association of 37 communities in active resistance to the destruction of land and water. When asked what difference the award will make for MASSVIDA, Gérman said: “We will no longer be silenced, our work will become known.” Bernadette Demientieff is the Executive Director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee and she is Gwichyaa Zhee Gwich’in. Bernadette stands strong to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge-Coastal Plain, the Porcupine Caribou Herd and the Gwich’in way of life. Bernadette is a council member for the Arctic Refuge Defense Council. She also serves as an advisory board member for NDN Collective, the Care of Creations Task Force, Native Movement Alaska, and Defend the Sacred Alaska. She is a tribal member of the Gwichyaa Zhee Gwich’in Tribal Government, and on the leadership council for ITR. When asked about her years of advocacy, Bernadette said, "We must all remember that we are on a spiritual path and that co-existing and respecting each other’s ways of life is important." Jorge Díaz co-founded AgitArte in 1997 based in Santurce, PR and is an editor of the book When We Fight, We Win! He is a puppeteer, popular educator and bicultural organizer with over 25 years of experience. He is deeply committed to working class struggles against oppressive systems, namely colonialism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. Jorge is also a founding member of Papel Machete, a collective of radical artists and street theater/puppetry workers dedicated to education, agitation and solidarity work in 21st century Puerto Rico and its Diaspora. Upon announcement of receiving the award, Jorge said, "I take this award as an opportunity to reaffirm my individual commitment to continue in the collective struggle for a life in which we can be free from violence." This program was underwritten by The Jacob and Terese Hershey Foundation.

In The Conversation’s first guest-featured Virtual Café – our once every few weeks gathering with fellow listeners on Zoom - former guest of the podcast (epis. 152 and 153) Nato Thompson talks about “the Indignation.” He riffs on how our emotional space, the space of the personal, becomes a political space... and how in that emotional space, the things that get the most traction are the things that provoke the most emotion. He points out that our biggest emotion- fear - is the modality of the internet, and how most internet chatter takes the form of social media- which has, ultimately, become our political discourse. He also talks his departure from the Philadelphia Contemporary (and nonprofits), and his new post directing the Alternative Art School, and ends with a great anecdote about his turning point towards becoming a curator.

Philadelphia-based curator and author, Nato Thompson was chief curator at Creative Time 2007-2017 and recently has been developing ideas for a civically engaged contemporary museum in Philadelphia. His Instagram Live series - Let's Talk Alternatives - has brought together change-makers, activists and artists globally. Here Nato talks candidly about his roots, what scares him and his aspirations for the way we might make new worlds. Instagram: @natothompsonnatothompson.comYou can discover Creative Time projects hereNato mentions the following projects: The Interventionists at Mass MoCARick Lowe's Project Row Houses in HoustonTheaster Gates' Rebuild Foundation in ChicagoChristine Tohme's Ashkal Alwan in Beirut

Live from NADA New York... maybe more than a year ago but certainly last time we were at NADA NYC… NATO THOMPSON returns to the show to talk about “seeing power” and how we need to think about our relationship with culture, and culture’s relationship with us, especially when we are talking about "high art," "museums," and the tools of hegemony. What’s an artist to do?   https://www.natothompson.com/ https://www.newartdealers.org/ http://www.claireashley.com/ https://www.natothompson.com/books-2#/https/wwwmhpbookscom/books/seeing-powe/

This episode is the first part of a three-part series on “Homelands and histories.” In this episode, Dr. Dylan Miner—an artist, scholar and activist who teaches at Michigan State University—discusses his work in relation to land use, cultural heritage, and indigenous activism. Miner identifies as Wiisaakodewinini, or Métis, a person of mixed ancestry with ties to indigenous communities in the U.S. and Canada. Transcript:   Jolie Sheffer:                          Welcome to the BG Ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Jolie Scheffer, an associate professor of English and American culture studies and the director of ICS. This is the first episode of a three-part series entitled Homelands and Histories, in which we talked to people making big impacts on local communities through their work on land use and cultural heritage. Jolie Sheffer:                          The word homeland can evoke comfortable feelings of patriotism or cultural identity, but it is also used to justify expulsion or even genocide. Similarly, the word histories is meant to call attention to the many points of conflict, debate, erasure of violence, and silencing that accompany efforts to describe and interpret the past. Today, we are joined by Dr. Dillon A. T. Miner, an artist, scholar, and activist, who identifies as Wiisaakodewinini or Metis, a native person of mixed ancestry with ties to indigenous communities in the US and Canada. Jolie Sheffer:                          Dylan is an adjunct curator of indigenous art at the Michigan State University Museum as well as the founder of the Justseeds artists collective and a board member of the Michigan Indian Education Council. He recently commenced the Bootaagaani-minis Drummond Island Land Reclamation Project, a de-colonial initiative to acquire land and establish a cultural center for Metis, whose ancestors were forced to leave the island during the War of 1812. Dylan is also the director of American Indian and indigenous studies at Michigan State University and an associate professor of transcultural studies in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State. Jolie Sheffer:                          He's the author of the book Creating Aztlan: Chicano Art, Indigenous Sovereignty, and Lowriding Across Turtle Island, in which he shows that Chicano art needs to be understood in the context of indigenous history, anti-colonial struggle, and Native-American studies. I'm very pleased to welcome him to BGSU as a part of ICS's 2018 Spring Speaker Series. Thanks so much for being here. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 Thanks for having me. Jolie Sheffer:                          One of the things that we're interested in at ICS is discussing the relationship between different kinds of knowledge and different modes of activism, so scholarship, art, grassroots organizing. Can you start us out by telling us a bit about your particular path of negotiating those three? What set you out into trying to do all three? Dr. Dylan Miner:                 Sure. So I kind of come into the work I do. I grew up in punk rock circles and kind of crusty anarchist, Zeen-making circles. Much of the work I do kind of emerges from that space. I also, as you said, I'm a Wiisaakodewinini or a Metis person, and one of the Cree words for Metis is [foreign language 00:02:57]. That's a Cree word which means the people who own themselves are the people without bosses. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 So much of the work I do thinks about the ways of dismantling hierarchies in all of its forms. So I don't see a distinction necessarily between the scholarly work I do, the community-based work, the arts practice, or even kind of the familial and community work I do outside of or in spite of the institution or university. The more I get involved in various projects, the more I see all of them intermingling and intertwined into a holistic whole. So kind of what I'm doing, say with the Bootaagaani-minis Land Reclamation Project is not that much different as with what I'm doing say in the pedagogical practices in the classroom, working with the urban indigenous youth and the Native Kids Ride Bike Project, Anishnaabensag Biimskowebshkigewag. To me, they're all intertwined and all part of the same holistic way of thinking about building a better and more socially-just world. Jolie Sheffer:                          So how do you then decide kind of what the praxis is that goes with the project, right? Because your audience are going to differ depending on which mode you're working in. So when you're taking on a new project, how do you decide which path or paths to follow? Dr. Dylan Miner:                 Sure. Part of the reason I went to graduate school in art history was because I wanted to think about the ways... I had gone to art school for a year. I had gone to the College for Creative Studies in Detroit for a year and dropped out, partially because I felt that art school wasn't giving me some of the larger social or cultural worldviews to understand more engaged making of work. So I kind of went to graduate school in studying the history of art, particularly focusing on arts of the Americas, kind of indigenous, and Mestizo, or Metis practices throughout this hemisphere as a way to inform my own practice. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 The further I get away from needing to write academic and scholarly texts, the less I do. I felt there's a very colonial way of framing arguments that exist within academic writing. Part of the reason I've been writing more creative nonfiction, more poetically is because I think that engages with the themes I'm engaging within a much more nuanced and way that actually matches the work itself. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 So when I write now, much of what I try to write, I like to think about ways that the form of the writing can actually reproduce the ideas within it. I think that when I'm engaged in creative practices, whether it's something like The Elders Say We Don't Visit Anymore, which emerged in conversations with retired Ojibwe auto workers. So I started to employ that, what I started to call the methodology of visiting based on what they'd shared, in all aspects of what I do and what I've been doing. So I started thinking about, "What would it mean to slow down, to actually engage more intimately and more critically in all moments, in all practices that I'm engaged in?" Jolie Sheffer:                          You've worked with a wide variety of media in your art. You've done silk screening to building a decorating bicycles. You've talked about the pennant as a form. Can you talk about some of those examples, and how you selected that particular form, and how that helped convey the thematics that you were interested in? Dr. Dylan Miner:                 Sure. So I came up. I used to identify as a printmaker. I would make prints, and that's what I would do oftentimes relief prints, woodblock, and linoleum block prints. More recently, maybe the last decade or so, I've identified it as an artist who engages in projects. I think that in some ways, it comes from those conversations with elders where I'm at a place and I think that there's something liberatory about arts and creative practice. There was an interview or a small essay I read, I think it was in e-flux a number of years ago by the Mexican curator, Cuauhtemoc where he said that contemporary galleries were one of the last places for radical politics left. While I don't fully believe or agree with Medina on that point, I have some commitment to understanding and thinking about art as significant and important. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 So when I engage in projects now, I just have ideas and begin to call them artistic projects, call that a project. So for instance, my grandfather's grandmother was an herbalist. She was known for particular forms of herbal medicines. That's knowledge that didn't get to my generation, or my father's generation, or my grandfathers, or grandparents generation. So what I'm interested in doing is, "Okay, how can we frame that as a particular form of project and move forward with it in that way?" So many of the projects that come to begin there, "What is a knowledge form or practice I'd like to learn, and how can I, as an artist, as a Wiisaakodewinini person, how can I engage in that?" Dr. Dylan Miner:                 So sometimes it takes the form of print. Sometimes it takes the form of community collaborations. There's been lots of conversations in the last number of years about what people call social practice. There's lots of critiques of social practice. How does this all intertwine together? Sometimes it's particular forms. Sometimes it's conceptual. Jolie Sheffer:                          You talked about sort of the elders, but you've also done a lot of work with children and youth. Could you talk to us about some of those projects and why you think that's a particularly important audience to engage with? Dr. Dylan Miner:                 Sure. I do a lot of workshops with youth, primarily with indigenous youth, but also lots of urban youth, and rural youth, Latino youth, Chicano youth in the U.S., Canada, [Bit-Wasame 00:08:27] communities in Northern Scandinavia, [inaudible 00:08:29] indigenous communities in Australia, and to some extent in Latin America as well. As somebody who's interested in weird stuff, who's interested in certain kinds of punk, and hip hop, and certain artistic practices, and the creation of alternative social institutions, many of the collaborations with youth come from that space. So Anishnaabensag Biimskowebshkigewag, Native Kids Ride Bikes comes from wanting to interact with youth and have them interact with fluent speaking Ojibwe elders. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 So in Lansing, Michigan, we have some of the largest numbers of fluent Anishinaabeg speakers in the state of Michigan, but on the U.S. side of the border. But there was a disconnect between them and youth. So building bikes became an intentional time to gather people together around a particular thing of doing a doing and making. If in the end, people only learned how to make a bike, great. But it hopefully became something more than that. Jolie Sheffer:                          You're talking about the sort of colonial forms that so much of knowledge production in its institutionalized ways operates. So it's really interesting to hear you talk about these projects that are designed to sort of function outside of those frameworks. How do you in your own workshops and practice work to get outside of that habit of the kind of colonialist resource extraction of you go in or you're brought in, and it's like, "Now, you're going to be our native informant"? Then, everyone goes back to doing things the way they always did them. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 So my partner is Estrella Torrez who runs a project in Lansing called the Indigenous Youth Empowerment Program, IYEP, which is a native youth program. She co-directs with some friends of hers. She also coordinates a project with Latino youth called Nuestros Cuentos, which is Writes Stories with Youth. But one of those things is that she develops is this idea of kind of reverse resource extraction. What does it mean to be inside institutions within the university? In what ways can we extrapolate and build upon the resources and relationships we have in institutions to benefit communities, particularly communities we're a part of, but also communities we might not be a part of? How can we make those benefit communities, particularly communities of color, indigenous communities, and other communities, immigrant communities, et cetera? Dr. Dylan Miner:                 So I do a lot of work against resource extraction, anti-mining stuff, anti-pipeline stuff. So one question I've been asking in thinking through is, "What is the opposite of extraction? What would that look like? What is the opposite of actually mining and/or having pipelines for fossil fuels? What would that look like?" Just as a rhetorical question, "What would that look like for those of us in places who have access to particular resources? How can we kind of reverse those pipelines?" Jolie Sheffer:                          Your book is on Chicano art and movements, and you also work on indigenous Metis art. So can you provide an overview of some of those histories and convergences? Dr. Dylan Miner:                 Yeah. I'm really interested in the detribalized to histories that happen at both the intersections of both settler-colonial nation-state borders, whether it's the U.S.-Canada border or the U.S.-Mexico border. I grew up as a white-coated, indigenous person in the state of Michigan in a community that had a migrant farmworker community, a Chicano, and Mexican-American, and Mexican farmworker community and from an early age was seeing the linkages between the Metis histories of the Great Lakes, and the plains, and prairies of the U.S.-Canada border lands and some of the Chicano or Mexican-American forms of indigeneity that you see in Texas in New Mexico. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 My partner, her family, comes from Genizaro communities. Genizaros are folks in New Mexico and Texas that were basically taken detribalized indigenous folks that were then kind of put into servitude for Spanish settlers. So thinking about the ways that both colonial projects happen, whether it's the U.S. colonial project, the Canadian colonial project, the Mexican colonial project, and what they do to indigenous folks and to detribalized a non-recognized indigenous folks. So in that book, in particular, I look at Chicano or Mexican-American artistic practices after 1968 in relationship to a concept called Aztlan. Aztlan is the [Chica 00:12:54] or Nahua origin story that before the so-called Aztecs founded Tenochtitlan, or what is now Mexico City, they came from this cave on an Island. That place was called Aztlan. During the 1960s, during the Chicano power era, activists began to talk about the U.S. Southwest as that location. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 So one of the things I articulate in that book is thinking about Chicanos or Mexican-American folks as an indigenous nation and as a nation of movement, and what does it mean to slowly move across land? So using the metaphor of lowriding, whether it's lowriding in cars or lowriding in bikes that is, we all know lowriders. Some say they started in Espanola, New Mexico, some say they started in East Los Angeles. Either way, whatever the origin story is, it's an anti-capitalist form of movement. We think of muscle cars, we think of the automobile. I grew up in Michigan, kind of the birthplace of the automobile. That's about getting places quickly. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 But when you lowride through place, you intimately know the territory, begin to talk to the land, relate to the land, and it's a big F-you to capitalism where time is money, you're intentionally inverting that system. So for me, making these linkages are important as we both resist violent state practices. We're in a moment in time where the U.S. government is moving in certain ways. I've been advocating kind of for DACA and understanding of the linkages between U.S. immigration policies and what they do as a component of the same settler-colonial forms of appropriation, and appropriation, and violence that happened kind of as Anglo America pushed westward with manifest destiny. Jolie Sheffer:                          Well, and that sort of speaks to our theme of homelands and histories and the ways we think very differently about our own moment if we lengthen the window of time in which we're operating and to think about... I'm very interested. My own scholarship is on the history of immigration. So much of the rhetoric that circulates now is on legality and illegality. When, in the longer window of history, the laws changed around people. It's not that people are illegal or not. So what do the terms like a homeland and history connote to you? Dr. Dylan Miner:                 When I think of homeland, I think we all live in an era where we think of homeland security. I link it to certain kind of state practices, certain moves by the state towards a certain form of patriotism, a fascistic form of patriotism, that in its very creation creates borders that are solidified in certain ways. To link this back to the last question. One of the things I've been thinking about, and I think many, many scholars and activists, indigenous and Chicana activists have been thinking about this are the ways that communities, and indigenous sovereignties, and indigenous forms of governance and territoriality exist in relationship inside and outside of the forms of territoriality that Western nation-states have. That means that the U.S., Canada, Mexico have to have solidified borders. Those borders cannot be shared. A territory has to be one or the other. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 But when you look at longer-term histories of land use and land practice in Western spaces, but particularly in indigenous communities, there's always been conflicted spaces but also shared spaces. That the notion of territoriality that we see in this particular moment that arises from a form of polity that that happens and emerges in Western Europe at a particular moment of time is only one form of governmentality and territoriality that exists or that has to exist. If there's anything that I'd like my work to engage with as an activist, as a scholar, or as an artist is thinking about thinking otherwise, imagining other possibilities. The Zapatistas in the '90s, shared with us that, "[foreign language 00:16:50]. Another world as possible." When they think about, "What other worlds are possible, and do we have to be so constricted by the particularities of the worlds that we've been given?" Jolie Sheffer:                          I think that's something that the older I get, the more you realize that even in our own lifespan, that there were other ways of being. I remember what it was like not to have a cell phone, not to have social media. Or, thinking on the issue of borderlands, growing up in Michigan, you would just cross over into Canada. I was thinking about this very recently. I have a young son and I was like, "Oh, this summer, maybe we'll go to Canada." I realized, "I can't do that. I have to get him a passport." The way the state intrudes on those things. We take for granted that like, "Oh post-9/11 for many of our students, that's the only way of being they've experienced." Again, taking that longer view reminds you there have been other ways of being, and there could be yet again. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 I teach an undergraduate senior seminar, and one of the questions we ask is, "Is another world possible? Can we imagine a world beyond, or outside, or after, or in spite of capitalism?" Each time I've taught it, when we get to the end, it becomes nearly impossible for anyone in that class to think beyond, or outside, or in spite of capitalism, that as an economic and way of organizing social relationships, it has such a power on all of us that imagining something outside of it has been nearly impossible. Jolie Sheffer:                          We'd love to hear some of your questions. You ready? Alexis:                                        I just want to say, first, thank you for coming and I appreciate this dialogue that we get to have with you. My name's Alexis [Ribertino 00:18:33]. We're apart of a class, all of us here. It is a studio seminar in the arts school, and we read the beginning of Creating Aztlan and other things regarding Native Kids Ride Bikes, specifically. That's kind of where our collaborative questions come from, just to give you a background on where we're coming from. Alexis:                                        So you say in your book, Creating Aztlan, "Once you know the story, it is your collective responsibility to tell it." In thinking about this, I've noticed a trend in socially-engaged art to rely on the audience or participators in order to be the ones that enact with the change or artists put their trust in the participators in order to be provoked and then to think enough in order to pursue the change. This tactic then replaces the artist's direct involvement in policymaking or direct change. My question is, is this tactic enough or the best way of enacting social change and engagement? Or, is this possibility of inspiring in numbers more enticing than using more time and less minds to pull out the direct work? Dr. Dylan Miner:                 That's a good question and one that I'm not certain I have a full answer to. I will say that I'm of the perspective that unfortunately we live in a time when artists are brought in to fill in voids and other social services. So why is it that artists are engaging in certain kinds of projects when there's been a reduction in funding of social services that should do that exact same thing? I think that at a policy level and at an institutional level, I think that's a problem. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 Do I think that art is the best way to enact, or to initiate, or to be the change itself? As I said earlier, I do hold onto something that our art is liberatory in certain ways. I'm not certain what it is. I think that with the various avant-gardes you've seen throughout history, I think many of them have held onto that belief, whether rightly or wrongly, probably wrongly. But I do think there's something liberatory about it. There's a way... For instance, the majority of my work, I don't sell. I don't make work for the market. I've been criticized, and rightfully so, because I have I come from an institutional space of privilege where I teach at university and don't need to make work to pay my bills. Therefore, I can make work that's gifted or given away. I think that's significant about what I'm trying to do is make work outside or beyond the marketplace. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 So in terms of social practice or socially-engaged art, I think there's some very good examples and I think there's some very bad examples. I think that, at its best, community collaboration is just that. Like, when I engage in a project, it's that. I don't imagine that it's something beyond that. The Elders Say We Don't Visit Anymore, that's using my access to institutional spaces to create momentary spaces of visiting. Do I think it's going to fundamentally change those institutions, or indigenize them, or kind of transform them? No. I know that it's a momentary thing, and I know that the results will be fleeting. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 The same thing I'd say with Anishnaabensag Biimskowebshkigewag, Native Kids Ride Bikes. That's really about building social relationships, and making connections between existing community members, and one another. If it goes beyond that, that's wonderful. But I don't think it always will or always has. But I do think there's moments in time where we live in a moment when so many different institutions for public good have been dismantled, and so now we're turning to artists to do the work that something else should do. I think that's a fundamental larger problem. Nick:                                           My name's Nick. Thank you for coming. For my question, in your interview with America Meredith that we read, you provide a quote from Ryan Red Corn stating, "We're Indian. We're political by default." I was struck by the idea that even in a not-overtly political project, the aesthetics become politicized. Do you see this as being an issue for indigenous artists or a distracting element if their work tends to be viewed through a specific lens? Do you find that your work strives to have a singular identity, or do you feel like is split serving two different purposes regarding an indigenous and a outside audience? Dr. Dylan Miner:                 Good question again. So the quote by what Ryan Red Corn, and Ryan Red Corn's a graphic designer and Osage guy. He's also in the comedy troupe 1491, so he was just visiting East Lansing and I had dinner with him a few weeks ago. So it's good to see you brought that quote up from the interview with America Meredith, who's a Cherokee painter, who is also the editor for First American Art Magazine. So if you're not familiar, put a plugin for that to really exciting and interesting article or magazine that she publishes. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 So I think this is a problematic both for contemporary indigenous artists, but for artists of color, for queer artists, for many other artists, who there's a certain kind of reading that when work becomes biographical, people only read it in that way. I think that happens to certain artists and not to all artists. Why is that? That said, my work is always political even when not politically. It's intentionally political, and I have some that is overly agitprop. It's fine to be read one-dimensional. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 In the class I was just meeting with, I showed them a Line 5 pipeline Risograph poster that I recently produced. My own politics, I'm vehemently against that pipeline, Line 5. Enbridge line 5, of course, was created in 1953. It's a approximately 700-mile pipeline that brings tar sands from Western Canada through Wisconsin and Michigan to be processed and refined in Sarnia, Ontario. Of course, Sarnia is right by a First Nations, an Anishinaabek First Nations community that has some of the largest cancer rates of any community because of the processing of so many chemicals and particularly oil refineries there. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 But with this image, it is a unidimensional reading of it. A poster kind of demarking, or discussing, or showing the 20 plus... I don't remember the exact number, the nearly 30 oil spills that have happened since that pipeline opened in 1953 and spilling 1.1 million gallons of oil. There's not a lot of readings that can be read into that poster. It's intentionally one advocating for the dismantling and shutting down of that pipeline. So I'm okay with a one-dimensional reading of that. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 Other works, particularly in museums and galleries, kind of text I write, they need to be more nuanced and understanding of them. I think that with indigenous, with artists of color, oftentimes the work becomes read as biographical. I think that's a hard dynamic, and hard dialectic, or hard tension that people who aren't part of that community have when engaging with that art. There's been scholars and critics who've looked at the ways that, particularly with indigenous art, when you come to it, you have to both understand the particularities of the knowledge system the artist is working with as well as the understanding of the discourses and structures of contemporary art. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 That's high expectations. It's a lot to expect of audiences, whether indigenous or not, whether a member of that individual artist's community or another indigenous nation. There's a lot of expectations there. So with that, I think there'll probably be a lot of misinterpretations. When you make something and put it in the world, you have to be open to understand and think through its possible multiple readings, whether they're ones you want or not. Jolie Sheffer:                          That seems like the focus of your work that is very process-oriented seems partly designed to break down that singular reading because you have to kind of engage with the work and help create it. That seems in itself kind of an anti-capitalist way of being that you can't just sort of, "Okay, now I'm going to absorb the art and the artist, and then get out." Dr. Dylan Miner:                 I think time, non-capitalist, nonlinear time is very significant in my work. If you come to my talk tonight, and I've said it a number of other times, but I'll talk a bit about this term [foreign language 00:26:59], which is a Anishinaabemowin term meaning one's ancestors but also one's descendant. So it's referencing in particularly one's great-grandparent or one's great-grandchild, but it's the same word for both. But it breaks down linear notions of history that past is behind us, kind of the future's in front of us, and actually creates a relationship with one's ancestors and one's descendants that is very intimate and very real. To do that, you have to engage in a long-term, nonlinear notions of time. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 So much of my work, whether studio or otherwise, I think I'm trying to evoke and employ this particular notion of temporality that isn't linear, that doesn't somehow put past behind us, future in front of us, and somehow we can get to this attainable future of some sort. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 When you were talking a moment ago, I was thinking of a project I do called Michif–Michin, The People The Medicine, which is a collaboration with plants where I actually have conversations, learn from and with medicinal plants, and then harvest them, and then make prints from them. I print them in inks I harvest. Inks I make from berries I harvest and then give them away. They're not sold. So there's a long-term relationship between me and the plant, but also between me and the people who share knowledge about the plant and then who receive these prints. So lots of ways of thinking through and around these questions. Maria:                                        Hi, my name's Maria. I also wanted to say thanks for coming and spending time talking to us. My question is that you mentioned that one of the long-term outcomes of your lowriding project was both the inclusion of native tradition, culture, and history, but also a commentary on sustainability within transportation. How do you envision the lowriding project impacting within the relationship that exists between native and colonialist values? What type of conversations do you think that this will spark between the two groups, and do you foresee an impact or a change being made on colonialist viewpoints of sustainability and conversation from projects similar to this? Dr. Dylan Miner:                 Another good question. For me, it's hard to say, or hard to predict, or hard to judge kind of what impacts or relationships they have. As someone whose practices fundamentally about building relationships and engaging with other people, I think that I want to put that in play. I want that to happen. If you'd have asked me this two years ago, I think various conversations were happening about sustainability, and about climate change, and resistance to climate change, and understanding potential transformations that needed to happen at a dominant structural level. At this point in time, I'm a little less... I don't think those are happening at the upper echelons of state and capitalist institutions. So because of that, I'm concerned. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 This is a slight aside, but I think that what we see is that there's very powerful systems of violence and oppression, whether it's violence to the land, whether it's oppression of other individuals, whether it's the creation of patriarchal systems. Those are all intertwined. If you look at the scholarly text and the creative text as well, part of what I'd like to put in place is how all of these are intertwined together. You probably haven't heard it as much on U.S. news, but I've been kind of attentive to it is that in Western Canada, just last Friday, there was a court case that came through. This was a young Korean man who was in his 20s, Colton Boushie, who was shot three times in the head by a Saskatchewan farmer a number of months ago. That ruling came down on Friday. Stanley, the individual who shot him three times in the head, was acquitted for murder and or manslaughter. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 This is to say that there's institutional forms of violence and oppression that become reproduced within structures and systems, that whether or not we control them. So when I make things and when I'm engaged in practices, I put them out there in the world. How they operate within these existing systems, to some extent, is outside my control. Tyler:                                          My name's Tyler. So my question is, as artists, we want to avoid cliche and heavy-handed work crafted without intention. Sometimes this want can lead to work made with intent by the artist, but that isn't understood by anyone who isn't familiar with the piece. So for socially-engaged art, how blatant do you find that art needs to be in order to actually be an effective piece of social engagement? How much of the artist needs to be present, and how much of the activist? In your own practice, how do you balance these two sides? Dr. Dylan Miner:                 Good. Julie and I were talking earlier about balance and the fact that balance doesn't exist. It's a process. But at any moment, we're going to fall off as we're trying to balance anything. I have no intention to balance. I come to my work as someone with particular political motivations. Some of the work, particularly the print-based work that exists in poster and print form, is freely downloadable off the internet. That has an agitprop positionality. That is intended to agitate and provoke, to make people think about particular issues, oftentimes indigenous issues, oftentimes environmental issues, oftentimes immigration issues, and how all of these are linked together. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 The other work, what could be called the socially-engaged work or the work I'm doing oftentimes in galleries or in museums, you're right, is less heavy-handed. Yet, the ways that those are read, I think, are going to differ greatly based on the baggage, and the knowledge, and the information people bring to them. The more I do things, the more I understand that and I'm open to that. With Anishnaabensag Biimskowebshkigewag, Native Kids Ride Bikes, I've done that a number of times with communities that I know and a number of times with communities I don't know. Some of them have been very successful, and some of them have been very awful based on existing relationships between me and people in those communities and people in those communities and the institution that brought me in. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 So I think a lot of times, it's not even necessarily on the actual social engagement but rather the relationships, the networks, the interactions that exist outside, and beyond, and around those particular engagements. As an artist, as much as I'd like to say I'm against hierarchies in all forms, which I am, as an artist, sometimes we bring our own ideas into things. I think that the more engagements I do, the less I have to have particular ideas of what I'd like them to be. So building bikes, those emerge out of collective conversations. Clearly, we're there to build a bike, but what will that be? Jolie Sheffer:                          Following up on that question. So you're an artist, you present your work in these different venues, but you're also a curator, right? So how do you think about your role in positioning? What are the kinds of decisions and conversations you have with yourself and with artists whose work your career curating in the museum context? Dr. Dylan Miner:                 Sure. So I have this adjunct curator title and position, and I don't do a lot of curatorial work in that museum. But I am curating a show at a university gallery in March, which is on land and water, thinking about what those topics, concepts mean. Again, sometimes it's bringing in activist projects into the museum context. I think Nato Thompson, the curator who was with Creative Time for some time, is probably most well-known for that kind of integrating activist projects into the art world and kind of reciprocally bringing art world projects into activists' world. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 So one of the works that's going to be in the show is some of the ephemera from Lee Spragge, who is a Anishinaabeg activist, and he's kind of most well-known for his knowledge on wild rice. He's a wild ricer. He's a former chief of one of the First Nation communities in Michigan. He was leading one of the canoe brigades at Standing Rock, and his canoes were stolen by the state and destroyed. But what we're going to have in the show is some of his ephemera paddles, and life jackets, and things like that. Clearly, he was, kind of some time ago, living in Berkeley and doing performance art and kind of identified as an artist in that point in time. But this is clearly taking some of that more ephemera from activists' projects, placing it in the context of an art gallery and museum. I think that you can create various interesting conversations and projects around that. Jolie Sheffer:                          What's next? What are you working on now, or what are some upcoming projects? Dr. Dylan Miner:                 So I'm working on a number of things, trying to do less and less academic writing. I have a number of shows coming up. One is a new project for the Grand Rapids Art Museum doing large-format cyanotypes. So the year the cyanotype was invented as a photographic process was actually the same as the last treaty was signed in the state of Michigan, the Treaty of La Pointe. So I'm doing a series of landscapes, and waterscapes, and skyscapes using this process to think about the relationship between the materiality and the form itself. I think this goes back to some of your earlier questions. I'm really interested in the relationship between materiality, and the form, and how those all are intertwined. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 I have another solo project building bikes. I might be doing lowrider canoes for a gallery at Western University in Ontario, and then I'm just trying to do some more writing, and do some more working, and just be a human being, and build a better world that in this moment in time, it seems that it's really hard to be a good human being. So if I can try to be a better human being, I'll go that route. Jolie Sheffer:                          Thank you all very much. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 [foreign language 00:37:02]. Thanks for having me on. It's been fun to listen and engage in conversation. Jolie Sheffer:                          Thank you all again so much. So today, our producer is Chris Cavera. Research assistance is by Lauren O'Connor and Elizabeth [Brownlow 00:37:16]. With special thanks to our co-sponsors, the School of Cultural and Critical Studies, the School of Art, and the department of English at BGSU. Thank you all. Dr. Dylan Miner:                 [foreign language 00:37:24].

Nato Thompson, curator and critical writer, talks about his new book Culture as Weapon, and how politicians, corporations and artists use cultural aesthetics to channel their agendas and motivate collective actions.

Since 2008, Big Think has been sharing big ideas from creative and curious minds. The Think Again podcast takes us out of our comfort zone, surprising our guests and Jason Gots, your host, with unexpected conversation starters from Big Think’s interview archives. Novelist and essayist Gish Jen's work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories four times, including The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and her work was featured in a PBS American Masters’ special on the American novel. Her 2017 book, The Girl at the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap, takes an unflinching, funny, and deeply insightful look at how fundamental East-West differences in the sense of self play out in art, culture, business, education, and more. In this episode, Gish and Jason discuss the benefits and downsides of our fundamental assumptions about who we are, and what's to be gained by escaping your cultural bubble, even for a moment. Surprise conversation starter interview clips: Nato Thompson on individualism as a corporate product. Paul Root Wolpe on self-enhancement & culture.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since 2008, Big Think has been sharing big ideas from creative and curious minds. The Think Again podcast takes us out of our comfort zone, surprising our guests and Jason Gots, your host, with unexpected conversation starters from Big Think’s interview archives. Nato Thompson is the Artistic Director of Creative Time, which commissions and presents ambitious public art projects with thousands of artists throughout New York City, across the country, around the world—and now even in outer space. They did Waiting for Godot in New Orleans, a free public performance in hard-hit New Orleans neighborhoods after the flood that Jason talked about with actor Wendell Pierce on this show (episode 22). Nato’s new book is called Culture as Weapon: The Art of Influence in Everyday Life.  In this episode he and Jason talk about the ways the tools of art now permeate every aspect of our culture, from advertising to politics to always-on digital entertainment. They also discuss uploading human consciousness onto computer chips, the DIY, anti-"selling out" discourse of punk and hardcore music, and the weird relationship between art and commerce.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As promised (at least via Twitter), I'm finally posting new shows for the winter quarter of 2016. First up: Show # 247, January 15, 2016, my interview with Nato Thompson, author of Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the 21st Century. Nato is an atypical but completely appropriate Hearsay Culture guest: an art curator. In Nato's book (and broader work), he studies the use of art as a social and political force in a world infused with easy and transformative communication technologies. In our discussion, we explored the challenges and opportunities presented to and by our creative activists, and how consumers can interact with and react to this demonstration of power. Given the power of images and physical structure in our world, Nato's focus is both highly relevant and largely unique. I greatly enjoyed chatting with Nato, and hope that you find the discussion enlightening! {Hearsay Culture is a talk show on KZSU-FM, Stanford, 90.1 FM, hosted by Center for Internet & Society Resident Fellow David S. Levine. The show includes guests and focuses on the intersection of technology and society. How is our world impacted by the great technological changes taking place? Each week, a different sphere is explored. For more information, please go to http://hearsayculture.com.}

This week: Holy bicenquinquagenary Batman! Brian and Duncan (and guest stars including but not limited to Randall Szott) talk to Creative Time chief curator, author, and all around interesting guest Nato Thompson. This show is the second in the series of interviews recorded at the Open Engagement conference at which Mr. Thompson was a guest. This series already charts among some of my favorites in the history of the show. Enjoy!Since January 2007, Nato has organized major projects for Creative Time such as Democracy in America: The National Campaign (2008), Paul ChanÂ’s acclaimed Waiting for Godot in New Orleans (2007) and Mike Nelson’s A Psychic Vacuum. Previous to Creative Time, he worked as Curator at MASS MoCA where he completed numerous large-scale exhibitions such as The Interventionists: Art in the Social Sphere (2004), a survey of political art of the 1990s with a catalogue distributed by MIT Press. His writings have appeared in numerous publications including BookForum, Art Journal, tema celeste, Parkett, Cabinet and The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. The College Art Association awarded him for distinguished writing in Art Journal in 2004. He recently curated an exhibition for Independent Curators International titled Experimental Geography with a book available by Melville House Publishing. His book on art and activism is due out by Autonomedia in October 2009.

This week: The first in our series of interviews from the Open Engagement conference that took place in Portland this past May. We start off with an excellent discussion that Randall Szott, Duncan, Brian and the occasional Incubate person had with artist, writer, lemon tormentor Ted Purves. Topics include; Ted's work, the past present and future of Social Practice and what it means to be an artist today.This series of interviews (thusfar, I've only gone through the first two) are some of my favorite discussions that (the royal) we have had in the 5 years of the show. Great stuff!Ted Purves is a writer and artist based in Oakland. His public projects and curatorial works are centered on investigating the practice of art in the world, particularly as it addresses issues of localism, democratic participation, and innovative shifts in the position of the audience. His two-year project, Temescal Amity Works, created in collaboration with Susanne Cockrell and based in the Temescal neighborhood of Oakland, facilitated and documented the exchange of backyard produce and finished its public phase in winter 2007. His collaborative project Momentary Academy, a free school taught by artists over a period of 10 weeks, was featured in Bay Area Now 4 in 2005 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Ted recently received a visual arts grant from the Creative Capital Foundation and a Creative Work Fund grant from the Elise and Walter Haas Foundation. His book, What We Want Is Free: Generosity and Exchange in Recent Art, was published by State University of New York Press in 2005.The Open Engagement conference is an initiative of Portland State University’s Art and Social Practice MFA concentration and co-sponsored by Portland Community College and the MFA in Visual Studies program at Pacific Northwest College of Art and supported by the Cyan PDX Cultural Residency Program. Directed by Jen Delos Reyes and planned in conjunction with Harrell Fletcher and the Portland State University MFA Monday Night Lecture Series, this conference features three nationally and internationally renowned artists: Mark Dion, Amy Franceschini, and Nils Norman. The conference will showcase work by Temporary Services, InCUBATE, and a new project by Mark Dion created in collaboration with students from the PSU Art and Social Practice concentration. The artists involved in Open Engagement: Making Things, Making Things Better, Making Things Worse, challenge our traditional ideas of what art is and does. These artist’s projects mediate the contemporary frameworks of art as service, as social space, as activism, as interactions, and as relationships, and tackle subject matter ranging from urban planning, alternative pedagogy, play, fiction, sustainability, political conflict and the social role of the artist. Can socially engaged art do more harm than good? Are there ethical responsibilities for social art? Does socially engaged art have a responsibility to create public good? Can there be transdisciplinary approaches to contemporary art making that would contribute to issues such as urban planning and sustainability? Open Engagement is a free conference May 14-17, 2010, in Portland, Oregon. This annual conference will be a focal point of a new low residency Art and Social Practice MFA that PSU hopes to launch in Fall of 2010. This years conference will host over 100 artists, activists, curators, scholars, writers, farmers, community organizers, film makers and collectives including: Nato Thompson, The Watts House Project, Linda Weintraub, Ted Purves, Henry Jenkins, Wealth Underground Farms, Brian Collier, Anne E. Moore, David Horvitz, Chen Tamir, and Parfyme.

Libsyn, who hosts our stuff has really been a pain in our collective Bad at Sports ass this week, so many of you tried to download last weeks show had trouble, we're sorry, they suck, we will beat them up as soon as we can find their offices. Don't forget to download Episode #10, good stuff! THIS WEEK: We really will get back to reviews at some point, but there is just too much to talk about in the interview department! Lou Mallozzi, Executive Director of the Experimental Sound Studio, artist, and educator, talks about the Open Ear Festival of Sound (November 13, 2005 - December 15, 2005) and the 20th Anniversary of ESS! Also, Duncan talks to Jonathan Rhodes Executive Director of Three-Walls about Nato Thompson's lecture on Art Activist Communities. We talk about why Scott Speh hates Canadians. Duncan and Richard sing a duet!! If you miss this you will have nothing to discuss around the water cooler next week, loser! More links to follow! The Experimental Sound Studio Mass. MoCA While we didn't get achance to talk about it this week, go check out Art in the Abstract, one of a couple really kick-ass shows at the Illinois State Museum, which I honestly had forgotten about until I was blundering around the Thompson Center trying to find a form for something. Okay, city dwellers, all you have to do is get off at Clark and Lake on the Blue line, go up to the second floor, and BLAMMO, kickass Illinois-artist-made abstract art throughout history. Go see this, this is the best use of my tax dollars I've seen!! Illinois State Museum-Art in the Abstract