1 2 The Politics and Poetics of Self-determination Movements Curated by Daniel Tucker Catalog edited by Anthony Romero Soberscove Press Chicago 2016 Contents Acknowledgements 5 Gathering OURSELVES: A NOTE FROM THE Editor Anthony Romero 7 1 REFLECTIONS OYO: A Conclusion Daniel Tucker 10 Panthers, Patriots, and Poetries in Revolution Mark Nowak 26 Organize Your Own Temporality Rasheedah Phillips 48 Categorical Meditations Mariam Williams 55 On Amber Art Bettina Escauriza 59 Conditions Jen Hofer 64 Bobby Lee’s Hands Fred Moten 69 2 PANELS Organize Your Own? Asian Arts Initiative, Philadelphia 74 Organize Your Own? The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago 93 Original Rainbow Coalition Slought Foundation, Philadelphia 107 Original Rainbow Coalition Columbia College, Chicago 129 Artists Talk The Leviton Gallery at Columbia College, Chicago 152 3 PROJECTS and CONTRIBUTIONS Amber Art and Design 170 Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research 172 Dan S. Wang 174 Dave Pabellon 178 Frank Sherlock 182 Irina Contreras 185 Keep Strong Magazine 188 Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela 192 Mary Patten 200 Matt Neff 204 Rashayla Marie Brown 206 Red76, Society Editions, and Hy Thurman 208 Robby Herbst 210 Rosten Woo 214 Salem Collo-Julin 218 The R. F. Kampfer Revolutionary Literature Archive 223 Thomas Graves and Jennifer Kidwell 225 Thread Makes Blanket 228 Works Progress with Jayanthi Kyle 230 4 CONTRIBUTORS, STAFF, ADVISORS 234 Acknowledgements Major support for Organize Your Own has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, with additional support from collaborating venues, including: the Averill and Bernard Leviton Gallery at Columbia College Chicago, Kelly Writers House’s Brodsky Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania, the Slought Foundation, the Asian Arts Initiative, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and others. Project Staff: Abby Dangler (transcription and exhibition Installation view, Columbia College, assistant), Paul Gargagliano (photography), Maori Chicago, 2016. Karmael Holmes (administrative and communications support), Valerie Keller (video editor), Josh MacPhee (design), Anthony Romero (publications editor), Daniel Tucker (organizer and curator), Mariam Williams (exhibition engagement), and Nicholas Wisniewski (frame builder). Exhibition Advisory Group: Maori Karmael Holmes, Billy Keniston, Lisa Yun Lee, Jennifer S. Ponce de Leon, Nato Thompson, Hy Thurman, and Rebecca Zorach. Special thanks to: Bill Adair, April Alonso, Maggie Appell, Lily Applebaum, Maya Arthur, Lucas Ballester, Andrew Beal, Cat Bromels, Emily Bunker, Julianna Cuevas, Marnie de Guzman, Meg Duguid, Brad Duncan, James Fisher, Cecelia Fitzgibbon, Al Filreis, Mashinka Furunts, Michelle Garrigan- Durant, Amleset Girmay, Jack Gruszczynski, Ramona Gupta, Pablo Helguera, Kaytie Johnson, Alli Katz, David Knight, Laura Koloski, Madeline Kirmse, Becca Lambright, Dylan Leahy, Dakota Lecos, Aril Lewis, Jessica Lowenthal, Paula Marincola, Jenn McCreary, Kristi Ann McGuire, Ian Thomas Miller, Kaitlin Moore, Peter Nesbett, Jacob O’Leary, Silvana Pop, Maura Reilly-Ulmanek, Chloe Reison, Danny Snelson, Amy Sonnie, James Tracy, Erika Van Veggel, Madeleine Wattenbarger, Megan Wendell, Roy Wilbur, Asia Williams, Autumn Wynde, Xerox Center (Kathy Krajicek and April Little), Meimei Yu, Connie Yu, the selection committee at The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, colleagues at Moore College of Art and Design, and the participating artists, writers, and activists. Thanks to the following media reviewers, writers, and producers for sharing words and reflections on Organize Your Own: WURD’s Stephanie Renee, IHeartRadio’s Loraine Ballard Morril, Apiary Magazine’s Mai Schwartz, Philadelphia Citizen’s Emma Eisenberg, artblog.com’s Tina Plokarz, National Catholic Reporter’s Mariam Williams, Chicago Tribune’s Rick Kogan, Hyperallergic’s Chloë Bass, Newcity Chicago’s Michael Workman, CAN TV, Columbia Chronicle’s Jessica Scott, Bad At Sports’s Duncan MacKenzie. Thanks to the following educators and organizations for bringing groups to the Organize Your Own exhibitions: Maggie Ginestra (Moore); Philip Glann (Tyler); Jennifer S. Ponce De Leon, Shira Walinksy, and Jane Golden, SPEC Art Collective (University of Pennsylvania); Joanna Grim, Rebecca Zorach (Northwestern University); Kera MacKenzie (Jones College Prep); the Hyde Park Art Center; Susan Giles, Annie Morse, and Lora Lode (SAIC); Harold Washington College; and Riverside Brookfield High School. 6 Gathering Ourselves: a note from the editor Anthony Romero The book you are holding in your hands was created on the occasion of Organize Your Own: The Politics and Poetics of Works Progress with Self-Determination Movements, a multi-city exhibition and Jayanthi Kyle, Kelly event series that took place in Philadelphia and Chicago in Writers House, Philadelphia, 2016. early 2016. Like the exhibition and the events that surrounded it, this book does not propose to present a history of social movements. Rather, it invites artists and poets to consider what it might mean to “organize your own” in the context of social and racial justice. What you will find in the following pages is a succession of responses, which take into account the various histories of organizing that form the foundation for contemporary notions of self-determination—ultimately bypassing those histories in favor of more interpretive and personal responses. There are existential questions hidden amongst the contributions—understanding “my own” necessarily requires that I first define myself. You will find nothing related to ownership here, as most of the contributors choose to think of ‘own’ not in the sense of ownership, but in the sense of an extended self—from Frank Sherlock’s ruminations on Irish identity to Amber Art & Design’s performative reimagining of the lawn jockey. In this way, “Organize Your Own” becomes “Gather Your Selves,” and gather themselves the contributors do. We’ve separated the contributions into three sections—across each you will find documentation of the exhibition’s installations. The first section assembles a series of “Reflections,” by writers and artists who we commissioned to supply us with texts that ruminate on the ideas, histories, and conversations surrounding the exhibi- tion and events. The second section, a group of “Panels,” consists of transcripts from the five public dialogues that took place in the locales where this project transpired. The third section, “Projects and Contributions,” reflects what happened when we asked the participants to represent their contributions as they saw fit. As a result, this collec- tion of scripts, notes, texts, and images, functions as both an extension of the physical exhibition and its material representation. Much like the history that inspired our contributors, this is not a linear narra- tive, but rather a collection of intersecting accounts. Pick a place to begin that seems the most intriguing to you—that place will lead you backwards and forwards through the book, sometimes even simultaneously. It is for you then, dear reader, to gather up the many selves that occupy this collection. 8 REFLECTIONS OYO: A Conclusion Daniel Tucker “Color is the first thing Black people in america become aware of. You are born into a world that has given color meaning and color becomes the single most determining factor of your existence. Color determines where you live, how you live and, under certain circumstances, if you will live. Color deter- mines your friends, your education, your mother’s and fa- ther’s jobs, where you play, what you play and, more impor- tantly, what you think of yourself. In and of itself, color has no meaning. But the white world has given it meaning— political, social, economic, historical, physiological and philosophical. Once color has been given meaning, an order is thereby established.”—H. Rap Brown (Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin), Die Nigger Die!: A Political Autobiography (Dial Press, 1969) “Social exclusion works for solidarity, as often as it works against it. Sexism is not merely, or even primarily, a means of conferring benefits to the investor class. It is also a means of forging solidarity among ‘men,’ much as xenophobia forges solidarity among ‘citizens,’ and homophobia makes for solidarity among ‘heterosexuals.’ What one is is often as important as what one is not, and so strong is the nega- tive act of defining community that one wonders if all of these definitions—man, heterosexual, white—would evaporate in absence of negative definition. At every step, ‘uni- versalist’ social programs have been hampered by the idea of becoming, and remaining, forever white. So it was with the New Deal. So it is with Obamacare. So it would be with President Sanders. That is not because the white working class labors under mass hypnosis. It is because whiteness confers knowable, quantifiable privi- Notes: leges, regardless of class—much like 1 <http://www.theatlantic. ‘manhood’ confers knowable, quantifi- com/politics/archive/2016/02/ able privileges, regardless of race. why-we-write/459909/>. White supremacy is neither a trick, 2 “On Being White . and nor a device, but one of the most Other Lies” by James Baldwin powerful shared interests in American (Essence, April 1984) was the first text to formulate this history. And that, too, is solidar- phrasing, with its more recent ity.”—Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Enduring usage introduced by Ta-Nehisi Solidarity of Whiteness” (Atlantic 1 Coates in Between the World Monthly, 2016) and Me (Spiegel & Grau, 2015). White people are always getting together. We get