Queens Museum 2018 SUSTAINABILITY Open Engagement Table of Contents A note about this program: This document, just like the conference itself, is a Front and back cover: 4 Director’s Welcome Jökulsárlón Glacial Lagoon, Iceland, 2017 labor of love split between a tiny part-time staff and a Program Design: 5 Acknowledgments few interns. Please be kind and gentle with us if Lauren Meranda, Andrés Alejandro Chavez, 6 Curatorial Statement you see an error, omission, typo, or any other human Kate Heard mistake while reading this document. 7 OE 2018 Team 8 Locations Social Media 10 Queens Info Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook Schedule @openengagement 12 Overviews Share your posts from this year with #OE2018 18 Featured Presentations #OpenEngagement 19 Pre-Conference Find further details at 20 Open House www.openengagement.info 23 Saturday Parallel Sessions 26 Conversational Dinners OEHQ 28 Sunday Parallel Sessions OEHQ (information and registration) is our conference 31 Parties & Projects hub! OEHQ is the place for the most up-to-date 33 Open Platform information about the conference throughout the weekend, including any schedule or location changes. 36 Trainings Bronx Museum of the Arts Friday, May 11th: 6:00pm - 7:30pm 37 Featured Presenters 38 Contributor Bios Werwaiss Family Gallery, 2nd Floor, Queens Museum Saturday, May 12th: 9:00am – 5:00pm 42 Schedule at a Glance Sunday, May 13th: 9:00am – 4:00pm 2 3 Director’s Welcome Acknowledgements It is 6:12am and I have been in bed thinking about writing this I wish I could talk to Ted about where we are now. He This type of event is not possible without the support of many Thank you to Paul Ramirez Jonas for his encouragement, for almost an hour. I have something on my mind from the night was supportive of the project from its inception. He saw individuals and institutions. We would like to thank the following and his belief that Open Engagement is a site that is needed. before. I also have an urge to put everything on the figurative the conference grow from that small convening in Regina, for all they have done to make Open Engagement possible over When the future of OE seemed uncertain, he was an table. This is the tenth time that I have written this opening Saskatchewan with 40 presenters and 120 attendees and evolve the past 10 years: advocate. When it was in search of a new landing point he welcome note for Open Engagement (OE). There is a slight relief into the largest artist-led conference dedicated to expanding even generously offered his kitchen table. that this might be the last. There is also some sadness and a the dialogue around and creating a site of care for the field of Thank you to my graduate thesis advisors Rachelle Viader sense of failure. socially engaged art, hosting over 200 presenters and over 1,000 Knowles and Randal Rodgers who supported this project from We would like to thank all of the members of the Open attendees annually. Ted went from being an advisor, to a mentor, its inception. Engagement National Consortium: Oakland Museum As we gather to address the theme of sustainability we are faced to a collaborator and member of the OE national consortium. of California, California College of the Arts, School of Art & with our own inability to continue, and a recognition that we want Ted Purves, who served on my graduate committee, and then Art History at University of Illinois at Chicago, the Queens to be doing more, that we do not want to continue a model that is We are resourceful and scrappy. We work with the spirit of DIY continued to work with and support OE over the next 9 years. Museum, and A Blade of Grass. Special thanks this year to our not completely in line with our visions and values. We want to be and DIT. As we move forward I want to retain the punk ethos hosts the Queens Museum, and in particular Prerana Reddy Crystal Baxley, who has been part of the conference in creating and enacting the futures we want to see. that Ted saw in us. I also want to be open to whatever the next who has worked with us since 2014. indispensible capacities since 2010 and now serves as the phase is, even if it means not just radically changing forms, but Associate Director. Open Engagement has in many ways done just that, we have sunsetting all together. Thank you to all the selection committee members created spaces that are fluid, feminist, queer, accessible, who have over the years been responsible for shaping our Latham Zearfoss, our Assistant Director. restorative, anti-racist—that are accountable for its aims while I hope that as Open Engagement moves into an exploratory year amazing programs. also championing radical, visionary, difficult, revolutionary, of reflection, that collectively we reach solutions and find forms Nicole Lavalle, Sarah Deann Baugh, and Taryn Cowart, who for Our invaluable interns, Sophia Fish, Martina Lentino, necessary work. and ways of working that can support and care for the people many years were the design gurus behind OE. engaged in this important work. Christopher Bednash, Rimona Law, Kyra Gross, Max Gottlieb, We have ensured our selection processes are open and We would also like to acknowledge Gemma Rose Turnbull and Ashley Clodfelter, and Sarah O’Neil. democratic. The majority of Open Engagement programming In the process of writing this final welcome message, I reread Alexandra Winters, who both took time serving at the helm of the Our sincere thanks and appreciation goes out to all of the Open continues to be coordinated through an open call for many that came before. A consistent statement I made again and OE Social Media. proposals, and that these committees first and foremost again was that without all of you none of this would be possible. Engagement volunteers who have lent their time and energy. emphasize the local, as well as include national perspectives. We are OE. It is a testament to the political power of art to affect The many former students from Portland State University who And, the over 2,000 presenters and over 6,000 attendees who social change, and in our current moment I find comfort in the dedicated energy, time, and most importantly enthusiasm, have formed the OE community over the past decade. We are proud that the conference continues to be a site energy and support in our coming together. This community is in particular Ally Drozd, Lexa Walsh, Ariana Jacob, Sean committed to diversity and the representation of a wide the most valuable outcome of this work. Schumacher, Jason Sturgill, Erica Thomas, Stefan Ransom, Anyone who has ever called us out, and especially everyone perspective of the multitude of human experience. We have Eliza Gregory, Sandy Sampson, Laura Sandow, Will Bryant. who has had the generosity to call us in. fostered a space that is majority minority. If the future is brown, With hope, love, gratitude, and the pride in knowing that this is femme, and queer, then Open Engagement has been a portal to without a doubt the most important way I could have spent the that future. last decade. With endless gratitude, In our collective curatorial statement for Open Engagement Jen Delos Reyes and the Open Engagement Team 2018 we asked “What happens to our labors of love when love is no longer enough?” What do you do when you don’t have the Jen Delos Reyes resources to live your values as an organization? When you want February 20, 2018 a living wage for all people, but you can’t even pay yourself? Chicago, IL Like many of us in this field I was deeply impacted by Ted Purves’ book What We Want Is Free: Generosity and Exchange in Recent Art. Ted Purves was my external graduate advisor in 2006. My graduate thesis was Open Engagement. When I Land Acknowledgment started this endeavor, it felt paramount that attending be free, but ultimately I came to the conclusion that this insistence on We would like to acknowledge that the land on which the generosity devalued our supposedly shared site of exchange. Queens Museum stands is the occupied/unceded/seized territory There was no room for collective responsibility, an onus on the of the Matinecock, Canarsie, Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware, public who forms Open Engagement to ensure it continues by Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape, and the Ramapough Lenape Peoples. investing in it, even if only in a small monetary way. What do we want now when it is not free? 4 5 2018 Curatorial Statement— 2018 Open Engagement Team SUSTAINABILITY Jen Delos Reyes Lauren Meranda Kyra Gross It is not coincidental that as Open Engagement nears its ten year Our selection committee prioritized proposals that reflected Founder and Director Designer/Creative Director Outreach Support anniversary we choose to examine the theme of sustainability. upon universal sustainability, the sustainability of our While we are thinking broadly about the urgent complexities field, and the sustainability of Open Engagement as both a Jen Delos Reyes is a creative laborer, Lauren Meranda is a Chicago-based in Kansas City who uses painting and of sustainability ranging from social, economic, cultural, site and a form. In the collective review process – made up of educator, writer, radical community arts designer and educator specializing in social intervention as a means to analyze environmental, educational, and institutional, we are also faced volunteer stakeholders – we sought out practical tactics and organizer, and author of countless emails. projects for cultural institutions, social how people view themselves, others, and activism, civic engagement, and public with the issue of our own sustainability as an artist-led project, methodologies for sustainable practices, as well as expansive, She is the director and founder of Open their communities from an anthropological memory.