The Conference and Pedagogy Working Group seeks to examine how individuals and groups acquire and exercise social and political agency through collective aesthetic practices and—taking its cue from the group’s name—is particularly interested in the situation at this moment in this (porous) city. We probe the interface between theory and practice.
Projects:
- Two public assemblies in the Fall, bracketing the presidential election, to produce four or five distinct incidents of political agency. They will be structured like charrettes (modeled on design charrettes, an often entertaining and effective combination of concept and mobilization) with specific challenges that call for immediate practical solutions developed within a few hours. It will be required that the outcome of each charrette will find a public platform—provided by the institutional members of Where We Are Now and other organizations—to ensure long-term impact beyond the one-day event.
The Arts in Action Working Group is dedicated to facilitating projects that actively engage the act of voting. We relate to the act of voting as something that happens, not only once in every four years, but as something that could happen more often (perhaps all the time). Voting, as we understand it, can take the form of, but isn’t necessarily limited to, the act of casting a ballot. It is an act that does not represent the end of an electoral narrative but instead is imagined as the beginning.
Projects:
- Beyond Voting: a distributed city-wide day of action in the early summer, and another in mid-Fall, to take place in galleries, lecture halls, and in the streets.
- Regular meetings for artists, activists, writers, curators to announce and promote projects, propose ideas for collaboration, network and plug in.
The Communications Working Group aims to create an infrastructure that allows us to deepen our understanding of existing resources, build new ones, collaborate, and impact New York.
Some of us want to marry art, activism, and critical practices here in New York.
Some of us want pandemonium in the streets.
Some of us want to offer a way to frame and interpret collective art-activist gestures.
Some of us want a bird’s eye view of art and activism in New York City.
Some of us want to engage contemporary art and academic institutions in the service of change.
Some of us want to see New York City step into political discussion with all of the voices that we have at our disposal.
Some of us want art to inform and interrogate activist practices.
Some of us want technology to further art and activism and hurry things up.
Some of us want to broadcast diverse voices.
Projects:
- Listservs and email blast, website, press and publicity, online social platform, radio broadcast and online audio streaming, a map and other printed ephemera. Seeking graphic designers, photographers, videographers, wheatpasters, writers, theorists, producers, interpreters, promoters, and propagandists.