As you know, Where We Are Now has met a few times and we have had very productive discussions on what individuals are working on, their thoughts on the current political conditions / challenges in NYC and beyond, and the myriad methods for mass organizing. What has become very evident is the deep need on the part of everyone involved to have a coordinated clearinghouse where people can participate with each other and learn about different political projects. This structure in and of itself feels sorely lacking in the city and we all realized how powerful the need to produce something on this level is.

At the same time, our process thus far has generated confusion about what exactly this network is, and what sorts of support it can and cannot offer to individual projects. This confusion comes out of the difficult paradox of organizing an art political community for the sake of organizing an art political community. Aiming to capitalize on the civil discourse generated during an important election season, but being resistant to defining a singular analysis and politics, the group process has proved somewhat arduous for all involved. While an open format has been daunting, it has also allowed us to gain an appreciation of the vast community interested in this work. We simply need to become more effective. With that in mind, we would like to propose a slightly different format for the next meeting as well as a different structure for Where We Are Now in general.

We hope to offer the large network-wide monthly meetings as ‘meet ups’ where individuals and organizations can present what they are working on or ideas they are developing.  The meetings would operate as a networking social event.  People who are interested in sharing a specific project with the group will put their names on a speaker’s list when they arrive, and will each be given 2-5 minutes to talk about their project, depending on how many people wish to present.  We will begin the meeting with brief introductions from anyone who did not sign up to present a specific project, then we will hear each of the project presentations.  At the end of each presentation, a sign-up sheet will be passed around where people can write their email address if they are interested in supporting the specific project.  These lists will then make their way back to the presenter, who will be able to follow up with those interested (or not!) however they would like. We hope that this revised structure will allow those who want to work collaboratively to do so while others can feel free to develop projects without feeling they need to check in with the larger group before launching them in the public arena.

As the Where We Are Now Organizers Committee, we plan to channel our energies toward a goal that we feel can act as a catalyst for making Where We Are Now more energized and productive.  To that end, we will develop online infrastructure that can help facilitate a mission of coordinating art and politics in this city. This website will function to announce and visually represent various projects happening around the city, provide a forum for interactive dialogue, and offer tools and resources to individuals and institutions. For the sake of efficacy, this project will be anchored by our small core group, but we welcome suggestions and any programmers with experience in the Ruby on Rails coding language.  Our aim is to ideally launch this site in September.

Until we launch the coordinating Where We Are Now website, there seems to be a widespread opinion that the working group structure of the network might prove difficult to generate a productive programming form. Launching a robust website that facilitates the actions that we have discussed in the large group meetings seems the best method currently for providing a more sustainable model that has transparency, coherency and a useful structure.

We appreciate everyone’s work and involvement with Where We Are Now so far. We know this process isn’t easy, but we also believe in the political strength of coordinating our actions. There are too many difficult political conditions stemming from the powers that be here in the city for us to not organize. We remain confident that a coordinated extended political cultural community is our best chance at producing a counter model for social change. Trying to sustain an open platform is difficult, but ultimately, we see a light at the end of the tunnel for channeling such energy into a productive social force. If all goes well, the website and these meet-ups should help clarify Where We Are Now’s goals and will eventually generate a structure for coordinating the profound and exciting social energy that we have seen emerge at these amazing meetings.

Sincerely,

Nato Thompson, Creative Time
Carin Kuoni, Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School
Jakob Schillinger, Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School
Lydia Matthews, Parsons the New School for Design
Doug Ashford, Cooper Union
Beka Economopoulos, The Change You Want To See Gallery
Jason Jones, Not An Alternative

-Members of the Where We Are Now Organizers Committee

These working group meetings are open to anyone who’s interested in getting involved:

Arts In Action Working Group, Wednesday April 9th, 7pm. At Eyebeam: 540 W. 21st Street, (between 10th and 11th Avenues), Manhattan. A portion of this meeting will be structured as a salon/clearinghouse, where participants can announce projects and events, offer or solicit resources, meet and identify collaborators. The other portion of the meeting will be oriented towards brainstorms and planning for the upcoming Where We Are Now “day of action” to take place in early summer.

Communications Working Group, Sunday April 13th, 3pm. At The Change You Want To See Gallery: 84 Havemeyer Street at Metropolitan Ave, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. At the last break-out participants discussed plans to form project teams along the following lines: maps/ephemera, translation, media tent for day of action, pirate radio/podcasting, stenciling/wheatpasting/visibility, website. At this upcoming working group meeting we will further concretize these ideas, identify point people for each project, make plans, and make stencils!

Conference and Pedagogy Group, to be determined.

Community Group, to be determined.

The Where We Are Now Arts in Action Working Group:

In this election year a wave of creative energy will sweep the country. It will be characterized by an explosion of brilliant and colorful projects that will bring focus, aim and meaning to politics for people across the nation. As people come together to work toward different and common goals it will be an occasion for new communities, infrastructures and networks to be invented.

This familiar and perhaps idealistic narrative is one that the Arts In Action Working Group is dedicated to realizing. However where this narrative typically plays out in only one of every four years and ends with the act of voting at the ballot box, we aim to expand on the story.

The Arts in Action Working Group is a platform intended to facilitate the production of projects driven by individuals and groups. We are the space where, for example, the activist, artist or group can explain his or her project to a larger community, and the curator can hear about possible projects to organize into a catalogue or show. We are the place where people power comes together and where resources are shared. The Arts in Action Working is the place to go if you have an idea of what the voting could/should look like.

One of the most powerful transformations that occurred in the last century was that art was freed as a discipline from itself. After Duchamp, it is absurd to imagine art as necessarily determined by any particular material, discipline or location. Like politics, art can be, or perhaps is, present in everything and requires only a slight shift in perspective to be revealed. But where a urinal is art and everything is political, the act of voting, of exercising one’s right to affect politics, is contained to only the most limited range of expression.

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:

• 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 promote projects and plug in.

TO GET INVOLVED:
Please send a blank email to wherewearenow-artaction-subscribe@googlegroups.com to join the Arts in Action listserv.