The Francis Effect by Tania Bruguera

Episode #211: This episode of ART21 "Exclusive" features artist Tania Bruguera collecting signatures as part of her socially engaged performance project "The Francis Effect" (2014). For fifteen weeks Bruguera stood outside of the Guggenheim Museum in New York asking passersby to sign a petition to Pope Francis that requests Vatican City citizenship for undocumented immigrants. "A lot of people know it's impossible," says Bruguera. Yet she believes "the impossible is only impossible until somebody makes it possible." In her engagement of our political imaginations, Bruguera demonstrates the power of art to change perceptions and mobilize political action. Tania Bruguera explores the relationship between art, activism, and social change, staging participatory events and interactions that build on her own observations, experiences, and understanding of the politics of repression and control. Her work advances the concept of arte útil, according to which art can be used as a tool for social and political empowerment.

Learn more about the artist at: http://www.art21.org/artists/tania-br...

Sign the petition at: http://dignityhasnonationality.net/sign

CREDITS: Producer: Ian Forster. Consulting Producers: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Ian Forster. Camera: Rafael Salazar & Ava Wiland. Sound: Ava Wiland. Editor: Morgan Riles. Translation: Michela Moscufo. Artwork Courtesy: Tania Bruguera. Special Thanks: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum & Rebecca Mir. Theme Music: Peter Foley.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dMFIIPhmP...

American Alphabets by Wendy Ewald

“While the United States has become increasingly diverse since then, the culture of our schools has remained much the same as in my childhood: white middle-class. American Alphabets is an attempt to remake the buildings blocks of our language to reflect our differing cultures. The young people I worked with chose the words and suggested the imagery of their alphabets. I created a Spanish alphabet with Spanish-speaking children of immigrant farm workers. The words they chose—like nervioso or impostor—were symptomatic of their uprooted way of life. Taken as a whole, their lists of words amounted to a kind of cultural self-portrait. Students in Cleveland worked with me on an African Alphabet and girls in a private school on a Girl’s alphabet. At the Queens Museum I collaborated with Arabic speaking middle school students to create the Arabic Alphabet. The students had emigrated with their families from Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Morocco and Lebanon.” Wendy Ewald

Source: http://wendyewald.com/portfolio/american-a...

Colonial White Project by Charlotte Lagarde

“When I moved to Connecticut in 2017, I learned that the walls of our home were painted with Patriot White and Opulence White. Looking for alternate whites, I stumbled across a paint color called Colonial White. I was stunned. I grew up in France, which has a continuous history of colonization and where the word colonial is used to represent that oppression and supremacy. But in the US and especially in New England, the word colonial has become ubiquitous. And I wondered how can the word colonial be reduced to an architectural style? But then looking at it again, I thought that the paint chip Colonial White is actually making visible the reality of America and its history.

By asking participants to visually merge the Colonial White paint chip with a place/object/situation that embodies colonial white to them, I am hoping to reframe the term colonial in its historical and present context amid a collective reflection and conversation about structural racism.” Charlotte Lagarde

Source: https://www.charlottelagarde.com/colonial-...

Slave Rebellion Reenactment by Dread Scott

Slave Rebellion Reenactment is a conceptual community-engaged performance that will restage and reinterpret Louisiana’s German Coast Uprising of 1811. This was the largest rebellion of enslaved people in United States history and took place outside of New Orleans. SRR will animate a suppressed history of people with an audacious plan to organize, take up arms and seize Orleans Territory, to fight not just for their own emancipation, but to end slavery. It is a project about freedom.

The artwork will involve hundreds of reenactors in period specific clothing marching for two days covering 26 miles. It will be reenacted upriver from New Orleans in the locations where the 1811 revolt occurred—the chemical refineries and trailer parks that have replaced the sugar plantations forming its backdrop.” By Dread Scott

Source: https://www.dreadscott.net/works/slave-reb...

John Brown Song! by Laylah Ali

“In spring of 2013, I asked various people I know if they would sing "John Brown's Body," a song that became popular during the American Civil War. (The song was also lyrically transformed in 1861 by abolitionist and John Brown sympathizer Julia Ward Howe into the still-famous "The Battle Hymn of the Republic.") There are several versions of the John Brown song and participants could choose which version they wanted to sing. I gave them little guidance except to ask that they video themselves if possible and sing as many verses as they could. What follows are their responses.” Laylah Ali

Source: http://awp.diaart.org/ali/dual-1-html5.htm...

Photo Request from Solitary

Photo Requests from Solitary (PRFS) is a participatory project that invites men and women held in long-term solitary confinement in U.S. prisons to request a photograph of anything at all, real or imagined, and then finds a volunteer to make the image. The astonishing range of requests, taken together, provide an archive of the hopes, memories, and interests of people who live in extreme isolation.