Artists and Rights

with Zackary Drucker, Ahree Lee, Sandra de la Loza, Jaklin Romine. Moderated by Mario Ontiveros.

In this episode, the artists continue their conversation about visibility and access. Woven through their talk are issues of vulnerability, generosity, and accountability, as well as intolerance, privilege, and art-washing. 

They talk about their paths— to Los Angeles and to their current projects—and how their frameworks have shifted and adapted. One of the roles of the artist, Ahree Lee says, is to counteract the deficiencies in the world around them. 

Zackary Drucker says, “We're really called upon in this moment to create a new structure in which everybody is provided for, and everybody's needs are provided for.”

with Zackary Drucker, Ahree Lee, Sandra de la Loza, and Jaklin Romine. Moderated by Mario Ontiveros. 

In this episode, the artists discuss the ethical pitfalls and radical possibilities of visibility. Sandra de la Loza acknowledges that we are living “in a moment where we're overly surveilled and overly visible” with A.I., facial recognition software and the pervasiveness of social media. She reminisces about the magically transformative spaces of the “underground.”  She asks a really challenging question: “How do we create structures where we can have more honest, more intimate, more vulnerable conversations?” 

On the flip side of “becoming visible,” they also talk about erasure and invisibility. Access is not universal, and even the most ethically-minded efforts can still be exclusionary. For example, to the disabled body. Jaklin Romine reminds us that many progressive institutions and centers often they lack awareness that disabled bodies are denied entry to their spaces. She says, “Any space that is not physically accessible to the disabled body is not radical.”

This episode was recorded in February 2020, about a month before the COVID-19 pandemic caused LA to shut down and before the mass uprisings in the name of racial justice and against police brutality.

https://www.x-traonline.org/online/episode-7-becoming-visible

We welcome back Arshia Haq, Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, Latipa, and Mario Ybarra Jr. to the table. In the second part of their discussion, the artists delve more deeply into the importance of both intimacy AND engagement. They talk about how to theorize, act, and create from a place of intimacy—whether it be the nightclub or grandmother’s pillowcase. 

Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, coming from AIDS activism and Act Up, talks about the nightclub, and how it can be, he says, “a very intimate, personal space where many people don't even get to be themselves until they arrive at that sacred space." Arshia Haq highlights the club space as a place of collectivity and talks about “using it for creative expression, and for organizing.” She addresses the paradox of artists of color being exploited as they gain more visibility and suggests “choosing to be silent” can be “a form of reclaiming power.” 

The group talks about protecting themselves from the exhaustion of explaining everything—there’s a difference between explaining and sharing.  And they talk about the importance of bearing witness and listening when collaborating.

Please note: the artist Latipa was previously known as Michelle Dizon, and in this episode, she refers to herself as Michelle.

with Arshia Haq, Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, Latipa, and Mario Ybarra Jr. Moderated by Mario Ontiveros. 

This episode was recorded in December 2019. One of the ways this conversation connects to the present moment is through the discussion of the Brown Ceiling, a term introduced by Mario Ybarra, Jr.. The group talks about how representation of Black and Brown people in the media gets internalized and needs to be dismantled in order to break through the ceiling.

This gets pushed further when Latipa highlights the ways that imperialist dynamics are still underlying even well-intentioned discourses, like that of human rights and social justice. A re-orientation of these discourses, interrogating the violence of whiteness and white supremacy, is a key to breaking out of the cycles of oppression. She asks, “How we can think about possible futures that don't reproduce the violence is of the present?”

With Cog•nate Collective, Vishal Jugdeo, Patrick Staff, and Elana Mann. Moderated by Mario Ontiveros. 

In today’s episode, the group picks up their conversation and works to define and reframe the idea of the artist. 

This session was recorded back in February 2020. Before COVID-19 had a name, and before the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor sparked a global movement for racial justice. And yet, this conversation addresses the present in so many ways. They discuss what solidarity looks like and the complexities of collaboration. Assessing different levels of need across groups, and understanding the time and work to achieve transformation. They acknowledge that it very well might be necessary to be uncomfortable. 

The stories they share span working with women vendors in a market in Tijuana, collaborating across continents with a trans person in India, partnering with non-artist tech startups, and maintaining and activating criticality towards art institutions while working within them. They talk more about the need to re-imagine art history and to look beyond art institutions to find guidance. 

They also grapple with the need to un-do and un-learn what they were taught in school. This is a key step in the decolonization of the mind, a concept introduced in the first episode by Todd Gray. One take away from this episode is that the future must be built on a foundation of solidarity, that careful collaboration and reciprocity require dialogue and risk. And, importantly, it will take time.

EPISODE 3: Weaving Tight Enough: Forming Solidarities and “Fixing” the Situation

with Cog•nate Collective, Vishal Jugdeo, Patrick Staff, and Elana Mann.

Moderated by Mario Ontiveros.

When these artists came together for this conversation in February 2020, we knew about the virus and all felt something coming but the magnitude and roller coaster of the events of the past 5 months was unimaginable.

And yet, this conversation intersects with the present in so many ways. For one, the artists struggle with state definitions and institutions that limit humanity, that diminish and displace humans. They also talk about how the process of beginning to undo state violence and institutional racism, for example, requires not a speeding up but a slowing down, to assess points of alignment and to form solidarities. They shed light on the role that art and artists can play in these processes.

EPISODE 2:

In this episode, the artists pick up their conversation from last week. They discuss strategies for protecting the time needed to make work. They get into the economic and pedagogical challenges of working with emerging artists in MFA programs. And assert the importance of defining what drives your goals and learning to sustain that.

Find more info about the artists and the podcast here.

Episode 1:

In this conversation, the artists explore the challenges of sustaining a creative life, from managing the pressures to make a living, to pushing against prevailing models of the “artist” and the for-profit art world, to practicing self-care. The discussion addresses teaching, mentoring, and sharing as ways to enact creative communities and build supportive relationships to effect change.

“For the revolution, stay ready so you don’t have to get ready,” says Nao Bustamante.

This session was recorded in December 2019, before the Covid-19 global pandemic and uprising for racial justice upended our lives. It was only 6 months ago, but it feels like a day less than eternity. And yet, you will hear how this conversation remains relevant: the pandemic, the protests, the police violence, and the failures of the government have shed more light on the intersection of inequity, systemic racism, and injustice that compels the work of these artists.

The artists might not address the protests directly in the talk—but they lay out strategies for effecting change into the future.

X-TRA’s Artists and Rights is a conversation series exploring what art can do, at the intersection of artistic practice and Los Angeles’s most urgent issues.

Learn more on our site.

Listen as art historian Mario Ontiveros moderates conversations between a group of LA based artists. You'll hear from Nao Bustamante, Cog•nate Collective, Michelle Dizon, Zackary Drucker, Todd Gray, Arshia Haq, Vishal Jugdeo, Gelare Khoshgozaran, Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, Ahree Lee, Sandra de la Loza, Elana Mann, Jennifer Moon, Jaklin Romine, Patrick Staff, and Mario Ybarra Jr.!

They share strategies for reaching across the boundaries of their disciplines. Building bridges. Working collectively. Creating supportive conditions and opportunities. 

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