Talk
Discussion: Alternative Modes of Exchange
Saturday, February 23 2013
5:00 am - 6:30 am
This 3 course conversation will look at non-monetary forms of exchange that are emerging in artistic and social practice. Participants will discuss which alternative systems of exchange they have initiated and what has been effective, commenting on issues of ownership, relationship-building, performance, value and evaluation.
This discussion will take the 'Long Table' format in which participants will be seated at a long table, and served three 'courses' of conversation and questions. Dessert will be on the public, who will be invited to sit on the table and participate throughout the conversation.
With Gonzalo Casals (host), Sol Aramendi, Tania Bruguera, Deborah Fisher, Caroline Woolard
The Format
The 'Long Table' format, invented by performer/professor Lois Weaver, is a means of generating open discussion about a specified topic, using a stylised environment and participation protocol to turn ordinary conversation into a performance.
The approach is inspired by the film Antonia’s Line by Maureen Gorris. In this film a woman returns to the Dutch countryside to raise her young daughter and founds a communal house where the residents defy convention and live life as they please. The central image of the film is a dinner table that grows longer and longer as this family of friends, outsiders and eccentrics gets bigger and bigger. Eventually, the table becomes so long it has to be brought outside into the yard.
'The Long Table' experiments with participation and public engagement by re-appropriating a dinner table atmosphere as a public forum and encouraging informal conversation on serious topics. This Long Table will be on Performance and Social Justice.
Participants:
Gonzalo Casals (host), Sol Aramendi, Tania Bruguera,Deborah Fisher, Caroline Woolard
Sol Aramendi is a New York based Argentinean artist working in new media, photography and video. She was born in Venado Tuerto, a small town in Argentina.
Sol is the founder of the Project Luz Photography Program for New Immigrants. Project Luz has served over 2,000 students with 58 programs since its inception in 2004, and is the first project of its kind in the nation’s most ethnically diverse county of Queens, New York. Project Luz has worked in partnership with the New York City Department of Education, the Museum of Modern Art, The Noguchi Museum, the New York Public Library, the Queens Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio and the Queens Library. In addition, Sol has developed twelve outreach programs at museums to engage Spanish-speaking immigrants with the arts in New York City.
Tania Bruguera is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in behavior art, performance, installation and video. She has been a participant in Documenta 11 (Germany) as well as in several biennales such as Venice (Italy), Johannesburg (South Africa), Sao Paolo (Brazil), Shangai (China), Havana (Cuba), and Site Santa Fe (United States.) Her work has also been exhibited at The New Museum of Contemporary Art (United States). She has initiated Immigrant Movement International (IM International) produced by Creative Time and the Queens Museum of Art. Bruguera has lectured extensively internationally among others at The New School in New York, The School of the Art Institute in Chicago, The Royal College of Art in London and The Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Gonzalo Casals joined El Museo del Barrio in September 2006, where he currently serves as Deputy Executive Director. In his former capacity as Director of Education and Public Programs, Casals successfully developed exciting new programs that have drawn new audiences to El Museo and cultivated new stakeholders for the institution, while increasing the museum’s attendance 8 fold. He has led the institution in the development of a new approach to socially conscious cultural production, in which the Museum’s collections and resources are used as tools to foster cultural empowerment and understanding, social capital and civic involvement. Casals truly believes that museum should be an active participant in civic life, while providing a space for its constituents to learn, reflect and impact the communities they belong to.
Deborah Fisher is an administrator, artist and critic. She has been the Executive Director of A Blade of Grass since its inception in early 2011. Fisher has worked as an advisor and collections manager for the Shelley and Donald Rubin Private Collection, as studio manager for Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, and has taught art history, appreciation and studio classes at New York University, St. John's University and Nassau Community College. She is a co-founder of Urban Farm Syndicate, a social enterprise in its startup phase that partners with developers to modularly farm vacant lots in New York City using mobile containers and distributed design principles. Fisher's artistic work questions the relationship between nature and the built environment, and is focused primarily on public projects. Her most recent action, Bed Stuy Meadow, 2009, asked more than 100 volunteers to sow wildflower seeds on every square inch of vacant land in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn.
Caroline Woolard is a Brooklyn based, post-media artist exploring civic engagement and communitarianism. Her work is collaborative and often takes the form of sculptures, websites, and workshops. Woolard is a co-founder of OurGoods.org and Trade School, two barter economies for cultural producers, and a coordinating member of SolidarityNYC, an organization that promotes grassroots economic justice.
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When: 4:30 Saturday, February 23
Where: 29-27 41st Avenue, Queens
Subway: Queens Plaza M, E, R
Queensboro Plaza N, Q and 7
Made possible by support from
RSVP Related Exhibition: How Much Do I Owe You?
