Are we so busy surviving that we forget to be radical?
This summer Michelada Think Tank (MTT), an artist collective organized by Noé Gaytán, Mario Mesquita, Shefali Mistry, and Carol Zou, will inhabit the LACE Project Room with a humorous and critical exploration of survival under a framework of institutional racism in the arts. Through a series of weekly think tank sessions, MTT will bring people together to talk about survival strategies for artists of color working in a predominantly white art world. The knowledge generated in these discussions will be compiled and published as a “PoC Survival Guide” in LACE’s Project Room, and later as a book. This guide will be a tongue-in-cheek look at how artists are impacted by race. If artists of color can come together as a community to make survival easier, we can then begin to foster more radical artistic practices.
MTT will be holding think tanks at sites where communities of color are working; some of the sessions will be open forums at LACE while other sessions will take place elsewhere.
Race, Art, and Survival – Michelada Think Tank & Chats about Change is a continuation of the Chats About Change series, a project organized by artists Robby Herbst and Elana Mann, which was initiated with a symposium in January of 2015. Chats About Change asks questions, wages debates, and supports artists and activists seeking experimental ways to affect Southern California and beyond.
www.chatsaboutchangela.org
Michelada Think Tank (MTT) is a group of socially conscious artists who are interested in hosting conversations, creating safe places and opening up opportunities to connect and build relationships between people of color (PoC). Through think tank sessions, MTT creates networks of socially-engaged /community artists interested in creative ways of making social change happen. Past projects include Race, Community, and Creative Action, a two day event consisting of discussions around communities of color and social practice at the 2015 Open Engagement conference. www.facebook.com/micheladathinktank
PROGRAMS:
August 31, 2015 – Open Forum at LACE
Open to the public / details to be posted shortly
June 29, 2015 – 7 PM
at Human Resources – 410 Cottage Home St., LA 90012
www.humanresourcesla.com
In this kick-off session we pose the question, “If there were a PoC Survival Guide for artists, what topics would you want it to cover?” This think tank will serve to “crowdsource” content for the survival guide we all wish we had. Artists and activists of color are invited to a conversation where we share the relevant issues and survival skills encountered and employed by communities of color working in the arts. Join Michelada Think Tank on Monday, June 29 at 7pm at Human Resources for the launch of Race, Art, & Survival.
