The Inspired Disturbance of All Status Quos
One issue that came up several times during the Political Equator 2 tour was the tiresome question, “Why is this art?” I think Roberta Smith nailed a definition of art in her November 16, 2007, review of Lawrence Weiner ’s show at the Whitney (“The Well-Shaped Phrase as Art,” New York Times , p. B33):
“Mr. Weiner’s ebullient work…reminds us that while art and money may have been inextricably entwined throughout most of history, art’s real value is not measured in strings of zeros, high-priced materials or bravura skill, but in communication, experience, economy of means (the true beauty) and, yes, the inspired disturbance of all status quos.
It also affirms that art ultimately triggers some kind of transcendence that can only be completed by the viewer.”
The Political Equator 2
Champaign, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, Tijuana, and then back again. I was really tired when I got home.
The idea of this event was truly fascinating: “an exploration of the intersection between sociopolitical and natural domains, foregrounding the notion of collective territory, but also a territory of collaboration that transgresses hemispheric boundaries. At the core of such trans-hemispheric sociopolitical and economic dynamics is the conflict between transcontinental borders and the natural and social ecologies they interrupt and seek to erase.” So many interesting folks came together for this mobile symposium, but the end result was disappointing. It took a lot of energy just to move 80-100 people around, and the logistics of being able to hear, have time to pee and eat, and still have time for dialogue were too much. So maybe Political Equator 3 will allow for more time, more silence, more women, and less strutting. The highpoints for me were the show that Nick Brown and Ava Bromberg put together at LACE, “Just Spaces,” and then the bus tour of Tijuana, which was a city I had never seen before. But I came home still wanting to know about the community of San Ysidro, just on the border, and what actually might be happening with the Tijuana River and the watershed in that area. There were no specifics; just a lot of architects and artists networking in what Sarah Kanouse rightly called “transnational intellectual stars.”
On the flight home I read T.C. Boyle’s Tortilla Curtain, a chilling and powerful depiction of undocumented workers nose-to-nose with the wealthy folks who live off their labor.
Teddy, Tacos and Talk
One man after another, talking and talking. The tacos were fantastic and Teddy Cruz must be thirty times more tired than I am. What energy and passion that man puts out, bilingually and all over the map. At the start of our journey from LA, Teddy noted our tendency to “hide beneath weird complexity.” It just stayed complex for the next four days…fascinating, frustrating, and fragmented. Probably no other way it could have gone, with 120 people trailing after Teddy’s enthusiasms. Metro, train, trolley, walking, buses, and more walking. Definitely the weirdest for me was the HaudenschildGarage in La Jolla. Suzanne Lacy said she collected “language”–phrases like “archipelago of enclaves” and “critical insertion.” I met Ava Bromberg, New York-based urban planner Al Wei, CCA architecture student John Manzo, Tijuana architect Rene Peralta (who contributed to Here is Tijuana), Emily Scott of the LA Urban Rangers, Christina McPhee, Christina Ulke of the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, many of Suzanne Lacy’s students, and enjoyed time with Sarah Kanouse, Nick Brown, Monica Mayer and Suzanne. Almost as a corrective to the train ride from Los Angeles to San Diego, and the party that night in La Jolla (which was over the top), was my bus ride across LA on Sunday, on the Number 33 city bus along Venice Blvd. It felt everyday, and slow…19.62 miles according to Mapquest.
Indigeneity as a Category of Critical Analysis
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn was in Champaign in early November 2007 to speak in the series, “Indigeneity as a Category of Critical Analysis.” She was also promoting her latest book, New Indians Old Wars. She started out reading her tribute to Vine Deloria, Jr., called “November 19, 2005.” Deloria died two years ago tomorrow; Cook Lynn noted how very influential he was in and to American Indian Studies. So, she asked, how do we move on in American Indian Studies?
American Indians are the most colonized people in history, she said, and we are not in a “post-colonial” era. Three hundred to four hundred Indian “colonies” are REAL and current. Thus she posited “post-coloniality” as a “condition of becoming.” “Sometimes,” she declared, “shame is a good moral compass.”
The “model” in the US for treatment of American Indians has included genocide, but not only genocide. There has been legislation, for example: a denial of basic human rights through the development of nationalistic legal and social systems that make it impossible for a collective People to determine their future. Poverty, disease, domestic violence are the result of colonial behavior. There are not two “sides”: one “side”–the US–has a sledgehammer.
She asked: What came before colonial rule? How might we restore the functioning of pre-contact times?
BEFORE RECONCILIATION MUST COME JUSTICE. I put that in caps because she said a number of statements in a capitalized way. Here’s another: YOU CANNOT STEAL PEOPLE’S LAND AND WONDER WHY THEY ARE POOR. And another: CONGRESS MUST DISAVOW PLENARY POWER AND REPUDIATE THE DOCTRINE OF DISCOVERY.
Cook-Lynn noted that American Indians are NOT an ethnic group or a minority, but rather are indigenous. American Indian Studies should not be lumped with ethnic studies, but rather should be nurtured as a distinct field of inquiry. She suggested three reasons for this–defensive; regulatory; and transformative.
AMERICA IS A FRAUD AS A DEMOCRACY, she claimed. IT IS THE FIRST SETTLER-COLONIAL COUNTRY TO ACHIEVE GREAT POWER AND SHE WANTS THIS POWER TO BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE.
Social Justice Activism and Technology
Prompted by an email from Karen Medina, I have been thinking about ways that people younger than I (today I turned 55) use mobile technology for social justice organizing. One activist older than I noted that young people don’t seem to come to monthly meetings anymore. Probably older people don’t either.) I know I am reluctant to head out the door to evening meetings unless it is really compelling as a topic or a group of folks.
I started a Facebook profile, just to dip my big toe into that universe. Then I discovered that Facebook is mostly white. And that there are other social networking sites that I was only vaguely aware of! An article called “Whose Space? Differences among Users and Non-users of Social Network Sites” notes that Facebook, MySpace, Xanga and Friendster are used or avoided depending on a person’s gender, racial identification, parental educational background, etc. The full citation, for those of you who care, is: Hargittai, E. (2007). Whose space? Differences among users and non-users of social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 14.
Our local paper had a nice profile of my friend Bill Taylor and his Primary Communications Project, a long-term commitment on his part to help construct radio communication in a hilly area of southern Honduras. This reminded me of the Congolese organization, Interactive Radio for Justice
The regions where people have adopted mobile phones are using them in dynamic and powerful ways, as noted by Ethan Zuckerman. Zuckeman notes that “the anonymity of mobile phones is one of the key reasons they’ve been so useful to activists.” This allows people to send messages inquiring about an issue or reporting an abuse without fear of retribution (unless they have to register their phone, which apparently is not usually the case.)
Political Equator 2
The Tijuana-based artist ERRE (aka Marcos Ramirez) created this “Toy an Horse” in 1997. Its two heads faced north and south, with one set of wheeled legs in the US and the other set in Mexico. Ten years later, this border intervention seems no less apt.
