Guerilla Art Action Group
Five booklets from Half-Letter Press
Temporary Services (TS)–through Half-Letter Press–has been producing wonderful little booklets of interviews, which now number five. One of the “Temporary Conversations” was with Jean Toche of the Guerilla Art Action Group (GAAG). Formed in 1969 and enduring through 1976, GAAG consisted of Jean Toche, Jon Hendricks, and Poppy Johnson, with occasional others. The bright orange booklet (2008) that features TS’s interview with Toche has illustrations provided by Jon Hendricks.
I really enjoyed driving back from Chicago with Brett Bloom of TS and hearing more about the process of this interview. The entire interview was conducted using snail mail!
One excerpt from the booklet–which you can buy from Half-Letter Press–that has been sticking with me, is a 1971 communique by Hendricks and Toche called Esthetics and Revolution:
TO BE INVOLVED WITH USEFUL LABOR–AS A REVOLUTIONARY ARTIST–YOU MUST:
- BE AVAILABLE WHEN NEEDED
- FORGET ABOUT IMPRINTING YOUR OWN STYLISTIC ESTHETIC ONTO THE REALITY
- DEAL WITH DAY-TO-DAY REALITIES, NOT FANTASIES
- BE ABLE TO OVERCOME YOUR PERSONAL HANG-UPS
- DEAL WITH ISSUES, NOT PERSONALITIES
- BE ACTIVE, NOT REACTIVE
- BE ABLE TO WORK ALONE OR WITH OTHERS
- BE FLEXIBLE
- BE ABLE TO TAKE INITIATIVE WHEN NEEDED
- NOT BE AFRAID OF MAKING MISTAKES
- NOT BE AFRAID OF BEING INCONSISTENT
- BE VERSATILE
- BE IMAGINATIVE
- GET RID OF PRECONCEPTIONS
- CONSTANTLY REDEFINE YOUR ROLE AS REALITY DICTATES.
Seems like a good description for getting through life in general.
Every Body! Again
Artist Bonnie Fortune, organizer and curator of the exhibit “Every Body!,” asked some of us to reflect on these questions, or similar ones:
- How feminist health movements challenge/change the images of women and/or men and health?
- Where do you think the visual representation of bodies in feminist health movements needs to go, and/ or the new concerns they must grapple with?
- What is the future feminist health movements in general?
Here’s what I wrote:
Dorothy Roberts pondered in Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, “how is it possible that Black women’s reproduction has been subjected to so much degradation and intrusion?” Roberts published her book in 1997, but after more than a decade, I still agree with her that we in the feminist health justice movement must focus “on the connection between reproductive rights and racial equality.” This is not an abstract connection, given that entrenched social injustices prevent many women the choices that the government supposedly protects. These deep injustices mean that we white, well-off women also have to examine our own collective past–organizers in the birth control movement who collaborated with eugenicists; or opposition to sterilization reform by Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Rights Action League because the reforms seemed to make access to sterilization difficult for middle-class women. We must expand what we mean by “reproductive rights” beyond “right to abortion” and tackle other hard realities: the rights to a healthy pregnancy and parent-child relationships along with safe, fail-proof, and non-coercive birth control. My own challenges include coming to terms with artificial reproductive techniques: While not discounting the emotional costs of infertility, I’m not sure that anyone should use them. But that only the wealthy can do so, points to a profitable and questionable system of access that again excludes the poor and not white.
Dorothy Roberts
Every Body! Visual Resistance in Feminist Health Movements, 1969-2009
Health Care is for People not for Profit
Artist Bonnie Fortune is tremendous! She conceptualized, organized, and raised funds to produce a two-city, multi-event extravaganza called Every Body! This past week I have gotten the flier for the public performance of Terri Kapsalis’s “The Hysterical Alphabet,” and the flier for the series of “Every Body!” events. In addition to Kapsalis’s performance, there will be a display of Feminist Health Political Graphics at the Women’s Resource Center on the campus of the University of Illinois in Champaign, and a small display of books and posters by the History Library up the street. The books will include publications by UIUC scholars like Sarah Projansky, Leslie Reagan, and Ruth Nicole Brown, as well as some of our inspirational books by Andrea Smith, Dorothy Roberts and Suzann Gage. In addition to Terri Kapsalis’s books, there will be some zines and posters in that case too. Suzann Gage is coming from California to give an artist’s talk on September 12 at the I-Space Gallery in Chicago where the main exhibit will be held. Artist Christa Donner will give a presentation in Champaign on October 5. So the next month will be a flurry of activities around women’s health justice! Melissa Mitchell of the UI News Bureau wrote a nice publicity piece too. Congratulations Bonnie!
Aim High
Aim High poster
I have been obsessing about this challenge today. This photo, taken by a student in a first-year class that I am co-teaching, captures it well. There’s the goal on a pole, but the pole is rusty and without a top. The conflict I feel is that the efforts I and many others make to “engage” with “community” fall so far short of appropriate responsive-ability (as Meiling Cheng called it in her book, In Other Los Angeleses) that I almost don’t want to aim at all. Meiling meant that reciprocity in relationships–built on trust with some equity of power if not equality–is crucial for partnerships that address key social concerns. The homeless know about being homeless, I do not. The poor know about poverty, I do not. The hungry know about hunger that I can only imagine, and not very well. Compassion and empathy of course matter. Listening matters. But when it comes to action, how do we create a give-and-take that taps into economic and social resources without taking away power from those who must access it to move out of painful, systemically-nurtured situations? How can I be part of the solution and not part of the problem? It takes courage to “aim high” because one so often misses the mark. So many people have no choice but to keep on aiming, despite the high failure rate. Giving up is not an option.
