Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Hi All

Hi All,

The link to the Shared Meal Among Survivors event page doesn't work so here are the details for anyone interested in joining...

The Places We're At: A shared meal among survivors


Saturday, November 25th @ 7pm 

4826 N. Montana Ave, Portland OR. 97217 

Hi all, 

I am hosting a community potluck at my home for folks who self-identify as survivors, whatever that may mean for you. After having conversations with people in my life about how we identify and dismantle our personal cycles of abuse, I became interested in how our individual experiences provide us with a wealth of knowledge that may help others along their own journey if we come together and share these experiences with each other. With this idea in mind, my hope for this dinner is to build community and collective support through shared meal and conversation. 

I will be cooking a large meal to feed about 10 people, but if you are able, please bring something you love to eat so more can join in our shared meal! 

P.S. I also hope to have some documentation of the night with the intention of making a zine that I can leave at the Multnomah Library. My plan is to have paper and a sealed box available for folks who want to anonymously record their thoughts or a portion of a conversation to be included as a part of that zine.

Feel free to share this event with your networks and invite folks you think would be interested.

If you have questions feel free to message me or post to the page directly.

-K

Monday, November 20, 2017

Project References - Interpersonal Relationships - Kate Taylor

Hardy, Janet W./ Easton Dossie. The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Freedoms in Sex and Love. Random House Inc, 2017.

A website featuring many informative articles, books, and videos about unconventional relationships (“Relationship Anarchy”):

Saturday, November 18, 2017

The Places We’re At: A Shared Meal Among Survivors


The Places We’re At: A Shared Meal Among Survivors

Initial research: Conversation with friends and colleagues whose histories and stories I am personally acquainted with led two main questions and two goals to roughly model the project: 

Community meal : “How to stop cycles of abuse”

Documentation: 
Pieces of paper/pens to create Zine pages
Anonymous submission box
Optional photo submission to FB event page
-       Tailor presentation based on outcome of the dinner
Inspiration: 

#metoo social media platform and responses (gained awareness after accusations against Harvey Weinstein) - critique and need for personal connection among survivors to build interpersonal relationship and tangible support networks

Zine culture - For the method of documentation; I love making zines because they encourage community collaboration and are easily distributed and easily accessible to multiple communities. - Self-selection or reader-ship - exists outside of capital institutions/ not a commodity as it is easily replicated and are in low demand due to the sheer volume of circulating zines. Related to history of free/independent publishing 

Previous ethnographic research on “Safe Spaces” on college campuses 

WRC workshop on popular education and implemented some of these concepts in my framework for facilitation as a co-chair of RJAT 

CREATE: The community Meal (Public Art Saint Paul by Seitu Jones) -“CREATE: The Community Meal, from Public Art Saint Paul by Seitu Jones, aimed to lower barriers to making healthy food choices. On September 14, 2014, 2,000 people gathered at 1/2 mile long table in the middle of Saint Paul's Victoria Street for a civic dinner table conversation about Food Access, Food Justice, and Healthy Eating. This socially engaged public artwork was led by artist and Frogtown resident Seitu Jones, in collaboration with a cohort of artists that included paper maker Mary Hark, Ananya Dance Theatre, visual artists Cliff Garten, Emily Stover and Asa Hoyt, poets G. E. Patterson and Soyini Guyton, and spoken word artists led by Tou Seiko Lee and Deeq Abdi. As Seitu noted, all 2000 diners were artistic collaborators as they engaged in an artistic ritual of a meal, spoke words of grace and closing, and shared food stories of the world cultures that comprise our community” 


https://www.mealsharing.com/browse

“Meal Sharing brings people together over home cooked meals. Our mission is to build communities through shared resources, facilitate deeper cultural exchange, and encourage people to cook at home to enable a healthier lifestyle.”


Rirkrit Tiravanija: 

"In this deceptively simple conceptual piece, the artist invites the visitor to interact with contemporary art in a more sociable way, and blurs the distance between artist and viewer. You aren’t looking at the art, but are part of itand are, in fact, making the art as you eat curry and talk with friends or new acquaintances.
 

Friday, November 17, 2017

Links to Readings for Week 9

Hi Everyone, Here are all our seminar readings for Week 9. Please read them and post 1 question, comment or quote that stands out to you from each of them in the comments by class time on Monday.

Zeph's Reading:

Intro to Beautiful Trouble: a Toolbox for Revolution, by Andrew Boyd:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1__tf--MT5ksinCpceiz6EAAmr2cKDpST/view?usp=sharing

Lauren's Reading:

Here are parts of the intro to one of my favorite books about cities; The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and The Erasure of Memory.

https://drive.google.com/a/pdx.edu/file/d/1rj-XPIQOtkbQiSOULKfqfVwkb__dCvWI/view?usp=sharing

If you are at all interested in this topic I highly recommend reading this book!

Michael's Readings:

Geology.com - Oregon Gemstones
http://geology.com/gemstones/states/oregon.shtml

Innagem.com - Oregon Opal
http://www.innagem.com/oregonopal/

Roshani's Reading:

Born in a Dazed and Confused Era - it Was a Fashion Thing! Essay by Sonia Mehta. Exhibition catalogue: Her Stories: Fifteen Years of South Asian

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ie2z3XrbrofNjeZ_EkyDkHGrNuRZY7wY

Eric's Reading:

City of the Changers: Indigenous People and the Transformation of Seattle’s Watersheds, Coll Thrush, 2006

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q9AaYvnuTkChBYELgD98ANYsdlAH5KKK 


Tia's Readings:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1w1sQ6PIF0wIH2efnMtu5A4QIXi9ESEx2



Thursday, November 16, 2017

Color therapy/light therapy/color psychology Resources

*suspension of disbelief makes this more fun*
Color Therapy is a book by Reuben Amber, first published in 1964 in India (I'm not sure of any biographical information about this author but I'm curious as to his cultural heritage to compare to the second book I will mention). The first half of the book is general theories of color as perceived by people and groups both in modern day and past perspectives. The second half of the book is about application of color for healing:
In this section, a set of directives applying color to the dietary problems of man How to Lose Weight and How to Gain Weight is followed by an analysis of the properties and the healing powers of color. It ends with a list of the various diseases, the specific colors to be used in effecting cures, and the application of color to foods. Part II is specific and, at all times, practical. (from the introduction)
Part 2 is pretty wild and esoteric but interesting as theories anyways. I also wish I could find out more about the author and the sources he draws from. There is also an emphasis on food and color in this book which I find fascinating even if I remain skeptical:
Diet should always be the foundation upon which all the other techniques rest. The therapist must consider food and the color equivalents, as the last chapter of this section indicates. Foods of the proper color as dictated by the individual's needs must be recommended for food is nothing more than color materialized by the plant. (198)
Here's an example of some theories I find pretty amusing:
In the matter of clothing, white transmits more of the light rays than does dark clothing, and the light rays have a more animating effect on the body. Red can be worn when it is desired to warm any part of the body; for cold feet, red tissue paper placed inside the socks or red socks will have a more warming effect than a hot water bottle. (189) 
Doesn't seem likely since the paper would have to be illuminated to have the properties of the color itself? Not sure about that one. Red socks, maybe...
___________________

Another book I found for this project in particular is Color Psychology and Color Therapy: A Factual Study of the Influence of Color on Human Life by Faber Birren (first published in 1950). I haven't actually been able to read most of it but I found a section about light and plant growth which correlates to my interest in nutrition and color:
Johnston mentions that under the action of light, carbon dioxide and water are united in the presence of chlorophyll to form simple sugars. These sugars are elaborated into starch, proteins, organic acids, fats, and other products. Most of these compounds are foods - for the plant as well as for the animals that come to feed upon them. Further, the growth of the plant is vitally affected by the length of day, the intensity of light, and by color - even more so than by temperature and moisture (which also depend on light). (85)
I also wanted to mention that in the bibliography of this book most of the sources were either published in New York or London so I see a western bias to this book from noticing that so it makes me wonder about the specific perspective Amber was coming from.
____________________
maybe start here:
This video (It's super long and I recommend skipping to about 11:35 to start) is a good introduction into color as light therapy, which, is distinct from color therapy according to wikipedia although I think wikipedia is referring to color therapy in the historical context because color and light go hand in hand i.e. pseudoscientific color therapy theories published in mid 20th century* are distinctly different from proven effective light (color) therapy like neonatal jaundice treatment (seems to me as if scientists would like to distinguish color therapy that is proven to be effective as light therapy rather than just keeping it in the realm of color therapy). Anyways, there are some things I could take or leave in the video but overall a good overview.

*note: of course some non-western cultures as mentioned in Amber's book already had established theories of color and healing before it was discussed in western medical context

For further inquiry I'd like to look up more modern studies of light used for therapeutic application and see what the up to date research is and from there develop on my original idea of a dialogue around color and color therapy theories as a way to access the psyche or the "shadow self" and working through aspects of that part of the self using color as the guide.
I would also just like to read more books and articles from various perspectives to compare and contrast different cultural ideas about color.

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Roshani's High Chai research findings



U.S. Multiculturalism or Cultural Assimilation?

Acculturation - Cultural pluralism and multiculturalism

Acculturation - Cultural pluralism and multiculturalism - Culture, Society, American, and Assimilation 

Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism, essay by Cristina Tzintzun

Claire Tancons - Carnival
http://www.clairetancons.com/images/Faena%20Art%20at%20the%20Trinidad%20Carnival-HD%20(1).mp4

You Love ‘The Simpsons’? Then Let’s Talk About Apu
Article on comedian Hari Kondabolu's documentary, The Problem With Apu coming out on November 19.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/arts/television/the-problem-with-apu-the-simpsons.html

Namaste Motherfucker (with Mitali Desai and Naben Ruthnum) from The Racist Sandwich Podcast  https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-racist-sandwich-podcast/id1110874551?mt=2&i=1000394834541



Informal interviews:
Anupam Singh, MFA Art + Social Practice candidate
Saleshni Sundar, owner of the Big Elephant Kitchen
K.S. Dillon, chef of Gandhi

Artist Presentations - Haha/Regan Tamanui



Haha/Regan Tamanui

http://allthoseshapes.com/wp-content/gallery/ha-ha/all-those-shapes_-_haha_-_house-of-bricks_01.jpg

Australian self-taught artist working with stencils, specializing in portraits. Began working on the street but has expanded into gallery spaces. -www.regantamanui.com

Haha investigates the power of mass media within Australian popular culture and the new virtues of the 21st century: reality TV, sports, criminal lifestyles, instant fame and fortune. His images generally derive from newspapers or photographs.

His tag “Ha Ha” was inspired by the laugh of the character Nelson from The Simpsons. He tells documentary maker Nicholas Hansen, "I set myself goals. And my goal was to go through two tins of paint each night...and if you get caught? Ha ha. Ha ha."

Been exhibiting for over 8 years, held 10 solo shows in Melbourne, Brisbane, Hobart & Sydney. Represented by three commercial galleries across Australia. The National Gallery of Australia, BHP Billiton, State Library of Victoria, City of Melbourne, Artbank & private collections across Australia, NZ, UK & USA. -http://www.theblenderstudios.com/regan-profile.html


Ned Kelly Portraits


Notorious outlaw Ned Kelly - bushranger, outlaw, gang leader, convicted police murderer - is an iconic figure in Australian history, culture, and works in the arts.

"Ned Kelly was a criminal. Just like graffiti or whatever you want to call it. The act of stencilling runs in that same vein of thought. The cool thing is that Ned Kelly was loved by the people, and with street art, it's the people's art. It's like the voice of the people." -Tamanui


Personal Heroes



Coinciding with the 2011 Rugby World Cup. Retrospective portrait series of New Zealand Rugby players.
Team players once worked to support their collective sporting endeavour. These days corporate money encourages the status of the individual/celebrity, an advertising icon for multinational business products.
"...the whole idea of the show is it's all about rugby before it became a national corporation," says Tamanui. ‘So I've got pre-80s rugby players where dudes had to work on the farm, or have a real job.’”
A "lament for the passing of the mantle `individual hero' over to `corporate property'." -Gallery blurb


Related Interlude: Stuckism

Related image

Various people by HaHa in Stevenson Lane

Stuckism began in London, in 1999. Tamanui started the first international branch of the movement in 2000, the Melbourne Stuckists.

The Stuckists generally take a pro-painting and anti-conceptual stance on art. Tamanui explains, “Yes, I still consider myself a stuckist but I don’t subscribe to all the stuckist stuff. I do enjoy most themes in conceptual art, especially conceptual art you can interact with and become part of.” It appears he is able to see the potential for inclusivity in the nebulous miasma of conceptual art work. “I’m interested in the accessibility of art to the everyday person – that’s why I love street art. It’s the people’s art and deals with themes that we all relate to. The streets are like the people’s art gallery and everyone becomes a participant.”

“It’s very easy to be sophisticated and analytical and academic and intellectual and neurotic and totally tangled up in your thoughts and complexes. It’s much harder to get down to the essence of something and sum it up.” -Charles Thomson (English artist, poet, photographer, co-founder of Stuckist art movement in 1999)


Denham Lane Portraits



Commissioned by the Townsville City Council. Two story building on Denham Lane, featuring past and present people from Townsville.

Tamanui suggests, “A successful art piece should have controversy. That wall kind of reflects the ancestry” of the town, including figures that people can look up to. This piece works as “an example of honoring these people who contributed to the collective consciousness of Townsville.”

An interview highlighting this project, including some discussion of his various other works and processes:


Artist Presentation: Alyse Emdur, by: Hannah Welter

Alyse Emdur




Prison Landscapes



A collection of photos where prison inmates create and stand in front of backdrop paintings pr photographs provided made of fantastic places such as beaches, mountains, waterfalls, etc. To Alyse, she has a history with these backdrops. Her bother was serving a sentence for drug related crime. Her brother, sister, and herself have a photo in front of a tropical beach scene.




















She wanted to prospective of the families view of America’s incarcerated population from reflecting on her own photograph. “The collection was inspired by a photograph I found of myself at age five posing in front of a tropical beach scene while visiting my brother in prison. Since discovering this first portrait in my own family album in 2005, I have invited hundreds of prisoners to send me photographs for inclusion in this collection.” -Alyse (http://www.alyseemdur.com/3_prison/index.php)

Softcover, 176 pages plus 8 fold-outs, 165 x 235mm
Published: Four Corners Books, January 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9561928-6-8
USA price: $35


























Geyser Girls: A Waiting Room at Crystal Geyser



She states that this was a make-shift waiting room where “While visitors waited for the geyser to blow on sofas set within cascading travertine, they browsed my collection of women's gymnast magazines.”















It was a 3 day wait for the geyser to blow at 4 in the morning and went about 10 feet into the air.
















I couldn’t find much more information on this then what was on her website. The geyser is 4.5 river-miles south of Green River, Utah.




Videos



She also does a bunch of video work, titles include: Weather woman, Fountain of Youth, Something Small, How To See Aura, Kiss Me, Round Robin, Show and Tell, Tales for Tails, Be Brave, We Try, Waterfalls, Co-existence, We Love Lloyd, Healing Each other, Beginning Animal Communication, It’ Coming, and We’re a Team. A lot of these videos are either to learn about peoples daily lives, to teach ourself to heal and help one another, a open place to talk about experiences, or all of them combined.















Waterfalls
2006, 4:45
Waterfalls sets up a video camera on a tripod facing the Multnomah Falls in Oregon and documents visitors as the water gushes behind them.















It’s Coming
2005, 32:33

It’s Coming documents a child yoga class in Portland, Oregon.




Thank you
Hannah Welter

Interventionist Art Practices in Portland

What is interventionist art (my working definition): 

Public practices at the intersection of art and "direct action" activism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_intervention
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Interventionism

"(urban interventions)...are typically concerned less with representing political issues than with intervening in urban spaces so as to question, refunction and contest prevailing norms and ideologies, and to create new meanings, experiences, understandings, relationships and situations."-Professor David Pinder of the University of London

I'm looking into the Portland context of public intervention practices with the goal of connecting to local individuals and groups who have done this type of work. As a more hands-on form of research, I will also do some exploratory "talking to passersby" about the history of the Multnomah County Central Library, to get more practice being charming & asking strangers for their time. This is an important skill for certain forms of performative public interventions :)

So far I haven't found very many examples of this specific kind of work happening in Portland, so I'm including my explorations around the edges of this topic, including interventionist work in general and Portland-related art with strong connections to grassroots organizing.

General resources and readings on interventionist art practices

Books


Current organizations and training resources:

Center for Artistic Activism (Steve Lambert and Steve Duncombe)
Yes Labs (a project of the Yes Men)
Center for Story Based Strategy (grassroots organizing/design lens)

Other online writing and practitioners:


https://actipedia.org/
http://destructables.org/

There is often overlap/collaboration between interventionist artists and organizations that focus specifically on spectacular direct-action protest, for example:
Greenpeace (St. Johns Bridge occupation to stop arctic oil drilling)
Mosquito Fleet—Portland or just Seattle?


Where do interventionist practices intersect with Portland?

People

Igor Vamos (Reed College grad) (Guerrilla Theater of the Absurd/guerrilla street re-naming in PDX, Yes Men, Barbie Liberation Front, RTmark.) Now teaches at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Katherine Ball- (MFA SoPrac alum)—collaborates with Tools for Action in Europe (action inflatables) and DIY living experiments

Zachary Gough (MFA SoPrac alum)--Dentistry at the Museum, contributor to A Soft Spot in a Hard Place, investigating artists' contributions to anticapitalist movements (with Thomas Gokey, Cassie Thornton/Strike Debt and Max Haiven)

Sam Gould--Red76 project in early-2000s Portland--educational talks and gatherings in bars, laundromats, street corners. Currently teaches at Minneapolis College of Art and Design and involved in book store/publishing venue Beyond Repair

Historical-- Portland Cacophony Society?

Not directly interventionist but still good to know about

Other PSU Social Practice MFA expats

Jen Delos Reyes (Open Engagement, PSU SoPrac MFA and co-creator)
Transformazium (MFA SoPrac grads, now outside of Pittsburg PA) social practice neighborhood work

Portland art & artists with connections to grassroots organizing 

Just Seeds printmaking collective—Thea Garh, Icky Dunn, Roger Peet all live in PDX
Robin Corbo, muralist
Julie Perini--Arresting Power film with Jody Darby, also new film about Bo Brown, gentleman butch revolutionary bank robber
Don't Shoot Portland--Teressa Raiford. Article about art projects. Collaboration with Portland Art Museum

Other PDX artists with Social Justice concerns

Vanessa Renwick--experimental film 
Kaia Sand poetry
Pdx puppet show
August Wilson Red Door Project, Hands Up - public theater project about police violence
Joe Sacco - political comics journalist
Gentrification is Weird - Donovan Smith

Oral History Projects

Vanport Mosaic Project
Know Your City walking tours

Street Art

Portland Street Art Alliance (an above-board mural-painting nonprofit)
City Repair (once did guerrilla street projects; now it's institutionalized, so is it now "community arts"?)



Rock HOUNding With Fred

RockHOUNding With Fred (capitalization intentional ;)

An investigation into the unique minerals found in Oregon state leading with the question “What does only Oregon have?” Question answered using mineralized and unmineralized inquires.

I have been documenting my research (slowly) to Instagram which can be found here: @AMBSJprojects


There you can find semi extensive descriptions of my experience at The Fossil Cartel.

I went to another store called ​ÉYÈM Holistic Health Studio which I did not expect to find much about rocks, but did! And much more! I intend to post more about this visit on the @AMBSJprojects Instagram account, so check back soon!

As far as further Rock HOUNding goes, Fred had this to say about my current progress.






So, In this search I found a few mines I may be interested in visiting in the Summer Months.

The first of which is Pick and Dig Obsidian Company, which is the mine Fred insisted I find.


The second mine I am interested in seeking out is called Opal Butte, in Morrow County Oregon.

I sent Fred the Specimens I procured per the investigation of "What Only Oregon Has?"


The tight shots requested by Fred can be found in the post about the items acquired on the @AMBSJprojects Instagram.

Interviews conducted so far on this topic can be found here: Rock HOUNding with Fred (the album)

These are some sites that I have been using to further my study on this topic:
Forest Service: Public Rock Hounding Sites
Oregon Rock Hounds Online
Scott's Rock & Gem a Rockhounding Journey!

With these specifically set aside for reading by the group ;)
Geology.com - Oregon Gemstones
Innagem.com - Oregon Opal