SINS INVALID: THE CLAIMS TO BEAUTY IN THE FACE OF INVISIBLITY

Leroy Franklin Moore Jr. and seeley quest

Aorta: Lets start with your name, why Sins Invalid, why not Sex Invalid? Sin often has negative connotations in regards to lets say religious cultures, what prompted you to choose it?

Patty: I love the idea of Sex Invalid, that’s hilarious!!   Well, that one never actually came up.  The backstory of our name is that all the people that started Sins Invalid — me, Leroy, Amanda Coslor and Todd Herman — we were tossing around many different names, wordsmithing them, and we landed on Sins Invalid: The Claims to Beauty in the Face of Invisibility.  We chose it specifically because of the play on words — people with disabilities have historically been called invalids and it’s hugely insulting, the idea of being “invalid”, when in fact what is not valid is the idea that people with disability are somehow aberrant in nature.  In fact it is a very natural way of being in the world, because all bodies are different in capacities and limits.

Aorta: Can you talk about your decision to center the show around sexuality and disability?

Leroy: I can answer this one. I think sexuality is not touched upon, we have our legal rights, we have independent living programs, integration into schools, etc, but our sexuality has not been recognized.  Sexuality is in human nature of any human being so we wanted to celebrate it because it’s so often pushed aside for us.

Patty: I wanted to add that sexuality is a fundamental human right, not just for people with disabilities, but for everyone.  Acknowledging a persons sexual rights and identity is part of understanding that person as a whole person.  Not acknowledging a person’s sexual health and identity is a form of dehumanization, and as Leroy was saying, it is a very painful component of the way that people with disabilities are devalued.  The social misconceptions around disability have not shifted a ton even though the disability rights movement has succeeded in securing legal rights for people with disabilities — many people are still afraid of people with disabilities!  There is an awesome piece on our website by Matt Fraser (http://www.sinsinvalid.org/video pages/Mat_Fraser_2009.html), and the whole piece is about not being recognized as a sexual person — he’s being beaten up by ableism, with a voiceover soundtrack saying: “You’re very brave…I don’t see you as disabled, maybe a little different…How could you provide for her?…” culminating with someone saying “I could never  fuck a cripple” with the sound of people laughing.  We opened the show with this in 2009 to set up the social context for how we then set about decolonizing our bodies from ableism and move into liberating sex.  This truly is a part of the psychological violence and degradation of our communities face, and that we face as individuals while growing up.

Aorta: Can you disclose a bit about the creative process behind Sins Invalid? Who gets to be a part of the show, do you work with the same group of artists, does the ensemble change?

Leroy: Patty should answer because she’s the Artistic Director.

Patty: We are very lucky to have a very organic process, so how we curate the show every year is a tiny bit different.  Some years we do a call to artists, some years we commission specific artists, some years its a hybrid of both — and lot of it is through networking.

There are also many people that do creative or performance work that in fact live with a disability but don’t identify politically as having a disability until they interact with Sins, other artists may already identify as having a disability but may not yet have had a place to incubate their work much, and so on.

There is definitely a vision for the show every year.  We’ll see what we are going to do this year, because its going to be a hybrid of a film release and a performance.  Last year a few of us had been talking about the ways in which our bodies have been colonized as people of color,  queer people, as crips, and and how our bodies’ liberation stories are scripted in our flesh, and that we had to decode and read our bodymaps.  So the theme ended up being “Knotting Stories across Time and Geography” — we had historical references throughout the show, dream sequences, a “time machine” in the lobby where we shot video for “time capsules”, visual art from years past and present, etc.

Antoine Hunter

In our shows performance pieces will be woven around a theme, artists will be creating pieces in different places as we have artists from all over the country, and we try to harmonize them as much as possible.  Some years we have a better integration than others. Obviously, it would be easier to have everyone all be in the same locale but it’s a matter of resources.

Aorta: Tell us about the single identity politics vs.the one you have put forth that examines the wholeness of our bodies and experiences in the world? What do you think about art created around disability issues only without the analysis of class, race, gender and sexuality? Why do we need to draw the connections?

Leroy: I’m going to take a shot at that.  I think one identity is a good start for people to find their voice, their history, and develop their politics.  You begin to find the “I” in all the layers that we live in.  I think that as you develop you realize that we belong in many communities, not always one community, so for example, me being Black and disabled, I’ve always connected to both communities, it wasn’t good enough for me to learn my Black history and not learn my disabled history.  Sins Invalid comes in a social justice framework, and we have done identity politics but now it’s time to claim our whole selves. I think it’s important because if you do not learn about your whole self, if you do not bring your whole self into activism and into art, its not a full picture of you.

Patty: I really appreciate what you said Leroy, our intention is to help move towards a whole united front.  If I can only be this much of myself in feminist spaces because I can’t talk about my experiences of racism, how robust is that movement going to be?  If I’m in a woman of color space but can’t talk about disability oppression, than how is that movement going to grow?  If I am in disability spaces and can’t talk about queerness, we are not building a robust movement, in fact narrowing our lens undermines our understanding of the ways that power and privilege intersect.  And, like Leroy was saying, for our humanity, we have to actually be real and not segment ourselves.

First waves of movements are often single identity, like the early feminist movement or even the early “lesbian and gay movement” which is now the LGBTQI movement.  When movements mature over generations, we build off of the people that came before us.  The disability rights movement is basically in its first wave, and at this point, another crest in rising — we are putting forth a framework of disability justice in which we look at disability in connection to other forms of oppression, not in isolation.  We can’t do labor organizing and not address the ways in which women are particularly impacted by capitalism.  We can’t do youth organizing if we ignore how queer youth are particularly undermined as young people.  We can’t address disability without looking at how white supremacy, male supremacy and the gender binary and heteronormativity inform and reinforce disability oppression.

And most importantly, back to what Leroy said, we can’t talk about our beauty and how we embody our power unless we are fully ourselves.

Nomy Lamm

Aorta: Do you think (and if so why) the LGBT communities and activist communities are lacking in inclusiveness and analysis of disability?

Patty: I actually am going to answer that since Leroy is a straight ally. I’ve engaged in queer spaces since 1983 and have worked with a number of queer organizations, and generally speaking I actually find the queer world better at disability politics than other sectors — HOWEVER that is by no means to say that its perfect!  It’s sad that we can go to some really heteronormative middle class venue and find a wealth of ableism there, and then we can go to a queer progressive space and find an equal wealth of ableism there as well.  Disability oppression and ableism have not been brought into the broader left power analysis, even in radical queer or radical left discourse ableism isn’t really systemically addressed.  People in queer spaces still think disability is a personal tragedy, like “Oh, I’m sorry that you are disabled…”, as though it’s the condition of an impairment that oppresses us.  Sure, it may not be convenient to have an impairment, lots of things in life are inconvenient or a pain in the ass — but what’s oppressive is the systematic violence, discrimination and marginalization of people with disabilities, and to feel sorrow or to project a person’s experience as tragic, that’s part of the oppression.  I think this analysis has to percolate, make its way into the broader LGBTQI world, and there are some places where it’s moving and there are some places where it’s stuck.

Aorta: Who in the history of disabled activists and artists made the biggest impact on your personal lives or shaped your artistic vision?

Leroy: People with disabilities have been making history for centuries, so I could go on with names of people I look up to — one would be Rev. Cecil Ivory who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, who had a disability and was doing sit-ins back in the 50′s and 60′s, he is one of the top people that I look up to, as a person of color with a disability, but there are so many people I could name.  Our history is not widely known, or our art.  That is another thing that I love about our work is that we bring this history to the stage.

Aorta: Do you think that the fact that people in history, activists and artists are not mentioned enough, is this sort of one of the situations where people find it that they should not talk about someone in history from that framework?

Leroy: I think back then when MLK was marching disability wasn’t considered an issue to focus on, they were dealing with discrimination.  And once again we come back to identity, back than it was being Black in Jim Crow South, that was the identity, disability wasn’t an identity.  People lived with disabilities all the time, and did not identify it as their political identity until very recently, just like people have been queer throughout history but did not identify it as a part of their political identity. Harriet Tubman had a disability, but did not consider it as a political identity.  Ray Charles, Frida Kahlo, it’s a part of their biography but that doesn’t mean they held it as a political identity.

Patty: For me Essex Hemphill, a brilliant queer Black man who was a writer, and became disabled after contracting HIV.  He was brilliant and centered his identity as a proud Black gay man — and even though he had a disability, he did not integrate it into his politics.  Audre Lorde, a cancer survivor, did a bit.  If they were here now, my sense is they would likely raise up an intersectional politic in which disability was included, so we are standing on their shoulders.

Aorta: What has been the most rewarding experience to you as artists and activists in creating Sins Invalid?

Leroy: I think just seeing people, after being in Sins, realizing that they have a space to bring their whole self into their art as disabled people of color or as disabled queers.  Sins offers a unique space, so after experiencing that, seeing the artist go on and carry Sins’ art and politics, that really excites me.

Patty: For me it’s seeing the transformation on people’s faces after they experience the show, or even when they participate in a disability justice workshop.  People’s paradigms shift, particularly after the show, people look at themselves differently, look at their bodies differently, look at bodies with disabilities differently. For me, that’s huge.

Aorta: What is the most difficult aspect of keeping a show of such complexity running for 6 consecutive years?

Leroy: Oh god, there are so many aspects of Sins, just being an organization, trying to thrive under what we have to survive right now — lack of foundation money, for example.  Sins has year round programming, and although people know this amazing annual performance, the good work really goes on all year round.

Patty: Most challenging? As a performance project the highlight is when we do performances, and we also tour a bit, offer performance workshops, disability justice workshops, support artist development, work on a film — and these things are external events.  But the day to day of running an organization is not sexy, let’s be real.  Writing grants is necessary but not fun.  Luckily, we work great as a team — and that’s hot!

Aorta: What are you hoping to accomplish by making the Sins Invalid documentary? Tell us a bit about the production, and what stage you are in with the making of the film?

Leroy: Sins Invalid is based in the Bay Area, if you live here, you get a chance to see it, but if you’re not, you don’t really get a chance to experience what it’s all about.  From our online work, Sins has a wide audience, and we’ve worked with artists from the UK, Canada and we a get pile of emails from everywhere saying that they love our work. One way for people outside Bay Area to see the art and embodied politics of Sins is is the film, and that is one reason why we approached making a film.

Patty: Basically we want people to access this film, not so much because we want more people to know the organization, but because we see the changes people experience when they hear the message that our bodies and our communities are valuable and beautiful as they are, and see people embody that message.  People change from that simple truth, especially when it comes from people that have been marginalized in so many ways, people who are supposed to be ashamed of their bodies, actually embracing their bodies and their beauty. We want that simple message of beauty and power to reach people whether they are in the Bay Area or whether thy can’t leave their beds.

We are so close to being done, but film costs so much to make.  I have so much respect for filmmakers, as we are stumbling our way forward in this process.  We want community support to finish it and thats why we started the Kisckstarter campaign. (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dancersgroup/sins-invalid-an-unshamed-claim-to-beauty)

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Leroy: We started it on Jan 16th, it will wrap on Valentines Day.  There is a good amount to be done, we have to create music, balance and sweeten the sound, pay for the color correction, and also start distribution, so we are raising a minimum of $15,000 to do all that.  We are asking people to go to the Kickstarter page, beome a backer, then go to Facebook and share and pass it on!

Aorta: We are all – both abled and disabled-bodied people – bombarded by the prevalent myths of perfection on daily basis in our popular culture, in magazines, on the billboards and TV. How do you resist these myths and how do you confront them personally?  How can we eradicate the kind of reinforced brainwashing from our culture and our lives so we can all feel empowered and whole?

Patty: I love this question because it brings us right back to creating cultural work, that’s why we started Sins, that’s why Aorta exists, because this dominant framework and its media bullies, dehumanizes, and steamrolls our humanity.  Resistance is important but its a starting place, we are trying to communicate the vision that all people are valuable, there is no disposable human.  That framework is the opposite of what is churned out culturally, an absurd dominant idea that you must be between this bandwidth of weight and that bandwidth of shade or you are not fully human.  It’s absurd, the majority of the globe does not fit into this framing of popular culture.

At least for me, as an individual artist, there is no way for me not to interact with ableism, racism, or male supremacy in my life, there s no way to step out of it — as consumers of culture we are going to deal with hetero domination and homophobia in our life.  Whatever we do, we are still in conversation with systems of domination and oppression, that’s just the context we live in.  I try to address that explicitly in the work that I create. I did a partnership piece with Todd Herman, a film entitled Other People’s Stories, it explicitly addressed how I reconcile having hot pervy sex within this cultural noise of violence against our disabled bodies, it was a really really hot film. I think that as an artist I have to get bigger, my story has to encompass these stories,  metabolize and transform the dominant story to push and catalyze people.

Leroy: Well, I think we fight ableism by continuing to do our work.  When we do justice based workshops at schools, for example, even the professors have limited knowledge about the embodiment of intersectional identities including disability.

I think for myself, I know that all of these images that come to us come from a lack of awareness.  I realize that what I hold as a Black disabled man doing my artwork, from my histories, is way greater than any mainstream media that I can turn on.  I’m forty something years old, and because I know that my culture, my eyes, my voice, come from being a Black disabled man, of course we’re not on Fox news — but I really don’t want us on Fox, that’s ok for me.

Patty: Can I say one more thing?  Love.  Not to be cheesy, but love is central to the question of knowing our wholeness.  How do we eradicate this brainwashing from our culture?  By loving ourselves, loving each other honestly.  Having really loving relationships is huge — and part of that is good fucking!! Not JUST good fucking, but including.  Leroy and I are super best friends from more than a decade ago and love is a huge force of human power.

Leroy: Yes.  And, enjoying the work that we put out.  Many activists run themselves to the ground, to the bone, We want to enjoy our activism, art, cultural work, because we live on this earth only once.

FEATURED ARTIST: CARINA LOMELI

What is the overlap for you when it comes to art and activism, if at all?
I see art and activism as the same thing. The life of an artist, for me, requires the direct engagement in community. I observe the world with concern for the future and express my anxiety in my paintings. Turning the lens on myself, I continually strive to do less harm in the world by changing my behavior and try to expose others to reality which they avoid through television and repetitive lifestyle.

To continually renew my view of the world is very important for me. For example, I ride my bicycle a lot. This changes your perspective: you are not in the closed, protected, walled off confine of a car, nor the safe pedestrian zones. To be a bicyclist in the city is both dangerous and exhilarating, a self-awareness of yourself and the concrete jungle like nothing else. It’s the best way to observe and participate in everyday life of San Francisco. The bicycle, believe it or not, has been my stepping stone to direct activism.
Even though I had been volunteering for many years, I was only able to clarify how exactly I could assist with change in this world happened when I was Introduced to Tiny Aka Lisa Gray-Garcia, daughter of Dee, the founder of POOR Magazine before her transition to the spirit journey, the founder who I did not have the pleasure of meeting when I started volunteering as a translator.

What does the occupy movement mean to you personally? How do you see artists fit into it?
As an Individual I have always fought for injustices in my work, to the point that I have had to quit in order to be at peace. For me occupy started in 2006 when I worked at the Cafe Gratitude in the Sunset. Matthew and Terces Engelhart were the owners of this establishment as they are now also the owners of Gracias Madre in the Mission. I witnessed racism, classism and cultural theft from the community on a daily basis. They forced non-english workers to attend an event called tantric breathing with the entire work staff. It was an all-day event where breathing heavily for hours causes the feeling of what they termed “re-birth.” They tried to get me to go but since I knew that there was no pay and my religion was practiced between me and my god I did not attend. Other Migrants that did not know their rights were told that if they did not attend they would lose their jobs, others were told that they would be paid. The day after, a poor 47 year woman from Peru told me how scared she was to be at the event and said “paresia que se les estaba saliendo el diablo” thats spanish for (It looked liked the Devil was coming out of them) she had to flee before the event was over, but they Insisted that she stayed. I had told her she didn’t have to go but she was pressured into it. This was my last straw, after that, all the workers that attended this “sacred event” isolated me and made me feel unwelcome.

I think that before we express love or acceptance we need to fight for those who are unjustly taken advantage of. In 2010 POOR Magazine Hosted Gentrifuckation Tours “R” US where we stopped at 5 different hipster suites to Perform our chant of removal, you can see it on YOU TUBE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4KmtdS-mQ0&feature=plcp&context=C35d4dcfUDOEgsToPDskKHlgmbMTlMEGVSL56iROkp

Here is my excerpt that I wrote and read to all that were dinning at Gracias Madre that night:

“ You are taking our sacred symbol of The Virgin Mary, La Virgen de Guadalupe, the mother of compassion and forgiveness as a way to exploit our sacred beliefs. Do not use La Virgen De Guadalupe when you don’t believe in her, respect her or worship her, especially when you are serving a community that does not know her story, why she is so sacred and why she belongs to the People of Mexico. As a Xicana Mexican American Painter – artist, Illustrator I condemn the artist that accepted to paint a mural of an image he knows nothing about and worse, to use it to gentrify the Mission. It would be beautiful inside a church but to use for a business that discriminates, lies and is just trying to build an empire of transformation, confusion and greed is wrong.” I would also like to point out that all the Cafe Gratitudes including the recently opened Gracias Madre will be closing for good, due to lawsuits from two ex- employees.

Manifestations like these are the only weapon that I as an Artist have, but this was way before the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movements. You can Imagine the complete joy and inspiration that I get whenever I take part of the Occupy movement, I love talking to people, especially those that are awake to the power we each carry in this Police State. Our voices are our most powerful weapon. My voice comes out in the form of images, colors and visions. Even though I see the change that the Occupy movement has created, it is still in its infancy and today more than ever I feel a bit let down by the movement. As an artist that has experienced globalization, colonization and institution negligence I understand the importance of strategic terminology. Since the start of Occupy Oakland Indigenous Communities show up to support and have put forth the proposition to change the name to Decolonize Oakland Instead of using the oppressors military language.  Even though they voted and the proposition won 68% of the votes, census was not met because 90% of votes are required. This is a disappointment to me because clearly 68% is the majority. Even though some claim the Issue divides us, I know that overcoming this obstacle will make us stronger and more united. As an artist of the 99% I  will push for the proper terminology of this movement.

What is POOR magazine and what is your involvement?
POOR Magazine is a publication arts and education project that was started in 1996 by an indigenous, landless mother and daughter who struggled with extreme poverty, incarceration and criminalization in the US. POOR Magazine, the organization, is a poor people led/indigenous people led non-profit, grassroots, arts organization dedicated to providing revolutionary media access, arts, education and solutions for youth, adults and elders in poverty across Pachamama. My collaboration with POOR started in 2008 and has evolved in a way that I had never expected. POOR Magazine hosts press conferences, fundraisers, speak outs, education in the arts, literature, documentation, advocacy, radio, journalism, poetry and healing. Through my networking, organizing and teaching in this organization I have been able to work with the most amazing poets and youth that are eager to learn about art theory. I don’t just teach art, I also learn from the students, we do not believe in hierarchy, “Everyone is a teacher and everyone is a student” like my co-worker Ruyata Akio McGlothin always says.
At any given event I sketch out the paintings and get the community to add their own art and abilities. I love to teach and paint and it has become the focus of my work. At the same time I take pictures during every event I participate in and have no trouble finding my next painting. Recently POOR has launched two big projects. One is the publishing of our contribution to the Decolonize (Occupy) movements all around the country and the world. The Decolonizers Guide to A Humble Revolution a POOR Press Production was distributed to over 150 different occupy sites and it includes some of my art and teachings. Available now on a sliding scale at www.poormagazine.org. The second big project is the HOMEFULNESS Project: The Struggle, the Vision, the Poor Peoples-led Revolution! A Real Solution to Houselessness: a sweat equity, permanent co-housing, education, arts, micro-business and social change project for landless/houseless and formerly houseless families. I am excited and honored to be part of these great projects and witness real change for local marginalized communities in the bay area. Even though every day it is a struggle and a lot of volunteering is required, I know It is necessary for a better tomorrow.

FEATURED ARTIST: ALEXIS AMANN

Describe your process?
I draw all the time and some of those drawings get pieced together into paintings. I usually start with a drawing, and the feeling and image of the painting in my mind and work on it from there. I try to keep my studio practice steered towards making work that interests or entertains me — things I feel or things I think are funny.  My work is rooted in personal narrative and experience, combined with details that are at turns tragic and funny, rooted in mythology, literature, pop culture, and humor.

What or who is your inspiration?
Lately I’m really inspired by people who pursue their passion authentically and are able to be vulnerable in the work they present to the world, giving something of their own experience in a way that creates self-recognition and shared experience for other people. I think this is the most important thing, really.

I’m also inspired by the Pacific Ocean, the library, comics and illustration, evolution, people in my life, pop culture, mythology, stories, poetry, and humor.

Favorite things?
Internet memes, much to my chagrin — I love how people are constantly making things to entertain themselves and each other. I really do love the Internet, the instant creativity and fast sharing of jokes and images, even if it does create a culture of throwaway images instead of looking at art for a long time. It still makes so much more art instantly accessible to so many people, and has created a culture of sharing information and images that can’t be beat. Audiobooks and podcasts. Lynda Barry books. This month, it seems that one of my favorite things is artist-made 2012 calendars – I seem to be collecting them.

A question you would want to be asked? What is it?
Would you like to illustrate my series of children’s chapter books?
Answer: Yes! Someone email me, already.

WOMEN OF JUSTSEEDS by Melanie Maddison

Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative is a decentralized community of artists based in Canada, the US and Mexico who have banded together to collaborate with and support each other and social movements.
I spoke with the women active in the diverse Justseeds artists’ co-op, who are an integral part of the collective: Melanie Cervantes (Oakland, CA), Bec Young (Pittsburgh, PA), Molly Fair (Brooklyn, NY), Meredith Stern (Providence RI) and Thea Gahr (Mexico), alongside Nicole Schulman (Brooklyn, NY) who has created art work for Justseeds. We spoke about political collective creativity, art in social movements, socially engaged printmaking, and art as activism.

Aorta: Why do you make prints and create posters?

Melanie Cervantes: I create because it is a process of empowerment for me. There are moments when the structures that shape my daily life frustrate me and I feel powerless to change anything. I rage at the idea that we live in a post-race, let alone a post-racist society, and I feel most powerful when I can use creativity to translate the dreams and visions of my communities for a different way of living and relating to each other, into something that we can see and hold. Making art, particularly through collaboration makes me feel like it’s possible to have a transformative movement that will change our society. My trajectory as an artist has always been as part of a collective community. I have never been isolated as I have developed my creative muscles. I like to fuse what I have learned from interdisciplinary study of racialized peoples, my art skills and my decolonizing politics in order be an “artist for the people”.

Nicole Schulman: I want to make art that has a purpose beyond being decoration or a product to be bought and sold in the gallery system. Posters have the purpose of education and mobilization. They are an active art medium by definition.

Thea Gahr: Why do I make posters? Most simply because I love it. It’s my preferred method for expressing ideas, emotions, and my hope for positive change. Also it’s my desire to use what I love doing as a part of building a new world.

Meredith Stern: I love that [posters] are a democratic medium- the fact that you can make multiples means that they can be distributed widely. I like that it is art that can be held in hand, put up on the street, or on a wall. It’s something that anyone can afford.

Aorta: What do you hope to gain by producing posters?

Nicole Schulman: To spread awareness about hidden histories and contemporary struggles of people who have been ignored by the mainstream media and mainstream historians.

Thea Gahr: I hope that I can inspire new thoughts, imagination, and inspire curiosity to look for truth.
How I see it is you have to live the politics you believe in and be brave enough to create the world you want to live in here and now. A part of that is producing your own work and another part is reaching out into the world with your images and creativity to make radical change
in a world that desperately needs it. And a big part of reaching out to the world is a collective effort. As a group we have a network that reaches far and wide and the possibility to participate and support struggles around the world.

Melanie Cervantes: I make work to break up the feeling of isolation that we can experience under oppressive conditions. I make work to make people feel like they are not alone in that struggle.

Meredith Stern: Mainly, communication and dialog. I hope that people can relate to things that I am thinking about, and that through communicating through visual images we can put things into language that are either more difficult with words; or speak on an emotional level.

Aorta: To whom do you hope to speak to with your work?

Nicole Schulman: The fear with activist art is that you are only preaching to the converted. I hope I am reaching people who may not be aware of the issues my work deals with- and motivate them to become involved in social justice activism.

Bec Young: I hope my work speaks to people who defend themselves ruthlessly against the vampiric pain, fear, and jadedness of living enough to keep their minds and hearts open. I hope my work speaks to that guy waiting for the bus, the woman who cleans the floors at my work, the teenagers I did a presentation for last week. I hope my work speaks to people who are engaged in the process of living, reclaiming dignity through acts of honesty and integrity, and those who are having a hard time of it but are keeping up the fight; also those who gave up, but who might come back.

Molly Fair: When I create work in support of a specific issue, social movement, or community, then I am speaking to those who also wish to support these things.  Otherwise I want to engage anyone with my work.

Melanie Cervantes: My primary audience are the people who inspire the work. That ranges from domestic workers, to young women in lock up, queer mothers, freedom fighters, organizers, young people, it’s also the people who stand in solidarity with those whose struggles I capture in my prints.

Aorta: What can you tell me about how and why are you involved with the Justseeds collective, and/or why it is important to you?

Melanie Cervantes: [joining Justseeds in 2008 was] a great opportunity to work with artists that were consolidating their resources and creating collective projects to work on. I felt like it was important to have a space to work with other Leftist artists. I also thought it would be a learning and growth experience for us all since Justseeds was about 95% White before most of us from the Bay Area joined the cooperative.

Molly Fair: I became part of Justseeds through my old collective Visual Resistance. Justseeds was going through a transition as a project started by one person, and we were sort of languishing in our own collective.  There was the invitation to become part of a wider network of artists that wanted to make art in support of social justice movements and were interested in using art as a tool for social change, so some of us decided to become part of it. It was a difficult process for me personally to let my old collective naturally run its course, but that is something that happens.  In the end I think becoming part of Justseeds, and what it is now, revitalized my belief in the power of the collective process, and also introduced me to new people who are activists and artists that I am truly inspired by. I think of Justseeds as a strange and wonderful and ever-evolving experiment in collective art-making and cooperative business model.  We are figuring it out as we go along.

Bec Young: We are working together, doing projects and collaborating, and at the same time engaged in the process of figuring out how to do that.

Molly Fair: I am happy that I have a network of artists that I am a part of, that I enjoy working with, and that inspire me so much.  It is important in the sense that the work we create is able to support social movements and hopefully exposes people to different ideas.  I also think it is important as an experimental business model, since the profits we make are put directly back into our projects and enable the artists to produce more work.
I think it is incredibly important to support each other, that is the main reason I enjoy working in the collective model and especially with this group of artists.  I think that being able to support social movements would be difficult and somewhat superficial if we were unable to support each other.
Another major reason I like working with this group is that we don’t all have the same politics, or beliefs, and engage with people and communities in different capacities.  At the same time we are unified in our goal to use art as a medium to communicate ideas, and our belief that there is power in having diversity in messages.  Otherwise all of our work would just be a means to propagate a specific ideology, and that is not something I would want to do.  I don’t want to impose our beliefs on other people, I want to create dialogue around issues.

Bec Young: Making art is one of the most fulfilling things I’ve done in my life, and I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity to combine that with my passion for social change, and collaboratively with artists I admire for their far-sightedness, talent and dedication.

Thea Gahr: Motivated by an invitation to join Justseeds I created a radical graphic arts collective called Cordyceps 2 years ago with 2 friends here in Mexico. We’ve organized expositions and workshops in autonomous spaces in both Mexico and the U.S. Also painting banners and murals. We now have our own autonomous radical art gallery in Mexico city as part of a bigger project called Zona Autonoma Makhnovtchina. We recently organized a Justseeds exhibit. In the end we were invited to join the cooperative as individuals. It came as a big decision for me that I feel very happy with. As I’m having to learn many new ways of expressing my thoughts. And as a group the possibilities feel enormous.
I think Justseeds is a unique space for being able to distribute art that is accessible and meaningful on a lot of different levels. It’s had this amazing ability to build connections between people, collectives, and various movements, and struggles. I think a lot of great projects have been built and are being built from these connections.

Meredith Stern: There is no clear answer to [why Justseeds is important] other than every time I open my email, and see 20-30 emails from organizations and individuals asking us to be a part of the work they are doing. I realize that people all over the world relate to what we are doing and find importance in it- for millions of reasons- they want to liven up the work their organization is doing with visual images/ artists who want to feel connected to other artists/ people who are discontents or utopian visionaries looking to dialog on specific issues. So many reasons why people find us and find meaning in what we do: Love. Communication. A belief in a better world. Justice. Peace. People power.

Aorta: What social/political concerns does your work most commonly focus on? Why is poster/print making a good way to address/voice these concerns?

Molly Fair: The prints that I have made explore the ideas of collective direct action, communicating with prisoners through correspondence, and I am working on a print around the issue of creating safe spaces. Posters and prints are a good way to voice these concerns because they can be produced in multiples, and made available widely.

Melanie Cervantes: My work includes black and white illustrations, paintings, installations and paper stencils, but the work that I am best known for are my political screen prints and posters.  I employ vibrant colors and hand-drawn illustrations, and in my work I try to move those viewed as marginal to the center — featuring powerful youth, elders, women, and queer and indigenous peoples in my graphics.

Bec Young: I tend to focus on group process, education and other issues of sustainability in cities, destruction of war, power, political and imagined boundaries, mental health and vision, self-image; I like to create positive, powerful images of women; environmental issues including food production, resources, transportation, and the importance of non-human species.
These issues could be powerfully addressed in any art form, but printmaking allows a simple, reproducible design that can reach so many more people than a painting or sculpture, both in the actual print edition and when people view it online.

Nicole Schulman: I focus mostly on human rights issues, and in particular Labor and the effects that capitalism has had on the world.  Posters and prints are democratic, inexpensive and are intended to reach a wider audience than work displayed in the context of  a sterile, elite gallery.

Thea Gahr: Art is already powerful, and if rooted in a social movement it is an effective tool for mobilizing and informing people. Art is a tool to be used as propaganda, inform, decorate, and inspire. It’s one tool of many but it can be a way to fight against a blind accepting society of social norms that have been damaging to the emotional and mental well being of great masses of people. It is a fight for diversity and creativity is a world that is more and more homogeneous.

Meredith Stern: Art itself is something that relies on an audience- and social change is all about a group of people moving together. So, art and people are completely interconnected. One can’t exist without the other. Art is more powerful when it is a direct part of peoples lives and work. And social movements need culture and art to speak to people and be more than theories on paper.

Aorta: I love that posters for social change range from those with subtle political implications to those featuring bulldozing propaganda. What is your personal approach, and your thoughts on the range of uses (from subtle to overt) of politics within art?

Bec Young: My artistic style lends itself to a more subtle approach, although I love that as a part of Justseeds my work is seen in context with more overt messages. I like to build layers of meaning into my work that can be uncovered by people who are willing to look closely, and perhaps those meanings seep into the subconscious of everyone who sees the work, whether they look closely or not.

Meredith Stern: Different people respond to different forms of expression– it is all important to people in different ways. Overt art can help yell at things that are hurting people- they can let people feel like they are a part of a larger social movement. They can help like-minded people find each other. At its worst though, overt art can be off putting to people who don’t agree, and “preach only to the converted”. I think subtle art is more effective at drawing people in to new ideas. It can also be easily re-interpreted, or mis-interpreted, so that is the draw back there, I think when both exist together, new meanings and deeper meanings are created that can be more interesting to a larger group of people. It’s one thing I like about Justseeds- there is a wide range of artistic styles and ideas about this, and all the art together creates a really compelling and interesting conversation that wouldn’t exist the same way if each artist was operating alone.

Thea Gahr: For a long time I thought being subtle with a strong message undertone was The Way to reach a more diverse crowd. Now I’m not so sure maybe the strongest clearest voice a person has is the way to reach people. More than anything we need all the approaches.

Aorta: One of the things I find inspiring about Justseeds’ printmaking is not just that you’re producing politically radical material, but that you’re also enacting these politics through your organizational and production practices: handmade individual pieces as part of ongoing artistic practices within your everyday lives, all performed within a supportive, co-operative organisation.
How do you see these two factors (making posters, and making posters within this co-operative) at work within Justseeds, and why do you think it is (politically) important that the two work side by side, in terms of creating the most powerful and effective ‘results’ possible?

Meredith Stern: I think the two concepts are completely interlinked. I think of the phrase “be the change you want to see in the world” as a real truth. The most successful social movements are ones where the means and the end are the same.

Molly Fair: Being able to reach a wide amount of people with radical imagery and messages is linked with the process of printmaking and producing in multiples. Producing work that is handmade gives our work an added level of communication, and connection with whoever sees it or possesses it, since there is the understanding that there was care and some amount of physical labor involved in the production process.  In terms of our cooperative and as individuals we give a lot of our prints away for free, and the art we sell is relatively cheap, because we want to make it as accessible to as many people as possible.  I don’t think art should be for a privileged few, or that one person should have ownership of a piece.  In that sense, we are disrupting the relationship of art as a commodity.

Aorta: Do you see advantages and potentials, and a power, in working and creating art collectively, as part of a politically creative co-op like Justseeds; bringing together the creative energies of a group of diverse people with multiple voices, in order to create an ability to distill powerful messages and reach diverse audiences.

Bec Young: Yes, our ability to do so many projects and be involved in so many shows is because we are such a large group of different people in different places; this is our main strength. Hopefully other people will see that and be encouraged to start their own cooperatives.

Molly Fair: I think that this speaks to the fact that the collective process itself, the interactions, and use of human energy and creativity is the art – not just the art object that is produced.

Aorta: As an accessible and very public art form, (prints pasted to walls/ boards/ posts/ buildings and beyond), do you think that the very nature of posters as tangible, real things that are present in locations gives them an ability to lend meaning to individuals’ understandings and appreciation of the politics inherent in the messages?

Nicole Schulman: I think art should be democratic, and art is an essential tool to make “public” spaces democratic. I am a community muralist, as well as a cartoonist and illustrator. I try to teach the young people I work with to question what public space really is, and who controls it. It is empowering for everyday people to see visual images that are not corporate advertising, art that has been generated either by activist artists or community groups that are demanding to be represented.

Molly Fair: Yes posters are tangible, and especially when they interact with each other in public space.  The layering of multiple messages speaks to the plurality of ideas in our society.  Sometimes they engage directly, but it depends on the viewer.  Many people have learned to tune out the landscape around them because they feel so bombarded by messages or advertisements that exist in public space.

Thea Gahr: I think looking at the damaging effects of corporate advertising on the mental health of societies globally affected by it is a way to determine that posters and propaganda are extremely powerful and influential over peoples thoughts and feelings. The hopeful part of that is we also have that potential to fight back against all the lies and hopefully reach new realms of consciousness.

Aorta: Which Celebrate Peoples History posters have you created, about whom? Why did you wish to tell those peoples histories?

Nicole Schulman: So far I have done 2 poster designs, one is waiting to be printed. The first is the Korean Peasants League poster: this was initiated by the suicide of Korean farm activist Lee Kyung Hae during the protests against the WTO in Cancun. My husband is from Seoul, and his sister has connections to union activists and the KPL in South Korea. My husband Dustin Chang wrote the Korean text for the poster. It wasn’t as collaborative as I would have liked it to have been because of back and forth communication difficulties with the KPL.  I chose to do a piece about the KPL because they are a prime example of how the World Trade Organisation’s policies are destroying non-corporate farms, particularly in non-western countries. Forcing South Korea to import rice and beef they don’t need (they used to produce more than enough for their own country) devalues local crops, the farmers can’t pay their bills and they go bankrupt. Lee Kyung Hae was actually a very innovative farmer- he was able to grow crops on what was considered inhospitable mountainous land. He had an agricultural school at his own farm. He was a pioneer, not just some mad man who killed himself. However, the impression I got from the KPL is that while they honoured his sacrifice, they didn’t want to be represented by one person. They are a cohesive movement that is more about the group than specific leaders- which is why I didn’t show Lee on the poster.
The newest poster is about the Co-Madres from El Salvador – the Mothers of the Disappeared and Assassinated. My friend Mara Komaska has been working with the Co-Madres and we collaborated with them on the design and the text. I felt really good to have their approval on every step of the process. When it is printed we will send them a bunch to use for fundraising.  The Co-Madres are still fighting for justice. One of their leaders, Madre Alicia’s 16 year old son was shot leaving their office a day after the peace accords were signed. She and her eldest daughter are still suffering health problems from the rapes and tortures they endured at the hands of the Salvadorian military.  Since the FMLN won the elections recently, there is hope that the Amnesty for war crimes will be lifted, and the new Left-wing government will investigate and prosecute the murder of Archbishop Romero and other victims of the civil war.

Aorta: Why do you think it is important to remember the positive and celebratory moments in our collective history via Celebrate Peoples History?

Nicole Schulman: We have to be reminded that WE are history, that we make history everyday, and it’s not just the people on the top of the pyramid who should be remembered and respected. I think this is a great project to preserve the stories of people underrepresented in history. I think they should be hung on the walls of schools. I think the truth of it is, that if we can preserve our own history, then we can create our own future, and by extension our own just society. I also believe that we have to honor those in the past who sacrificed for us, the future generations they would never meet. That is what a lot of my work is about. I think we have to remember the successes of past social movements in order to keep us from giving up and becoming cynical (or in my case, more cynical). Not to mention these are great stories, great personalities, people who made the world a better place by virtue of them being in it.  And these examples should teach us not to take for granted the people and movements we have around us today.

For more info, visit:
Justseeds: www.justseeds.org

Individual art pages:
Melanie Cervantes: www.DignidadRebelde.com
Nicole Sculman: www.nicoleschulman.com

Melanie Maddison is the amazing talent behind Coloring Outside The Lines zine and a blogger at Remember Who You Are

By Elizabeth Sims

“In regard to…art, the artist is reformist, he is not revolutionary…Because here we discuss the political virtue of art: distraction. Pushed to the extreme, this will create aesthetic quarrels where otherwise the urge to revolution might have been born. Art is the safety valve of our repressive system. As long as it exists, art will be the system’s distracting mask. . . And a system has nothing to fear as long as its reality is masked, as long as its contradictions are hidden. The artist, if he wants to work for another society, must begin by fundamentally contesting art and assuming his total rupture with it. If not, the next revolution will take over his responsibility.”

Written by Daniel Buren in June 1968, in an essay entitled “Is Teaching Art Necessary?” this passage, in fact, brings into question the necessity of art-making in general. Art is, after all, only a context; a context into which anything at all- paintings, urinals, mounds of earth, even dinner parties- can be placed in order to demand a certain kind of attention and analysis. The beauty of this context, “Art,” is that it can illuminate and transform objects in a way that gives them almost magical cultural powers. However, it must not be forgotten that this context is now, at least, also a product and mechanism of Capitalism. Whether corporate, institutional, governmental, academic or private, support for the arts under Capitalism is limited and defined by the imperative to build capital and concentrate power.

With these ends, art as a context often isolates creative activity from the common production of our lives. In order to concentrate its value as capital, collectors and institutions often fetishize art as something above or apart from everyday existence. In this system, art is necessarily removed from its studio, home, or community, in order to enter into an economic system that provides for the sustenance of the artist. Even art which is embedded in a particular site or community can often only do so through the benevolence (and oversight) of wealthy and powerful parties- Rick Lowe’s Project Row Houses, a sustainable community project in Houston’s Northern Ninth Ward, lends progressive prestige to its funders, Chevron, Shell, and Bank of America.

With oversight from ‘partners’ like these, funding for the arts often amounts to a patronizing concession meant to pacify and recuperate dissent; creative energy is supported as long as it is channeled in the proper, harmless ways. Artists receive a little financial security, and Capitalism receives an opportunity to masquerade as radical, while keeping all the radicals busy making art. This dynamic explains the never-ending procession of institutions eager to bestow legitimacy on once-radical practices like ‘Street Art’: it can be argued that Banksy’s rise to art-stardom resulted from his ability to easily commodify a rebellious sensibility inherited (stolen?) from May ’68 graffiti and ethnic-minority urban taggers. In today’s climate, there’s no need for actual political engagement when you can buy a radical poster or a tee shirt.

In short, under Capitalism, creative work either enters into the context of art in order to attain a privileged and exalted position at the cost of its autonomy and authenticity, or forgoes that context to suffer the kind of obscurity and poverty that prevents the artist from receiving the support or recognition that would sustain his or her creative practice.

So, what is to be done?

If this critique is accepted, then it is important to reject any tactics that seek a reform (and therefore a strengthening) of the existing system. It is more important to consider how creative work might be liberated from the current system. It is even possible to consider how creative work might interrupt, subvert or break away from that system. The question is: how? Do we work towards complete negation, or attempt to inhabit the corrupt system by forming interstitial utopias? Are either of these viable programs?

Anarchist discourse is sometimes framed to imply a tactical choice between prefigurative politics and insurrectionary politics. Prefiguration attempts to prefigure alternative social organizations within existing ones, and encourage people to ‘act as though we are already free.’ It is generally perceived as ‘positive’ action, and suggests the dinner parties and communes of Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Suzanne Lacey’s social events designed to forge temporary intimacy between cops and urban youth, old and young women, and other alienated parties. Like Rick Lowe, these artists have appropriated institutional resources to build anti-institutional communities and events.

Insurrectionary action is often understood as ‘negative’ action, assuming that all positive projects are too easily corrupted or recuperated. These negative actions are usually expressed as critique, revolt or rebellion against current conditions, sometimes without a concrete end goal beyond destabilization. An insurrectionary sensibility is reflected in the institutional critique of artists like Andrea Fraser, who literally sold herself to the highest bidder, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles who spent one of her exhibitions on her hands and knees, washing the gallery floor, in order to call attention to its continuing complicity in an invisible social order supported by exploited labor. Beyond even these scathing critiques lies the pure negation of artists like Lee Lozano who determined to absent herself from the art world for a period of time, Keith Arnatt, whose omission pieces include Is It Possible for Me to Do Nothing as My Contribution to This Exhibition, and John Cage, whose 4’ 33” was not a symphony of silence, but a dismantling of the artistic frame to emphasize the audience and the moment.

Work like this deals with absence and withdrawal- from object- and commodity-hood, from the art world, and from performance or “distraction”- and yet it is a powerful source of potentiality. The apparent opposition between negation and prefiguration is, of course, a largely false one- the Occupation itself is a perfect example. Positive, prefigurative projects are built upon the destabilization of oppressive dynamics. Negative, insurrectionary projects create moments of autonomy and radical social transformation.

The real decision is between recuperable acts and resistant ones. Buren’s condemnation of art was written in the moment of the May ‘68 actions, which derived at least some of their inspiration from the Situationists and their exhortations to realize creativity within the practice of everyday life, thereby liberating it from the confines of artistic context. Indeed, a consensus is forming around the necessity of withdrawal from all oppressive contexts, and the propagation of new, libratory ones. The new ‘social practice’ may be the construction of communities that manage resources collectively, free from the institutions of money and property, their creative work becoming indistinguishable from common production, possessed or experienced communally. This work need not be distributed, as it can simply take place, and belong. No museums, no galleries, no collectors, no grants or funding campaigns, no art criticism aside from neighborhood talk, and indeed, actually, no art.

Among our guides are, indeed, the Situationist International, and Tiqqun and the Invisible Committee, a mysterious and amorphous commune that has released anonymous texts incendiary enough to bring upon them charges of “criminal association for the purposes of terrorist activity.” This radical, creative communalism is our task. We must follow Ben Morea of Black Mask, a collective that invited a rowdy public to disrupt elitist art events, when he claims, “we are neither artists or anti-artists. We are creative men [and women]- revolutionaries.

The participants in the Occupations seem to be involved in this practice in the deepest sense- working towards social change ostensibly without leveraging their accomplishments for status, celebrity, or personal exposure. As artists, this might just be the opportunity to relinquish the privileged yet alienated status of cultural producer, and step humbly into a more democratic space in which the construction of the impossible is a task shared by all.

As artists, however, we do possess particular strengths that may be contributed to the Occupations with a DIY ethos; free-skooling and skill-sharing are ways artists can share their specialties with their communities. Having honed a sensitivity to the immersive visual, textual, and musical culture that often reproduces oppressive systems of sexism, racism, class-ism and other social hierarchies in its popular forms, artists may be able to develop this literacy in others. Furthermore, they may able to provide greater access to the cultural domain by sharing technical, technological, and aesthetic knowledge.

Inasmuch as art as a field of production has taken on amorphous and ephemeral proportions, artists may also be equipped to facilitate interdisciplinarianism within the Occupation movements, exercising an imaginative agility in anticipating the potential for synergy within different disciplines- translating, transforming, and transgressing. Fundamentally, this is the radical destiny of the artist- to leave the aesthetic exile of the art world, and nurture innovation in a new un-governed and borderless field.

Elizabeth Sims is an anarchist, artist, and arts educator living in Oakland. She works at the Bound Together Anarchist Bookstore Collective in San Francisco, and the Holdout Anarchist Bookstore in Oakland. She is also an organizer of the Annual Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair. She writes art criticism and radical pedagogy, and makes art in visual and social media. Her work can be found at ElizabethSimsProjects.com.

Artists of the 99% San Francisco

From the Artists of the 99% Manifesto:

We are artists and art workers of the 99%. We are struggling to survive and sustain our creative practice in an economy that does not value us as workers, that privatizes cultural institutions and that continuously defunds art programs—from public education to government grants. We are the workers of the 99% because we are divided by the competitive nature of capitalism. Most of us are in debt from privately owned art institutions which churn out hundreds of professionally trained (but ultimately unprepared for the economic disillusionment of the art world) cultural workers. The same issues of bancrupcy, the average poverty, lack of employment and of government funding affect us. It is time to join hands with working class people everywhere, to BE the movement and to envision a better world for all of us.