Forty people came to the review for Networks, Tactics, Breakdown. Beth Coleman, Amanda Parkes, Cati Vaucelle, Fender Schrade, and Ute Meta Bauer brought perspectives from various fields - cultural and media theory, industrial design, sound art and engineering - to a debate about how participatory networks online and off can address zones of emergency.
Today, we spent most of the day at 620 Putnam considering how we might bring our research, which has been mostly online, to this physical space. Owned by MIT, 620 Putnam is the site of a paint factory that has been neglected for what looks like years. As we contextualize our research off site without the tools and technologies with which we are familiar, we hope to generate a space for dialogue. Perhaps in this space we can re-examine the concepts of emergency that we have been exploring over the course of the term.
My zone of emergency concerns the genocide happening in Sudan.
“My work and the work of other artists has raised question that I am considering during this process while all the time remembering first and foremost the savage genocide happening in Sudan. I cry into a void when I see the images and hear the voices from the internet of a whole people being wiped off this planet. I know only one thing, I want this to stop.” - Ros Murray
“The Sudanese government and the Janjaweed militias, an Arab supremacist movement, have been carrying out a horrifying campaign of ethnic cleansing against African tribes. Some 2,700 villages have been destroyed, and as a result of the violence and the related starvation and disease, some 250,000 Sudanese have died, most in 2003 and 2004, and another two million have fled to refugee camps. The Bush administration has called these atrocities a genocide.” Andrew S. Natsios, U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan in 2006-7 and Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development in 2001-6
Singing Sorrow
Initially I concentrated on the rape crisis affecting black African women and girls in Sudan. When women taking refuge in camps leave to search for necessary food or water, they run the risk of gang rape and mutilation by the Janjaweed. Amnesty International says rape is used as a weapon of war in Sudan. The Sudanese government denies this is happening or that they are involved. Women who report violent attacks risk consequences in their communities and with the law.
I wanted to sing sorrow for the plight of African women and for the black African community both Christian and Muslim who are being murdered, raped and violently wiped out. I am Irish and we have forms of traditional singing which use a lone voice to access deep feeling. Keening was also a tradition in the past, where women used voice to mourn the dead. I wanted to use my voice to acknowledge what is happening in Sudan and open up a space of awareness, mourning and possibility.
I gathered texts on the internet and many of my articles were by New York Times reporter Nicholas D. Kristof who is a voice crying out to save Sudan. I edited the texts to sing in videos which also incorporated drawing. Although the videos were powerful I felt I was trying to represent a situation I did not have first hand experience of and questioned my right to interpret the experience of Sudanese women in this way. I wanted to use a more unmediated voice.
How do I make a relevant response to the genocide happening in Sudan
Many questions have arisen for me during this process and my work has become an exploration into what it means on a personal and transpersonal level to try to make relevant work relating to a real crisis, a real zone of emergency. We live in an information age and what does that mean for us? Youtube makes it possible to see harrowing reports from Sudan and just google ‘Sudan’ or ‘rape in Sudan’ and be prepared to face the horror of what is happening as we go about our daily business. All over the world horrible things are happening but in Sudan a whole people are being systematically wiped out? In an information age are we implicated, are we responsible? What can we do with all this information?
What are the ethical issues and what does participatory artwork or artistic intervention mean? Is it effective, especially when the stakes are so high? How can I, as an outsider make a contribution to trauma I am not experiencing? Beyond that, how can I, as a concerned human being who is against genocide, make any impact in the face of governments who have chosen to ignore and be ineffective in regard to the genocide happening in Sudan for ten years? In a world where money and oil count more than life, how can my voice take up a part in that or make a difference? Do I know anywhere near enough to understand the problem? Does this matter? Can I do anything from a distance that will make one iota of difference to the people in Sudan, other than email my public representative, send money or pray? How can I use my experience in a relevant way within this work?
What can I ask of others when I am unsure what to ask of myself?
How can I ask others to participate in a situation that I feel confused and impotent in? Is it the role of the artist to patch the willful disregard for humanity shown by our governments and global business? Is highlighting or giving personal response enough or relevant? ‘Songs for Sudan’, the idea of singing sorrow for Sudan has brought up many questions, can sorrow be enough? How can I live with myself as a human being if I say nothing?
In his Zones of Emergency lecture, Ntone Edjabe raises many very pertinent issues about the use of the mysterious, poetic and inarticulate voice, the opening of creative space beyond the oppositions within conflict, the power of the imagination and the pitfalls of visualizing and voicing the invisible and the unheard in a world that concentrates on commodity. So my work and the work of other artists has raised question that I am considering during this process while all the time remembering first and foremost the savage genocide happening in Sudan. I cry into a void when I see the images and hear the voices of a whole people being wiped off this planet. I know only one thing, I want this to stop.
How to _____ is a collaborative project with New Urban Arts, a free interdisciplinary arts studio for Providence high school students and emerging artists. The “how to” video was chosen as a medium because of it’s potential to engage large audiences in art as makers through online participatory networks. The act of making a how to video is a creative act in and of itself and cements one’s knowledge of what it being demonstrated. In the context of a nonprofit arts organization, how to videos reflect the work of the organization to the outside world while strengthening student voices. For this project, six how to videos were made covering a variety of creative practices. They were posted on New Urban Arts youtube channel and posted on New Urban Arts wiki, which was created specifically for this project.
Julia Gualtieri, RISD, MA Art + Design Education, Community Tract
http://www.youtube.com/user/newurbanarts
http://www.nuahowto.wetpaint.com
The MIT Visual Arts Program is hosting a review and party to exhibit the research and art works of the Spring 2008 Zones of Emergency teams from 5 to 9pm at 620 Putnam Ave, Cambridge, the site of the MIT FEMA Trailer. As a symbol of emergency, the site will provide a space for dialogue to examine the scale and complexity of catastrophe scenarios. Projects from two courses (MIT 4.381/4.366 and RISD GRAD-103G-01 Participatory Media: Networks, Tactics, Breakdown taught by Amber Frid-Jimenez and 4.370/4.371: Research as Artistic Practice: The FEMA Trailer Project taught by Ute Meta Bauer and Jae Rhim Lee) examine how critical design practice and technology can generate new paradigms and alternative approaches to zones of emergency and disaster relief.
Today, May 5, 2008, we are hosting a Zones of Emergency film screening, lecture and panel discussion at a the Stata Center (32-155) at MIT starting at 6pm. Amar Kanwar, filmmaker, and Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Professor of Law and Development and Director of the Program on Human Rights and Justice at MIT will speak on the topic of The Human Condition. Amar Kanwar will present “The Little Museum” with reflections on the image that lies between sorrow and resistance. This exploration will include extracts from different film projects such as Shrines 1991-2007, which emerges from labor and indigenous people’s resistance movements, The Torn First Pages, which emerges from the Burmese democracy movement and The Lightening Testimonies, which emerges from the search for language to understand the narratives of sexual violence in areas of conflict. Balakrishnan Rajagopal will talk about ‘normalizing emergency’ in development and human rights terms, drawing on Agamben, but with a specific focus on the condition of Dalits in India.
Can Do is an experiment in gathering a collection of small steps everyone can make to positively change in our environment. It is based in the belief that building a community of people interested in taking some of these small steps can be a powerful motivating tool, and empower us with the knowledge of our collective impact.
The central idea for this project was that small lifestyle changes across many people hold tremendous power to affect my zone of emergency (the worsening environmental situation), and so I designed a web site where I could gather people’s ideas for those types of changes, and then track the aggregate contributions of each member.
More information:
participatorynetworks.katybeck.com
Katy Harris, MFA Graphic Design, Candidate 2009
The elections are in process. For the past decade Zimbabwe has experienced a tumultuous turn of events: politically, socially, economically. On March 6th , 2008 Zimbabwe’s inflation was reported at 100,000 %. The diasporic experience of the crumbling socio-political fabric is the focus of this project. This project attempts to give agency back to the diasporic dialogue through an insurgent online practice or the manifesto as an ‘utterance.’ The method used for this expression is speech, or utterances, that remain anonymous, yet critical….. enough.
Tsitsi Isabel Gora
project process website: www.tsitsi.tumblr.com
audio samples: http://web.mit.edu/gora/www/AUDIO%20SUBMISSIONS/
This Is My Providence is a community-building project that aims to show arts events and programs in Providence to visitors, residents, and future residents from the perspective of grassroots community leaders. The emergency that motivated this project is that of the missed opportunity to interact with what’s best about Providence. The purpose of the project is to highlight vibrant arts culture, debunk myths, and improve understanding of the strong cultural fabric in Providence.
Postcard imagery is generated by local community members who share photographic documents of people participating in favorite events and programs in Providence. The images are then made into postcards that include detailed information about the event and people pictured, so that new people can get involved. These postcards are distributed free of charge in the busiest areas of downtown Providence. A web presence with links will be added.
Lindsay Kinkade, Graphic Design MFA, ‘10
www.lindsaykinkade.com
click on ThisIsMyProvidence
links to cool things in Providence:
http://del.icio.us/thisismyprovidence
This project is an attempt to physically portray the complexity of the issues of sustainability in China — one of the largest growing socio-political entities in the world. While China has encountered rapid social and economic developments in the past few decades, these changes have come at a price. Income disparity has widened while pollution has increased to the level of human health threat. The triple bottom line of sustainability [environment, social equity, and economy] is threatened at many levels becoming a major Zone of Emergency. This project educates the visitors by physically portraying and exposing the complexity of the issue of sustainability through a visual display of network system of relevant actors. The final participatory element of the piece poses a query to the visitors regarding the issue of sustainability in China.
Natsuko Kikutake
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