The Compass:
EMPATHY
GENERATIVE CRITICALITY
COMMUNITY
INTERSECTIONALITY
The Tenets of CRT:
1. Racism and colonialism are endemic to American life
2. Neutrality, objectivity, color-blindness, meritocracy, and post-racial thinking (AKA liberalism) must be challenged
3. Contextual/historical analysis is necessary
4. Experiential knowledge/stories should be ingrained into discourse and analysis
5. CRT is interdisciplinary (law, politics, economics, art, all bleed into each other)
6. CRT is intersectional (gender, race, sexuality, ability, and class are all connected)
7. Ending racial oppression is a part of the goal in ending all social oppression
Readings to Ground:
Artist References:
Identity & Representation
LaToya Ruby Frazier: Monuments of Solidarity (Exhibition)
Photography, utilizing collaborative storytelling, empathy as a central tool when working with subjects/collaborators, making the violence of racial capitalism visible
Young Joon Kwak: Trans 삼태극 (Sculpture)
Often works depicting bodies, adorning East Asian cultural signifiers, while uplifting trans people, ornamental declarations of resistance
Lyle Ashton Harris: Billie Dreaming in Blue (Photo)
Self-portraiture, personal and the political, examining intersections of ethnicity, gender, and desire -- autofiction, agency in narrative, fluidity & multiplicity, contradictions
De-Colonial Narratives
Yinka Shonibare: Scramble For Africa (Sculpture/Installation)
"The heads of state are characteristically headless--and equally mindless in their hunger for what Belgian King Leopold II called "a slice of this magnificent cake."
Jumana Manna: Foragers (Film)
Policed ecology intersecting with the policed lives of Palestinians under Zionist occupation -- indigeneity, self-determination in the midst of genocide
James Luna: Artifact Piece (Performance/Installation)
Fetishization and objectification of indigenous people/culture/images in institutions, language of anthropology used to bastardize these narratives of domination
Strategies
Theaster Gates: Stony Island Arts Bank
Research-based practice, community organizing, South Side of Chicago, Rebuild Foundation, Dorchester Art + Housing Collaborative, Kenwood Gardens, Frankie Knuckles House Music Celebration
- Arts Bank Cinema, which is a free weekly screening and analytical discussion of films by and about black people
