Warrior Ethos: Performing political education
Workshop
Sunday, Nov. 10th 2019, 1- 4 p.m.
Institut für Kunst im Kontext
Universität der Künste Berlin
Einsteinufer 43-53, 3. Stock
10587 Berlin
Through the process of a workshop, Music Research Strategies (Marshall Trammell) and Pro Arts Gallery & COMMONS (Natalia Mount) aim to engage artists in a discourse through using resistance, transgression, disruption, and subversion strategies and methodologies, centering on the creation of common language and vocabulary that reflect the ethos of a global movement towards solidarity economy. In this participatory workshop, they use the medium of the collaborative writing process to formulate a manifesto that represents our collective voice and a stand against current oppressive systems and structures in the art world. In collaboration with Project Kalahati (Pro Arts COMMONS) this workshop will be afterwards transcribed in workshop-to-text format, and along with the manifesto, published in 2020.
The discussion will center on questions, such as:
• Is it possible to address and/or expose oppression, exclusion, and injustice in a fixed system, such as our current art market, through the participatory process of writing a manifesto letter?
• Can we re-frame the value of art and cultural labor through the creation of new pathways to sharing material and immaterial resources that support collective production, independent art spaces and artists, practices, and processes that are based on the ideas of resistance and solidarity?
• Are there any current alternatives to organizing in the expanded field of art that work besides, parallel or in direct opposition to the current art market model?
• Can this workshop and the collaborative process of writing a manifesto provide a wider platform for engagement, especially if expanded to include global participants, galvanizing thus a larger movement towards the building of a new, solidarity economy?
• What does the act of drafting a manifesto really mean in more practical terms on both individual and collective level?
The workshop will start at 1 p.m. but we will start gathering with coffee and brunch at 12 noon. Bring food and drinks to share. To register please email to: Kristina Leko and/or Karina Griffith
Natalia Ivanova Mount is a dynamic cultural organizer and sociologist of art with extensive experience in nonprofit leadership, development and strategic partnerships. She has organized numerous exhibitions and site-specific projects, experimental theatre productions, sound-based performance, film, radio, and public programs and events. Originally from Bulgaria, Mount lived in New York, where in the early 2000, she co-founded FLUX Art Space – a pioneering nonprofit organization that commissioned and produced long-term art projects, claiming the intersection of art, technology, and civic engagement. In 2010, Natalia launched the first radio station in Central New York, Redhouse Radio, that aired exclusively arts and culture programs. During that time, she was also the Executive Director of Redhouse Arts Center, a multi-disciplinary space and residency program, located in Syracuse. In the beginning of her career, Natalia worked at MoMA PS1 and the Clocktower, both located in NYC. Currently, she is the Executive Director of Pro Arts Gallery & COMMONS where she is actively engaged in the co-creation of Pro Arts Gallery & COMMONS model in Oakland. Mount is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards in recognition of her contributions to the art and culture field. She holds a BA in Criminal Justice, MA in Art Market, and MBA in Media Management.
http://www.natalias.club
Marshall Trammell is the experimental percussionist and critical ethnographer known as Music Research Strategies (MRS). The identity of this arts engagement platform began as a critical ethnographic framework bridging obsessions with strategic, or compositional, improvising strategies, organizational improvisation and psychology, and street-level, social justice, international organizing. MRS navigates the global economy as a touring musician performing-research and -political education nationally and internationally through a battery of modular, social science-based systems producing several works for fellowships, residencies, festivals, and investigations. MRS organizational strategy mimics scholarship embedded in indigenous technologies in professional development pedagogy (guild) and simultaneous multi-dimensionality (cognitive embodiment/Dr. Anku) to serve as an interlocutor of new language development of Warrior Ethos amongst Warrior Ecologies from the Pacific Northwest, the San Francisco Bay Area, Mexico City, the Southwest, the Midwest, and the Mid-Atlantic. A recent Intercultural Leadership Institute fellowship, residencies with East Side Arts Alliance, Prelinger Library, Off Lomas, Southern Exposure, Museum of Human Achievement, and Charlotte Street Foundation, and future engagements in 2019 and 2020 at Rhizome DC, Western Front (Vancouver, BC) and Rauschenberg (Florida), have yielded a transformation of Trammell’s 30+ year, vernacular practice. Trammell is known for participation in such music project as Black Spirituals (Sige), In Defense of Memory, Mutual Aid Project and collaborations with Saul Williams, David Murray, Dohee Lee, Dylan Carlson, Pauline Oliveros, Raven Chacon, Laura Ortman, Aaron Turner, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Hafez Modirzadeh, Genny Lim and others for 30 years. Trammell is affiliated with East Side Arts Alliance, and a member of Solidarity Research Center.
>https://www.musicresearchstrategies.info/
Pro Arts COMMONS is a multi-use space for the expanded field of art, debate, experimentation, and collaboration. We house exhibitions, symposiums, experimental music and film programs, literary events, reading groups, assemblies and community events, workshops and short-term residencies. We are local commons-centric network of autonomous organizations, collectives and individual artists and commoners. Currently, Pro Arts COMMONS is a home to Pro Arts Gallery, Projects Kalahati, RATSKIN Records, Safer DIY Spaces, Oakland Freedom Jazz Society, CounterFlicks, and Opalescent.
https://proartsgallery.org/
Images:
01. Image from the webseite of Marshall Trammel - MRS
02. Warrior Ethos Workshop at Pro Arts Gallery & COMMONS on September 25th, 2019
03. Marshall Trammel (MRS) during the workshop at Pro Arts Gallery & COMMONS
04. Detail from the workshop at Pro Arts Gallery & COMMONS
05. Pledge Letter draft from Pro Arts Gallery & COMMONS (September 28th, 2019 workshop) collab between MRS (Marshall Trammell) and Pro Arts Gallery & COMMONS (Natalia Mount)
06. Marshall Trammel, an image from Marschalls webseite – MRS
07. Image from the webseite of Marshall Trammel - MRS