Sage Crump

The Battle for Our Imaginations

Racism and white supremacy culture thrives off two legs. It encourages us to be ahistorical - to forget the past, or relegate it to unimportance, save nostalgia. It additionally seeks to truncate our imagination, undermining our ability to vision a different world and align our actions to build the worlds that we vision.

Art activates our historical memory, inspiring us to more than what we currently see and experience. This makes art a justice front. Art is constantly at risk of attack and co-optation. The work of artists of color is consistently devalued, particularly for queer artists and artists working in culturally specific forms. This session features five practitioners ensuring that art is more than window dressing to the movement, and building intentional ways to subvert white supremacist capitalist models of art making. This panel will address:

The history of establishing art institutions as a reflection of the colonial project that sought to control imagination, particularly in regions critical to advancing the colonial project.

Neo-colonial implications of current art institutions and how they are funded via continued extraction and exploitation

Disrupting the notion of value in art, particularly when it comes to culturally specific art forms, and the creation of the folk arts genre as a means to silo culturally specific forms

Arts and culture as a realm of possibility in a moment where our movements urgently need possibility

Models for integrating arts as a justice practice

Complex Movements: connecting social movements, creative expression, and science

An interactive workshop and dialogue about the connections between complex science and social movements, with a particular focus on the application in Detroit-based local community organizing efforts and how these may be applicable to other communities. The presenters will share insights into their collaborative creative project: Complex Movements' Beware of the Dandelions, and how creative and organizing processes can mirrors these ideas through hip-hop and multimedia installation based performance. Community participants are invited to explore how concepts of complex science in nature and technology can be applied to the practice of counteracting systems of oppression and building visionary community-led movements. Participants will be invited to explore how concepts of complex science in the natural world such as bird flocking, ant societies, and emergence theory can be applied to the community practice of counteracting racism, injustice, and all forms of oppression.