Organize Your Own: Exhibit and Event Series Starts January 14

Fifty years ago the members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) made a historic call. SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael wrote “One of the most disturbing things about almost all white supporters of the movement has been that they are afraid to go into their own communities – which is where the racism exists – and work to get rid of it. They want to run from Berkeley to tell us what to do in Mississippi; let them look instead at Berkeley… Let them go to the suburbs and open up freedom schools for whites.”

Organized by Daniel Tucker, “Organize Your Own: The Politics and Poetics of Self-Determination Movements”, is a multi-city exhibition and event series to take place in Philadelphia at Kelly Writers House (January 14 – February 17, 2016) and Chicago at The Averill and Bernard Leviton Gallery (March 3 – April 9, 2016), with events taking place in both cities throughout the exhibitions. Organize Your Own is an exhibition and event series featuring new work by contemporary artists and poets that responds to archival materials related to the history of white people organizing their own working-class white neighborhoods in Philadelphia (the October 4th Organization) and Chicago (the Young Patriots Organization) in keeping with the mandate from the Black Power movement to “organize your own” community against racism.

January 14, 6:00pm at Kelly Writers House (at the University of Pennsylvania 3805 Locust Walk Philadelphia, PA 19104):
 

EXHIBITION OPENING

Featuring newly commissioned artwork by artists from across the country:

Mary Patten (Chicago), Dave Pabellon (Chicago), Dan S Wang (Madison), Rosten Woo (Los Angeles), Robby Herbst (Los Angeles), Matt Neff (Philadelphia), Amber Art & Design (Philadelphia), and Works Progress with Jayanthi Kyle (Minneapolis). With online projects by Irina Contreras (Oakland) and Anne Braden Institute (Louisville).

Newly Commissioned Performances by artists from across the country including Thomas Graves (Austin) and Jennifer Kidwell (ACG '15) (Philadelphia), Frank Sherlock (Philadelphia), Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela (ACG '12, LTA '05)(Philadelphia) and Salem Collo-Julin (Philadelphia).

PERFORMANCES

JENNIFER KIDWELL and THOMAS GRAVES

Jennifer Kidwell and Thomas Graves are presenting the very first workshop presentation of an original performance piece to be built over the coming year. We are beginning with the idea of a visit from an outsider to allow us the opportunity step back and take a fresh look at the structures that we have built, to talk about the unwritten rules and to laugh together about how tragic it is. Imaging an alien interlocutor also provides us the possibility to imagine how things could be otherwise and think about what it means to fit in and what does it mean to stand out.

Jennifer Kidwell is a performing artist. Recent projects: Underground Railroad Game co-created/performed with Scott Sheppard (FringeArts 2015 & 2016, NYC Premiere Ars Nova 2016), Bessie award winning I Understand Everything Better (David Neumann/advanced beginner group), Antigone (The Wilma Theater), I Promised Myself to Live Faster and 99 Break-Ups (Pig Iron Theatre Company), -as the controversial artist Donelle Woolford- Dick’s Last Stand (Whitney Biennial 2014) and Zinnias: the Life of Clementine Hunter (Robert Wilson/Toshi Reagon/Bernice Johnson Reagon). Upcoming: Those With Two Clocks, a drag quartet. She is a proud co-founder of JACK (Brooklyn) and co-artistic director of Philadelphia theater company Lightning Rod Special. For OYO Kidwell will be performing with Thomas Graves.

Thomas Graves is a Co-Producing Artistic Director for Rude Mechs in Austin, TX. As such he has developed, performed in and produced The Method Gun, I've Never Been So Happy, Now Now Oh Now, Stop Hitting Yourself and MatchPlay. Thomas was a co-creator and performer in Dayna Hanson’s The Clay Duke at On The Boards in Seattle and Noorderzon Festival (NL). He also is a dancer and choreographer for the queer performance group Christeene. Thomas holds an MFA in Performance as Public Practice from the University of Texas at Austin. For OYO Graves will be performing with Jennifer Kidwell.

SALEM COLLO-JULIN

What Am I Doing Hanging Round?

A county-western pub in a gritty neighborhood of early 1970s Chicago hosts a songwriting duo struggling with the inherent depression of the political landscape and a recent attack on one of them by a neighbor who wants them to move. This performance, featuring music inspired by the Young Patriots and The Chicago-based Sundowners country-western band, reflects on the continually deteriorating race relations in twenty-first century Chicago.

Salem Collo-Julin is a performer and writer who strives to be a good neighbor and likes talking to everybody. From 20002014, she collaborated with the artists Brett Bloom and Marc Fischer in the group Temporary Services. Some of their accomplishments included creating and running Half Letter Press (a publication imprint), cofounding Mess Hall (an experimental cultural center in Chicago that closed in 2013 after offering completely free programming for ten years), cocreating over eighty publications, collaborating with a variety of people from all walks of life, and realizing projects in public spaces in cities all over the world. Salem is currently bridging her experiences in theater, comedy, and music with her daytoday life as a nonprofit worker and community volunteer to build a series of projects to solve all the world's problems.

MARISSA JOHNSON-VALENZUELA

Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela will read new poetry and prose that explores the concept of organizing one's own when one falls outside of or between traditional identity markers-- and when one wants to imagine the erasure of such borders. Using the last 15 years at the corner of 50th and Catherine in Philadelphia as a starting point, this work remains hopeful about the anti-racist and anti-capitalist spaces and bonds that can be conceived despite their often temporary and inevitably imperfect nature.

Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela’s poetry and prose has been recognized by The Leeway Foundation, Hedgebrook and others, and can be found in print and online. She is a 2015 Lambda Literary Fellow and the editor of their annual anthology for that year, is a member of the Rogue Poetry Workshop, and is the organizer of a quarterly literary salon, still untitled, in West Philadelphia. She is the founder and primary obsessor at Thread Makes Blanket press, which publishes a range of historical and creative work including Dismantle, the VONA/Voices anthology. As part of her teaching at Community College of Philadelphia, Marissa teaches in Philadelphia jails. www.threadmakesblanket.com

FRANK SHERLOCK

Philadelphia's 2014-15 poet laureate Frank Sherlock writes a reclamation of radical Irish solidarity with people of color- a tradition that has suffered erasure from the U.S. assimilation narrative. Black Panther Party support, radical labor organizing, support for Puerto Rican independence and Central American human rights work are woven into a new poem/performance/publication.

Frank Sherlock approaches the work of poet as conduit, and the writing process as collaborations of encounter. He is a founder of PACE (Poet Activist Community Extension), which enacts roving guerilla readings/performances in public space. Poems beyond the page have found their forms in installations/performances/exhibitions, including Refuse/Reuse: Language for the Common Landfill, Kensington Riots Project, Neighbor Ballads, and B.Franklin Basement Tapes. He is a 2013 Pew Fellow in the Arts for Literature, and the 201415 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia.

FUNDING AND VENUES

Major support for Organize Your Own has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, with additional support from collaborating venues including The Averill and Bernard Leviton Gallery at Columbia College Chicago, Kelly Writers House's Brodsky Gallery, Asian Arts Initiative, MCA Chicago and Slought.