<div dir="ltr">Dear Margaret,<div><br></div><div>Thank you so much for sharing this work! To me both of these projects, though very different, share commonalities in their design. The design of both allows for focused yet multiple expressions that can unfold over time and also take on a life of their own such as with the story Miracle. Here, as I understand it, not only is the video it's own piece, but Helen Hall is able to use it for advocacy and to generate new exchanges between researchers, incarcerated folks, and their families and communities....</div><div><br></div><div>Perhaps for starters I am curious what your creative process is like, and if you ever conceive of yourself as a designer of sorts and yes how you encounter and work through issues of power in your creative process. I'm also wondering how you might link your process to feminist pedagogical processes and research. Do you locate a certain way of working that in itself is resistant to cooptation?<br></div><div><br></div><div>Perhaps most pressingly, I'm curious where you locate the aesthetic in your social practice, and if this is ever in any kind of tension with the political or ethical concerns of the work... This of course could easily dovetail with your initial requests to engage in institutional critique, which I share.</div><div><br></div><div>That's a lot of questions! Please feel free to answer what inspires you the most.</div><div><br></div><div>Kind regards,</div><div class="gmail_extra"><div><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">Margaretha Haughwout<div><a href="http://beforebefore.net" target="_blank">uncli<u>que</u></a>, <a href="mailto:margaretha.anne.haughwout@gmail.com" target="_blank">disconnect</a></div><div><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><span style="font-size:12.8px">One of the most moving outcomes of From the Center, was when one of the participants Helen Hall was able to present her story Miracle to HIV/AIDS researchers at UCSF, and how art can intervene within binary economy of community/experts and center issues of incarceration: </span><a href="https://vimeo.com/26096719" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" style="font-size:12.8px">https://vimeo.com/26096719</a><br>
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I'd love to explore questions of institutional critique and social practice art. What is gained and lost when social practice art is legible as "art" within particular institutions? How is change (structural and individual) occur through aesthetics? How does one teach social practice art, especially when engaged within and with institutional power? I've found myself retiring to read Linda Tuhiwai Smith and Paulo Freire and love to discuss how their concepts of libratory education and knowledge product may shape the discourse on social practice, community collaboration, and advocacy. Also interested to discuss affect such as grief, joy, and pain.<br>
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best,<br>
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Margaret<span><font color="#888888"><br>
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-- <br>
Margaret Rhee, Ph.D.<br>
<br>
Visiting Assistant Professor<br>
Women's and Gender Studies<br>
University of Oregon<br>
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