[-empyre-] week 4: social practice and institutions

Sat May 28 06:43:29 AEST 2016

Hi Babak,
It looks as if the links didn't come through in my initial email. Apologies.

My website is http://www.factmemorytestimony.com/
Site for the Spiritual Technologies Project goes live later this summer,
but here are some rough cuts from the project and a link to the blog (only
a few entries while we were traveling)
https://stprojectblog.wordpress.com/about-2/
https://vimeo.com/154281181
https://vimeo.com/151431530

I'm editing the food project, but here is an example of the stories I've
collected in Mississippi and elsewhere in the Delta.
https://vimeo.com/156642328

- Global campaign around women and girls, science and technology
<http://ignite.globalfundforwomen.org/>
- Media project with girls in Rwanda and Malawi
<http://factmemorytestimony.com/project/nike-foundation-grassroots-girls-initiative/>
- First generation Latina girls discussing sexual and reproductive health
in Salinas (my work for them involved making video journals with the girls
-- these are confidential and not available online)

On Fri, May 27, 2016 at 10:06 PM Babak Fakhamzadeh <
babak.fakhamzadeh at gmail.com> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
> Hi Michaela,
>
> Your projects sound rather fascinating.
> Have you got some links to these actual projects?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Babak Fakhamzadeh
> On May 26, 2016 3:13 AM, "Michaela Leslie-Rule" <
> michaela.leslie.rule at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Thanks so much for the opportunity to participate in this discussion. I
>> look forward to hearing your thoughts on this issue.
>>
>> My professional practice is concerned with using art and participatory
>> media practices to build opportunities that amplify marginalized voices in
>> communities. I often collaborate with philanthropic institutions in this
>> work, either by collecting or synthesizing information gleaned from within
>> communities, or by connecting community members to institutions so that
>> they may better inform programming and policy.
>>
>> My work has primarily been focused outside of the United States (largely
>> in Sub Saharan Africa), but recently I've begun working with communities of
>> children living near Salinas, CA and with a community of elders in the
>> Mississippi Delta. I define my professional work as storytelling that lies
>> at the intersection of research, advocacy and communication. Importantly I
>> don't distinguish between the art I produce as a media maker and the art I
>> produce with communities that use media as one discipline among many
>> others.
>>
>> Right now I'm working on two long term projects that deal with the idea
>> of spiritual technologies in Black American communities in the South and
>> South East United States. One deals with exploring metered hymn singing,
>> its role within the black church (baptist and methodist) as a
>> transformative ritual, and the potential application of this 'spiritual
>> technology' to secular communities working within a social justice or
>> social impact space. The other deals with agricultural knowledge held by
>> elderly black farmers in the Mississippi Delta and ways in which this
>> knowledge can be transmitted to young parents and their children through
>> storytelling.
>>
>> Other past projects have included:
>>
>>
>>
>> As I continue working around and within philanthropic institutions I find
>> myself struggling with questions relating to the ethics of accepting
>> institutional support and a oft heard 'new' equity agenda that includes
>> increased focus/funding of *voice *and diversity, when in most cases
>> institutional wealth is sustained in some manner by social inequality.
>> I'm also interested in how the impacts of social practice projects are
>> measured, when is it important to measure impact or change as a result of
>> social practice art projects and who should do the measuring.
>>
>> I'll leave it at that for now.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 8:11 AM kyle mckinley <bicirider at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>> hello everyone,
>>>
>>> Welcome to the fourth and final week of our May discussion of social
>>> practice. This week’s guests on EMPYRE have been selected to help us think
>>> about the particularly challenging intersections that emerge between
>>> artists, communities, and institutions as Social Practice is increasingly
>>> crystalized as a genre and as a funding model. Those guests are Michaela
>>> Leslie-Rule and Corrina Mehiel.
>>>
>>> I've generally thought that this might serve as an opportunity to
>>> reflect on the challenges that (funding) institutions and socially
>>> practiced artworks present to one another, and, I suppose, the
>>> opportunities...?... Basically I'm thinking about how Dont Rhine’s comments
>>> in week 1 present a critique of the ways in which institutions expropriate
>>> value from the participants of socially practiced art ("participation in
>>> its value form"). To the extent that such institutions are themselves
>>> implicated in processes of displacement and gentrification, and to the
>>> extent to which such institutions are de facto put to service as an
>>> extension of the State, such critiques should serious pause all of us who
>>> imagine art as a force for social transformation. As artists and curators,
>>> what do we do with that going forward? Where you encounter meaningful
>>> strategies for working against these tendencies? Are there other pressing
>>> issues that come up in the interchanges between artists of social practice
>>> and institutions of various sorts?
>>>
>>>
>>> Corrina Mehiel (US) is an artist / art professor, with a background in
>>> community arts education.  An adjunct professor at the Art Academy of
>>> Cincinnati, Mehiel teaches social practice and studio inquiry in the BFA
>>> and MAAE programs.  She holds a BA from The Pennsylvania State University
>>> and an MFA from the University of Cincinnati.   With roots in Seattle,
>>> Washington and Central Pennsylvania, Mehiel identifies as an American more
>>> than from a particular city or state.  She spent the greater part of the
>>> last decade abroad, living in India, Australia and Dubai.  Currently a
>>> studio assistant for the social practice pioneer Mel Chin, Mehiel is a
>>> collaborator for his Fundred Dollar Bill Project which aims to educate
>>> children and families to make a lead safe environment for all.  In addition
>>> to teaching, maintaining a studio practice and collaborating on socially
>>> engaged projects, Mehiel is a graduate student in the Public Policy program
>>> at Portland State University, with research on policy shaping through
>>> artistic and civic engagement.
>>>
>>> Michaela Leslie-Rule (US), MPA, MPH is an artist and social scientist.
>>> As the owner of Fact Memory Testimony <http://factmemorytestimony.com>,
>>> she has been fortunate to collaborate with ITVS’ Women & Girls Lead Global,
>>> Memphis is Music Initiative, Community Foundation for Monterey County, Nike
>>> and Firelight Foundations’ Grassroots Girls Initiative. Embedded in
>>> Leslie-Rule’s approach to advocacy, communication and strategy, is a
>>> commitment to elevating community voices through the use of storytelling.
>>> She is particularly interested in participatory methods for measuring and
>>> documenting social and organizational change, and has designed and
>>> implemented participatory evaluation, strategic planning and documentation
>>> projects on four continents. Leslie-Rule also uses a storytelling approach
>>> to design and produce multimedia advocacy campaigns. As the producer of
>>> Global Fund for Women’s IGNITE: Women Fueling Science and Technology global
>>> campaign and online storytelling project, she curated and oversaw the
>>> creation of five online galleries, designed and implemented a five-city
>>> international girls’ hackathon and oversaw a coordinated advocacy effort
>>> between the Fund and UN Women demanding equal access to and control of
>>> technology for women and girls worldwide.
>>>
>>> Leslie-Rule holds Masters of Public Health and Public Administration
>>> from the University of Washington with a focus on advocacy and multimedia
>>> storytelling in global health. She also earned a BFA from New York
>>> University’s Tisch School of the Arts. You can learn more about
>>> Leslie-Rule’s approach and see samples of her work at
>>> http://www.factmemorytestimony.com/
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> http://www.kylemckinley.com/
>>> http://buildingcollective.org/
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> empyre forum
>>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
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>>
> _______________________________________________
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