Decolonizing the Arts Conference: A Report from Emergence 2016

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Typically, most arts conferences that I attend do not include water-pouring ceremonies, pop-up coloring sessions, or group meditations. Yet not all conferences are created equal, and I recently participated in one that included all of those activities–and then some.

A few weeks ago, I flew from Portland to San Francisco to attend Emergence 2016, the annual convening of Emerging Arts Professionals San Francisco/Bay Area. Like many conferences, Emergence seeks to connect arts and culture workers to one another to share ideas and best practices for our field. Unlike many conferences, however, Emergence is grassroots, experimental, organized predominantly by people of color, and eager to tackle topics like revolution and justice, which were at the center of this year’s theme, “Crafting Equity, Shifting Power.”

As national demographics change and conversations on race, gender, class, ability, language, and more bubble to the surface of the arts sector, equity has become a hot topic for our field. As a person of color and member of Portland Emerging Arts Leaders’ Equity Committee, which seeks to spark dialogue and action surrounding cultural equity in Portland’s arts sector, I was eager to spend quality time at Emergence brainstorming ways to make our arts institutions less “male, pale, and Yale,” in the words of former Brooklyn Museum director Arnold Lehman.

Over the course of one day at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, coffee in hand and notebooks in tow, we asked difficult questions regarding power in the arts. Emergence focused on examining the practices, values, and assumptions that we tend to make within arts organizations. How did our current systems came to be? Who benefits? How can we create change? Breakout sessions like “Unpacking Privilege” and “Diversity is for White People: Arts Equity Conversations We Should Be Having” sparked provocative insights about ourselves and our institutions. Bay-area collectives such United Playaz and the Oakland Creative Neighborhoods Coalition shared on-the-ground creative tactics they are using to dismantle historical inequities. Plus, activities like personal creativity mapping and the Living Altar (“a drop-in space offering facilitated centering practices, one-on-one practitioner support, and healing circles”) challenged traditional models of learning and knowing, illuminating that there are ways of working that most “professional” spaces do not recognize or value.

At the end of the day, all 100+ conference attendees came together for one final large-group workshop, “Crafting Our Cultural Equity Frame,” facilitated by Dia Penning. It was this session that left me with the most revelatory takeaway from Emergence: that simple fact that many arts organizations operate–and indeed benefit—from a legacy of colonialism, Eurocentrism, and white supremacy.

We began the workshop by taking a deep dive into historical texts that justified European colonization of Africa, Asia, and the Americas beginning in the sixteenth century. Conquest, domination, and exploitation were primarily driven by desires to ensure European economic prosperity on a competitive global stage; to realize “the White Man’s Burden” and “civilize” non-white “savages”; and to investigate and exploit cultural “others.” Colonialism allowed European countries to completely reshape global economic relationships, ensure wealth systematically funneled to the colonizers, and ultimately gain world power.

Then, in a moment, that had the weight of a mic drop, Penning asked the toughest question of all: How are these colonialist values mirrored in the workings of your own arts organization?

After a few seconds of silence following this question of tremendous magnitude, we collected our thoughts and began discussing. Looking at the arts through a colonialist lens was a challenging but valuable frame to wield; while the interests of arts organizations seem far-removed from those of colonial empires, it is impossible to deny that colonialist thought has a legacy that still impacts us today. Looking at the origins of museums, their motivation to collect and possess objects to which they assigned value aligns with colonial strategies of resource hoarding and wealth-building. They readily built upon a curiosity that exoticized objects of non-white cultures, removed them from their cultural context, and served as “an edifice for the display and affirmation of bourgeois values” according to sociologist Pierre Bourdieu.Current conflicts around diversity and the clear lack of leadership of color at museums across the country also speak to an type of institution that has historically been white-dominant.

Despite these stark realities, we are not forever stuck in them; at the end of the workshop, Penning asked us to consider how we might change these systems and paradigms. At their most equitable, museums can hold the stories and histories of all peoples, preserving them for the future, and I am happy that there are endless examples of organizations and individuals striving towards that vision. My own institution, the Portland Art Museum, has catalyzed discussions about race, history, and power by increasingly highlighting work from groups who have historically not been represented in the institution, especially Native communities. Blogs like the Incluseum are sharing methods and practices to create diverse pathways for individuals to access and participate in museum life. Groups such as Museum Hueare sparking more conversation than ever before about how to dismantle the walls that have historically left many outside of collecting institutions. Our organizations, assumptions, and values are in a time of transformation.

We ended the workshop with the aforementioned water-pouring ceremony, calling on our ancestors to guide us as we reflected on the day. As the attendees trickled out, my brain was spinning with more questions than answers. The arts sector is astoundingly complex in its systems, history, and worldview, but to look at our field, we can start by looking at our organizations. These are some of the questions that I left with, which I encourage you to ask them of yourself and your organization, too:

  • Who makes decisions?
  • Who decides value?
  • Who has power and why?
  • How might you and your organization perpetuate a legacy of colonialism?
  • What are you and your organization willing to risk to be more equitable?

During my flight back to Portland, I surveyed my notes from the conference, knowing that these are questions that I will continue to explore at the Museum and through my work with the PEAL Equity Committee. Reshaping power and cultivating equity are not easy, and they take time. However, even if they seem like gargantuan tasks, we can begin with small steps. Perhaps suggest that your next staff meeting include a grounding meditation and see what happens from there.

This blog post was originally featured on the Portland Art Museum blog by employee, Candace Kita. EAP is thrilled to share this write-up of Emergence 2016 with our readers!

Reflections from The Living Altar: Liberatory Practice from an Afro-Indigenous Lens

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Rekia Boyd. Sandra Bland. Trayvon Martin. At Emergence 2016 these were but a few of the names lifted up, floating atop a sea of “Ashe’s” in a collective pouring of libations. In the tradition of Black Liberation organizing, I draw upon the practices that have sourced the resilience of my ancestors for generations—altar building, collective chant or song, and pouring water as an offering and reminder of the ongoing life that connects us all. Emergence conference attendees gathered in a large circle, joining me in a calling in of those passed on, those lost to state violence, those whose lives have become the testimony for the work we call “cultural equity” to require at base, a radical shifting of power—and to shift power requires a radical participation from all of us. During the course of the day I hosted a ritual and reflection zone called The Living Altar. The intention was to provide a space where conference attendees could ground in the body and integrate the content they were ingesting in workshops throughout the day. Forming a sacred hoop of candles and cowrie shells, I arranged a colorful altar at the south gate of the medicine wheel adorned with offerings of food, healing herbs, fresh flowers, and items from my own Afro-Indigenous lineage. Attendees entered the circle and became participants in a reverential act of writing letters to the ancestors. They inscribed their messages on the apron hem of a Black Madonna, an in-progress painting of a deified Black Mammy anointed with a halo of sunflowers. Calling in the Egun (origin: Yoruba for ancestors), participants connected to their roots, writing messages that reflected a range of gratitude, grief, confusion, and empowerment. This space transformed attendees into participants. Such is the gift of anchoring in the ritual act of ancestral reverence. It requires us to first examine the soil we are standing on, the inheritance we have been given in this skin, and the privileges and internalized oppressions thus received before attempting to build alternatives.

Skilled organizing, and by extension compelling facilitation challenges us to stretch beyond our comfort zones, confronting our preconceptions of freedom, justice, and yes—equity. How do we create spaces that bring people into authentic connection with one another? How do we provide practical tools that strengthen capacity for these uncomfortable but necessary dialogues? And once we’ve gotten people in the room, how can we keep them invested, engaged enough—across varying life experiences and identities—to move to a place of action that extends beyond the conference, training, or workshop container? These conversations reveal the Anglo-European dominant culture embedded in our work and daily praxis. It is an active choice to moment by moment resist reinforcing these oppressive norms, and conversely embody an alternative.

To truly progress along the trajectory of diversity to cultural competence to liberatory practice, requires a complete transformation in how we do this work. It’s simply not possible to squeeze a new model inside of an old construct, and yet this is often what we do for lack of familiarity with a less-colonized alternative. We insert LGBTQQIA2-S people-of-color into spaces that are still dominated by a prevailing white heteronormative framework, and wonder why these spaces have not shifted overnight to reflect the equitable, social justice experience we imagined they would bring. We offer an arts-based workshop and a “healing” space in an already packed conference agenda and check off the box for including something “holistic” and accessible. If it is truly our goal to employ liberatory practice, and not just an infusion of diversity into spaces maintaining the status quo, we need to completely reimagine what these spaces could become.

Currently, I am codifying an Afro-Indigenous framework for activism and community organizing through a multidisciplinary platform called, #DignityInProcess (learn more at www.ChE-Art.Life ). This response to the Black Lives Matter movement merges art activism, ancestral healing, and intersectional identity exploration within the Queer and Trans,* Afro-Indigenous Diaspora. Bringing together dance, ritual, storytelling, and pop-up installation, #DignityInProcess creates immersive experiences into a decolonized archetype. As #DignityInProcess has already offered workshops, performances, and art actions gathering the stories of Black, Creole, Native American multi-generational voices across the West, East, and Gulf South Coast, some foundational guideposts of an Afro-Indigenous framework for organizing emerge:

  • Non-Vertical Hierarchical Structures: Maintaining the Circle (i.e. Community, Family, The Village) as the central model for all organizing, honoring that every position in the circle has something valuable to offer, and the wisdom of the collective is greater than that of the isolated individual.
  • Ritual and Ancestral Healing as the framing for conversations about race and gender justice. Beginning with the lineages we carry into the room, we create space to honor the gifts and challenges we’ve inherited from our ancestors. Allowing these practices to increase resilience, presence, and capacity for deepened, sustained engagement.
  • Embodiment: Understanding that experiences of both freedom and oppression live in the body. Thus all work regarding healing the impacts of racism and gender oppression require participation of the body. This presumes experiencing the body in a nondual way, where soma and consciousness are not separate.
  • Intersectionality: Understanding the hierarchical nature of power and how belonging to multiple discriminated forms of identity can mean one’s wholeness is compartmentalized, invisibilizing one’s full experience. Instead we hold race and gender identity as interconnected, non-binary elements that are always in relationship with one another.

These are just some of the learnings that have emerged as #DignityInProcess unfolds, continuing to evolve and take shape. The practices I bring into #DignityInProcess have been passed down to me from the African American, Creole, Congolese, West African, Nigerian, Native American elders I have had the honor of sharing family and community with. It is this collective wisdom sharing that continues to strengthen my leadership as a Queer Mixed/ Indigenous/ Black multidisciplinary artist-activist and consultant working at the intersections of race and gender justice. I encourage us to consider centralizing these decolonized alternatives in the spaces we create to uphold cultural equity. To invite in the leadership of these powerful communities is to reimagine how together we can achieve collective liberation.

 

 

Artist’s Note: The Black Mammy Madonna is part of a #DignityInProcess: Black Madonna Series in honor of the #SayHerName campaign. This series celebrates the Black Feminine* as God in her many forms of African American, Afro-Indigenous, Creole, Afro-Latinx, Mixed Race, LGBTQQIA2-S identity. ChE’s intention for these Sacred mixed media paintings is that they eventually find a home on the altars of seven individuals sharing roots with the African Diaspora. If you would like to inquire about commissioning a Black Madonna, please contact ChE directly at che.art.life@gmail.com.

 

About the Author:

ChE (pronoun- they/ them/ their) is a Queer Afro-Indigenous artivist working at the intersections of youth leadership development, consulting in liberatory praxis, and socially engaged artmaking. As a director/ choreographer, ChE’s work is robust with gospel soul sounds and movement of the African Diaspora that leave feet stomping and hands clapping. Currently ChE is developing a framework for Afro-Indigenous activism piloted through #DignityInProcess, a multi-disciplinary platform responding to the Black Lives Matter movement through ancestral healing, art as direct action, and sustainable leadership models within the Diaspora. To follow the process visit www.ChE-Art.Life.

The Results Are In!

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The results are in!

We would like to thank the 88 network members who took the survey and gave us feedback for our upcoming Emergence 2016 convening! See the Summary below. We are currently taking your input and working to deliver the most desirable event. Similarly, if you would like to be involved in the organizing and planning process, there are plenty of ways to plug in. Please email katherin(at)emergingsf.(dot)org to let us know!