As a community-based performance artist, I find the act of sharing the process equally important to the act of sharing the final product.
Here are images from the last week of the #delValleMural unfolding.
Chicago
NOW THIS IS GRASSROOTS!!
The Student’s @DelValle4Mayor video just made it into the Huffington Post!!
Rahm Emanuel Hit On School Policy By High Schoolers For Del Valle
A group of Chicago high school students has decided to take Rahm Emanuel to task for his education policy.
Cristina Henriquez, Gerardo Aguilar, and Alexandra Alvarez appear in a YouTube video, uploaded Sunday, entitled “Invest in Our Public Schools.” The spot attacks Emanuel for his praise of the city’s charter schools, and backs rival candidate Miguel del Valle for supporting neighborhood schools.
“I go to Roger C. Sullivan High School,” says Henriquez. “This is not one of the schools Rahm Emanuel cares about.”
The students, who wrote the script for the video, according to its description on YouTube, also point out what they describe as a factual inaccuracy in Emanuel’s portrayal of the city’s charters. “When you take out North Side, and you take out Walter Payton, the seven best-performing high schools are all charters.”
“Someone didn’t do their homework,” the video says, listing the seven top schools as reported by the Chicago Tribune. None of them is a charter school.
The video says it has no connection to any candidate, and judging by the del Valle camp’s reaction, they seem to be telling the truth. Spokeswoman Joanna Klonsky didn’t know much about the video’s origins, except to say that “we didn’t orchestrate it.”
Watch the students take on Rahm:
Invest in Chicago Public School Students
On January 30, 2011 Chicago Public school students and graduates (from Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood) got together to film a grass-roots/guerilla campaign ad to “tell it like it is,” and support the best candidate to improve our neighborhood public schools.
The footage used is filmed outside of Roger C. Sullivan High School and from WGN’s January 27th mayoral debate. The stars and script writers of this ad are Sullivan HS students (in order of appearance) Cristina Henriquez, Gerardo Aguilar, and Alexandra Alvarez.
On February 22, 2011 vote to improve our neighborhood schools – Miguel del Valle!
http://www.delvalleformayor.com
This ad was not paid for or endorsed by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Labor & love donated.
Source of top seven high schools: Chicago Tribune
Ian Weaver, The Black Knights of the Black Bottom, and Are You My Other?
On the afternoon of November 18, 2010, on the Island of Facebook, history was made…
in response to the Fat Free Elotera post:
Ian Weaver: I take ALL the credit for this (and future) collaborations between these two exceptional artists….! [just needed to make sure I put in that legal boilerplate stuff, just a formality]
Andria Morales: No doubt! We are eternally grateful to the prolific genius of Ian Weaver for the inspired notion of pairing us together.
Maya Escobar: YES!!! So true- we are Are You My Other? because of this Fine Man. We keep trying to figure out just how to pay homage… Latina Black Bottom promo girls? Just saying 🙂
Ian Weaver: By commenting on my post you have in effect given me the legal authority to profit in part from any future performances, lectures, presentations, and sales of related merchandise. I will work out the percentages later with my BB lawyer, but for conversation sake, let’s just say if you perform jointly at, say, the Mattress Factory or the Renaissance Society that I will net 33.33% of profits from said performance.
Again, I will get my BB lawyer to draw up the papers
Andria Morales: Did we just get served??? So much for the We ♥ BB Knights campaign…
Ian Weaver: Nooooo! You haven’t been served! I can’t do that online; you will be formally served in person presently (I think someone is at your door; delivery guy??? Flowers By Irene???)
Maya Escobar: I think a cut of all “BB profits” is totally fair and should be required.. LOL.. “profit” what an interesting concept… “to make money from art”… am I dreaming? But hey Ian if you can work us in to an of the aforementioned “performances, lectures, presentations, and sales of related merchandise” and oh “performances at, say, the Mattress Factory or the Renaissance Society” Are You My Other? would be eternally grateful.
Ian Weaver: Done! I am on the phone with Hamza was we speak. I will work the Pittsburgh angle after the holidays.
And seriously, fantastic work by both of you! I got on the blog; really interesting! I am having Maya present in my spring Research class for artists, and if I had the dough I would fly you out Andria and have you guys co-present. But, that would blow my transfer student’s minds!
Andria Morales: I think Maya and I meeting each other in person would blow OUR minds. Lets start a fundraiser!
Maya Escobar: Wow, wow, wow!!! Is it okay with the two of you if I screen-shot this convo and re-post? Ian, I am going to try to see if there are any opps to lecture in other SAIC departments that week so that we could get funding for Andria to come in.
Andria Morales: Summon your internet powers
Ian Weaver: GO FOR IT! I AM OPEN TO IT!!
Elotes
¿Sabes una cosa? ¡A los Chicagüenses les encanta comer elotes! En el verano, puedes encontrar elotes en muchos vecindarios, especialmente en los parques.
Aquí hay una colección de vídeos donde el tema principal son los elotes. Si tú tienes un vídeo de elotes, por favor compártelo aquí.
Y pronto tendremos recetas saludables e interesantes de elotes en Are You My Other?
Emerging Paradigms in Critical Mixed Race Studies
Come join me at the 1st annual Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference, Emerging Paradigms in Critical Mixed Race Studies, at DePaul University in Chicago, November 5-6, 2010.
The CMRS conference brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines nationwide. Recognizing that the diverse disciplines that have nurtured Mixed Race Studies have reached a watershed moment, the 2010 CMRS conference is devoted to the general theme “Emerging Paradigms in Critical Mixed Race Studies.”
Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) is the transracial, transdisciplinary, and transnational critical analysis of the institutionalization of social, cultural, and political orders based on dominant conceptions of race. CMRS emphasizes the mutability of race and the porosity of racial boundaries in order to critique processes of racialization and social stratification based on race. CMRS addresses local and global systemic injustices rooted in systems of racialization.
I will be presenting at the conference on November 5th in a roundtable discussion moderated by Laura Kina, on the use of arts in challenging racial ideologies. My next post will include more information on the roundtable and on my fellow panelists: Alejandro T. Acierto, Tina Ramirez, and Jonathan Reinert.
Chicago Does Jibaritos a Cyber Banquet in East Rogers Park
This Saturday my friends and I participated in a Cyber Banquet (virtually) hosted by artists Lisa Link and Io Palmer. Here is a re-post of my post on Lisa and Io’s site serve & project, documenting the evenings proceedings.
Cyber Banquet hosted in Chicago at Sandi and Stacey’s apartment.
Follow the Tamalero on Twitter http://twitter.com/tamaletracker.
Caldo de Pollo in the making.
Chicago Does Jibaritos
A New York Bagel
The Pig Roast
I Lost Myself To Good Cooking
Berlin’s Eruv Talk
I will be presenting Berlin’s Eruv at KAM Isaiah Israel, as part of their World Jewry Program, this Sunday, November 8th. The lecture is open to the public.
video still from interview with Moshe Or
In 2008 I traveled to Berlin as part of exchange program with my University. Prior to this visit, I had never been to Germany- nor did I have any particular reservations about going or not going, but it seemed everyone else had their own opinion on the matter.
“Germany, how can you go there as a Jew?” “There are Jews in Germany? I thought they were all dead?” “You are so brave to go to Germany…”
Ultimately people’s projections as to my intentions for going to Germany became the filter through which I experienced Berlin.
While I was in Berlin I conducted interviews with members of the community concerning the highly visible presence of the monuments and memorials commemorating Jewish life (death) have impacted their individual and communal Jewish identities. Other topics included: the notion of German Jews vs Jews living in Germany and how this differs from an American Jewish identity, their status as diaspora Jews and their relationship to Israel, their thoughts on the European Union, anti-semitism and the widespread use of facebook as a mode of connection.
The title of the piece Berlin’s Eruv is a play on the fact that there is not actually an eruv in Berlin. An eruv is a rabbinically sanctioned demarcation of space that transforms public space into private space for the purposes of the Sabbath, allowing Orthodox Jews to carry in public places, a practice which is otherwise prohibited. Modern eruvs are often made of wire strung between utility poles, a gesture towards a “walled courtyard,” indicating an enclosed, private space.
Just as the eruv exists in the minds of the people who abide by it, Berlin’s Eruv manifests itself through the conversations surrounding the idea of the piece. The interviews I conducted in Berlin relied on the presence of institutionalized markers of Jewish identity, to give weight to the idea non-presence of the living Jewish community.
Berlin’s Eruv Talk
11/8/09 @ 10:30 am
KAM Isaiah Israel
1100 E Hyde Park Blvd
Chicago, IL 60615-2810
773-924-1234
Help Republic Windows Workers!
Fredrico Martinez, who joined other workers in a prayer vigil, said he had worked at the factory for nine years.
Republic Windows, a Chicago company since 1965, closed it’s doors on Friday, December 5, leaving 300 workers without a job, and only a 3 day notice. Under the WARN Act this is illegal, and the company must give at least 60 days notice. Workers have occupied the plant and are demanding that if the plant stays closed, they receive the wages, severance, vacation pay due them–totally $1 million.
Here are some things you can do to help:
1. Donate to the strike fund the families of the workers have to eat, pay rent and utilities, while they are occupying the plant. Donations should be sent to UE Local 1110 at 37 S. Ashland Chicago, IL 60607.
2. Bring friends to the plant to show solidarity, workers can get very de-moralized if they feel like people are just going on with their lives while they are putting themselves at such risk, so any small group of people can be very helpful to the morale. We invite you to sign our solidarity posters and visit with workers.
3. Call Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis. Say that you are a concerned member of the community who is disturbed by BoA’s apparent disregard for people’s livelihoods by forcing republic windows to shut down without paying people their vacation and WARN act pay. BoA just got $25 Billion from taxpayers precisely to make credit lines like the Republic Windows line work. Calls help, but so do emails and faxes to the CEO. Jobs with Justice National web site has an action email you can send to BofA.
from the New York Times
Talks Fail to End Sit-In at Closed Factory
CHICAGO — As workers at a window-making plant here prepared to spend a fourth night in the factory they had been told to leave for good, union leaders, bankers and company owners met into the night on Monday but the meetings ended without bringing about an end to the workers’ peaceful but increasingly tense occupation of the plant.
The layoff of 250 workers last week at Republic Windows and Doors on the North Side with only three days’ warning and without pay the workers say is owed to them had, by Monday, drawn the attention of nearly every politician with a connection to this city, numerous union and workers’ rights groups and scores of ordinary people, who arrived at the plant offering families toys, food and money.
Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, who met with the workers Monday morning, said the State of Illinois was suspending its business with the Bank of America, Republic Windows’ lenders, and that the Illinois Department of Labor was poised to file a complaint over the plant closing if need be. Political leaders on the Chicago City Council and in Cook County threatened similar actions. Representative Luis V. Gutierrez said he was encouraging the Department of Labor and the Department of Justice to investigate. “Families are already struggling to keep afloat,” Mr. Blagojevich said.
Workers here say they blame the operators of Republic Windows and Doors, a manufacturing company that was founded in 1965, for giving them just three days’ notice before closing last Friday, with no earlier hints to the employees that orders for vinyl windows and sliding doors had fallen off.
Late Monday, the company released a statement that indicated that it had known since at least mid-October that it intended to close the factory by January. The statement suggested that it had gone back and forth with Bank of America for more than a month, but that the bank had rejected several of its “wind down” plans as well as the company’s request for financing to pay workers’ owed vacation.
The statement also revealed that the family of Richard Gillman, once a minority shareholder who in 2006 and 2007 bought out Republic, last month formed a new window business — Echo Windows LLC. All along, workers here said they feared the owners were shutting down to reopen a cheaper operation somewhere else. A trade publication reported last week that Echo had recently bought a window manufacturing plant in Red Oak, Iowa. No one from Republic could be reached for comment.
“It is looking like reopening is exactly what happened,” said Tara Taffera, the editor and publisher of the publication, Door and Window Manufacturing magazine.
The company’s statement said it had been placed, “in the impossible position of not having the ability to further reduce fixed costs, coupled with severe constrictions in the capital debt markets and an unwillingness of the current debt holder to continue funding the operations.”
The workers here also blamed Bank of America for preventing the owners from paying its workers for already-earned vacation time and severance. Workers here said the owners told them last week that Bank of America had cut off the company’s credit line and would not allow payments.
As part of government bailout efforts for the struggling banking industry, Bank of America has received $15 billion, and is expected to receive an additional $10 billion. That fact left many workers here seething.
“Taxpayers would like to see that bailout money go toward saving jobs, not saving C.E.O.’s,” said Leah Fried, an organizer for the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America. “This is outrageous.” […]
Maya Talk 