Margaret Kearney - How to Hear More - Booklet 1 - SAIC Gradshow2020

1

Introduction

Listening, I believe, is and always has been a critical skill for making change of any sort. As the problems of a profitoriented world are increasingly complex, we must look to those who’ve already lived through their effects to learn about solutions and mitigations. There is so much knowledge in the stories and experiences of communities across the world. In times of crisis we tend to look towards experts to provide solutions. But while innovation and technology are valuable tools, we must also learn from the direct experiences and lived knowledge of those who have already been impacted and have already needed to develop a response. We can collaborate across context in order to hear what those 2

around us have figured out and re-orient towards decolonization. To survive the climate chaos, violent inequity, and daily injustices of the present we must come together. Art and education are vital tools for this listening work, but how can we be art educators in an authentic, ethical, and respectful way?

For this project I talked to 13 people who mix together art and community in some way and I asked them what they think about listening as an aspect of their work.

I investigated the politics, problematics, and potentials of listening as a component of anti-authoritarian community engaged art and I got a deliciously mixed response.

I have been looking to these conversations and processing through creating artwork to answer the following questions: How do artists and cultural workers describe listening as an active practice in their work?

What are some ways that sharing stories can disrupt historical relationships towards power, knowledge, and expertise? What are some shared ethics around holding other people’s stories?

Those who I interviewed might call themselves curators, activists, photographers, teachers, musicians or urban planners, but they share a vision for witnessing and celebrating the experiences of everyday people. Some people I knew beforehand through my own work and others I met for the first time when I interviewed them in the fall and winter of

2019-2020. In addition to the case studies I conducted through interviews, I made a series of drawings in response to what I learned. Drawing helped me see patterns between different interviews and visualize narrative elements of human interactions.

To analyze the interviews as a complete set, I coded the transcripts according to themes that were used to develop a series of posters about the major ideas that the artist/educator/activists talked about including mutual learning, local expertise, self knowledge, and making as listening.

I’ve edited the interviews lightly for length and clarity and offered opportunities for the speakers to alter or approve their transcriptions.

The purpose of this study was to honor the complexity of working with other people. To this end, I have leaned into personal accounts, collective knowledge, and stories. Hearing itself is deeply personal and different people listening to the same accounts may spark different themes and ideas. My own experiences as an artist and educator who works in collaboration with various communities has also naturally influenced the ways that I’ve interpreted interviews, drawn conclusions, and connected themes.

While I have gained a lot from reading theory, text can be privileged above other ways of knowing. I wanted to put in action my hopes of re-imagining this hierarchy, so I aimed to build a collective

knowledge base rather than reinforce singular ideas of where expertise is found.

However, it is important to pause and note those whose writing has helped me develop the ideas and framework for this project, and to acknowledge that this project will ultimately be self-published in written form. I’ve looked to cultural critics, artists and theorists who bridge multiple worlds to help me link together the broad field of community engaged art through common ideas of collective power, a shared politics of social order, and a leaning towards non-expert, interdisciplinary roles (Bishop, 2016; Helguera, 2011; Thompson, 2012).

Critical theory has helped me develop my framework for understanding structural oppression, histories of power, and ongoing systems of colonization (Bishop, 2002; Friere, 1972; Smith, 2002). I have also been inspired by hopes for a different future that yearns for shared humanity, sparks collective power, and creates brave new ways of being rather than relying on obsolete structures (brown, 2017; Friere, 1972; Lorde, 2007; Solnit, 2009). Finally, the orientation towards ethics of practical methodologies has come from my learning on communities of shared accountability, the importance of reflection and intention, the possibility to activate our capacity for care, and the particular role artists have to play (Boggs, 1974; hooks, 2000; Shulman, 2017; Thompson, 2012). Additionally, many of the theorists whose work I’ve referenced 3

here are themselves practitioners who complicate ideas of expertise, engage with community, and work towards a critical context in which academic authority and experiential knowledge are not mutually exclusive. This has helped me articulate my own role as a hybrid academic, educator, and artist. All of this has primed my frame of reference for better understanding the answers I got from my interviews.

As my understanding evolved through the course of this project, power has become a central consideration.

People I spoke to for this project talked about the ways that privilege provides access to official qualifications such as degrees and connections and told how expertise can collapse diverging opinions and stories, excluding the validity of lived experiences. Others explained how hegemonic structures have historically limited our capacity to authentically listen to each other, pointing out that it takes care, intention, and action to truly hear one another. The 13 artists, activists, and cultural workers I spoke with for this project talked about power, some of the ways that people are intervening, and the ethics of talking and making together. Below I’ll dig into my interviews with Salome Chasnoff, William Estrada, Paul Farber, Marc Fischer, Maria Gaspar, Liza Goodell, Aaron Hughes, Damon Locks, Damon Rich, Aram Han Sifuentes, JJ Tiziou, Jennifer Turnbull, and Ron Whyte. With a wide range of roles 4

and approaches, these people all engage in a practice of complicating expertise.

They balance their own achievements and expertise with an intention of engaging in different types of expertise and ways of knowing. A full account of these interviews and brief bios can be found in the second booklet of this set. For now, I’ll move on to discussing the themes and lessons which have emerged.

Authority: What Binds Us

Foundational to my conversation about listening in community contexts became the question of power because power structures have determined whose opinions are respected and whose are ignored or deemed false. Power determines who is compensated for their knowledge, whose voices have been historically heard and whose have been overshadowed. Power determines a story written to paint one person as a hero and another as a victim or a villain, and it can manipulate attempts at liberation to undermine the righteous struggle in order to maintain its own success.

In order to break down those systems of

power, dominance, and control, I aimed to understand these systems, and to witness the ways they function. Some of the ways that power came up in my interviews were through divergent ideas about knowledge and expertise, frustration at being unheard, and outrage at the manipulation of stories for maintaining the status quo.

Expertise might be validated by official qualifications including academic degrees and internships, , publications and certifications, and this is the case for some of the people I interviewed in my study. Often the formal means of acquiring this knowledge such as higher education, advanced degrees, research experiences, and so on correspond to those with economic advantages. Thus, the knowledge of privileged communities is amplified, but what can be said about the knowledge of those who have not had such privilege?

Ron Whyte descried this with his work, explaining: “I think that’s kind of what happens a lot of times when you talk to people and they don’t even ask you directly but they’re talking to you and trying to find out if they should take you seriously or not based on where you went to school or where you’re working right now. And if you don’t check the right boxes they’ll kind of pat you on the head and say like ‘okay, there there, your opinion is cute but it’s not really that important’”. While community based projects and artistic endeavors may 5

up-end this relationship and create different ways of valuing situated knowledge, they often continue to replicate the same structures they claim to want to challenge.

When I asked Aram Han Sifuentes if art could be a way of inverting these structures, she gave me a definitive “no”: “I try in my work to create these participatory projects and stuff but at the end of the day I’m the artist, and I’m the expert, right? [...]

I’m educated in art and have a degree in art and therefore I get to be an artist. And I do these community based participatory projects that other people do but I function very well and get a lot of opportunities in the art world for that very reason”. This points to the structural barriers to re-organizing hierarchies of expertise. Some projects may aim to imagine new structures, destabilize old ones, or work within the current parameters engage with participants in thoughtful ways.

6

While expertise has been used to silence divergent narratives, it has also become a tool of controlling, assimilating, and exploiting the wisdom carried by marginalized communities. Too often communities are surveyed and surveilled supposedly for their own benefit but in such a way that actually serves to reassert control of those communities, turn their situated knowledge into something that hegemonic forces may universalize and profit from. Jennifer Turnbull described this manipulation well in our conversation: “a lot of white culture seems to get to decide what is valuable and what is turned into capital. I think that people’s lived experiences are super valid and that a lot of the surveys or projects that nonprofits, universities, community development world

or whoever will do decide that they’re going to look into that experience but it really isn’t for anybody’s benefit except for their own. And they end up mining poor people, people of color, and other oppressed groups for their gain and it never goes back to those communities. [...] And to be clear that those researchers couldn’t be doing the work that they’re doing if they didn’t have all of these ‘poor’ or ‘oppressed’ people that hold that information”.

We can see here the dangers of community based research and the potential for experiential knowledge to be commodified and neutralized by institutions. It is important to emphasize that listening is not always a good or helpful thing but creates harm and neglect.

Aram Han Sifuentes talked about the frustration of how this plays out and wears down: “our own stories get so weaponized against us. [...] I’m so fucking exhausted of telling my own story over and over again. So now I just don’t go in certain circles because I’m like ‘ya’ll don’t do anything to support me or make me feel safe, I’m on repeat and this is not good for my anything, and so I’m tired of it’”. While storytelling can be a powerful tool for building resistance (as I’ll detail below), it is not inherently so when done without careful consideration. Telling stories can become a chore, a burden, and a way to control and contain people into one specific aspect of their experience. To avoid this, we must practice listening with

active attention to impact.

The above examples show us that while we might be tempted to connect listening, storytelling, and inquiry as soft, warm, and helpful tactics, they operate within the same sets of privilege, power, and manipulation as the rest of our society.

These may come as intentional moments of control and dominance or may sneak in as ways of replicating social structures we claim to be fighting against. It takes care, thoughtfulness, intention, and humility to truly challenge these systems and listen in a way that creates a new sort of relationship to build.

7

Interventions: Break it Down, Build it Better

Once we know of the injustice of our power systems, it becomes soon evident that those systems must be reimagined, redistributed, and brought down from within. Many of the conversations I had for this project concerned various ways of creating a different way to relate to each other, to see each other better, to respect each other’s struggles, create counternarratives, and a new solidarity.

One way of doing this is simply through sharing our experiences in order to see what we have in common. Once we see what strifes, sorrows, passions, and joys we share we can begin to use our shared intel to move towards justice.

This happens through telling our stories in intentional contexts. Aaron Hughes, speaking of his work, explained this saying: “I don’t think you can just tell somebody they’re impacted by war, I think you have to create space for people to say how they understand the impact. Through that sharing, other people start to hear how they might see that same relationship and therefore build a collective narrative”. This is something that happens in all sorts of 8

communities with all sorts of relationships.

In our conversation, Damon Rich pointed out that “it seems to be that there is no space that has humans that doesn’t have people who have some kind of collective agenda. Even though it might be like a wicked mess of conflict or what have you”.

Talking together we’re able to figure out what shared goals we have, who we need to influence, and how we can align ourselves to build the power needed to make change.

As mentioned above, storytelling doesn’t operate as a tool for changemaking in a vacuum. It must be paired with thoughtful contexts, transparent communication, and an intention to affirm whole people (rather than tokenizing individuals for particular experiences they may have).

Artists working in community have a particular role to play in building these contexts where social norms are more affirming than usual. Defined frameworks for interactions help us to imagine a different way of being, a microcosm of a world where we can better be ourselves, a world where we feel safe, a world where we have the conditions to succeed. This might happen through an artist curating towards a more equitable representation, noticing who shows up and who does not. For instance, JJ Tiziou talked about his photo projects in which he creates situations that depict a wide variety of dancers with an equalizing setting not determined by the person’s individual resources. However, creating the conditions to depict a microcosm of an equitable world doesn’t just happen.

There’s time put into establishing broad outreach networks, but there’s also artist

enforced parameters: “so while every single person who signs up for the project would be perfect for it, I have to put in some sort of triage and curation and individual choice to sort of counteract for the fact that some groups might be overrepresented”.

Another way that this sort of temporary alternate reality happens is through artists creating cushions and barriers to daily distractions. Damon Locks told me about his work with the Black Monument Ensemble and the effort he puts into creating something more joyful, nourishing, and affirming than a standard band, saying “I know what sucks so I’m gonna try to cut out all the sucky parts so that they can just have a good experience”. He does this through managing the logistical details, curating consistency amongst different settings, and never compromising on his commitment to treat the members 9

well. In other circumstances this might mean providing food, compensation, or child care to allow for community participants to be present.

Making art together changes the conversations that we have. Through engaging with our hands, our bodies, our creative selves, and our brave hearts we are able to reach places that we couldn’t through just talking with our words and our brains. We are able to make unexpected connections, to form lasting bonds, to share things that we can’t explain, to practice building a more affirming reality together. Liza Goodell described this of Spiral Q’s work, explaining: “We’re not just dipping in for a conversation or whatever but we’re scribing on the paper and the artists and the people in the room are noticing themes and then they might bring a metaphor into the mix. And to bring in that metaphorical thinking can help lend itself towards artmaking. For most people once that’s turned on, they start to come up with other things to build on it. We’re shifting the way of thinking”. Similarly, Maria Gaspar spoke of her work collaborating with people incarcerated at Cook County Jail as getting a place that you can’t in a regular conversation: “It’s that place in art where you’re like, “this is weird, it’s so good, it’s so rich, there’s something funky happening here and I don’t even know- it’s just crazy good and I want more of that”.

We have to ask ourselves how we can get 10

there because to me, that’s where we start to push against the narratives that we see about incarceration”. Through pushing into the unexpected, reaching towards the ineffable and the poetic, we are able to shift a dialogue to reach beyond our words. Marc Fischer built on this, describing to me connections he and artist peers were making from testimony they attended during the Jason van Dyke trials: “that’s just the kind of observation that we can make that’s probably not gonna show up in the Chicago Sun Times coverage on what happened during the sentencing hearing.”. When artists show up to witness the world around them, they change the conversation and give permission to make ignored connections important.

Though stories are all around us in our news, social media, and cultural understandings, we sometimes forget that

a story is always told from a particular perspective. Like a game of telephone or whisper down the lane, a story told and retold and retold evolves, changes, and perverts itself. The re-teller of a story may have their own conscious or unconscious agenda in the angle of the re-telling, they may adjust the details to paint the picture of reality in various lights. This may be a means of maintaining power for those who have it or it may be an unconscious adjustment due to the lasting legacies of hegemony and internal colonization. This is not to say that we should not share stories, but must be clear on how and why we’re doing so. For instance, my re-telling of the interviews I’ve conducted here is informed by my own perspectives as an artist, academic, and educator. There is, however, a particularly great power in creating the conditions to tell your own story for yourself and to allow others to tell their own truths. William Estrada talked about the ways that his work in neighborhoods across Chicago has created new avenues for people-driven narratives to emerge: “it’s also helped me learn about just the multitude of resources that exist in the city, all the people doing such amazing work.

It’s a reminder of how rich and beautiful these neighborhoods really are and how we forget about that. Because often only the bad stuff gets represented”. This narrative changes when people have the space to share their passions, stories, and 11

common interest, as in Estrada’s projects.

Building on this, my conversation with Aaron Hughes branched into the role artists and educators can play in actively creating the conditions for people to voice their individual experiences separate from the narrative placed on them. He explained: I start to hear people repeat similar things, things that aren’t really based on people’s experiences but are really from the dominant narrative pushed out through popular culture. I think that’s a tricky thing to be able to sit with the dominant narratives and be able to ask questions about them and begin to push back against it in a way that helps people find their own unique expression. Because these dominant narratives are things that we all live with. In some ways we’re all perpetuating different biases and assumptions and also tropes. I think it’s really important to push on that and not allow those things to be perpetuated in a way that feeds into so many different historically oppressive power structures.

Through creating open space for conversation, sharing, and community, artists can create situations for people to determine their own stories and for them to be heard.

In listening to each other, we can create new models for interaction rather than replicating the same structures that have held us back. For instance, we can consider ways that a situation may mutually benefit each other, to be transparent about 12

the power transpiring in each circumstance rather than acting as if it does not exist.

Paul Farber talked about this in his work with Monument Lab, saying “what we have often found is that it’s best to be intentional and you let people know what you’re doing.

And to think of it as a form of exchange, not a one way telling and not one way extracting. There has to be mutuality and then you scale it to what’s possible”.

Alternatively, we can work with a framework of generosity and offering our time, energy, and resources to each other without expecting something in return. Aaron Hughes suggested that the framework of benefit has the risk of treating interactions as transactional. He explained, “I think generosity is really important, and appreciation in regards to listening and creating trust. And I imagine at times there also might be spaces where nobody benefits [...] There’s been times when I am part of the problem and perpetuate the problem and yet people have shared with me. And that generosity is extremely humbling and I often think about whether it’s something I can pass on”.

Through all of these strategies, artists are creating different ways of being that resist authoritarianism and build examples of a new order. They are playing with curated frameworks, testing new ways of thinking and being together, and seeking areas of shared experience to build our shared capacity for humanity and justice.

Ethics: Taking Action with Intention

In taking action on any of the above approaches to confronting injustice, it’s important to consider the ethics of taking action. Artists working in community space encounter a certain degree of privilege in this role, whether they are working within their home communities or coming in as an outsider. The weight of this privilege can cause great harm even with the best of intentions, so it is important that artists have a strong sense of the ethics of their practice and projects to truly attend to their impact.

Different conversations have brought out

different aspects of these ethics that have become important to working with other people in a way that honors rather than exploits a shared humanity.

A key component here is staying accountable to those that you are working with. While you may traverse into and out of a space for certain periods, you should be conscious of what you bring with you and what you do not. You will need to take into account multiple opinions, manage expectations, and deliver on promises.

Relationships are built through a strong demonstration of your integrity and commitment, through showing over and over again that you can be counted on to do what you have said you will. As Damon Rich pointed out, while it’s important to be present and open in community, your actions show how accountable you truly are: “So one of the typical questions would 13

be like ‘maybe I care whether you listen to me but I care much more about what you do about it’”. Working with other people you are responsible for harm you’ve done, including the harm of doing nothing with the opportunity to make great positive change. Salome Chasnoff spoke about the importance of staying true to your word and shared intentions rather than capitalizing on opportunities that may arise: “when you’re making a documentary, when somebody agrees to sit down with you, they’re letting you into their life. And it’s based upon either verbal or tacit contract so unless I have their permission to veer from it, I have to stick to what we agreed on. I can’t come in under the guise of doing one thing and then learn things because they trust me”. To work ethically with other people,

14

you must be accountable to yourself and to each other. Trust is built up through this vulnerability, consistency, recognition, and care.

In order to work well with people in any context, it is important to know yourself well. This means an awareness of the biases, privileges, and blind spots that you bring along as well as the resources, knowledge, and skills that you have to offer. This means considering how you are being impacted or influenced by what is happening around you and adjusting as needed. William Estrada spoke about the importance of self awareness in his work: “A big part of what makes the projects successful is both people making the time to stop and learn and talk but also how I show up there. Like obviously I have to be very aware of my body movement, my expressions, my tone, and I think my background in teaching helps but part of it is that I really enjoy the work. Because you can’t show up in a place and be an asshole and be like ‘well why aren’t people participating?’ [...] I’m very much about the idea that just because you think you’re doing good doesn’t mean that you’re doing good. You have to ask people what good they want to happen instead of you saying ‘well I’m gonna do this because it’s amazing and you should be really happy that I’m here doing this for you’.”

While working with other people is inherently somewhat chaotic and

unpredictable, it is important to take the time to pause for self-reflection. This means leaving space to listen to yourself, honor your own humanity, and act with as much patience for yourself as you show for others. JJ Tiziou pointed out that to get to this place of awareness; it’s important to make space for stillness and reflection.

He explained that taking the time to pause also equips you to show up more fully for others: “When I’m better listening to myself I’m able to better listen to others because I’m giving myself what I need and feel more balanced and settled. So, then I’ll ask better questions or I won’t rush to fill empty space and I’ll let more that needs to be said get said. Whereas when I’m an anxious, frantic mess then I don’t always listen as gracefully as I’d like to”. While the tendency for those working in community may be to lean into giving more and more of themselves, it is critical to pause to see if what you’re giving is good for yourself and for others.

Coming into a situation, you are bound to have some sort of preconceived notions of what may happen, what you may hear or see, who someone is, etc. Salome Chasnoff spoke of her practice making documentary films as “based on listening and discovering the story through where other people lead you rather than coming with a preconceived notion of where you want the story to go”. Here we can see that much is to be learned from entering a

situation with an open heart. It is impossible to be entirely non-judgmental, but it is possible to understand your assumptions and intentionally look beyond them to witness the unexpected.

15

Conclusions

These interviews emphasize the need for context-driven thinking and specificity.

Each of the people I’ve interviewed spoke both about the broader implications of their work and about their approach relative to their particular contexts, demographics, histories, relationships to power and resources, creative roles, and world visions. To this end, I have not attempted to seek out a one-size-fits-all strategy but rather a more complex web of intersecting, overlapping, and contradictory stances towards listening and sharing stories.

That being said, the collective knowledge built through my research does have 16

clear implications for my own practice as a maker and thinker in collaborative and community spaces. These implications are of course also informed by my work as a community engaged artist and educator over the course of the past several years.

What I’ve included here is related to the interviews described above but also filtered through my own lens of experience. I hope the following suggestions will be useful to others seeking to continue learning how to listen together:

In order to dismantle the authoritarian structures that make it hard for us to hear each other, we first need to be aware of them. Attend to your power and privilege, be aware of your biases and potential blind spots. Be conscious of how you organize your projects; be sure to acknowledge the contributions of all participants with fair credit and compensation. Consider the contexts of your own knowledge and the ways your learning has been shaped by those in power. Actively work to uproot your thinking through respecting situated knowledge, lived experiences, and that which resists quantification.

To break down the systems that have held us back, consider solutions-based work that identifies problems and pushes against them. Seek moments of shared experience and struggle to find common goals. Create frameworks that establish equity-oriented norms that challenge the status quo. Use creative approaches to

collaborate, find unexpected connections, and engage with poetic moments. Work towards opportunities for those most impacted by injustice to be the authorities on their own stories. Stay aware of the power dynamics in your relationships, but try to be generous with your time.

While doing this work, set a high standard for your own ethics of engagement. Hold yourself accountable to the communities you work within.

Do what you said you would do and maintain consistency.

Take space to process your own experience, follow your intuition, and care for yourself.

Go in with an awareness of your preconceived notions and a willingness to set them aside in order to witness what you could not have expected.

Show up with a confidence in your own work and a readiness to hear “no thank you”.

My final suggestion is this: lean into specificity, build local relationships intentionally, and never assume you entirely know what you’re doing.

17

References Bishop, A. (2002). Becoming an ally: Breaking the cycle of oppression in people, Second

edition. New York: Zed Books.

Bishop, C. (2006). “The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents.” Art Forum, 44 (6),

178-183.

Boggs, G. L, & Boggs, J. (1974). Revolution and evolution in the twentieth century. New York:

Monthly Review Press. brown, a. m. (2017). Emergent strategy: Shaping change, changing worlds. Chico, CA: AK Press.

Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder.

Helguera, P. (2011). Education for socially engaged art: A materials and techniques hand

book. New York: Jorge Pinto Books. hooks, b. (2000). All about love: New visions. New York: HarperCollins.

Lorde, A. (2007). The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. Sister outsider:

Essays and speeches (pp. 110-114). Crossing Press.

Schulman, S. (2017). Conflict is not abuse: Overstating harm, community responsibility, and

the duty of repair. Vancouver, Canada: Arsenal Pulp Press.

Smith, L. T. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. London,

UK: Zed Books Solnit, R. (2009). A paradise built in hell: The extraordinary communities that arise in disasters.

New York: Viking.

Thompson, N. (2012) Living as form. Living as form: Socially engaged art from 1991-2011.

(pp. 18-33). Creative Time.

18

19

20