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Courtesy the Artists (Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade) The Meeting, 2012 MoMA PS1, October 21, 2012 Courtesy the artists
and Alexandro Segade, presented The Meeting, a performance program in conjunction with the opening of Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960–1980, curated by Kellie Jones at MoMA PS1 in late 2012. The geodesic dome in PS1’s courtyard, where this program was held, was built specifically to host a wide array of programs including performance art, film, dance and other multidisciplinary projects—quite literally works that don’t fit within the museum’s main building. As part of The Meeting, local artists, such as niv Acosta, Adam Pendleton and Xaviera Simmons, among others, were invited to respond to a song from activist and Black Panther leader Elaine Brown’s 1969 agitprop album Seize the Time. The duo behind Courtesy the Artists each performed their own responses, deliberately shifting their roles from organizers to collaborative performers. The curatorial impulse by artists is often inseparable from their visual practices, thus leading to openly subjective approaches toward making meaning. When artists’ practices leak into the shaping of exhibitions, they not only are collaborating and performing with other institutions and artists, but also are inviting viewers to join them in the spread of knowledge.
Volunteer Day at The Platform, 2011 Courtesy Watts House Project, Los Angeles
1. Julie Baumgold, “Black Museums,” New York Magazine, October, 21, 1968, 19 2. Andrea Fraser, “From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique,” Artforum, September 2005, 284. 3. Penschilderingen are pen paintings on prepared canvas or wood panel.