XTRA’s Artists and Rights is a conversation series exploring what art can do at the intersection of Los Angeles’s most urgent issues and artistic practice. Each session brings four artists together around a table.
Episode 7:
Becoming Visible, Being a Thorn, and Seeking Justice
with Ahree Lee, Zackary Drucker, Jaklin Romine, and Sandra de la Loza
Moderated by Mario Ontiveros
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In this episode, the artists discuss the ethical pitfalls and radical possibilities of visibility. Sandra de la Loza acknowledges that we are living “in a moment where we’re overly surveilled and overly visible” with A.I., facial recognition software, and the pervasiveness of social media. She reminisces about the magically transformative spaces of the “underground.” She asks a really challenging question: “How do we create structures where we can have more honest, more intimate, more vulnerable conversations?”
On the flip side of “becoming visible,” they also talk about erasure and invisibility. Access is not universal, and even the most ethically-minded efforts can still be exclusionary. For example, to the disabled body: Jaklin Romine reminds us that many progressive institutions and centers often lack awareness that disabled bodies are denied entry to their spaces. She says, “any space that is not physically accessible to the disabled body is not radical.”
This episode was recorded in February 2020, about a month before the COVID-19 pandemic caused L.A. to shut down and before the mass uprisings in the name of racial justice and against police brutality.
Learn more about the artists:
Ahree Lee, Zackary Drucker, Jaklin Romine, and Sandra de la Loza
Keywords:
Community, agency, solidarity, accountability, critical, visibility, technology, surveillance, protest, performativity, vision, future, visionary, access, power, weaving, truth
Reference Links:
Artsy covers the conversation about accessibility in art world.
Girls Who Code offers free computer science programs for teenage girls in order to close the gender gap in tech.
The Women’s Center for Creative Work hosts Artist in Residence programming such as Ahree Lee’s exhibition: Pattern : Code.
** Scroll down for full transcript **
Acknowledgements
Executive Producers: Shana Lutker and Mario Ontiveros.
Recorded at Catasonic Studios in Echo Park by Mark Wheaton.
Production and editorial assistance from Sara Ellen Fowler and Theo Greenly.
This series was made possible by generous support from California Arts Council Art and Public Media Grant, the Michael Asher Foundation, and KCET’s Artbound.
Thanks to all who contributed to the development of this series, including Ellen Birrell, Andrea Bowers, Ian Chillag, Neha Choksi, Poppy Coles, Justin Cram, Gilda Davidian, Juan Devis, Sara Ellen Fowler, Harry Gamboa Jr., Theo Greenly, Kara Hart, Carren Jao, Anuradha Vikram, Brica Wilcox, Matty Wilder, and Lindsay Preston Zappas.
Transcript
(Session Recorded on 2/10/2020)
Mario Ontiveros: All right, so welcome everybody. My name is Mario Ontiveros. I’m a curator and an art historian.
Jakin Romine: My name is Jaklin Romine. I’m a visual and performance art protest artist who also makes art books and zines.
Zackary Drucker: I’m Zackary Drucker. I am a human being and an artist and advocate for the trans community. And I’m so happy to be here.
Sandra de la Loza: Good morning, everyone. My name is Sandra de la Loza and I am a multi generational Angeleno. Actually, I don’t know how far back my roots go. I recently learned of an ancestor who’s buried in the San Gabriel Mission. I’m interested in now knowing and learning how far back my roots go. That’ll be my next line of investigation. My work is research-based. So I’m finally turning to myself as subject for research and the word that I’m really connecting with these days is: connecting.
Ahree Lee: I’m a visual artist. My medium is primarily video and new media. Although in the past few years I started introducing weaving into my practice. I found that weaving was the genesis of the first computers. And being a new media artist, I naturally was very intrigued and my current body of work stems from that research.
MO: Well, welcome, everyone. So today we’re meeting to talk about “becoming visible.” And one of the things that as a sort of way to begin is to sort of think about the urgencies and the concerns–what’s most pressing around that topic maybe for you. And that’s why for me, the idea of belonging and solidarity are two important issues around becoming visible that are hard to sustain sometimes in this climate that we live in.
JR: For my reason, or my representation, like being included in this talk and originally being included in the first round of talks was my protest performance art is about Disability Justice, because part of my practice is protesting in front of art spaces and music spaces that are not physically accessible to the disabled body for an entire opening or closing. And so I go to the space without the intention of protesting. I go to an art space because I want to go to support artists that I know or I’m interested in the art that’s there or I had heard about the space from somebody else but without the knowledge that it was inaccessible. And then I physically go to the space and I actively want to participate, but my body is segregated on purpose because the disabled body is an afterthought for the majority of the DIY art community in Los Angeles. So me being visible–me and along with every other disabled body is excluded. I don’t believe intentionally initially, but once I bring it to the awareness of the space, and they recognize the fact that I have been excluded, either they have made choices to continue to to stay there or they have moved to a place that’s accessible. So visibility, for me, is only allowed with physical access. So that’s part of why I’m here and what I talk about.
ZD: Thank you so much for that, Jaklin. I think you know a lot about how visibility is, you know, begins with representation, begins with images and how the kind of dearth of images of people with disabilities and trans people and people of color existing in public life have kind of invisibilized to us and made our need sort of…underground, concealed, the physical needs for us to exist. Invisibilized representation in the trans community I think has really been front and center and the conversation over the past several years because of the emergence of gender diversity on screen and the counter. You know, sorry, I’m a little jumbled. But having trans visibility in the media has also catalyzed a backlash to trans and gender diverse people and trans women of color are being murdered in larger numbers with every passing year. With every kind of cultural gain, there’s unintended counterpoint, there’s an undercurrent that also happens. And I always think that the future is both better and worse, that things move simultaneously in both directions. And without that kind of visibility, will we ever see a trans or non binary person as president or in a prominent public position–after decades of being clandestine and sort of underground, think: creatures of the night–or assimilating into society so effectively that nobody knows about your trans history? I also think about AI facial recognition. And the fact that, you know, at a consumer level one day soon, there might be apps that identify us who we are, where we live to anybody and that, but law enforcement, you know, federal, state, local law enforcement are already using this kind of facial recognition…
JR: Instagram stories. Every Instagram story you use facial recognition on it is recording your face like on the app.
ZD: It’s spooky. I mean, I mean surveillance used to be such a kind of frequently discussed and contested area of life. And now it’s kind of something that we’ve accepted, this constant invasion of our privacy. I think that in Los Angeles, just helicopters overhead and they’re like increasing occurrences of drones. You know, just like flying over your house. Being like: oh, somebody is watching me, or somebody is like seeing me in my bathrobe in my backyard. So visibility is something we all have to reckon with, I think and the ethics of visibility are still being publicly figured out.
SdlL: Yeah, I think visibility is a double edged sword kind of what you refer to, Zackary. I came of age in the 80s and the 90s. And actually it was through underground clubs and underground culture that I was introduced to art and dissident thinking. I agree, like we’re in a moment where we’re overly surveilled and overly visible. And for me being underground and clandestine, like there’s magic there, in those spaces where we’re not surveilling ourselves. I think in those spaces, often we take leaps, we do, we explore the forbidden. There’s intimacy also in not being visible as well. But on the other side, as someone who was born and raised in LA and grew up under the shadow of Hollywood, I definitely grew up being erased. And in my early work, making the invisible visible was very important in my work. And so my work began, my early work began, through actions: making guerrilla historic plaques to make invisible histories visible in public space. And I think part of the intention of that work was to puncture the myths of dominant culture. So I think as tactic, as a strategy, artists making unknown or under recognized narratives visible is a way of de-normalizing what has been normalized
AL: That really resonates with me and the work that I’ve been doing recently. I mentioned before that my recent body of work looks at the history of technology and how the contemporary, modern computer comes out of the technology that came from the weaving loom. That Jakarta weaving loom uses punch cards, and the people who designed the first computers look to that technology to run the first computers. And then the nature of weaving itself is binary–the way computing is binary. Computing uses ones and zeros and weaving uses warp threads and weft threads, each of which is only visible at one time. So looking at the histories of technology actually being derived from something that is often considered to be women’s work and associated with women. And the fact that women were the first computer programmers and they actually were the thought of as when you thought of the computer programmer back in like the 40s, or 50s, or even into the 60s, the common image of a computer programmer was a woman. And it wasn’t until later on that this now dominant stereotype of the computer hacker or tech bro became prevalent. And so like you’re talking about uncovering these invisible histories. In my work, I’m trying to elevate to this history that has been forgotten of women being computer programmers and women being integral to the creation of computer technology. And it was a woman who wrote the very first computer program in the 19th century. Ada Lovelace. Then is also interest, thinking about Sandra, you’re mentioning how invisibility can also be something that can help a community. So thinking about how, now with this dominant image of a male computer programmer, a lot of girls are sort of not necessarily discouraged, but they don’t see themselves as being part of the computer world or a lot of people who didn’t grow up as being encouraged to go into this or feel like that this is their world and they’re entitled to it can feel like this is a venue that they don’t belong in. And, but then to make these sort of safe spaces for people who have not traditionally been in the world of technology, to explore technology and be encouraged in it. With programs like there’s this program called Girls Who Code which is especially geared towards girls and young women of color to to learn technology in a space that’s curated just for them. So they don’t go into a room at like a summer camp where they are the only girl in a group of 30 and feel like whoa, wait, maybe, maybe this is not a career that I want to get into. And so in that way, creating a space that’s away from the dominant space, to to be oneself and be okay being, you know, a girl, or just like a regular human being who happens to be female, but also can can do this activity that maybe hasn’t that the larger the greater society hasn’t seen as being something that belongs to you can be empowering to.
MO: Jaklin, can you talk a little bit more about the protest aspect, how you use protest to start a conversation, over invisibility.
JR: I have been an artist, I’m 34 now, and I’ve been an artist, like, on and off since I think I was like 20 years old for like the past 14 years. I’ve been actively participating in art and I’ve been disabled since I was 21. So up until the age of 21, I was operating my entire life as an able bodied person and didn’t have to think about the things that I think about now. And it took me four or five years to go back to school and start making art again, after my injury. And I wanted to go to art shows and I even had my art exhibited in an art space that I couldn’t get into when I was still an undergrad. And I didn’t understand that it wasn’t as serious as it was. I couldn’t be in the same space where my art was when it was happening–because I just wanted my art to be shown. And I wanted, like whatever career that I could potentially have was more important than like me being able to be there with my art being there. So that was like my first real experience with that. And I didn’t realize that I was othering myself from being able to access art and be able to access my own art in that same context. And I, I just started going to–I had more independence. I didn’t drive yet, but I was physically going out to more spaces. Encountering spaces that I couldn’t get into started happening to me more often because I had been to the museums and to like different blue chip galleries and they’re accessible because they’re commercial public spaces. And then meeting new artists and new artists friends, like there’s more DIY spaces or artists run spaces that are started to open from like, 2014 until now. And I wanted to show up and support my friends or support other artists. And it started happening to me more often than it didn’t happen to me. And this accumulation of being denied access on a constant basis, I couldn’t ignore it anymore. And I couldn’t ignore the fact that it wasn’t just me who was being excluded. It was like every disabled body that exists like in Los Angeles. Right now, the disabled community is like 20% to 30% of the national population. So that’s how many people that these spaces are potentially excluding every time they open their doors to have an opening. And the only way I knew how to make myself visible and to bring awareness to the situation was to take pictures and video and then post it on social media and I chose the medium of taking a picture of myself facing the space with the stairs in front of me. And there’s a video of me in the, from behind where my back is turned to the audience and my face is looking towards the problem that I’m sitting in front of which is a flight of stairs. And you, yeah, I couldn’t get away from the fact that it kept happening to me all the time. And so what I do is I take the picture and I take the videos and I posted on Instagram, and I talk about my experience and most, most of the time the spaces that I’m protesting against, they have very inclusive language. They talk about being able to highlight people of color, women of color people from the LGBTQA+ community and boasting about their progressive and/or alternative mindset but they are constantly forgetting about the disabled body and any space that is not physically accessible to the disabled body is not radical, and it is not doing anything more or less than another space that isn’t including all those other areas.
MO: Sandra, when you talk about invisibility, can you talk a little bit about the shift for you–because your earlier work that you highlighted a moment ago was about the erasure and visibility and even within your own early work with your own family. And then now, the shift turns back to your genealogy and your history. How does that connect to visibility and visibility and access because research based, archive based work, practice…
SdlL: Yeah, I wouldn’t say that my work right now is necessarily turning to my genealogy. It’s just surfacing for me in a very, very powerful, powerful way.
MO: Can I just ask about that surfacing?
SdlL: Yeah, actually, last summer I was an artist in residence at LACE and I was doing research on a project called “To Oblivion, the Speculators Eden”. And that work comes from being at a real crossroads in my practice, as an artist, really, really kind of questioning what it means to be an artist. And what I’m committed to as an artist and not committed to and kind of being more aware that I’m kind of not, not so much committed to a career as an artist, but a life path as an artist. I’m committed to following a critical practice where I can, along with others, collectively find our agency and like really kind of doubting whether operating as an artist was the way. And that kind of surfaced at a point where I was and actually this is a really long story, so I’ll turn it over at a crossroads where my mom was crossing. She was battling with cancer and I had hyper visibility. I had a solo show at LACMA as part of the first Pacific Standard Time. And I was also aware of the massive shifts in infrastructure that was radically transforming the city that I call home that we now call Los Angeles. So gentrification. And seeing processes of gentrification literally displace the communities that I grew up in. And feeling really disempowered and also feeling really vulnerable, really vulnerable with the death of my mother and also economically feeling really vulnerable as being a precarious artist and kind of living from project to project, teaching gig to teaching gig, and, and just really thinking like I need I needed to look at the bigger bigger picture. And where do I find my power and so that led me to work with others and to join anti-gentrification community responses in the neighborhood I still live in, Highland Park, to close the loop. Anyway, that led to this investigation of transportation how the construction of transportation shapes the city. And also usually when transportation infrastructures build pretty much demographically, radical demographic shifts happen. So the show, at least, was about that. Two weeks before the show opened. I received a really interesting email from someone asking me if I was related to Ricardo Zapien de la Loza. And this person had paintings of this artist named Carlos Zakian Bella Lhasa, and I searched my memory banks. I remember my father telling me that he had a cousin who was gay (and he said in kind of really homophobic ways) who was an artist. And long story short, I learned that I found this queer ancestor. And, and so literally I found this queer ancestor, month later a cousin visited me and brought me my grandmother’s birth certificate that stated that the cause of her death was an illegal abortion. So it’s been all these weavings into my own research based practice which really is about connecting with this land and uncovering the histories of this land. Like my own personal history has just been surfacing in really interesting ways. So I feel like the ancestors are calling me and I have this opportunity to literally explore my own history. I’ve never really had the time space or also, I don’t know, the call to do that.
ZD: Yeah, I think just to piggyback off of that, the more we know about where we come from, the more secure we are in our present. We’re just surrounded by ancestors names we don’t know, ones who we are, you know, directly connected to and ones who find us. I feel like artists will have an expanded role in the future, especially as we transition out of capitalism. I think that art is the most noble pursuit, and in any kind of human civilization, that art is the creation of magic that is inventing of things that have not existed before, and a way to imagine our reality differently. A way to see outside of the parameters. I think that art in these kind of rarefied spaces that we’ve all circulated in, is this like last holdout, unregulated economy. And as economic structures shift and people move towards cooperative ways of living, as people begin to opt out of a system, it’s clearly failing a lot of people around us — I think it’s impossible to live in Los Angeles and to not be conscious of the rising epidemic of homelessness, and the displacement of people from neighborhoods where they’ve lived for generations — and not see the tangible and visible byproduct of that. I mean, we are in the future, like the future is here. And it’s unevenly distributed, you know, and you look in certain directions to see which fun phenomenons are new and where we’re heading. I think that artists are naturally able to solve problems creatively and to see around those structures and that as our environment also, you know, as we stand on the edge of the mass extinction and life on Earth, and 10 million species will be extinct in the next 10 years. How do we shift our ways of being, our ways of seeing, and our ways of relating to each other in order to adapt? I feel like artists will be on the forefront of that.
AL: This is Ahree. I totally, I’m so, like, in that same headspace of what artists are, what our role is now, as we are the visionaries. I think that we are the ones who hold that standard and provide the vision. There are so many people who are disturbed by these trends, these economic trends, these environmental trends, all these things and want something to… They feel like they need to do something, but it’s hard to find. There’s so many voices, there’s so many things you can attach yourself to so many causes. It’s hard to find just the one thing. And I think as artists, we can use our voices and our vision and provide this imagination, use our imagination to provide this vision of what the future can be like that people can mobilize behind and and hopefully create actual positive change.
MO: How do you think, so what spaces can those change happen, for you as an artist? Like what arenas, what platforms? What environments do you think that you, as an artist, you can intervene in or engage? Like is it beyond the gallery? Is it beyond multiple notions of an art world for you?
AL: That’s such an interesting question. I think we’re all trying to figure that out. Because the art world has been in this transition for a number of years now. And you know, the gallery model isn’t working for so many people. It never has worked for so many people in the first place. Yeah, that’s, that’s a really tough one. I think I’m trying to kind of piece this out myself. Like, like last fall, I was artist in residence at the Women’s Center forCreative Work. And in my artist residency, I created a body of work a body of visual works and weavings and video that were exhibited in the exhibition space there. But I feel like an equal part of that residency was creating these public programs to engage people around some of these core issues that I’m involved in: In teaching people things like, like there’s a design thinking workshop, having an artist’s talk, of course, teaching people weaving, and coding with other collaborators, and kind of introducing these tools of the technology world to a broader audience and getting people involved. That’s part of it. And also, I think, because of this kind of weird intersection of worlds that I’m positioned on, you know, I’m a visual artist, so you know, I’m part of this world. Now, I’m also a weaver. So I, you know, participate in weaving communities and part of this Southern California Handweavers Guild. Handweavers Guild of America. and I know a bunch of people through the textile world which is very active here in Los Angeles. And then also my, my non-art practice, professional background. I came up through graphic design in my career and visual design and user experience design. Most recently, I also teach design thinking workshops and do user research for technology in the public and nonprofit and art sector. And that’s like a whole other world right there. And it’s like, I feel like I’m positioned in this very oddly unique position of being a participant in each of these different spheres, which can all kind of help each other. And I’m hoping this is something I’m trying to do kind of a next wave of my activity, to leverage my connections in each of these distinct communities, to make connections between people and organizations to help bring about some of these changes, and some communities have access to more things than others. Like the technology, we’re all just very rich in tools and capital, and in the art world is very rich in vision and generating like goodwill and excitement about a cause. And you know, the textile world brings other things to the table and I’m interested in figuring out how we can connect these communities to to leverage change that benefits everybody.
JR: I wanted to be here. And I know the only way that this issue could be brought up was if I was here physically again. But it has confused me up until this point, why they have continued to want me to be participant, especially with my vantage point as my directive as an artist because my directive is like consistently trying to talk about physical access. And X-TRA , even though they brought me to the table for the first time, they’ve still had their releases and their launches at inaccessible galleries since I’ve been brought to the table to have this discussion. And I’m confused, I’m not confused, because like, I think that’s just more of what people are doing the same. But my confusion with it is like: Why are you having me here? Why do you want me to be here and you want me to participate? And you’re asking me to say the things that I talk about and that I work about. But then you’re not actually listening to me, because you still had your releases for your magazine in inaccessible galleries. So I mean, that’s just my question back to this conversation: If you want me to be here, if we want anybody to be here, to disseminate their information, and you want to believe we want to believe that we’re being heard, how can that be possible if the institutions that are saying that they are progressively thinking about these things in this way, are still excluding the disabled body by opening up their magazine launches at galleries that are still accessible? I mean, you guys don’t know. I mean, it kind of seems like oh, yeah, duh, but I don’t I’m still here asking.
ZD: It’s a fair question. I mean, I think that the institutions that exploit our, our resources, our presence, our intellectual labor, have a necessity to advocate for our needs. It isn’t like, you know, necessarily negotiable. I think in the art world especially there’s this kind of… it seems so predisposed to critical thinking, and so open and porous. And then when it comes down to it, there’s a ruthlessness to the, you know, profit margin. I’m not talking about any organization in particular, I just think that all of our institutions are replicating the systems of capitalism which are still based on profit, which don’t really give, you know, much concern to any, you know, particular human body? Yeah, I mean like it’s like this kind of…
JR: We’re all disposable in some kind of way to capital.
ZD: Yeah.
SdlL: Yeah, no and yeah, in art circuits in our world, there’s a lot of rhetoric that espouses to, to reach, to be grounded in certain ideals. We say we’re doing all these things, but are we really doing it? So I think it’s super important to push back and question that so. So thank you for sharing that.
JR: I don’t mean to be a thorn in people’s sides, but that’s what people see me as sometimes.
AL: I think that’s, I think that’s the role of the artist: to be the thorn in the side is like all the people in power. All the institutions of power. Sure. To remind them of the need to make these changes and hold them accountable.
ZD: And I think to request our participation is also like to not buy our complicity, or to be made apologists for an organization, but to continue to speak truth to power and to exist in your truth in these spaces. And sometimes it’s uncomfortable. You know, I think the digital era has kind of like cloistered people and made them completely buffered from discomfort, right? Like you can say something terrible online and never be responsible. There’s no consequence. You can do it anonymously. But the reality of sitting in a room, of being accountable, for organizations being accountable to us as people with needs that are outside of dominant culture. Yeah, it’s just sometimes uncomfortable.
MO: The writer Sarah Ahmed talks a lot about the feminist killjoy. And she talks about the importance of sort of, in a circle like this or in a room like this, to be able to ask for that accountability and sort of press, like, that sustained commitment, then at some point…
JR: You have to follow through.
MO: Right. Right.
ZD: Yeah.
SdlL: You know, informal/formal discussions, there’s always a performativity you know, involved in, you know, like, how do we move beyond the structures of panels and supposed dialogues? Real honest dialogue, where we’re really kind of off the script, making ourselves vulnerable, taking chances, taking risks, the risks of loss like saying something maybe we don’t have fully thought out. But that’s brewing within us like where real deeper conversation happens. And I think where, like, thinking can really kind of shift and open up, where does that happen? And how do we create structures where we can have more honest, more intimate, more vulnerable conversations? You know, and that’s kind of another one of my like, frustrations with like, art circuits and art worlds. And that, you know, I, in my introduction, I talked a little bit about my discomfort with being an artist. But it’s always been a really uncomfortable kind of label, but I’ve had this kind of like, love/hate relationship with the sphere of art. You know, a lot of the sphere really has been super important as has been an important foundation but there’s also these contradictions also that I’m uneasy with that I’m constantly wrestling with and struggling with within myself and also kind of with within the sphere
AL: I hadn’t heard of that term they could feminist killjoy before, that’s just intriguing to me, because a lot of these things that we have, these issues that are so important to our work and that we want to promote in society and work towards, you know, justice and an end to injustice for it’s kind of a killjoy to talk about them. But they need to be talked about. We need to bring attention to these issues. And one of my big questions now is how do we have these discussions and bring these issues out, without always having to be the killjoy? Without always having to go: Okay, technology. Okay, Google, only 20% of your women in technical positions, or a 20% of your employees in technical positions are women. What are you going to do about it? Now in this kind of preachy, naggy tone. What’s another way that we /you can talk about these things and not push people away or turn people away, just by a negative reaction to the even thought of talking about it.
SdlL: But it’s okay to be preachy. And maybe that’s a great starting point, you know, and it’s like, necessary and essential at some, you know, essential and it’s in that way we open up doors. And of course, we’re not going to stay preachy and naggy because when we have dialogue and discourse, we move and we travel together and we arrive somewhere else. But we have to go through that process of entering difficult spaces and territory.
ZD: You know, think that progress is only possible when… I always give people the benefit of the doubt, and think, like, that we’re all doing our best in every moment. And it’s okay to challenge people and say you can do better, to say, you know, there is this oversight thing that you’ve overlooked and I exist and are part of your community. And then to not be the only person doing, but to have allies. Once you are woke to disability rights, or I think all the time about my friends who are intersex and how often that is left off with LGBTQ acronym and how upsetting it is to them because they’re existing in this space in alliance with their queer community, and to not be recognized. Then you have organizations that are starting to recognize them but haven’t changed the acronym and it’s kind of like, you know, we live in this expansive society where people are more empowered and have more platforms than ever before, to speak truth to power. And as organizations kind of learn to accept, another thing is that the privilege is so invisible to the person experiencing it and people are so threatened–I mean masculinity and whiteness. These things are so, like, fragile and people always get up in arms when you start talking about white privilege as a white person or start, you know, challenging other people’s assumptions that they have challenged themselves. Yeah, I think there’s just like an element of interrogating oneself and really looking carefully at what you can do for people who have less power and the result is that we all live in a better world.