X-TRA’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 8:
Committing to Showing Up and Shifting Frameworks
with Zackary Drucker, Ahree Lee, Sandra de la Loza, and Jaklin Romine
Moderated by Mario Ontiveros
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In this episode, the artists continue their conversation about visibility and access. Woven through their talk are issues of vulnerability, generosity, and accountability, as well as intolerance, privilege, and art-washing.
They talk about their paths—to Los Angeles and to their current projects—and how their frameworks have shifted and adapted. One of the roles of the artist, Ahree Lee says, is to counteract the deficiencies in the world around them.
Zackary Drucker says, “We’re really called upon in this moment to create a new structure in which everybody is provided for, and everybody’s needs are provided for.”
The artists debate various tactics to ensure access, activate imagination, and create alternative models for living today. Both Zackary and Ahree ask us to consider, as Ahree says, “how we are all connected, that there is no such thing as an individual good. There is only collectivism.”
This conversation was recorded in February 2020, before the global pandemic and mass uprising in the name of racial justice and against police brutality. It is the last of our series, released on August 25, 2020.
Learn more about the artists:
Zackary Drucker, Ahree Lee, Sandra de la Loza, and Jaklin Romine
Keywords:
accountability, accessibility, art-washing, status quo, privilege, future, public, imagination, dreamers, solidarity, gallery, organizing, activism, generosity, design
Reference Links:
Learn more about the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture and the Creative Strategist Artist in Residence Program.
These galleries are named by Jaklin Romine as some who were targets of her protest work and now have accessible facilities: Gas Gallery, Nicodim Gallery, in lieu, Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, The Pit
**Scroll down for full transcript**
(Clockwise, left-right) Ahree Lee, Mario Ontiveros, Zackary Drucker, Sandra de la Loza, and Jaklin Romine
Acknowledgements
Executive Producers: Shana Lutker and Mario Ontiveros.
Recorded at Catasonic Studios in Echo Park by Mark Wheaton.
Editorial assistance and editing provided by 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 back, everybody. One of the things we talked about was the changing notion of the artist. And during our break, we talked a little bit about the different strategies of producing work that might not be object- based or have any physical manifestation. And Sandra, you talked a little bit about this idea of the embedded artist and issues around positionality. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that.
Sandra de la Loza: Sure. Yeah. So actually, that came up because currently I am an Artist In Residence (AIR) in the LA County Department of Parks and Recreation. So I’m kind of a guinea pig for a new program called the Creative Strategist Program, and it’s funded by the County Supervisors to implement an initiative called Cultural Equity and Inclusion Initiative. And so the whole idea of this program is to embed artists in different county departments. So the county departments were invited to develop a proposal for Artist In Residence, and my department, Parks and Rec., wrote a proposal to invite artists in to create arts and cultural framework for the county parks system. And they want art and culture to be a core program. So when we think of parks like in terms of public offerings, tons and tons of sports programming. But arts and cultural programming, kind of nil, not there. So, I was invited in to research, to get to know the department and then to envision what an arts and cultural framework can look like for the department. So yeah, it’s been a super interesting experience and I never really saw myself as someone embedded in a county institution. But really interesting experience to have this opportunity to possibly impact infrastructure at that scale.
Ahree Lee: Sandra, are you allowed to talk about some of the things you’re envisioning as this artist? I forget what the term used was, creative strategist program.
SdlL: Well, the county parks system is a huge system. It’s, like, a huge department. Actually, LA County Parks I think is the largest landholder in Southern California. So over 108, urban parks, but in terms of facilities like over 200 facilities because it includes botanical gardens, it includes rivers, it includes nature centers. You know, and so one thing that really struck me about the county park system was like the legacies of Neo-liberalist policies, how much of the public sector has just been whittled down. So like, basically like parks and libraries are one of the few public resources that are open and accessible to our public and especially to the poorest communities and most disenfranchised communities in the county. So the framework I am developing is–I think it’s super important to invite in local artists and also to place local cultural practices at the center. So, so definitely artists with the capital A, I’m looking at practices and what offerings like pedagogical projects might be interesting in a park context. But I’m really expanding my idea of what our cultural framework can be and really kind of centering everyday people’s cultural practices and knowledges you know. Weaving knowledge from Guatemala would be amazing programming. So my hope is that the LA DPR really invests in a Cultural Asset Mapping program where they really kind of go out and look at the cultural practices that are in local communities and invite those in and make those front and center of arts and cultural programs.
AL:It seems like there’s so much cultural activity that’s not documented by the powers that be that could be made visible in that process.
SdlL: And supported and highlighted and celebrated. Yeah. So, yeah, so we’ve talked a little bit about art worlds, and maybe this goes to your question of visibility–like whose art is made visible, whose creative practices and creative knowledge is recognized. And who’s isn’t you know, You don’t have to have an MFA to be an artist. I think. One thing that has always struck me about LA is just how creative people are, how creative communities are actually. I was working on a mural with my brother when I was 18 or 19 years old. And it was amazing. Every day we’d have people come by from the community and ask about the mural and then share their artwork. So, everyday people are making artworks. LA has a huge history of, lineages of art and cultural practices that never get recognized and haven’t been documented. So I think it’s a fallacy that visibility is important or is essential. I think things are alive and get passed that down and continue whether they’re recognized or not, and, and definitely in the case of art and cultural production in areas like South Central, and East LA, which I’m most familiar with. But that doesn’t mean that those lineages, those genealogies, don’t deserve to be historicized, supported and recognized.
Zackary Drucker: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s so fascinating that your family has been in Los Angeles for generations because Los Angeles is also, you know, such a city that people adopt and people move to. And it feels like there’s been such an exodus to Los Angeles, especially amongst an art community, from other major cities. And then I travel often. I go to other cities where they’re talking about how Angelenos are moving to Seattle to Portland to Austin, to Tucson. You name it, you know any kind of Western city, Salt Lake City. You know where people are witnessing the ways in which property ownership changes the landscape. And so sometimes some people tell me that they’re moving here, I used to be like: Oh, the more the merrier. And increasingly, I feel speechless in those situations because the homeless population has gotten so enormous in Los Angeles and it’s because of this constant influx of people here and like the traffic is palpably worse than it was 10 years ago. We’re witnessing visually the impact on our city of having, you know, more and more people. Now sad, South Dakota State Legislature today is voting to outlaw, you know, pediatric treatment of gender identity disorder to make it illegal for a doctor to treat a young person with gender identity disorder, punishable by 10 years in prison. And as federal courts have been stacked with conservative justices, living in a state like California, as a trans or non-binary person will become increasingly a matter of survival. You know, depending on what happens with the Supreme Court, it seems as though within our lifetime, it might be difficult for any federal ruling that goes to the Supreme Court that it’s not gonna land in favor of people who live in California, let’s just say. People who are outside of the dominant classes. So, you know, will we see migrations of people based on, you know, their physical safety? Will we see young trans people, you know, from all over the country having to make it to California in order to be who they are? It’s been incredible to live here for 15 years. I feel like it’s very much my adoptive home, and to witness it change and evolve so rapidly. And of course, artists are always more able to see around the corner than other people. I think that we are often visionaries and dreamers. We’re really called upon in this moment, to create a new structure in which everybody is provided for everybody’s needs are provided for. How long have you lived in LA?
SdlL: My whole life. Yeah, I’m born and raised here. My, my mom’s side of the family’s from Boyle Heights and my dad’s family’s from Lincoln Heights, and they’re all originally from Texas. And then from Mexico,
ZD: What changes have you witnessed, Jaklin?
Jaklin Romine: Since I’ve been here, I think my framework is different because I have spent the majority of my life as an able-bodied person and having a forced change. To be a disabled person because of an accident I’ve had to change my framework completely. And visualizing what a city can and cannot do for its people, because as an able-bodied person, you can get around Los Angeles very fluidly for the most part unless you actually need to take public transportation and then you are circumvented with a lot harder ways to be able to get around the city as an able-bodied or disabled person. So, I don’t know, the changes for me have been very different. Seeing things, being able to get to and from, in a safe way on public transportation was my first route of being able to get around Los Angeles in a safe way. And then being able to drive. I was put, I’m a very privileged person who is disabled because I have the opportunity and the access to a vehicle that I can drive. And being able to do that around Los Angeles is just like a normal thing that everybody can do. But having that has made me be a lot more free than I thought I could possibly be. And the changes that I’ve seen take place from before I was disabled until now and landscape of Los Angeles before now. When there’s new gentrified infrastructure, it is required for it to be accessible to the disabled body. But just because it is physically accessible to the disabled body, it does not mean that the surrounding communities that live within this gentrified space can actually afford anything in that institution. So there’s like this weird thing that happens is that when areas are gentrified, they become more physically accessible, but they become financially inaccessible to the neighborhoods that experience them
AL: It’s funny because I come from Philadelphia by way of the San Francisco Bay Area, and Minneapolis and Connecticut. So I feel like I’ve lived in almost every part of the US now except for the South. I’ve been in LA for, I think, about seven years now, I still feel like a newcomer, I still feel like a baby Angeleno. I feel like I’m still getting to know all the different communities within LA. I mean, going back to this thought of visibility and invisibility, though it’s funny because being an American of Asian descent, growing up in like the 70s and 80s, on the East Coast, it’s like I was always the most visible person everywhere I went. And you know, you just grow up being accustomed to the feeling of having everyone look at you when you walk into a room and not because you’re like the most attractive person or something. Just because you stand out the most everywhere you go. And when I moved to California, there’s this huge relief that I sensed because all of a sudden, there are so many more people who either looked like me or more people who looked not like me in many ways different ways, at least in the major cities in California there, there’s not really one dominant ethnic group, or, you know, one group of people who stands out above anyone else. And I could just be myself. I could be Ahree. I didn’t have to be like the Asian person in the room. I didn’t have to be the voice of all Korean Americans. You didn’t have the people saying, oh, and where are you from? Well, I’m from Philly. And not having that be a surprise. So for me, there’s like, it’s this funny, it’s like a combination of visibility and invisibility that moving to California afforded me. So in a way I become less visible as a person representative of my entire ethnic identity, but I become in turn that same ethnic identity is more visible. Within this environment that I inhabit.
MO: How do you think your work intersects with that? Like, how does that like work today? Like, what’s part of the differences do you think, to deal with the sort of fragmented issues around identity and diasporic communities?
AL: I’ve kind of put that one a little bit to the side for now. The project that I did before this current one was in response to: a number of years ago, I was invited by the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco to do an event or create a work in response to something either in their collection or with the institution or the community. They left it very broad, which is very generous of them. And I was not an art major in college. I was actually an English major, but I took a lot of art history courses, but of course in that education, the time that I was in college and the late 80s, early 90s, it was very, very focused on the western canon. And you know, the intro course was history of art from prehistory to the Renaissance and then the Renaissance to the present. And it skips over so many cultures and so many art history is in favor of one story. And I never learned anything about Asian art. And you know, here I am an Asian American and I am being invited to do something with an Asian art museum. And so I had to, I went in and I kind of looked around and I immersed myself in their collection. And the thing that really spoke to me was these objects called bojagi, which are quilt like textiles that are pieced together out of little bits of leftover material from old clothing or other things around the house and they were used for very utilitarian purposes. So they’re used to like bundle up bedding when you’re not using it or like to cover food before it’s time to eat. I learned they’re commonly made by women for use in the household, and given as presents when women…it started when daughters would get married, they’d make a whole bunch of these bojagi, give them to their daughters and their daughters would then take them to their new households. And the way Korean society was set up at that time, women were pretty much based within their own sort of home compound, and very rarely got to leave it. Maybe once a year, they might get to go out on an outing and visit some of their other women friends or their extended families. And these bojagi became this expression–It’s creative expression and an expression of love for their daughters, because they would stitch these messages into them too. There’s like a certain stitch, that means good luck. And another one is like prosperity. And it was really moving for me to learn about this, but like, it’s like my entrée into this, this whole cultural realm of art history and art objects was through something very common and domestic and very something that I, I as a human being could very much relate to. And so that was the beginning point of a body of work about piecing together bits of video that I had access to, an archive of Asian American family home movies in the Bay Area, to create like a video response. It’s kind of like a video bojagi for that community. And I felt like that was a very fruitful and meaningful kind of line of inquiry. And it’s funny because even though it wasn’t an explicit connection at the time, now, in retrospect, I can see how this one connection to the textile aspect of that project was sort of a almost like a connection to this body of work that I’m working now with weavings and how weavings are also associated with the women and done commonly by women. And another activity that is not really valued as much as other activities like the bojagi were not seen as art objects. And yet now they’re collected by, starting to be collected by, museums. And, you know, weaving isn’t, even though it’s a very technical activity and has the same sorts of roots as computer coding and involves many of the same sort of activities in your brain. It’s not valued the same way that that coding is and working in the computer industry is. So there are these these kinds of connections there. But I feel like that’s something that I could return to in the future. Going back to that kind of the identity part of that, that interest that I have in my art practice. I’m kind of seeing where this current line of inquiry goes before kind of circling back to it. Like, I do feel like it all sort of connects in the end. Like we as artists, we follow something that our heart or brains lead us to. And then eventually, if it may not seem like it connects to something that I feel like it eventually all does. So I have faith in that.
MO: Jaklin, can you talk a little bit about the we talked at the beginning, in the first session, you talked about your, the form of protest and about, often, the inability for institutions to change. And then during the break, we talked a little bit about some of those transformations that you were a part of that you instigated, we talked a little bit about that.
JR: Part of what my practice is: going to the gallery and then calling this space out and then tagging them and all the artists who are participating in the show, all the work that I’m talking about lives on Instagram as a call-out post. And then all of the pictures and video are culminated into a video that I then show in art spaces that want to further discussion about art and accessibility. There have been places that have taken the words that I post on Instagram and the different parts of when I’m talking during the videos, they’ve taken it into consideration into recognizing the fact that they are participating, and enable this activity and take it upon themselves to change either their physical space or make parts of their programming in accessible spaces. Gas Gallery is a gallery that is run out of an old UPS truck, and they physically got a ramp that can give the disabled person access to their gallery in their van and they got funding for that through a grant. Nicodim Gallery recently moved, which is crazy, because today is the first day that I’m going to go there. I’m going to go there today and it will be the first time I will ever be able to go there. And it’s for the Rema Hort Foundation benefit, which is going to be tonight. And I was one of the recipients of that award last year. And it was with this work that I won that award and I’m going to be going to the benefit in a gallery that I made accessible since last year, today. Actually, it’s really funny because I hadn’t thought about that. But yeah, so: Nicodim Gallery, in lieu… Los Angeles Contemporary Archives still has their space upstairs, but they made their public programming and talks outside in their courtyard space. And then The Pit, which is in Glendale, they got a ramp. Some of the places that become accessible, they message me or they DM me on Instagram, notifying me of their new accessibility. And I think that it’s great that they’re notifying me but I think that they want me to say thank you. And I’m not going to because I’m not thankful that they’re finally making their space accessible after being inaccessible for five years. I don’t feel like I need to thank them, I just tell them, I tell them, thank you for doing the thing that they should have done originally, instead of thanking them for making the action that should have already been made, that would have not been made, if my call out hadn’t brought to their attention. There has been change through the work that I’m making. I think that most people think that it’s just for me, because I’m the one that’s out there calling people out. But it’s, it’s not just for me.
AL: It’s not just for you. Yeah, like in my other work, when I teach design thinking workshops we focus on, like, the first part of that process is understanding who it is you’re designing for, and you interview people to understand their needs. But then you also interview people who are on the extremes of that spectrum of behavior that you’re investigating. And so there are a lot of examples of things that were designed around some with extreme needs that benefit everybody else who exists somewhere else along that spectrum. And like one of the examples that I cite is the curb cut. A curb cut, for those who don’t know is that dip in the corner of the sidewalk, where when you cross the street, you can roll something down to the street level and roll it back up to the sidewalk level on the other side. And those are mandated because of wheelchair access. But you know, anyone who’s, like, pushed a stroller benefits from those curb cuts. Anyone who has a bike and just needs to walk it across the street and benefits from those curb cuts. Anyone you know, people who are maybe older and can’t, like, walk as you know, lift their feet up as much. They benefit from those curb cuts too so many people benefit from the activities of people who live on the extremes and experienced that on a much more acute level. So we all benefit from your efforts.
JR: And I don’t mean to be crude or grim. But every able body is only a temporarily-able body. Everybody can become disabled. You don’t have to be in a horrific accident you or like contract some horrible disease.
MO: How do you sustain not just your practice, but also the visibility and issues around access for the communities that you engage in? What do you need for that?
ZD: I mean, I think the only thing that is sustainable about being alive is generosity and kindness and to create love between individuals and that no matter how civilization shifts, if that exists, there will always be our saving grace in the most dire conditions of survival. Kindness between people is still possible and it’s still what makes us human. So my own kind of sustainable ethos comes very much from my auntie Kate Bornstein who’s a trans writer/theorists/cultural commentator, and her cardinal rule in life is: you can do whatever you want. You can rob a bank, you can do drugs, you can, you know, anything as long as you’re not mean, and as long as you’re not hurting somebody. It sounds like a low bar, you know, like, just don’t be mean no matter what you do, but it’s astounding how many people are mean, you know. And then it’s actually not a low bar at all, that there’s people being mean, every day, people running this country on Twitter being mean, you know what I mean? Like, it’s pretty egregious. If we can minimize the destruction we cause and the pain that we could potentially inflict on other people and my view, that’s the only sustainable way to be alive.
JR: People think this area of our practice is mean, and that I participate in violent call out culture by calling out spaces that are violently excluding me or segregating me. I don’t know, what do you say about that?
ZD: I don’t think there’s anything mean about it at all. I think that you’re being, you know, really clear and direct and that’s not. I think being mean is like if it involves calling names.
JR: Ablest is a negative thing to be and it is not like a positive thing, but it’s still like a truth. It’s like a truth identifier of the activity that’s participating. But I don’t think that most people, it’s not a word that’s actively used that often and what it is, it’s like, it is like you’re calling somebody a racist, but it’s because you’re putting the ABLE body in as being more important than the disabled body.
ZD: And like ableism exists, racism exists, you can’t talk around those things. You can’t create a new reality, yeah, where Trump is not a racist. It’s not possible, you know, like, so I think, yeah, I think just, you can be respectable and still challenge…
JR: Agree,
ZD: You know, like you can respect everybody and still hold them accountable to the ways that they’re falling short. And I think to do that, you know, without being mean, I mean, it’s, it’s easy, it’s easy for people to be full of ego and to get offended quickly and to just jump to that, but I don’t know, like, I feel like as an artist, I am really discerning with information, and to be able to read between the lines and to be able to really truly understand what somebody is saying you can recognize bullshit so quickly. And sometimes I turn on Fox News. And like, how just the information that’s being given to people is, if you are just reading between the lines, even if you believe that it’s true, there’s still these gaping holes and logic where you just think how is a 49% of our country is not able to think critically about the information they’re given to understand that it’s false. And that it’s not an alternate truth or whatever the hell they call it, like, truth exists. And I hear people being so dismissive about truth sometimes as if, like, it no longer exists, or it is this flexible thing. And I don’t believe that for a second, like not for a second. Really like demanding. And I think a lot of it has to do with how we consume news and how opinion-based news has kind of influenced objectivity. And it’s all led to this like, extremely polarized society. But to actually listen to, like, be able to identify pain and to be able to say, like, it hurts to be excluded, it hurts to be expelled or, you know, disallowed into a space. And to hold space for that if you’re in a place of privilege to recognize, like, I benefit from the status quo, I benefit from the way that civilization is structured. What can I do when I, you know, hear the needs and the demands of people with less privilege than me? What can I do to lift them up? You know, the only way to really truly deconstruct systems of oppression are to uplift the people who are most depressed in your immediate life. We talked before about vulnerability and like to sort of step outside this room, for example, once the microphones are off then it’s just a very different way of composing oneself. But you began Sandra, talking a little bit about the sort of a space in which you actually can be vulnerable and the space that can be where you can be uninhibited, in a sense where you… can you talk a little bit about that. How you can get to that point through art, for example, like I get it within a, sort of, certain environments like a club environment? Absolutely. But I’m trying to figure out how to enact generosity and criticality and understanding that the criticality is also connected to generosity and transformation I read that you talked about then reminds me of Sandra, the way you began about the sort of moment of a moment where invisibility is precisely where you can experience something otherwise, different.
SdlL: I guess that kind of goes back to how I came into the realm of art, and it was through underground culture, and those spheres were collective spheres. So pretty much most of my adult life, to grow, I’ve always kind of sought out and have created collectives, collaborative projects, and spheres. So I mean, I think that’s part of my work. And that’s kind of part of my process, like I always have a reading group going on with artists, also lots of non-artists. I’m a part of many different communities that are participating and creating in autonomous schools. I think one of your previous guests, Michelle Dizon (Latipa), created at land’s edge and I was a part of that group. Growing up in working class communities in northeast LA, there weren’t many art institutions. I really had no art education, but it was in youth-run autonomous spaces, that I had access to art. And so we’re kind of creating our own infrastructure through collectives in the 90s and a kind of post-riot landscape. So it’s like those spaces like where we ask questions together, we respond to the questions where we’re grappling with and we kind of co-grow. We share space and also through those projects, lots of people come in and out. And so we’re also kind of, that’s how I was introduced to a lot of different political thoughts, points of views, the ideologies, concerns, and also lots of different creative practices. That’s really kind of how I’ve operated as an artist, a small… just one of many. And in collective spheres,
MO: Each of you have some aspect of organizing as part of your practice, like the weaving. For me, that is your… at that moment where at the beginning, you talked about trying to figure out how that will manifest itself. And for me, that was the key word there was something like a type of organizing that can happen. And then also a different exchange economy that can happen within those circles, whether it’s knowledge or sharing of resources, or encouraging different perspectives through weaving. Organizing seems it’s not a word that a lot of artists tend to use. But or at least the artists that say, the artists that I tend to think about organizing as a central component of their work, to increase visibility, for example, or to sustain their work. It’s through organizing and collaboration that that happens.
ZD: Not to get too into semantics. But I think also, I think that, you know, to be an organizer is a very specific role. I think that everybody can be an activist. And that, you know, as artists, we’re, I think a necessity for survival right now is activism and kind of like, scaring the horses, as it were, being, you know, challenging people in really open ways. And then I think that organizing is a very, to me, it’s a very revered capacity and it’s people who have the unique commitment and dedication to create, to building movements, and I’ve resisted for a long time identifying as an activist because I felt like it was somehow at odds at being an artist like that art was about creating complexity. And the activism was about creating clear and concise points that everybody could identify with. And so I thought of it as like, the language of art it’s really elitist and the language of activism is for the people.
SdlL: For me, artist and organizer kind of went hand in hand because I didn’t have access to infrastructure arts. And so we had to create that infrastructure, to be creative to make. And also to name and develop our own complexity. So yeah, for me, it wasn’t a choice. It kind of went hand in hand.
ZD: Absolutely. I also think that so often, you know, artists who work in their studio alone and maybe they’re organizing materials, but not necessarily organizing bodies organizing social movements.
JR: Yeah, I didn’t want to become an activist, but I am now, I didn’t think that I needed to be. But I had to be for myself and for my community, I am an organizer within my own practice, because I can’t get all my physical work, I can’t make myself. I am an organizer. I’m a studio manager when it comes to making my own physical art. But in order to make my art I had to become an activist.
AL: I think that our circumstances often compel us to do things you wouldn’t have thought of ourselves capable of learning to do before.
SdlL: Yeah.
MO: Right. And I think some of the ideas that have come out of these conversations is that addressing inequities, but also addressing deficits, and that that’s been one key word that has come up as the artists dealing with deficiencies within the world around us and how to imagine worlds otherwise
AL: That’s interesting that word deficit that came up, because I think there’s something I’m trying to do with where my artwork is create, there is definitely a deficit of imagining what everyone can be. We’re talking about visibility of different communities or issues and how and in larger society, there’s a deficit of imagination like imagining what roles people can play, imagining which bodies are allowed to inhabit different spaces, or have the right to access spaces, of course, or things like that. And I feel like one of the roles of artists or at least one that I’m trying to grapple with is creating the positive image to counteract that deficit of an image to create the model or the vision for the world that has the space for all these things are, all these different ways of being, are taken as a given. You don’t have to advocate for any of these things anymore because they exist in the popular imagination.
JR: When I first started doing my project, I was hesitant and I got told by almost all photo faculty at Cal Arts not to make the work about protesting against art spaces. I don’t want to have to continue making the work. I would like my project to be over. But I keep having to make new work because it keeps happening. Like there’s more spaces that I keep finding about that are inaccessible, but I would like to stop it. I would like to be like: Okay, this is, the project’s over, it’s done, but it keeps happening, right? I don’t mean for it to happen and the work is still there. Because the deficit is still there.
ZD: And there is a kind of directness in the art world too where it’s like, it’s, yeah, not a multinational corporation where you’re never gonna talk to somebody. You can actually talk to a gallery owner. Oh, yeah, like we could set an example. Our work could actually set the example for other sectors of society. Yes. And I think that actually like that’s really, our institutions, as a necessity for survival, will have to advocate for all of us. You know, Al Steiner and I this past summer were a part of an action to remove our work from The Shed, which was at Hudson Yards, which is owned by a huge developer who has raised millions of dollars for Trump.
JR: And it wasn’t as physically inaccessible. It was built that way. So there’s their access only to that building.
ZD: Wow.
JR: And there’s another artist, I think their name is Shannon Flanagan and they did a sit in at the The Shed because there was a new brand new building that was made completely stair accessible and they did a sit in with a bunch of disabled artists where they sat in front of the building, like, like I do with my individual protest, but as a group of disabled artists just to sit and say: We would like to be able to come into a weekend…
ZD: Yeah, that’s unacceptable. It’s brand new… you know, it was a it was a small thing that we did like pulling our work out, writing a statement, talking to the press about why, but it’s sort of like, what, you know, we have to do what is in our power and capacity to do and if we’re not, then we are being complicit.
JR: Yes.
ZD: You know, like you can’t know something and not act. Mm hmm. You’re kind of tacit acceptance of injustice or of things not being accessible is an endorsement of it.
JR: Yes.
MO: Issues around awareness, and thinking to accept an invitation into a space without thinking about the politics of that space, without thinking about the larger conditions that allow that space to be there.
ZD: Yeah, I mean Nan Goldin’s activism around the pharmaceutical industry. I mean, look at how that on a national level has impacted all of these lawsuits against major pharmaceutical companies that have, you know, created the opioid epidemic.
JR: I don’t put it against somebody for taking the opportunity to show in an abelist gallery, because I know that they’re still trying to take the opportunity to further their career. But they have to recognize the fact that that’s what they’re participating in. But I think that people will still always choose their career over like, making the conscious choice because the one of the people who was in our first talk that I think that Iranian artist, like she just had a show, an inaccessible gallery and like, we were DMing each other and she was telling me that she was feeling so bad about doing it, but like she wasn’t stopping her from actually doing the show. Even though, like, she was there the conversation at the table, was having that discussion with us and agreeing with me that that is what an artist should do. But they took the opportunity to show in the gallery still. So, I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, I don’t put it against people because, like, they’re gonna, they’re trying to do it to further their career, but they’re still participating in ableist activity, and they’re going to take that opportunity because it’s for them even though they know they’re excluding me. So I don’t know.
SdlL: Art-washing
JR: Art-washing completely. Washes out neighborhoods. It invites people with wealth and affluence or white people to come to that neighborhood. And then the community where the art-washing is happening isn’t actually ever invited back into it. And they don’t feel comfortable either. Because they feel like they’re being ushered within their own community because this new white cube is in that space. So yeah,
AL: I mean, are there models to bring the community to participate? Like is there a “yes and” kind of model like for your friend who participated in that exhibition in the inaccessible gallery? Could she have said: Hey, I would love to participate in this show? Can we make this accessible to everyone? What can we do? Can we rent a ramp? I mean, are there…?
SdlL: Are we creating other models of operating as artists or being artists or how we work as artists, what we make and create and where that work work exists and how it circulates?
AL: I’m fascinated with that. Yeah.
ZD: I think that individual ambition is central to capitalism. I mean, it’s the myth that we’ve all bought into. And it’s very much the defining characteristic of republicanism is like individual ambition. I think that democracy is about the collective good, and then we have to within our own microcosms shift our own values towards the collective good. Because a future in which we continue to privilege individual ambition is one in which there’s a tremendous amount of scarcity and people without access to resources.
AL: I think also, towards that end, we need to show how we are all connected that there is no such thing as an individual good. There is, there’s only collectivism. How you may think of a collective as some sort of anonymous, giant conglomerate, but this collective is made up of all of us. It’s made up of individuals, and what’s good for a collective body of people is good for the individuals within that body of collectivity. I think that’s part of the root of this divisiveness. Some people who may not be on board with all these positions that we’re espousing in our different ways, may think: Oh, well if, if this thing gets promoted and that means there’s less for me that means they’re taking away something from me. When in reality, you know, like the curb cuts, if we give curb cuts, you know, in the name of wheelchair accessibility, in reality, it helps everybody. How do we show everyone that it’s good for all of us?
JR: It’s because it’s if it’s good for all of us, it’s usually more expensive and that’s the part that wants to pay out for it to be good or inaccessible for everybody. Everybody, like, every single one. So it’s mostly because it’s the bottom line, it is somebody’s dollar, somebody has to pay to make it better for everybody to be able to be included. So how do we get people to see that the expenditure is worth it? Because it’s ultimately that’s what it is. It’s like how do you believe? I mean, trying to think outside of capitalism is hard, when, like our government is run on based off of money in that way. And access is definitely expensive.
AL: I mean, one way I think about is just the power of stories and the power of individual stories and knowing people who are within your circle of, you know, acquaintances, and friends who these issues touch and impact deeply. Like, you know, now I know you, Jaklin, and every time I work with a gallery now I’m going to think is Jaklin going to be able to see the show? I better make sure.
JR: That would be nice
ZD: I agree. We can make a commitment on this podcast…
AL: Yeah, and just knowing that there’s a human behind every issue. I mean, there are many humans but even just knowing like, one human, how that is going to affect that one human. How can that help promote that issue and make it more real for other people?
ZD: Thank you so much for this conversation. It’s so illuminating.
MO: Thank you.