Critical Tactics Lab | "Art in a Time of Monsters" with Raquel de Anda and Gan Golan

Critical Tactics Lab | "Art in a Time of Monsters" with Raquel de Anda and Gan Golan

Thursday, April 13, 2017
6-8 pm

"The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters."

In a time of mass upheaval, where millions of people are stepping from the sidelines into action, what’s the relationship between urgent mobilizations and long-term organizing? How can art play a critical role in facilitating this connection? Raquel de Anda and Gan Golan will speak about their work on mobilizations such as the Peoples Climate March, as well as other artist-based projects including Project Row Houses, to illuminate key tactics and strategies for strengthening our efforts in the coming years.

Raquel de Anda is an independent curator and cultural producer based in Brooklyn, NY. De Anda began her career as Associate Curator at Galería de la Raza, a contemporary Latino arts organization in San Francisco, CA (2003-2010) and has continued to support the production of socially engaged artwork in both Mexico and the United States. Her work spans a variety of practices, including producing trans-media film-based projects, organizing public interventions and mass mobilizations, and curating exhibitions at museums, galleries and alternative arts spaces across the US. Recent exhibitions include Shattering the Concrete: Artists, Activists and Instigators (Project Row Houses, Houston, TX), The Ripple Effect: Currents of Socially Engaged Art (Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, D.C.), Art in Odd Places intervention festival (NYC), and overseeing creative production for the historic People’s Climate March (NYC), with hundreds of artists and 400,000 people participating. Raquel is a contributor to LatinArt.com and Arts in a Changing America. She is a 2014 member of the Laundromat Project's Artist and Community Council. De Anda's work has been covered in numerous media outlets including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Huffington Post and The Washington Post.

Gan Golan is a New York Times bestselling author and artist. He has spent the last two decades on the front lines of social justice movements throughout the US and abroad, from housing and labor rights, to climate and economic justice. His books include the bestseller Goodnight Bush and the critically-acclaimed graphic novel The Adventures of Unemployed Man. As an artist, he has designed rock music posters for Erykah Badu, Queen Latifah, Willie Nelson, Nick Cave and the Foo Fighters. Gan's work combines grassroots community organizing with high-profile, media-genic public spectacles that shift popular narratives and mobilize communities. Recently, he helped design the largest climate mobilization in history, The People's Climate March. He has personal understanding of the critical important of citizen’s right to film police. In 2003, while attending a peaceful protest in Miami, Florida he was unlawfully arrested, beaten and then forced to stand trial. Upon witnessing video evidence shot by bystanders, the judge dismissed all charges against him. Golan’s work has been featured in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes Magazine, BBC, CNN, MSNBC, The SF Chronicle, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, Salon.com and Wired Magazine.

Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics
20 Cooper Square, 5th Floor Conference Room
New York, NY 10003