Power moves swiftly through the vehicle of capital, and cultural production acts as a welcoming, smiling change agent introducing new publics across the globe to its ways through music, films, and other forms of artistic production. A double-edged sword at times as many artists wish to create space for open dialogue and critical mindfulness through the production of their artwork, and yet they ride in as the front line for systems that have a hard time adhering to such strategies, if they are interested at all, often giving up and employing force and strong-armed coercion over facilitation.
If a collection of cultural workers concerned with these issues were to align themselves with the state, knowing full well their meta-role within the apparatus of diplomacy, capital, and power could those workers still create a vital space concerned with thinking critically in regard to said power, autonomy, education, non-hierarchical publics, and global social histories? Well… at least they can try.
In Vancouver, Red76 will mask their efforts to consider these issues through the apparatus, not of art production, but capital itself. To all outward appearances the group will not create an artwork at all but instead a business. This business’s name is Henry, taking its name from the code word for the covert actions of the late 1960’s NYC “analytical street gang” the Up Against the Wall MotherFuckers.
This is (an) a Front: A Covert Education hides behind the mask of a business so that it might open up an area to discuss how we create fluid spaces within the world between us that are concerned with the formation of non-hierarchical publics, collaborative education, communal and individual autonomy, and more. Henry might resemble a thrift store, but aside from a familiar assortment of cast-off items it provides many items free of charge: a space for a series of discussions regarding collaboratively or horizontally imagined educational systems , screenings from the Red76 produced program YouTube School for Social Politics, as well as a continually expanding reading library of handmade books (along with the equipment to produce these titles on site) regarding the interests of Henry and the conversations that evolve within the public which forms around its discourse.
Henry looks like the world around us, and it could be.
Presented in conjunction with the Institutions By Artists conference, October 12 – 14, 2012.
Red76’s initiatives utilize overlooked histories and common shared occurrences as a means of creating a framework in which to construct their public inquiries. Social histories, collaborative research, parallel politics, free media, alternative educational constructs, gatherings, masking, and public dialogue play a continuing and vital role within the methodology and concepts of Red76’s work. Along with producing many independent initiatives on street corners, in laundromats and bars, Red76 have engaged in projects commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, the Drawing Center (New York), the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Printed Matter, Creative Time (New York), the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Gallery at Reed College (Portland, OR), Smart Museum at the University of Chicago, 01 San Jose, SF MoMA, Rhizome/New Museum (New York), and, The Walker Arts Center (Minneapolis), US Department of State, and the Bronx Museum of Art among others.
Previous event: Wrong Wave 2012 September 26 to September 29, 2012
Next event: I Will Survive November 16, 2012 to March 2, 2013