ultra-red against participation

Project description

Symposium and Exhibition

Listening Session

“Listening Session” at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History as part of three day symposium “Against Participation: Value, Form Participation” with International Sound Art Collective Ultra-red.

Organizer and producer of three day symposium for the 20th anniversary of the sound art collective Ultra-red.  The symposium was the culmination of a three year residency by members of Ultra-red at UCSC.

Value Form Participation Essay

Ultra-red are an international sound art collective whose members develop sound art and sound investigation projects in the context of long-term engagements with communities and social movements. Ultra-red members include artists, researchers, and organizers from various social movements including the struggles of migration, antiracism, community development, and HIV/AIDS justice. The collective has produced radio broadcasts, performances, recordings, installations, workshops, texts, and public actions. They have worked with numerous fine art institutions including Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), Tate Britain (London), ASPIS (Stockholm), Whitney Museum’s Whitney Biennial, and LACE (Los Angeles).

Ultra-red’s notion of the “Value-form participation” identifies how neo-liberalism exploits the knowledge and affective labor of working and poor people in the form of consultative processes said to foster democratic community participation. This claim falls apart when austerity, speculation, displacement, privatization, and mass incarceration determine the outcomes of consultation processes across social sectors. The field of social practice art has largely ignored these constraints even as the terms of participatory art replicate its very conditions. Where a critique of participation occurs in an art context, it largely remains bound within the limits of mainstream fine art, ignoring the voices that grapple for a critical perspective in public health, urban planning, community development, and social research. Ultra-red is uniquely poised to address these limitations given that its members conduct investigations in the context of long-term community struggles. Since each Ultra-red member is engaged in long-term research in specific social and political contexts, the conference will explore resonances between consultation and participatory practices in diverse contexts.

Ultra-red:

Sabrina Apicella (Berlin) – M.A. Candidate, Institute of European Ethnology, Humboldt University

Elizabeth Blaney (Los Angeles) – CoDirector, Union de Vecinos

Manuela Bojadžijev (Berlin) – Visiting Faculty, Institute of European Ethnology, Humboldt University

Janna Graham (Leicester, UK) – Ph.D. Candidate, Programme of Curatorial/Knowledge, Goldsmiths University

Chris Jones (London) – Southwark Notes Collective, 56a Infoshop CoFounder

Elliot Perkins (Torbay, UK) – Educator, Contested Idyll CoFounder

Dont Rhine (Los Angeles) – Visiting Faculty, MFA in Visual Art, Vermont College of Fine Arts

Michael Roberson (New York) – Community Scholar, Union Theological Seminary

Robert Sember (New York) – Visiting Faculty, Eugene Lang College The New School

Walt Senterfitt (Los Angeles) – Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, IRB

Ceren Türkmen (Berlin) – Research Faculty, Institute of Sociology, JustusLiebigUniversity

Gießen

Leonardo Vilchis (Los Angeles) – CoDirector, Union de Vecinos