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 6:
Behind the Closed Door: Intimacy, Collaboration, and Access
with Arshia Haq, Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, Latipa (née Michelle Dizon), and Mario Ybarra, Jr.
Moderated by Mario Onitveros
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We welcome back Arshia Haq, Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, Latipa, and Mario Ybarra Jr. to the table. In the second part of their discussion, the artists delve more deeply into the importance of BOTH intimacy AND engagement. They talk about how to theorize, act, and create from a place of intimacy—whether it be the nightclub or grandmother’s pillowcase.
Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, coming from AIDS activism and Act Up, talks about the nightclub, and how it can be, he says, “a very intimate, personal space where many people don’t even get to be themselves until they arrive at that sacred space.” Arshia Haq highlights the club space as a place of collectivity and talks about “using it for creative expression, and for organizing.” She addresses the paradox of artists of color being exploited as they gain more visibility and suggests “choosing to be silent” can be “a form of reclaiming power.”
The group talks about protecting themselves from the exhaustion of explaining everything—there’s a difference between explaining and sharing. And they talk about the importance of bearing witness and listening when collaborating.
Please note: the artist Latipa was previously known as Michelle Dizon, and in this episode, she refers to herself as Michelle.
Learn about the artists:
Arshia Haq, Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, Latipa (née Michelle Dizon), and Mario Ybarra, Jr.
Keywords
vulnerability, family, intimacy, collaboration, value, process, community, social media, access, translation, institutions, capital, funding
Reference Links
Creative Capital and the Women’s Center for Creative Work are organizations that help artists build networks and support for their work.
Learn more about the practice of performance artist Amitis Motesvalli, who has performed at Discostan.
Mario Ybarra, Jr. was introduced to art-making at the Homeland Cultural Arts Center in Long Beach, CA.
**Scroll down for full transcript**
Left to right: Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, Latipa, and Arshia Haq
Left to right: Latipa, Arshia Haq, and Mario Ybarra Jr.
(L-R) Mario Ybarra Jr., Marcus Kuiland-Nazario, Arshia Haq, Latipa
Transcript
(Session recorded 12/2019)
Mario Ontiveros: Where we left off was addressing deficiencies and lacks in the world around us. And I wanted to open it up and see if anyone had anything from the last session that you wanted to bring forward. Or if there were some new questions that came about based on what we were listening to and hearing and experiencing.
Latipa (née Michelle Dizon): Yeah, I wanted to pick up on the thread of intimacy, which I thought was very profound. Both in the way Marcus was describing the interviews you’re doing with men, and then the discussion we started getting into about, also, your group being closed. And then when Mario was talking about dancing for ourselves. So I just want to throw into the mix that the current project that I’m working on is called “Memory and Resistance Laboratory.” And it’s got different facets. But one facet is trying to develop collaborations with grassroots organizations, social movements –to work together to think about what media needs they might have. So the current collaboration that I’m in the midst of is with the Southern California Library, which is a community archive, community library not funded by the LA public library system in South LA. And we’re embarking on a community listening project. And, you know, according to the LA Times, it’s the most dangerous neighborhood for black folks to live in LA. It’s, you know, full of different kinds of vulnerabilities from homelessness and drugs and it’s just,like, kind of that kind of environment. And so we’re coming up against a lot of, you know, questions about: How it is that you do a community listening project and neighborhood like this part of South LA? One of the things that we were talking about–when I’m talking about me, I’m talking about me and the library–at the library, we’ve been talking about: on the one hand, the kind of stereotypes that certainly exist about South LA and countering those with just trying to focus our listening on questions of love. Particularly love in the time of displacement because it is a neighborhood that’s quickly gentrifying. But then as I was mentioning earlier, we’re also facing the question of like: How do you do a listening project in a place where people are so vulnerable? So the space is, you know, a place people come in and out of, but usually with certain needs–you know, food or using the bathroom or, you know, whatever, just like really basic stuff. But it’s that kind of place and more often than not they are researchers but they’re, you know, operating in a different kind of class than the people who live around the library. And yet, certainly the urgency to bear witness, I think, to the lives and the love that exists in the neighborhood is present for us. So the kind of the challenge that we’re facing is: On the one hand, like, how do we center intimacy, right? The kind of conversations that you have when you’re not being recorded, and the kind of, you know, life worlds that the real life becomes in those moments. And ultimately, like, what kind of strategies do you use to, you know, maybe to capture a little bit of that ephemerality?
Marcus Kuiland-Nazario: I learned a lot about how what I do now–which was really invaluable–as I was a street outreach worker. So I was collecting interviews in the street and doing harm reduction work and needle distribution. And so a lot of my work was, you know, working with these really high-risk populations. And trying to figure out how to reach out to them, how to get them to a clinic appointment, how to teach them how to clean a needle, or use a condom, or…And it was really that education, it has really has come in handy in my art practice. Like I never would have thought that that job of mine early-on would have influenced the work that I make today. But I think that people that are already in the community, that are already talking to people, that already are the gatekeepers in the community that you want to reach out to, you like, they might be a good resource around who is willing to talk to you, or who are the people that will connect you to the bread behind the counter as it were.
L: And, you know, I mean, I think it makes me think about, you know, this question of intimacy. Because I think you, Mario, you were talking about it as an assessment period. But what happens when we understand it as, not the assessment period, actually the work itself?
Mario Ybarra, Jr.: Yeah. Well, that, that I have this whole chart that I didn’t go into. But it’s funny that you bring up love because when I talk about assessment, it’s precedented by love. So there’s like, you could imagine this triangle like, because when I’m teaching artists to understand they need to have visuals, right? So this triangle, and the slope going uphill to the left is love. That’s where I write the word love and we all know that love is not always easy. Like if you have partners and throughout your life. You know, you really have to go through negotiating processes, which people are always confusing the term negotiating with compromise. Like, like they’re: Oh, I had to compromise that. And then I’m like: Why did you have to compromise? That compromise means that somebody’s foot is on your neck, right. But why don’t we change the language to negotiate? Why don’t we learn that when we’re going into institutional settings? I think that that’s one of the things that has helped me. That even in relationships we negotiate, right? My wife wants Chinese one day I want Mexican another day–we negotiate, right? And that’s in a day to day and in the long term. So love: going uphill. And why do we go through the struggle of going through love? Is because we want to reach the pinnacle. So the pinnacle of the triangle, right? And from the pinnacle or the top of the point of the triangle, we have a beautiful view, like when everything’s working and our negotiations are cool, and we have Win-Win and all that. We get to get to the top and like wow! We could see everything. And I’ll use that analogy that I once heard a story that the man that claimed climb Mount Everest, I believe the most times like this– somebody could fact check me in but I don’t know if this was the National Enquirer where I got this information from but–he claimed like 200 times and people usually do it once and are satisfied. And somebody asked him: Why did you do that like 200 times? And he said: Well the first, of course, was for my ego. Like I climbed this mountain, this love thing, for my ego because I wanted to prove I could do it. And secondly, I brought my daughter up because I wanted her to see this pinnacle. And the last hundred and 98 times I came because I wanted everybody else to understand what the view was from up here and what the experience was, right. So the uphill battle is the hard part which is love. But once you get past love and it’s proven that you love a space or you love a community or you love a partner or you love an experience or you love a field of interest or you love your field that you practice in–then you spend time! And time is where this assessment process happens. Like if I don’t spend time with–I love her, but if I don’t spend time with my partner, spend time with something that I’m invested in, you don’t know it, right. And you don’t know the nuances of it. I say that assessment time in the spending time is actually the fun part. That’s like the downhill side. And why do we do this. And I talked about the free estimate, with assessment is, because on the bottom in the foundational part of the triangle is where we want access. We want to access, not only for ourselves, but we want access for the folks that we’re working with. And if we could create, like, in the center of the triangle, like a notion of synergy, where all these things are happening simultaneously, without a hierarchal spin on them, but make sense and are working simultaneously, you could have some real action happening. So like if a person and in a community has a stakeholder in it, and it decides not to leave for whatever reason, like didn’t move out to Palmdale or Lancaster or whatever it is. Staying in a community like South Central probably because they probably have a literal financial stake in it. That they are owning a home or their families own the home generationally or whatever. But also, on the flip side of that the police have a stake in it. Like why are they flying helicopters all day long? In a place like South Central Los Angeles or like I’m always thinking like: Are they training these guys here? Like where they train them to send them out to other places in the country? Because that helicopter, like, flies non-stop–all the military tactics that are enforced by the LAPD. I worked on Slauson and Western when I first got out of graduate school, and I worked for a furniture manufacturer there. And my job was door knocking. He’s a patron for the arts and he would bring in something, like the Ballet Africaan did come and dance for the community in his warehouses. And my job was to go be a door knocker. Not unlike what you were saying, Marcus, and like knock on all the managers from all the apartment buildings like: Hey, can you bring all your kids to see the Ballet Africaan? And they’re like: What’s that? You’re like: Oh, it’s this beautiful dance troupe, you know. And they will bring all the kids and everybody. You have to spend time. So like assessment. Like a second phase to like what first is love. If you don’t love it, have no inkling for it, you shouldn’t be there. And yesterday I read this quote from Buddha that says: The difference between like and love is that if you like something, you go pluck it. Like: Oh, I like it, I’m going to take it. But if you love it, you attend to it daily, right? So there’s somebody who’s spending time in a place like South Central Los Angeles, doing research or just being a person that lives there. It’s essential that they love it, not just have a notion of “like” for the place, but that they love it. Lauren Halsey is doing a lot of important work around South Central Los Angeles. And it’s obvious. I went to her Nike Sneaker release like a couple of weeks ago. And it’s obvious that as an artist, she loves the place that she comes from, and it’s like all the cultural nuances are being fed into this practice. She has an exhibition that opens–I think this week, I think out of one of the big galleries. Somebody helped me out. I want to say Kordansky, Yeah, she’s opening at Kordansky–but it also walks this line, right, walks this line that I feel you were talking about. Like where does bringing stuff from the outside to this inside somehow invalidate it? Or does it validate it or that is the street cred removed from it. And there’s all these negotiations that will go back and forth in relationship to, like, how you take that information from a place that you’re researching, Into, like what Marcus was talking about in relationship to, like, the commodity part of it: the Willy Wonka golden ticket of the experience and where people will want to stand in line for it in whatever. So love, you’re right on, has to be, like, at the core or don’t even don’t even go there. Like what if you’re in the state of like, like don’t even go there. Just like the things on social media like don’t take your actual physical body to a place if you have no long term invested relationship with that place or would like to or want to love it. And I think one of our mentors, Karla and I: We started out at a place in Long Beach called the Homeland Cultural Arts Center when we were young people. And the founders were already in their 50’s, when they were starting this organization and they came together for their first meeting. And, you know, they came with the yellow legal pads and they were going to make all these notes and they said: Okay, I want you to write down everything that you want to do or accomplish, or how we’re going to interface with this community. And Dixie says she was writing all these notes and like flipping the legal pad paper in a fury to like, get all this information down. And her co-founder just wrote one word on the page and like set his pin down. And she was kind of confused like: Oh, what is this one word that this guy writes down. And when she wanted to share the thing that he had written down was the word “LOVE.” And that’s it. Like, so to be able to do that and foster that is important.
MKN: I want the golden ticket.
MYJ: Me too.
MKN: That’s what I want. It’s like, why are we told we can’t have a golden ticket? I feel like a lot of times we’re expected to do work. I mean, the work that I do–that I choose to do it–but like why does our work have to be so altruistic or have to tell a story from a certain angle? Like why can’t we want commercial success? Why can’t we get hired as the professor and not be stuck in the adjunct positions? I guess back to my original answer about what is the urgency that I have right now: It’s like, I feel like the little time I have left or the little time we have left on this earth, basically, because we’re destroying it, it’s like, how can we just do it better? It’s so frustrating to see, like our, you know, our president, I don’t want to name: #45. You know, it’s like, he’s like the standard of how to get ahead being lazy. You know, like: Here, we have the leader of this country who doesn’t do anything. And it’s almost like this example of like: Look, if you’re ignorant and you’re a sheep and you’re an idiot, you are going to get ahead. Don’t read the Muller report. Don’t read the impeachment, you know. It’s just really frustrating to me to see that and then to see how it trickles down into sort of the rest of society and into our communities, how he’s just reinforcing ignorance.
AH: It’s interesting that you point that out about the current leadership. And then thinking about what Michelle [Latipa] was saying: she’s twice as hard for it. I think a lot of us, as you know, immigrants or people of color were told that narrative, you know. It’s that narrative of self determinism that is so foundational to this country. Yet it’s like a total, it’s like, not only applies, it’s like made, you know, it’s made for the worker drones or something.
MYJ: Yeah my grandmother, my abuela, who passed away a few years ago…. Like, more than 10 years ago, now, I was in a show at the Sculpture Center. And they said that for the catalog, we could do whatever we want. Like it wasn’t going to just be like an image of the work but we could do whatever we want. So my grandmother was getting older. So my wife, Karla, and I decided we’re going to go interview my grandma because then we’re going to hear these stories, right. We want to hear these kinds of “Legacy Stories”. And I went in with a lot of assumptions like talking about love, like you think: Oh, I know this, we’re intimate. And I went to the interview with a lot of assumptions. And the first assumption that I made was that I put our little recorder down. And, you know, we asked her the first question like: Oh, why did you immigrate from Mexico to the United States? And I almost answered for her, thinking, like, because I’ve been programmed with, like, these brown ceiling things of like: “oh, for a better life.” Like that’s, like, the number one question if we were playing Family Feud, like the number one question on the board: “for a better life –ding ding ding–” right. And when I was about to say that she, like, put her hand down. She was like: For what better life–I came here for revenge. And we were like: revenge! Like Karla and I scooted back from the table, and she totally shifted the pantheon of, like, what the relationship was for, like, what my assumption was–my broad assumption for what my legacy was in the United States and what I was supposed to be doing. What the intentionality for, like, why I was going to school when I was going to college, while I was going to graduate school and all this stuff. I was thinking: Oh, I’m gonna have a better life. And no. When she told me that, I’m like–revenge!–like opened up all kinds of other possibilities.
MKN: Revenge is a motivator. Yeah, it is a real motivator.
MO: Can you talk a little bit more about capturing intimacy–the strategies–because that comes back to those closed doors and a very personal space. That can be very empowering. I mean, just as a general, I didn’t mean to put the burden on you, Michelle [Latipa].
L: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s like, maybe I wouldn’t use the word capturing it. I think I’m just reformulating. Just thinking about, for myself, like: how do I work from a place of intimacy? How do I theorize from a place of intimacy? How does that intimacy drive the analysis? One example I can offer is– you and I know that there’s our shared interest in questions of archives here. So I’m excited to go there with you all. But, you know, I’ve been doing a lot of archival work. First in provincial libraries in a small place that my family’s from in the southern Philippines. And that all started because: Grandma story: I wanted to use a picture of my great great grandma, of what the place was like while my great great grandma was alive, because there were stories about her being magical. Supposedly, she could walk down the street invisible or, you know, she would disappear for three days. People would be like: Where have you been? She would come back dripping wet like: I’ve been to Mecca. And then supposedly, you know, like, all this magic even after she was gone from, you know, this world that we know–because people who attend to her grave, their lives would turn around if they, you know, took care of her grave site. So she was kind of this tremendous figure of story in my childhood. And so I just wanted to see a picture because I thought I wanted to write a novel or something. But I couldn’t find the picture. I couldn’t find the picture. And like the province, I couldn’t find the picture in Manila, you know, I found the picture in Washington DC, in the Colonial Archive, of course. A picture of the town center in the 20s, 18 years or so into US occupation. But you know, I, you know, my brain, was wanting her as a figure to kind of counter, you know, Spanish occupation and US occupation through her magic. You know, it’s an idea I never wrote this, but it became an art piece. But at any rate, like, all this kind of archival work really brought up, you know, what it means for me, within my body, to go into the colonial archive and what that strange experience is like, which I would say is, like, really contradictory. You know, it’s like all of that kind of wonder and the search of it and wanting to find something. But then it’s also like the kind of numbness and like the incessant repetition of that “I” that, you know, that is I think this kind of doubleness of that experience. But at any rate, where I finally found my way into thinking about all of these issues was, you know, I happened upon an image of embroidery, which, in the US colonial archive and through like some films I came to understand was a way for US colonizers to profit off of Filipina labor for export. Like all this really intricate embroidery and brought me back to: Oh my God, when I was a kid and my grandmother had immigrated, all she did was crochet. You know, that’s all she did. And that was how she, you know, psychically could survive the pain of that migration because it was not fun. It was a horrible, horrible experience for me. She was here so that we could try to petition you know, her children, because that was a quicker way than my mom petitioning them, blah, blah, blah. But at any rate, like then I understood that that pillowcase was actually a way to theorize archive, because in that pillowcase was all of her attempts to psychically survive this whole trauma and to make something beautiful, you know, out of string. This kind of like, way to be creative and still hold some part of herself, you know, in the midst of being totally displaced. So, you know that then I understood that, you know, all the ways in which, you know, we could understand memory and histories in a way captured in this object that I thought, we never thought was anything of any importance until, you know, I saw that one image of the crochet and embroidery.
MYJ: Yeah, that’s what I felt the moment of the detail that my grandmother told me of the revenge you saw in the detail of that embodiment in that crochet.
L: Right. But you know, I think in this the sites of intimacy are all of the complexity and all of the counter narratives that will never get told. Right and in you know, more dominant ways in which our stories get told.
MKN: Objects are powerful things and that’s all you have when you leave is that thing you make, the thing you make that you learn how to do. There are the things you brought from over there. That’s the only thing left, it’s a reminder.
L: Right? And the way that you can remake these colonial knowledges so that they’re not just, you know, in the service of power, but actually in your own, you know, survivance.
AH: I was thinking, Marcus, from our earlier part of this conversation about what you were saying about one-on-one interactions and intimacy built that way. And in relation to Discostan and the project that I’m doing with that, I feel like all of us in this room probably remember a time before the internet, but because I’m in this communal space is intergenerational, so there’s a lot of people coming to the space who really have built their identities through the internet. I’m interacting with them a lot and seeing kind of this desire for connection, you know, that we all know now through social media, this kind of intense downloading of intimacy (in quotes) you know, where everyone is kind of speaking all of their, you know, internally, every vicissitudes of every emotion that they’re going through is being played out on this online forum. And, and yet, there’s, when I speak to, you know, a lot of these people that come to the space, they come to this space because it is providing something that is really deeply missing despite this constant apparent available space for expression. So I, I guess you know what I’m interested in. And I think this kind of ties into what you’re talking about Michelle [Latipa] about, you know, where actually there’s this moment of our dialogues being centered and given voice. And then that turns into performance, which we’ve talked about that can turn into commodification. So where do we go from, previously not having a voice to having having spaces, and now deliberately, maybe choosing certain areas to be silent as, as a form of reclaiming power, you know, when you choose that, when you choose to kind of remove yourself from certain dialogues because having to be part of the dialogue, explaining everything, it’s not only exhausting, but it’s actually I think it’s a subtle form of exploitation.
MO: It’s unethical. Yeah. Exploitive. Yeah.
MKN: I’m tired of explaining. I don’t want to explain anything to anybody anymore. I’m done.
MYJ: Well they could Google it. Like you don’t understand that: Google it. Like, isn’t that within contemporary literature. Like I was at the University of North Dakota Writers Conference last year and Viet Thanh Nguyen was one of the speakers and like all of these are writers of color. And pretty much that was the consensus. They were like: We’re not writing with the explanations inserted into the text. Like, if you need to find out what this word is or what this tradition is or what this article of clothing is or what the traditional Tagalog name is for the embroidery like: Google that shit. Like, you know, we don’t need to be like, doing two things simultaneously. Like we don’t need to be the purveyors and the the people who are creating and creating like the index or the map, legend at the same time, like, that’s a lot of work against. Like we were just putting it out there and if you’re interested, the audience should meet you halfway. I guess that’s kind of what their sentiment was. That’s what I left with. And it was kind of liberating because I was always feeling like: I’m a teacher. I’ve taught for a long time. I’ve always felt like, okay, I can go out into the market and start being a teacher. My wife is like: Mario, you’re not working right now. Like get away from those people, right? I’m like: Okay, I’m leaving them alone. But that is built into me. But it doesn’t always have to be in my work and it shouldn’t always be in my work because then it loses a poetics.
MKN: I want to clarify that, like, I don’t mind sharing. There’s a difference between sharing and explaining. Like the two larger works that I’ve done in the past couple years. Si Pero No. And Macho Stereo there, there are instances in the work where there are audio recordings in Spanish. There’s texts in Spanish. And I was asked: you know, aren’t you going to translate these things, or didn’t you wanna? And if it was a didactic, yes, it needs to be translated. But if it’s in the work, I was like, no, I don’t want to translate it. And it’s not for everybody to understand. And I don’t feel the need to do that. And then also, as an artist of color, you know, I’ve received the few awards I’ve received to make my work. I’ve come from like the Latino grant, and I’ve always felt pressure like having to make, like, I had to really think about, like, I’m just gonna make the work. I’m the brown person. I’m getting the money. I’m going to do what I want to do. I have kind of felt the pressure like, well, I guess I have to only interview Latin American people or I have to only interview, I have to only… something. And then I feel like nope my money it’s mine now. I’m going to make the work that I want to make. Why should I have to be beholden now to make, like, to continue to be brown? Like, you know, perform brown basically.
AH: Yeah, I agree with you and resonate with you and the resisting translation. There’s small formal gestures, you know, that have worked in my practice, you know, removing even the italics on a foreign word, no partheticles, you know, just things like that and making things more bilingual. Even though it’s, it’s a language that you know is not, it’s not definitely not, a second language of the world. I’m really starting to think about those things and living with it when you know, it doesn’t always have currency. You know, and, and continuing to make that work. The most recent exhibition that I have deals with a post colonial history of the partition, and there’s a lot that is not explained. That would take a lot, there’s a density and I think that frustrates a lot of people. And, you know, for me as an artist, it’s difficult because I, I, I feel like maybe, you know, it doesn’t necessarily translate into all the forms that it could because people don’t really want to take the time to like dig through that density. Does that mean that I don’t work in that way anymore? I, you know what, that’s one thing I’m thinking about–what is going to happen to my practice going forward, because that’s the kind of work that I want to make. And yet unless I unpack it all it seems to sometimes get lost because people don’t know how to relate to it or they don’t want to take the time to.
MYJ: I always get this kind of underhanded question, because I’ve been able to show abroad and all over the place. And I feel like I’m a storyteller. Like if I work, I tell stories, and they’re about people. I used to tell my grandma that I’d make portraits and landscapes. They’re either about people or places, right, and that’s translatable to anybody. And, but I get to go abroad and do these things other places. But then when I would come back home to Los Angeles, I wouldn’t get these questions because since Los Angeles has like such a relationship with like, Mexican culture, Mexican American culture that people pinpointed as, like a designated area that has boundaries, like once you leave, like I don’t know, Arizona, like nobody will understand it. Like there’s not gonna get past like, certain like areas it has its jurisdiction. And so people would ask me like, if I had had a show in London or whatever, like: how did they get it? It’s kind of sounded sincere, but also I started taking it as an underhanded question. Like, oh, how did they take it there, or like, how did they respond to it? That’s more like, the cool way of saying like; Oh, how did they respond to the work? And I’d be like: Oh, they loved it. Like, they loved it. I had a great time. And the people were really interested in it. And it gave me a platform, you know, besides making my work for me to tell my stories like about this story with my grandma and revenge or whatever it was. And then when I would think about it later, I would always say: was that a question saying that they don’t think my work is relatable, and they’re like, surprised that it was relatable in this other place? I would always see, is that an underhanded question? Are they sincerely asked so I started becoming suspect of that question like, my work is about storytelling. It’s about human relationships. It’s about all these things. So that should be translatable to all kinds of folks like it shouldn’t just be like, oh, because my grandmother came from Mexico that somebody wouldn’t get it if they weren’t from there. And then I thought about all the literature I had to read, like in middle school and high school and I remember having to read like The Diary of Anne Frank, and I was like, I never read World War Two and I never was a girl that was hidden and but I remember having to read that story. And all of the kids, when we had to write our book reports were like: Oh, the little girl and I, we were all sad about it. So we could relate to a kind of human story. And when the art is good, I think when the art is good, you know, speaking to y’all here, like, I’ve read your resumes and things, I’m like, you’ve been all over the place so that there’s substance to the work. And when there’s substance to the work, there should be, there should be and there is a multiplicity of reads. So like the things that you think you’re addressing for your own investigation and your own reportage and your own understanding isn’t always going to be considered by all the multiple audience members that are interfacing with the work. They’re going to be coming with their own things and your work will be dense enough for them to have entry points at different levels, even if it’s just through like a pure design aesthetic, or if it’s through the storytelling. Which is when you were talking about working with music, like if music isn’t the most like, like, kind of interfacing thing that if we don’t understand the language, we understand the language of music and just physically like physiologically.
MKN: It was an intentional choice for me to work with music because I know that people will understand that. It is a strategy that I do employ knowing that people are not going to necessarily speak Spanish or speak English. And so although I’m saying these things about not translating, and it’s a podcast, so you can’t see the work. The work that I’m talking about is like really direct and actually very accessible to pretty much my mom, she’s always in my mind a lot of the time. Yeah. What’s my mom think when they went to look at this? You know. So when I’m talking about not wanting to, not translate, it’s not like I’m intentionally not going out of my way to not translate. I’m just trying to be true to the vision of what I’m trying to create and to be true to the voices of the people that I interview. You know. Another thing that was pressing to me and about time I was saying is like I want to make really bad work now. I want to make all the work that I’ve been really afraid not to make. I just want to go ahead and make it. I see so much bad work and bad TV, bad everything. I’m like: I want in on that. Like I want to take more risks, and I want to challenge myself more. And I want to present more work that’s by other colleagues that’s challenging and risky and vulnerable. Because I think in these times, we’re obsessed with these Instagram filters and this, like, social media perfection. I think that humanity and fallibility and mistakes and tares and wrinkles, and that that’s really important right now more than ever. I think like the human, seeing the human hand, seeing flaws failing, I think is really a really important thing to me right now. Anyone want to share about their recent failures?
MO: Was there some questions that you had for coming here that we had talked about? That there’s a question that we brought to the table towards burning our minds. In relationship to communities and building those cultures elaborative collaborations or solidarities.
MKN: I like that there’s more I see, like there’s more services available to artists. Right now. I think that we keep thinking about art and art market and art world. But I think that all those things don’t exist without the artists. And that it’s great to see that there are more services available to artists around. They’re managing their money, managing their career, figuring out their website, like resources, like Creative Capital. Places like Women’s Center for Creative Work, places like 18th Street Art Center, where it’s artist-focused, and not so much focused on the work but focused on what the artists need to enable to make the work that they’re going to make. And I think that that is really important right now.
MYJ: Yeah, they’re facilitating that play.
MO: Enabling spaces. Enabling practices.
AH: I guess the question for me and I feel like I’ve kind of been circulating around this, but, you know, again that certain communities are en vogue in the moment, you know, and so getting funding, etc. But there’s still a limited amount of resources. We still get funded by institutions, most of us, you know, so there’s scarcity. And then…how do you negotiate that scarcity of resource when you’re trying to build community, and yet, every one, every individual on that community is dependent on all on that same pool of resources? So unfortunately, I mean, that works against community because then people are, you know, reaching for the same fruit. And so how to deal with that.
MYJ: I think a good way to strategize that, and this is a very important point you bringing up, is, when I talked about the urgency to, like, re- ascribe value to things is. As artists to understand that we like when you’re saying, scarcity to resources, I’m imagining like money, like through institutions. But Marcus is bringing up this point that there are these other kinds of in-kind supports that we have. But I think as artists, one of the things that is very important is that we start understanding and putting into action, a sense that we navigate multiple streams of capital. Like we navigate cultural capital, we navigate social capital, we navigate all these types of things, community capital. And one of the things that I think is important to understand when you’re working within specific communities is to understand that artists are trained with a keen sense of observation. Like, first day in art school, they teach us how to draw and stare at an apple, like I’m looking at this stuff on the table. Like some still life, you draw a box, and you drop a paper bag and an apple and all this kind of stuff. So they develop our sense of observation. But while that is happening, they’re also developing when we’re learning these things, a sense of critical thought, right? Because we have to put the relationships together between the box and the apple and all these types of things. But above that, we’re also taking simultaneous action by making a mark on a paper. So this is like basic drawing one -0- one when you’re sitting in a drawing class. And that’s the first day of teaching and artists observation, critical thinking and applying strategy directly. In any other field, they train you to do these separately like imagine as a person that works to survey streets because the streets needs fixing, they write something down, they take the observation and notes, they take it to an office in downtown, the engineer makes a plan, the engineer gives it to a forman in that forman and goes out with the crew and fixes the street. Those are like three different entities that are addressing the problem. As artists, we get to do that simultaneously. So we are trained in finding the gaps in our spheres or in our worlds. So one of the things that is really important for us if we’re working directly in communities, is to start seeing how like there are gaps and open fissures of in kinds of support navigational support, which is also very important. Like, why did those two white women get those jobs at the institution you’re working at? Because they had navigational support, because the hiring committee was probably five other white women. So they have these navigational support in relationship to how resources are pooled. So if we could think about the different types of capital that we as artists associate ourselves with… and I was just thinking because people ask me, a lot of young artists, like: how do you rent a space? Or how do you get a space? And my advice now is like: Why do you want to get a space? Like there’s the Zumba place that for three hours a day is empty? Like, why don’t you go ask them if you could use the Zumba place for three hours, instead of taking on all the overhead of like renting the space and paying the power bill and all that. So like if we could start understanding that our relationship to–like, not just art institutions, but–other types of, kinds of things around us and the resources that we have with all the folks around us as like a kind of holistic understanding, like the man at the market that gives that gives us his old bread or something, I don’t know. But we need to start understanding that we can operate in all these spheres of capital, so that when the money is low, we’re not feeling like we’re operating in this kind of, really scary place that it’s so scary to be in that place. So I think if we could kind of start tuning ourselves with all the different types of capital that we can navigate in, so that if our money’s low, like our navigational capital’s high, our social capital’s high, like our communal capital is high. And because I think that we’re in a kind of conundrum of like, a kind of another thing with the arts where the infrastructure for the brown ceiling within the art is that we’re on the less-receiving end in terms of capital and only a few get to, like participate in the, you know, pie crust of whatever wherever money is going. So I’m new to this to like I’m telling you this because I’m just coming to the realization that I need personally to operate in these kinds of spaces where communal support is important and all these other types of support, because I understand that If you’re not having money, it could get really dark. I mean, and so how do I combat that with other types of richness like other types of wealth? And it’s very hard to do and it takes it but I don’t think it’s a whole 180 we have to do. Like, I don’t think it’s like a whole 180 in our perspective we have to do, but just a nudge to like an obtuse angle that we’re not akin to looking at, you know, and if we can, if we can help each other do that that’d be great.
MO: How have you had to negotiate that reaching for the same prize or the same fund?
AH: I think, I think a lot of it has been, you know, working collaboratively. There’s a lot of collaboration in the work that I do, not just through Moozis, but even in, you know, solo projects. So-called solo projects, there’ll be collaborators that are brought in for different levels. And so I’m trying to think from that lens, but you know that that’s also a whole other kind of… comes with its own set of things to negotiate, you know, in terms of collaboration. And I’ve learned a lot about that in the last couple of years as well. So, so yeah, just really trying to think about how to create alliances and work more collectively with the artists that are coming to the table with similar concerns because a lot of us are arriving at certain themes at this moment in our practices.
MO: Do you think that that recognition can create some sustainability. Because you had just brought up sort of certain communities, certain identities, ethnicities coming into the marketplace where people are wanting to fund.
AH: Right. I mean, for me right now, I’m thinking specifically about artists from Muslim communities. That’s very, you know, en vogue right now, let’s be honest, you know, so it’s also at this moment, you know, and then what’s going to happen after this moment?
MO: Do you think that those collaborations then can… like you were saying, building ideas about the future? So those collaborations today, do you think they can be the foreground for sustainability to build ideas into the future?
AH: I think they can definitely be sources of creative sustainability. I think that there, you know, a lot of yeah, I think it can be. It’s, giving us, you know, the people that I know that I’m working with… not just solidarity, support, strength from sources that we need, you know, coming from histories that we come from, that we can’t find elsewhere. So, just to know, for myself that there’s… I grew up in a certain kind of community and then left that community and just knowing that there are other artists or creative thinkers who can relate to that path has been really nourishing. In terms of where it goes, it just all feels really in the moment right now. It’s kind of… I’m not sure what the end process is or where it’s going to land.
MYJ: I’ve been thinking about that same point, but in it from a different angle. So I was working with a life coach this year. And my life coach is cool, but the things that he posts there, I’m always like: Oh, when’s this guy gonna, like, fall from grace? Cuz he’s like, doing good now he just bought a home. He posts like all his stuff, I guess for us followers to be like, inspired by. But I’m always like a naysayer. Like oh this dude like he’s gonna lose all his money next week. Like I’m always like that right? Like so but then today as he posted something, and I was like: Why, why am I thinking like this? Like, why am I not invested in this guy’s continued success? Like he should be like, yeah, I’m glad that he’s doing that, like keep going, you know? And so when you’re saying like this notion of like, a particular group, being en vogue or whatever, I’m always then I’m thinking like: Oh man, like, why do we have to see the end of it? Like, why don’t we just rally like, why don’t we volley it? Like why don’t we make it keep going and hopefully that it becomes just part of how everything is going as opposed to like, oh there this is going to just have its moment and then die out. Because then where can we, where can we start? Where if we want sustainability for ourselves like if we want to make sustainability for our practices or for ourselves or sustenance for our health and all this. I was thinking like, how come I don’t have that sentiment of wanting to like, make sure that this guy succeeds.
MKN: We have to sustain each other. I think yes, we have this crab barrel mentality where everyone’s trying as a crowd gets to the top we just like, you know, tear them down and if anything we need to like how some are just bust open the crab barrel. Let the crabs be free.
MYJ: Why do we feel that way that it’s only for a passing time or it’s en vogue now? Like, why don’t we just be like this we’re gonna make this like, like, be like the rah rah sis boom bah of this motherfucker and like cheerleaders this shit because I’m in line, like I’m in line too. Like, I have been in line and then when I get there I want people to be like: Mario, yay. I don’t want people to be like, my, I hope you eat shit next week, you know? So when you say that I thought about my life coaching. Like, that’s how I was feeling about him too. Like, I was like this guy. He’s doing good right now, but it’s gonna be past. Yeah, gotta be happy for him. Karma, right? Yeah, gotta be happy for him and he’s doing great things.
MKN:
And plus, if he’s your life coach.
MYJ:.
I wanna be on stage with him, like at the seminar.
MO: Do you think Michelle [Latipa]… I’m just picking up on the idea of that collab. and creative sustainability. Can I just ask about how you started the conversation with the library? How did that happen? Just because I’m interested in just the strategies of the processes are just how do you begin that conversation? How did you?
L: I mean, it’s a long time coming, you know, I had already been taking classes there for many years and at lands edge during the 2017 to 2018 cycle was actually based at the Southern California library. So we got into, you know, many conversations about how that year would proceed. You know, how the fellowship would be framed. Who we would invite, we wouldn’t, all of those kinds of nitty gritty negotiations where the real politics lives. And so, so that was kind of already in place as a foundation, but then when I, you know, began the memory and resistance laboratory, the first thing I wanted to do was to collaborate with a library because I understood how many needs they had. And how, you know, talk about operating in the midst of scarcity, you know, how they are able to continue to do their work in the midst of what seems like impossible circumstances. And yet they do it because they love what they do. They know that they need to do this because of love for the community basically, for the histories that they’re the stewards of in a way. So yeah, I mean, I would go back to, you know, love as being a site that’s incredibly messy and complicated. And we all know like you’ve never felt as alone as you have with a lover next to you. So when you start thinking about, you know, love in those kinds of ways, and you understand that, you know, collaboration, and all of its messiness, and all of the times that it seems like it’s so much easier to work on your own, is actually really the only way. In a lot of ways, I mean, there’s a part of me that absolutely needs my kind of personal practice, you know, where I work stuff out, and you know that where… that has to happen, but I was thinking like, one of the ways I move forward in this world has to be like multimodal, there’s that kind of intimate reflection space, but there has to be the space of engagement with others, the space of building and you know, really doing something that you would have never thought you would never be capable of, on your own.
AH: So, I actually love working in the club space as well because that’s another step into collectivity in terms of not just the fact that there is a number of people in a space, but just the nature of the space itself and using that space as a space for creative expression, for organizing. And because it is kind of an abject space as well, when we were talking about like, kind of the guttural or failure–not necessarily failure, maybe–but shadow spaces where things are liminal. It’s kinetic. It’s cathartic. And there’s a lot. It’s actually been some of the places where some of the most interesting and innovative ideas from the collective have emerged in my visibility. So…
MKN:
Amitis Motevalli’s piece, really beautiful that she did that ritual that usually men do where she kind of inverted the role. Yeah, I mean, that was a powerful performance that happened…
AH: …at the club. Which a lot of people we were getting messages from Iran, and you know, all from the woke community in the Bay Area: how could you do this? So basically, it was a Muharram, which is a month of mourning in the Islamic tradition, especially specifically for the Shia sect, marked by public ceremonies of self flagellation, usually by men. And there are female traditions, but they’re in private spaces. So, you know, one of my dear friends and collaborators, Amitis Motevalli, what about you I mentioned earlier, she is from the Shia tradition, did this public self flagellation in the club space, while invoking histories of female martyrs, women who have been killed in the Wars on Terror. So there was a lot of outcry because it was a woman because it was a public space because it was a nightclub space rather than a sacred space, or an institution.. And which, by the way, institutions have a lot of rules about working with blood. So there was some life that happened, you know, bleeding that happened during this performance, so. And yet, I don’t think it could have happened anywhere else. And I actually think it was, you know, kind of really radical and groundbreaking.
MKN: One of my favorite performances I saw this year–was really powerful. Yeah. And moving and a reminder of why it’s important to work outside of the institutions–where we get to set our own rules and our own boundaries.
AH: Yeah. And I feel honored that you know, Discostan was able to host that it did come with a lot of—I was very… I had a lot of fear about doing it. There’s a whole other layer of having a nightclub with like, you know Muslim centered populations in the wake of Pulse and all of that. So there’s like all of that, that like anxiety that comes with that as well, in challenging things. But, but yeah, I don’t think it could have happened anywhere else. So it’s, it’s kind of a privilege to be able to do that. And each time it opens up it’s organic, it just, it opens up new things that I didn’t think about that, you know, and the community is feeding each other and pushing each other in really beautiful ways.
MYJ: I call that there’s two and to call the two sides of the coin. There’s like, the official story and then the oraficial story. And the oraficial story is that which speaks, which views, which bleeds and all these things. And so it sounds like there was like a space of the orifice kind of happening with Discostan and Amitis. That’s great.
MKN: But what you’re talking, many of us have been talking about intimacy. I basically come from, like the night world and activism and Act Up. And a nightclub is a, can be very, very intimate, personal space where many people don’t even get to be themselves until they arrive at, to that literal sacred space of a nightclub. And that’s kind of what a lot of my practice has been rooted in, in nightclub and in celebration–and an activism and celebration. And so I think it’s an intimacy here can’t be overstated: the intimacy of the nightclub.
MO: So I would like to thank you all for being here today. And thank you. Thank you.
MKN: Thank you. Thank you.
MYJ: Thank you all for being intimate.