THURSDAY 16th –  

Community Conversation:

Diasporic Theater & The Power of Black Narratives

Moderated by Tracie Hall, Executive Director of the American Library Association

3:30 PM Central Time

Brief: A roundtable discussion with leading theater makers from Chicago, Berlin, Stockholm, and London. 

Description:

Josette Bushell-Mingo OBE, Principal of The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (London) and past Head of Acting at Stockholm University of the Arts, Sweden (Stockholm)

Ken-Matt Martin, Artistic Director Victory Gardens Theater (Chicago)

Uriara Maciel, Artistic Director of Anastacia Berlin Schwarze-Frauen-Theatergruppe (Berlin)

Willa Taylor, The Walter Director of Education and Community Engagement at Goodman Theatre (Chicago)

Rohan Ayinde, RAISIN artist and interdisciplinary poet (London)

Across countries and contexts, this group will discuss their individual histories and shared experiences as directors and producers of global theater and stories of Black life. This live conversation will take place on Zoom, with a rebroadcast on Lumpen Radio.

SATURDAY 18th – 

Artist Talk: 

Keep the Land in the Family: Tales from 342

4:00 PM Central Time

Walt and Bessie Theus purchased 100 West 342 Place in 1965 with the intention of providing a home for their four children. For 56 years, the Theus family has made West 342 Place home. For this unique radio broadcast, RAISIN artist Brett Swinney lays the foundation for the conversation between Caroline Theus Swinney and Walt Theus Jr. to discuss their experiences of growing up in a South Side Chicago home. Caroline and Walt discuss family life, growing up in their neighborhood, and eventually sharing their experiences with their children.

Artist Intervention:

Joseph Josué Mora 

3:00 PM – 6:00 PM Central Time

Brief: Artist Joseph Josué Mora leads an artmaking workshop on the topic of human residence and migration 

Description: In Mexican-American Culture, Monarch Butterflies are used as a motif to represent undocumented Mexicans who have made the journey from Mexico to the United States. Using the design made by Monarch Butterflies’ migration path, this workshop brings forth ideas about how humans are the only species with federal laws that dictate how we migrate.

Mexican-born and based in Chicago, Joseph Mora’s art practice focuses on portraying his reality as a DACA-mented immigrant living in the United States. In-person event.

Artist Intervention: 

Cog•nate Collective

3:00 PM – 6:00 PM Central Time

Brief: Special Edition Print Sale of 32 Cans

by Cog•nate Collective artists Misael Diaz and Amy Sanchez Arteaga

Description: Thirty-two photo prints of food cans sold at California Supermarket (Calexico, CA) will be available for purchase as part of the RAISIN exhibition today, each available at the same price of an actual can in the store. The funds from this print sale will be used for an actual purchase of the pictured can, and will be driven across the border as a donation to the Hotel del Migrante shelter for recently deported migrants in Mexicali, Baja California Mexico. In-person event. 

FRIDAY 24th – 

Community Conversation:

Community Landscapes and Alternative Housing

Moderated by Tiff Beatty, Program Director of Arts, Culture, & Public Policy 

at the National Public Housing Museum

10:00 AM Central Time

Brief: A roundtable discussion with fair housing and community development advocates from Chicago and Greece

Description:

zakkiyyah najeebah dumas o’neal, RAISIN exhibiting artist (Chicago)

Nikos Vrantsis, Researcher of Social Sustainability of Alternative Housing Models at the Institute of Urban Research in Uppsala, Sweden (Uppsala/Greece) 

Erik Hotchkiss, Co-Founder Made in Englewood and team member at Englewood Nature Trail (Chicago)

Across countries and contexts, this group will discuss challenges and solidarity actions toward fair housing access and community development. This live conversation will take place on Zoom, with a rebroadcast on Lumpen Radio.

Artist Talk: 

Gloria Talamantes, RAISIN Exhibiting Artist 

Moderated by RAISIN Curator and SAIC Being a Woman of Color in the Arts Class 

3:00 PM Central Time

Brief: Artist Gloria Talamantes discusses The Brown Wall Project and municipal policy impacts on public art.

Description: In 2005, artist Gloria Talamantes founded The Brown Wall Project—a citywide public art initiative to beautify Chicago’s neighborhoods against brown buffed walls. These buffed walls are not only detrimental to the aesthetics of our communities, they are also a constant reminder that many neighborhoods are consistently isolated, forgotten, and deemed unsafe. Gloria is also a member of Mujeres Mutantes (MM), an all-woman Latinx art collective with roots all across Chicago’s South and West Sides. This live conversation will take place on Zoom, with a rebroadcast on Lumpen Radio.

FRIDAY 8th –

Community Conversation:
Placemaking & Community
Moderated by Hilesh Patel, Executive Director of the Invisible Institute
10:00 AM Central Time

Brief: A roundtable discussion with human rights and anti-discrimination advocates, from Berlin, Wroclaw, and Athens

Description:
Christiana Bukalo, Founder of Statefree.World
Lena Bielska, founder and president of the HerStory foundation Wroclaw, Poland
Vincent Kadiri, Biomedical Researcher founder of Na’egbia Iyese scientists of color collective
Iason Apostolopoulos, Rescue Coordinator at Mediterranea Saving Humans (pending ship schedule)

Across countries and contexts, this roundtable conversation discusses political obstacles and pushback—as well as organizing strategies and calls for support—in achieving equitable, accessible living and working conditions for all. This live conversation will take place on Zoom, with a rebroadcast on Lumpen Radio.

Artist Talk:
Zhiyuan Yang, Kyle Bellucci Johanson, and Maryam Taghavi, RAISIN Exhibiting Artists

Moderated by RAISIN Curator and SAIC Being a Woman of Color in the Arts Class

3:00 PM Central Time

Brief: Artists Zhiyuan Yang, Kyle Bellucci Johanson, and Maryam Taghavi discuss pluralities of design and home

Description:

Artist Maryam Taghavi is interested in an interchangeable role as both observer and participant, and locates agency in the role of the trickster. Zhiyuan Yang employs a research strategy that combines masquerade, collaboration, and participant observation. Kyle Bellucci Johanson is the director of Table, a Chicago-based temporary project space dedicated to situating artist’s practices through exhibition, discursive meals, and publication. This live conversation will take place on Zoom, with a rebroadcast on Lumpen Radio.

FRIDAY 15th –

Community Conversation:
Placemaking & Community
Moderated by RAISIN Curator and SAIC Curating in the Expanded Field Class
10:00 AM Central Time

Brief: A roundtable discussion on approaches to community-building through art and education

Description:
Nayeli Vega, RAISIN exhibiting artist (Berlin)
Max Guy, RAISIN exhibiting artist (Chicago)
Chip Moody, RAISIN exhibiting artist (Chicago)
Zawdie Sandvliet, Social Studies teacher and a professor of Afro-Dutch Studies at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Amsterdam) 

Across countries and contexts, this roundtable conversation discusses approaches and experiences of what it means to enact community-building through art and education. This live conversation will take place on Zoom, with a rebroadcast on Lumpen Radio.

Artist Talk: 

More than Useful: Aesthetics Objects and Social Change 

featuring Tintin Wulia, RAISIN artist

Moderated by RAISIN Curator and SAIC Being a Woman of Color in the Arts Class

3:00 PM Central Time (30 minutes)

Brief: Artist/researcher Tintin Wulia discusses aesthetics, the public space, and social transformation—within the tangle of imagination, emotion, and socio-political institution.

Description: 

Wulia urges seeing beyond the trope of usefulness in socially engaged art, to focus on the mechanisms of social change that are specifically aesthetic. Her argument is that imagination and emotion—two aesthetically-prone mental phenomena—have been entangled with the transformation of sociopolitical institutions for millennia. Citing results from her aesthetic fieldworks in urban public spaces during her Australia Council for the Arts Fellowship (2014-16), amongst others, Wulia discusses how the tangle of imagination, emotion, and sociopolitical institutions can especially pivot on aesthetic objects. Finally, she proposes an analytical method drawing mainly from sociology and artistic practice-based research, which includes repurposing Charles Tilly’s semantic grammar to analyze currently uncollated archives comprising three-decade worth of 900 socially engaged art projects globally.

Friday 22nd –

Artist Talk:
Işıl Eğrikavuk and Nahum, RAISIN exhibiting artists
Moderated by RAISIN Curator and SAIC Curating in the Expanded Field Class
10:00 AM Central Time

Brief: Işıl Eğrikavuk and Nahum, RAISIN exhibiting artists

Description: Berlin-based artists Işıl Eğrikavuk and Nahum discuss structures of exile and place—as well as their respective investigations of Christmas trees left in city gutters, and starry piñatas floating in outer space. Eğrikavuk is the winner of Turkey’s first contemporary art prize, Full Art Prize (2012). Nahum is the first artist to receive the Young Space Leader Award, for contributions to astronautics and space exploration. This live conversation takes place on Zoom; rebroadcast on Lumpen Radio.

Saturday 23rd –

Community Conversation:

Kaveri Raina and Zhiyuan Yang
Podcast special by Zhiyuan Yang, RAISIN exhibiting artist
3:00 PM Central Time

Brief: RAISIN exhibiting Artist Zhiyuan Yang presents their new podcast Asian Kids but not Model Minorities

Description: Zhiyuan Yang and Kaveri Raina present the podcast episode “Friends, Artists, Asian Kids–but not Model Minorities.” Yang and Raina collaborated to produce this episode on Asian family dynamics. This conversation explores family as a foundational social institution for all humans—not necessarily distinguished by “Western” and “Eastern.” This pre-recorded conversation will be rebroadcast on Lumpen Radio; there is no live Zoom.

Friday 29th –

Artist Talk:
Unyimeabasi Udoh, Tran Tran, and Diya Khurana, RAISIN exhibiting artists
Moderated by RAISIN Curator and SAIC Being a Woman of Color in the Arts Class
3:00 PM Central Time

Brief: Artists Unyimeabasi Udoh, Tran Tran, and Diya Khurana discuss objects of care and hope

Description: Tran Tran is a creative whose work explores the immaterial and the physical. Unyimeabasi Udoh focuses on how systems of knowledge are built and maintained. Diya Khurana works in lithography, screen-printing, photography and interactive art. These three artists discuss their memoirs of family and home, based on photographed memories and objects. This conversation expands into objects as symbols of care and hope. This live conversation will take place on Zoom, with a rebroadcast on Lumpen Radio.

FRIDAY 12th –

Artist Talk:
Kiki King, Alessia Petrolito, and Marina Cavadini RAISIN exhibiting artists
Moderated by RAISIN Curator and SAIC Being a Woman of Color in the Arts Class
3:00 PM Central Time

Brief:
Artists Kiki King, Alessia Petrolito, and Marina Cavadini discuss language, movement, and their (our) literary hero—Beneatha

Description:
Kiki King, Alessia Petrolito, and Marina Cavadini are ready to sing, dance, and shout their praises for a (kind of) fictional character: Beneatha. King is a dancer, whose choreography merges with activism and community-building. Petrolito is the founder of ArP Adoptic, an interdisciplinary project for adoptee experience and identity studies. Cavadini is a multidisciplinary and research-based artist who thinks with vulnerability and intimacy. This live conversation will take place on Zoom, with a rebroadcast on Lumpen Radio.

FRIDAY 19th –

Artist Talk:
Delilah Salgado, Kioto Aoki, and Jared Brown RAISIN exhibiting artists
Moderated by RAISIN Curator and SAIC Being a Woman of Color in the Arts Class
3:00 PM Central Time

Brief:
Artists Delilah Salgado, Kioto Aoki, and Jared Brown discuss tone, shadow, and color

Description:
Delilah Salgado is the co-founder of Mujeres Mutantes, an all-woman Latinx art collective with roots all across Chicago’s South and West Sides. Kioto Aoki is an artist and educator using the material specificity of the analogue image and image-making process to explore modes of perception as a politics of vision. Jared Brown is an artist who self-identifies as a data thief, understanding this role from John Akomfrah’s description of the data thief as a figure that does not belong to the past or present. This live conversation will take place on Zoom, with a rebroadcast on Lumpen Radio.

FRIDAY 3rd:

Community Conversation:

Reshma Persaud, Manager of Principal Giving at the International Rescue Committee

Guided Meditation for Artists

Moderated by RAISIN Curator and SAIC’s Being a Woman of Color in the Arts class

3:00 PM Central Time

Description: This live conversation will take place on Zoom, as a private event for RAISIN artists and program collaborators.