Charrette, Convening

A preview of the Vera List Center’s program cycle As for Protocols, launching in Fall 2020 and running through Spring 2022, this online event is convened by Dutch visual artist and curator Jeanne van Heeswijk–an extension of her research Training for the Not-Yet at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht. Her project develops a curriculum of community learnings through theoretical frameworks, performative workshops, creating “learning objects” and developing test sites to enact training for the “not-yet.”

Comprised of a series of collective exercises, interventions, and a musical performance by composer Angel Bat Dawid, artist Adelita Husni Bey, designer Sandra Lange, and artist Joy Mariama Smith, the event will unfold as a score or set of protocols for sharing different realities, making the space of the not-yet a generative place for intimacy and commitment. During a pandemic, when we can only safely gather in the disembodied atmosphere of a Zoom meeting and are otherwise subject to the protocols and commands of Artificial Intelligence, how might we use this fraught space to practice forms of radical kinship and being together otherwise?

Angel Bat Dawid is a Black American composer, improviser, clarinetist, pianist, and vocalist. In 2018, Angel composed Song of Solomon: A Cosmic Space Opera, performed by prominent free jazz musicians in Chicago. In the fall of 2019, she composed and premiered Requiem for Jazz–a 12-part Requiem Mass at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival. She also made her recording debut in 2019 on Chicago record label International Anthem. Her critically acclaimed album The Oracle was created entirely using only her cell phone. Angel tours worldwide with her septet Tha Brothahood and curates a series called Mothership9 at Elastic Arts, as well as hosts a monthly music show on NTS Radio. “Music is a language, you see, a universal language.”–Sun Ra

Jeanne van Heeswijk is a Rotterdam based artist who facilitates the creation of dynamic and diversified public spaces in order to “radicalize the local.” Her long-scale community-embedded projects question art’s autonomy by combining performative actions, discussions, and other forms of organizing and pedagogy in order to assist communities to take control of their own futures. Her ongoing research Training for the “Not Yet” develops a curriculum of community learnings through theoretical frameworks, performative workshops, creating “learning objects,” and developing test sites to enact trainings for the “not yet.” At the Vera List Center, Jeanne has participated in Projects A-E: The Art + Social Justice Working Group (2016) and Toward Sanctuary Summit (2018)

Adelita Husni Bey is an artist and pedagogue invested in anarcho-collectivism, theater, and critical legal studies. She organizes workshops and produces publications, broadcasts, and exhibition work using non-competitive pedagogical models through the framework of contemporary art. Involving activists, architects, lawyers, schoolchildren, spoken word poets, actors, urbanists, physical therapists, students, and teachers the work consists of making sites to practice collectively. At the Vera List Center, Adelita has participated in Indigeneity, Stack, Sovereignty (2017).

Sandra Lange is a performance designer and researcher situated in the Netherlands, whose primary interest is in designing spaces, exchanges, and trainings that are rooted in socio-political engagement, act as a shared activity of felt thinking and resist the oppression of the norm. As an advocate for radical slowness, Lange is interested in the fluidity of a body’s ability and mobility in relation to the social locations of the disabled and chronically ill. A current research project concerns itself with unpacking the embodied knowledge of women who are disabled by chronic illness as they interact with agents of the Disability Determination Service in the Netherlands.

A native Philadelphian and emerging “cyber pirate” currently based in Amsterdam, Joy Mariama Smith creates work that addresses the conundrum of projected identities in various contexts. A sub-theme or ongoing question in their work is the interplay between the body and its physical environment. Rooted in socially engaged art practice, they are a performance/installation/movement artist, activist, facilitator, curator, and architectural designer. They have a strong improvisational practice spanning twenty years. When they choose to teach, they actively try to uphold inclusive spaces.

Presented by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School as prelude to our 2020-2022 focus theme As for Protocols. Convened by Jeanne van Heeswijk, with Angel Bat Dawid, Adelita Husni Bey, Sandra Lange, and Joy Mariama Smith.