Join us for a roundtable talk on future art ecosystems as part of Critical Transformations: A Forum on New Futures.

Thursday, November 19 at 4:30 PM PST
Free & Open to All – RSVP Here

ZOOM URL
Meeting ID: 699 0286 6923
Passcode: 929121

How can we radically rethink and realize different structures for the production, distribution and reception of contemporary art? Given the current interwoven status of art, technology, communication, and activism, can there be a truly revolutionary path for the arts sector? This conversation brings together a group of leading-edge curators and artists who have used direct, actionable means to achieve these endeavours in their work.

Panelists:

Anaïs Duplan, Founder, Center for Afrofuturist Studies and Program Manager, Recess
Willa Koerner, Director, The Strange Foundation,and Former Content Director, The Creative Independent
Jen Delos Reyes, Founder & Director, Open Engagement
Moderated by Ceci Moss

Please note all Critical Transformations events will be recorded and published at a later date on this website.

About the Panelists:

Anaïs Duplan is a trans* poet, curator, and artist. He is the author of a book of essays, Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture (Black Ocean, 2020), a full-length poetry collection, Take This Stallion (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2016), and a chapbook, Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus (Monster House Press, 2017). He has taught poetry at the University of Iowa, Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College, and St. Joseph’s College.

He was a 2017-2019 joint Public Programs fellow at the Museum of Modern Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem. In 2016, he founded the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, an artist residency program for artists of color, based at Iowa City’s artist-run organization Public Space One. He works as Program Manager at Recess.

Willa Köerner is a future-focused strategist, editor, writer, and space-maker working to amplify change. She directs The Strange Foundation, a shape-shifting entity and experimental residency space in New York’s Catskill Mountains. In the past, Willa was Content Director at The Creative Independent (TCI), a vast resource of emotional and practical guidance for artists, and was Director of Curation & Engagement at Kickstarter, where she helped hundreds of arts & culture creators raise millions of dollars annually. Before that, she spent five years at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and freelanced with various arts organizations.

Jen Delos Reyes was born in the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba and educated first in its local music scene of the mid-90’s infused with the energy of Riot grrrl and DIY, and then in its university. How she works today is rooted in what she learned in her formative years as a show organizer, listener, creator of zines, and band member.

She is the author of “I’m Going to Live the Life I Sing About in My Song: How Artists Make and Live Lives of Meaning”, a book exploring the artist impetus toward art and everyday life and “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Public Engagement* *But Were Afraid to Ask.”

Delos Reyes is the founder of Open Engagement, an artist-led initiative committed to expanding the dialogue around and serving as a site of care for the field of socially engaged art. She currently lives and works in Chicago, IL where she is the Associate Director of the School of Art and Art History at the University of Illinois Chicago.

Ceci Moss is a curator, writer and educator based in Los Angeles, USA. She is the founder of Gas, a mobile, autonomous, experimental and networked platform for contemporary art. Her academic research addresses contemporary internet-based art practice and network culture. Her first book, Expanded Internet Art: Twenty-First Century Artistic Practice and the Informational Milieu, is released through the Bloomsbury series International Texts in Critical Media Aesthetics. Her writing has appeared in Rhizome, Art in America, ArtAsiaPacific, Artforum, The Wire, CURA, New Media & Society and various art catalogs. Previously, she was Assistant Curator of Visual Arts at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Senior Editor of the art and technology non-profit arts organization Rhizome, and Special Projects Coordinator at the New Museum. She is currently a Lecturer in Curatorial Practice at California College of the Arts and she has held teaching positions at the University of Southern California, Scripps College, the San Francisco Art Institute and New York University.

About Critical Transformations: A Forum on New Futures

We are living through unprecedented times that present the challenges of the pandemic, an economic recession, and rising fascism, alongside the opportunities of social justice, creative problem-solving, and bold thinking.

Curated by Ceci Moss and hosted by the Shumka Centre at Emily Carr University, Critical Transformations is a monthly series of online roundtable conversations that invites visionary artists, curators, activists, designers, architects, and arts organizers around the globe to discuss their work in creating groundbreaking new models for the arts sector.