#METOO // IRL – PARTICIPATORY WORKSHOP
CO-PRESENTED BY RUSLANA LICHTZIER, DIVERSEWORKS, AND FLATLAND GALLERY
Thursday, May 24, 6 pm at Flatland Gallery (1709 Westheimer, Houston, TX 77098)
Gaining steam in October 2017, the #MeToo movement aimed a spotlight at the pandemic of sexual assault and harassment that women, nonbinary, and gender-non-conforming people face. With this, it became clearer than ever that gender bias is a fundamental discriminatory structure of contemporary society. While it is extremely important for survivors to speak out, it has become evident that everyone is affected by this violence and oftentimes do not have the tools to intervene or interrupt it as it happens. This participatory workshop aims to provide practical tools to practice active listening, group empowerment through empathy, and transformative justice in the workplace. Active participation is encouraged but not required. This workshop is presented in conjunction with the exhibition The Dangerous Professors // Houston Edition, curated by Ruslana Lichtzier and on view May 3 – May 27, 2018 at Flatland Gallery.
DiverseWorks Executive Director & Chief Curator Xandra Eden will present her findings and research as a co-organizer of recent CAA and Common Field workshops on gender inequity in the arts, and share some of the ideas and tactics that have been proposed by artists, art faculty, and other art professionals.
Ching-In, co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities, will share some principles of transformative justice and community accountability — and discuss some lessons from case studies.
Scott J. Hunter will lead the group to address how trauma situates within ourselves, at a neurobiological level, and consider how the brain incorporates and processes adversity. This will foster a better consideration of how trauma influences what is seen, felt, and shared interpersonally, as well as psychologically.
The event will be accompanied by a screening and a sound program of works by The Dangerous Professor artists.
About the participants:
Xandra Eden is Executive Director & Chief Curator of DiverseWorks where her recent exhibitions include Lines Drawn (2017), Only in Your Way: Kate Gilmore & Heather Rowe (2017/co-curated w/Rachel Cook); and Pablo Helguera: The Fable is to be Retold (2016). She was previously a curator at the Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (2005-2015) and at The Power Plant in Toronto (1999-2005) where she organized exhibitions, performances, publications, and artist-driven programs and projects. She has also held positions at Women & Thier Work, Austin and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York. Eden holds a BFA from SUNY Purchase and MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.
Ching-In Chen is author of The Heart’s Traffic and recombinant and co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities and Here is a Pen: an Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets. A Kundiman, Lambda, Watering Hole and Callaloo Fellow, they are part of Macondo and Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation writing communities. Their work has appeared in The Best American Experimental Writing and Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics. They serve as the Texas Review’s poetry editor and on Thinking Its Presence: Race, Advocacy, Solidarity in the Arts’ Executive Board. www.chinginchen.com
Scott J Hunter, PhD is a Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, and Pediatrics in the Pritzker School of Medicine and Biological Sciences Division at the University of Chicago. He is the Director of Neuropsychology for the University of Chicago Medicine and Comer Children’s Hospital. Dr. Hunter is also a collector and curator of contemporary art, with an emphasis on the intersectional and relational within emerging to mid-career practices. His most recent exhibition, A is for Artist, at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago, presented current works by artists with intellectual and neurodevelopmental disabilities, as a confrontation with the idea of the outsider within contemporary art.