_ personal manifestos/public contradictions @ the mca --- 2008

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
---Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” 1855

...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903
in Letters to a Young Poet






INSTITUTE OVERVIEW
This 10-day summer institute is designed to explore the relationship between belief and actions, looking closely at the ways in which human beings negotiate, hold, & balance contradiction. Through the use of text & image we will call attention to the inadequacies, failures, disappointments, and outrages of the present political, historical, social moment, exposing beliefs, systems, structures, and questions that rattle our sense of private and political (in)securities. We will also investigate the power of text & image to galvanize change, identifying the methods and practices of contemporary artists/activists to provoke dialogue and exchange around the most potent questions of our time.

GUIDING QUESTIONS
What do you believe about the present, historical moment? What are the contradictions that you hold/balance/navigate on a personal level and how do those resonate on a broader social/political/global scale? In what ways do your beliefs and ideas contradict themselves and/or live at odds with bigger social realities? How do you even come to know what you believe and to what extent do we have the power to galvanize awareness/call to action through text and image?

Facilitators: Amanda Lichtenstein, Bridget Doherty Trebing, Mike Bancroft

with support from Marissa Reyes @ the MCA

Tender Politic -- Social Justice/Participatory Poetics Resources