ReaderV

Volume VI, 22 Readings on Research, Activism, the Academy and Conduct, is part of an occasional series of educational readers by the Think Tank that has yet to be named. This reader is created as part of the conference Open Engagement: Making Things, Making Things Better, Making Things Worse.

In working on this reader we’re interested in what it means to research and how to implement one’s findings in a socio-political context. How does one breech the barriers that render theoretical inquiry and expression useless? What is the role of the student? What is the role of the intellectual? What might the researcher look like / create if she exists outside the academy? How are we implicated in activist projects and communities? We’re interested in thinking through what it means to embody research and producing affective action in its wake.

Download the reader: 22 Readings on Research, Activism, the Academy and Conduct

Volume V, 30 Readings on Neutrality as it relates to Art, Politics, Biology and Space, is part of an occasional series of educational readers by the Think Tank that has yet to be named. This reader is created in conjunction with Prototype for a Pedagogical Furniture II to contain and present Reader V and a PHPM (Publicly Held Private Meeting) Instructional Pamphlet.

As a prototype, this piece is the second iteration of small-scale, mobile furniture which might be deployed in various contexts to assist in educational and dialogical purposes. In this version, the Directors have supplied a reader on Neutrality and included an instructional manual on how one might conduct a PHPM. This gesture intends to encourage the viewer to use the mobile unit to facilitate a Publicly Held Private Meeting in Geneva, Switzerland – a Neutral State.

This project is part of an exhibition entitled “Public Things” at Analix Forever and organized by Conrad Bakker. As stated: “The exhibition Public Things focuses on the role of contemporary artworks as “public things” that point to the dialectical relationship between a specific object and its context, between the private space of a gallery and the public space of the city, between a material thing and its network of relations.”

Download the reader: 30 Readings on Neutrality as it relates to Art, Politics, Biology and Space

Over the past few months state governments around the country have encountered shrinking tax revenues due to dramatic changes in our economy. Discussions about the economy, the recession, consumer confidence, etc. have led to threats to core governmental services and even government shutdown while corporations received bailouts to the tune of billions of dollars that were equivalent to over $4,500 per US citizen (of all ages). Here in Philadelphia the Mayor has threatened draconian cuts if the State does not provide a variety of laws enabling him to raise the sales tax and restructure the failing pension system. News articles have discussed in detail the possible outcomes of lack of State action: from the criminal justice system closing, to the closing of libraries, recreation centers, drastic cuts to the police and firefighter forces, and departments such as city planning, parks, etc.

Few dare to speak about the long term failures of government and the failures of our predatory economic system which got us into this mess.

It is the hope of this Department to bring together other Directors to explore what happens when governments collapse and to provoke alternatives to government and corporate responses to this current and future crises.

Some questions for exploration before the PHPM:
-what can be learned from failed nation states around the world?
-how are other states coping?
-what is to be learned by looking at alternative models for meeting the needs of citizens inside and outside of the US?

In 1980, Jackson Gregory and Joan Wye of the Belfast Bay Tile Works worked with children aged 5 to 13 at Somerville’s Powderhouse Community School to create 253 tiles that were later installed in the Davis Square subway stop. These tiles, part of the Arts on the Line program that placed art in and around MBTA rapid transit stations, present a unique opportunity to look back at how Somerville has changed since the opening of the Red Line extension in 1984.

This “Distributed and Participatory Public Investigation” project will collect the personal histories of the people who created the Davis Square tiles, to be published on the web and possibly in other formats. We are asking volunteers to help us by finding and interviewing one tile-maker. A set of questions is included below – in your interviews, please collect as much of this information as possible. If you are able to contact the artist and they would rather not participate in this project, please let us know so that we can take them off our list.

To participate in the project, please visit http://davissquaretilesproject.com/.

Volume IV in a series of occasional readers by the Think Tank that has yet to be named explores the idea of community and the many assumptions, ambiguities, and boundaries that inform this powerful and oft-cited trope found in contemporary urban society. We believe that to better understand how community is defined — that is, created, delineated, cohered, dissolved, complicated, contested, infiltrated, invaded, and generally transformed — will prove instructive for guiding our — artists’ and activists’ — capacity for collaborating with diverse groups of people in the struggles for social, spatial, and economic justice.

This reader accompanies the walking workshop entitled “Community” in Question: Conversations and readings on art, activism, and community vis-à-vis the Green Line Expansion, which investigates the proposed public transportation expansion (MBTA Green Line) into Somerville-Medford and examines how residents respond to (both for and against) changes in transportation and how transportation effects their cities.

The reader is organized into the following sections: Theoretical discussions on Community, Learning from Activists/Organizers: How to participate in a community, [Common] Space, Artistic responses to Community, Building Communities

DOWNLOAD READER VOL. IV

As an appendix to the reader and to the “Community” in Question project, the Think Tank that has yet to be named also presents History & Resources on the MBTA Green Line Expansion. This is an incomplete but useful glimpse into the historical record regarding the Green Line and Red Line transit expansions in Boston.

DOWNLOAD THE APPENDIX

The Think Tank that has yet to be named presents a walking workshop entitled “Community” in Question: Conversations and readings on art, activism, and community vis-à-vis the Green Line Expansion, in which we collectively investigate the proposed public transportation expansion (MBTA Green Line) into Somerville-Medford and examine how residents respond to (both for and against) changes in transportation and how transportation effects their cities. Leaving from the Tufts University campus, our walking and talking followed a portion of the proposed route of the Green Line expansion, visited 2 proposed T stop locations, and then culminated at Davis Square Red Line T stop.

Download the accompanying reader: 25 Texts on “Community” In Question: Conversations on Art, Activism, and Community and appendix: History & Resources on the MBTA Green Line Expansion

Directors of the Think Tank that has yet to be named presented this workshop for a conference entitled “Convergence: The Intersection of Arts and Activism” at Tufts University in early April 2009. Co-sponsored by the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service and Massachusetts Campus Compact, the conference gathered together artists, activists, and educators interested in social justice and the arts.

The Long Version…

We (The Think Tank that has yet to be named) propose to explore the idea of community and the many assumptions, ambiguities, and boundaries that inform this powerful and oft-cited trope found in contemporary urban society. Our project involves two convergent courses of research with respect to community — one general and one topical. Generally, we will address the nominal subject of this conference: the relationship between art and activism; topically, we will undertake a case study local to Somerville-Medford: the relationship between gentrification and the expansion of Boston’s public transit system. We believe that to better understand how community is defined — that is, created, delineated, cohered, dissolved, complicated, contested, infiltrated, invaded, and generally transformed — will prove instructive for guiding our — artists’ and activists’ — capacity for collaborating with diverse groups of people in the struggles for social, spatial, and economic justice.

As the title and theme of this conference indicates, there has been a growing conversation around what it means to be an artist working as an activist or an activist working as an artist. We are concerned by this notion of artists employing the tools of activism, because few seem to be astutely addressing key questions: What is gained when artistic and activist frameworks merge? Who profits? Is an artistic engagement with other fields highly superficial, or is effective work being done to benefit those constituencies and communities with which artists work? Is our work merely symbolic, as does it act directly and affect measurable change in the world? What is the relationship between artists and the communities they may work with? We ask these questions of ourselves, because we are a group comprised of community organizers, activists, and artists who must continually readdress the art-activism duality.

Turning to the specific and the specifically local, the problems of defining community become very apparent when considering the proposed expansion of the MBTA Green Line into Somerville and Medford. The expansion, with stops in Union and Ball Squares, will affect the areas immediately surrounding Tufts University, much like the 1980s expansion of the Red Line into Davis Square. By looking into the historical record and colloquial memory surrounding the Davis Square extension, we hope to gather a basis for questioning the effects of the newly proposed transit expansion. The character of Davis Square is said to have changed quite a bit since the completion of the Red Line station in 1984. More money and business came to the Square, more public art and new infrastructure; but with this also came increasing rents that, when coupled with the loss of rent control and other public housing assistance, ultimately displaced lower income residents away from the new station. This indicates a tension between the desire for more public transportation (less reliance on cars, potentially more efficient and environmentally sensitive) with the potential gentrifying consequences of such public transportation expansion, especially those expansions that connect high-end urban centers with outlying neighborhoods. We hope to examine how residents respond to (both for and against) changes in transportation and how transportation effects their cities and neighborhoods in order to further investigate key questions about the nature of community.

The tools and tactics we will use to execute these overlapping analyses of community are: creating an educational reader on community, organizing PHPMs within Somerville-Medford involving key stakeholders of the MBTA expansion, and facilitating a workshop within the Convergence conference that presents this dialogue in order to frame a critical conversation with conference participants about the notion of community and how artists (and activists) engage productively in the communities they wish to collaborate with.

As part of an ongoing conversation on art, activism, and education, we present documentation of radical educational texts broadcast throughout Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago in the style of public orations. The orations are sited in the location of each individual Director, documented, combined and distributed in this pamphlet.

The live interventions draw on the history of the street corner soapbox as a form of sited, distributable education. The documentation presented here intends to combine the temporal, performative, educational and site-specific nature of the project in to a (re)distributable form. In particular, the remixing of the audio documentation is an assemblage of the orations in content and context, somewhat aphoristic and fragmented, this editing down attempts to create connections between both the content of the radical educational texts and the ambient aural experience of the three distinct urban locations where the oration occurred.

Also important here is the prelude conversation that led us to this experimental project. For the participating Directors, this ongoing conversation is as important as this project. As you will see from our conversation, we believe our learning process is integral in a continual praxis dedicated to emancipatory education, critical discourse, and strategies for resistance.

Download the accompanying reader: 23 Readings on Art, Activism & Education.

Radical Oration of Public Education (DICP)

Radical Oration 01: Henry Giroux, “When Hope is Subversive” (DIM)

radical oration pt 1 – paulo freire (DITE)

Radical Oration 01: Pauo Freire “Pedagogy of Freedom” (DIF)

Volume III in an occasional series of educational readers by the Think Tank that has yet to be named. This reader was created in conjunction with Radical Orations on Art, Activism & Education. Also important here is the prelude conversation that led us to this experimental project. For the participating Directors, this ongoing conversation is as important as this project. As you will see from our conversation, we believe our learning process is integral in a continual praxis dedicated to emancipatory education, critical discourse, and strategies for resistance.

Download the reader: 23 Readings on Art, Activism & Education

TRANSMISSION 1
NOV 2 2007
[DIM] + [DIF],

I just finished reading this book on Anachist motivated education called “The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the US” by Paul Avrich. I was talking to DIRH about it and how it was pretty rad and he mentioned that you guys were also really interested in some of the same ideas (alternative education, “freedom schools”, etc). I often think about how art + education + activism can be merged together, but haven’t really found others having that conversation. It seems there are many talking about art and activism, and often times using methods that might be similar to those of educators, but previous to the pedagogical factory i’ve never heard them talked about in the same breath. It certainly seems to be becoming more hip, more and more I hear of artists citing freire, but I’m yet to really find someone who is attempting to articulate how we can use all three effectively as one.

I suspect by your practice and work with the Think Tank you think about art/activisms relationship to education (and I don’t necessarily mean “art education”). More and more I’ve been thinking about these types of practices that attempt to implement some kind of educational tactics as a way of communicating. I don’t know if I have specific questions about these types of practices (I guess I’m referring to work that was included in the pedagogical factory and other similar practices), but I wonder what your thoughts our about attempting to cram together art/activism/eduation all into one? Is the collective/think tank model a way of educating ourselves so that we might move forward, or shake the foundation of three fields? and how is that related to more traditional forms of education? I’m probably revealing my ignorance on the subject, but I guess that’s why I’m writing. I feel that this is an important discourse and I’d like to know what you guys think, or if you have any suggestions about where the a more complicated conversation may be happening. So far I’ve been reading stuff from all three angles, and they often seem to overlap, but never quite merge completely. Hopefully this isn’t too far out of left field.

Hope all is well with both of you! Look forward to hearing from you soon!
best
[DITE]

http://www.educationrevolution.org/modernschool.html

TRANSMISSION 2
NOV 2 2007
Hey [DITE],
Good to hear from you. Yes, [DIM] and I have been considering the conflux of art, activism and education for some time– though we are far from coming to any kind of a conclusion. I have attached a link for a writing that [DIM] and I produced a few weeks ago for a listserv called Empyre – http://thinktank.boxwith.com/2007/10/critical-spatial-practice-view/ . The list tends to be dominated by those who are densely theoretical, and few who practice– which seems common in these spheres. Regardless, after a month long web discussion about “critical spatial practice” KH asked DIM and I to contribute. We set out to talk about our experiences in Philly as artists and activists and the occasional convergence of the two. I think for a long time we had been also thinking about how to meld these two disparate practices. What came clear to us through the writing was a suggestion that perhaps this fusion was not necessary, but that our practices as artists and activists were two parallel practices that served to inform one another – as a way of grounding them, invigorating them and looking critically at them. And I think that is how we envision our Directorships within the think tank.

As far as the educational aspect, we are both very committed to teaching. I think we have both really thought of our educational practice as complimentary, and necessary to our work as artists. So again, everything intertwines and informs. Academia is the prize– the coveted tenure track job– right? But is there an educational model that lives outside of the institution? What we have not talked specifically about is what an alternative model would look like– internet based, free, socially engaged– or rather is it the creation of a model of self-education? With the readers, with pedagogical factory– I think we were thinking about how to make pointed, condensed, specific information available to people– perhaps even in a way that is instructional. Not to say that the reader is a “How to,” but that they provide a broad base of theory about the subject so that one might find themselves informed as they enter into their own artist/activist practices. They are kind of like free, hyper-specific text books. In fact, I was hoping to get started on volume three soon – perhaps it should be about alternative educational systems, art and activism? And perhaps you would like to help compile the texts, especially since it seems you are already doing that? Of course, you would have to declare your Directorship!

This week at Artivistic, I think I certainly saw more people whose work fell somewhere in between art and activism– but one of those distinct practices always seemed to dominate in the work. So I guess at this point I wonder if they can or should meld. When I think about the convergence of the three, adding activism, I think about how we could use an educational model to distribute the idea of the parallel practice. That a creative practice informs and activist practice, and an activist practice informs a creative practice. For me, this has been the more successful model so far. But I still have a hard time envisioning a form, a container for this whole thing… what ever it is?

This is all very much on the surface for me right now– and I thank you for giving me a reason to write some of it down. I have a suggestion: Perhaps we begin to gather and share text on delicious under the tag “reader3″ pertaining to alternative models of education (actually, I started this a few weeks ago under the tag Ed_Model, if you want to have a look). Non-internet texts can be scanned and distributed in PDF form. Interested?

How about you [DIM]?

[DIF]

TRANSMISSION 3
NOV 4 2007
[DIF],

thanks for responding. I found many of the things you said to be helpful, and if nothing else I’m always interested in how others view these problems. You’re e-mail made me think of a few things, many of which I was probably already sort of thinking about.

I wonder about the sort of default “alternative education” practice which is the free school or freedom school, or simple group of people meeting outside of the institution. While I’m totally supportive (I’m certainly not making a case that many of these programs don’t teach essential critical thought, that I imagine is difficult with NCLB, and state mandated textbooks, etc. etc.) and find these type of projects really exciting – I wonder if their effectiveness is all that it could be if a more creative approach was implemented. I guess in some ways I’m making the same critique of alternative education that I am of art or activism, which is that I think we could use a totally new, progressive, and creative form to push the field in a new direction and shake it up — this is sort of the case that Duncombe made in DREAM, though it was more entangled with “spectacle” and politics, but I suppose that isn’t too far off here…. I’m also interested in broadening how we think about education. I think the pedagogical factory did this, and I think the way you talk about the TT is more in line with what I sort of imagine a possible alternative art/education/activism looking like.

Obviously I’ve also been thinking about whether or not these practices can or should be merged – you mentioned they were parallel and informative to one another. This I certainly agree with, and I don’t think it is a counter-productive model by any means. Perhaps I’m hesitant to let go of the idea that it is one of the goals to successfully merge the 2 or 3 disciplines because we, or at least I, simply like them so maybe I think just desire to see them collapse into one, and this obviously doesn’t mean its necessarily a good idea – maybe it is naive , problematic, or just not that helpful. But one big question does come up for me – if we could imagine a container or forum for this practice, that we have yet to really define, but one that successfully merges 3 disciplines while simultaneously creating something new, are we also destabilizing and invigorating all three practices in a helpful way? Are we providing a new, more beneficial model for art / activism / and education to be implemented in ways that are right now unimagined but ultimately would free up all three practices and perhaps liberate them (at least a little bit) from the institution? – And this is not meant as an attack on the academia, but (obviously) if we could loosen the the stranglehold that institutions have on all three disciplines it would be helpful for those who do not have access to them, although maybe that is a bigger problem that isn’t the point here. Hopefully that thought / question makes sense.

I’d love to help compile some text for a reader one alternative ed. models! You’re right, I’m sort of already compiling some of these texts, but it’ll be good to take it a little bit more seriously now. I’ll start to pay a little more attention to some of these texts I come across and share them with you guys, and I’ll try and scan in a few things I’ve read recently that sort of energized these questions for me. I also noticed you tagged a bunch of freire books on goodreads, and I wanted to make sure you knew about this other book. It’s a book compiled of conversations between paulo freire and miles horton (the guy who started freedom school in Appalachia during the civil rights movement) appropriately titled “We make the road by walking”. I probably should take another look at it, I read it a few months ago and remember that they attempted to answer some of these questions also. Thanks again for responding, I’m excited by this conversation and look forward to continuing it with you guys!

best,
[DITE]

http://www.highlandercenter.org/a-history2.asp (miles horton’s school)
http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/804_reg.html (we make the road by walking)

TRANSMISSION 4
NOV 4 2007
[DITE],
I think your observation of the need to look critically at forms of “alternative” education is key. What kept repeating in my head at Artivistic was– these projects are excellent, but who has access to them? If academics are the only audience, what exactly are the projects doing in the world? My response to many of the projects at Artivistic, which I often thought were really thoughtful, critically significant and politically relevant was– if they only ever live here then they are impotent. They are selfishly created for an audience who already has privileged access to this information (everyone nodes their head in unison.) Ultimately, I think these artists are interested in a broader form of distribution– but perhaps there is no forum for that. Artivistic tried to be that forum, but failed by leaning too far toward academia. (and it is ok – attack academia… it really needs to be attacked!) For me, the problem is always– who has access to this education? I am reminded of DIM’s proposal for the “Office of Everyday Resistance”…

“if we could imagine a container or forum for this practice, that we have yet to really define, but one that successfully merges 3 disciplines while simultaneously creating something new, are we also destabilizing and invigorating all three practices in a helpful way?” [QUOTING DITE]

What happens in the think tank is that we try to ascribe form to a particular practice– which is what I think you seem to be interested in doing. An Example: having a dialogue about a site of contention, at the very site of contention, is a form that the Directors call a publicly held private meeting (PHPM.) What you are talking about in the quote above, nearly precisely, is what we Directors recently determined was the “space in between” (this was central to my presentation at artivistic.) Like the name, “the think tank that has yet to be named,” we have assigned the intersection of parallel practices with a name that is maliable for the user, or Director. The space in between, in our experience, has provided a location where these practices meet, but do not congeal into anything solid. And the reason for why we have chosen to create maliable, almost liquid forms, is to avoid co-optation, branding or consumption. It is to borrow from Bey, from the temporary autonomous zone. The Directors attempt to create distributable, usable forms that negate co-optation by the institution. The danger for instance: Collaborative practices, now all the rage, have only recently found their way into larger, economically driven institutions. What will happen to the practice of collaboration, a practice that was born out of the want to negate consumption, when it is made a commodity? (I am making some sweeping generalizations here, as you will learn I often do, but i think you know what I mean.) Directors attempt to create forms that make space in the world, forms that others can understand and borrow, forms that are there, then gone.

The space in between the directors is the think tank. The space in between our parallel practices (art, activism, education) is the un-named, unbranded site of convergence– another space in between. As a Director (which you have yet to self-appoint), you have the autonomy to name that form if you choose– or to use the form by creating space for the form with out naming it.

Jim Duignan from Ped Factory gave us a copy of “We make the road by walking” but I have yet to read it. I am dumping a ton of text onto goodreads as a way to begin research…
DIF

TRANSMISSION 5
NOV 4 2007
So, what is education? And, what is education for?

I recently brought out a graduate thesis written by my grad school colleague, Hillary Procknow, who was trying to plot an alternative ethics for education (at the time, it was applied to architectural education, but really only superficially). She and I shared a mentor (Steve Ross) who brought us along the critical theory / Hakim Bey route towards an understanding of critical consciousness. Her writing starts out with an account and critique of the scientific revolution, then moves through critical theory / dialectical thought (Marx and Hegel), and on into “critical pedagogy”; finally, ending with something called the “ethics of the self” as new tactic in education. I need to revisit the writing more closely, but her work lives in the same area where we are thinking about this stuff. I’m going to contact her and see what she’s up to, ask her for any updated texts and references, maybe engage her in some of this dialogue.

Here’s an excerpt: “We then moved to this category we call “education,” in which we realized that there are always politics involved; those things that we take or granted as being the constitution of education do in fact convey, perpetuate and reinforce certain ideals that are valued for whatever reason by the dominant culture. This, of course, would be true even in a “transformed” or critical classroom; but the critical classroom might admit this to itself. [...] To give up the pretense of knowing in the classroom is to recognize that there is a responsibility in helping students develop their individual critical consciousness which cannot be ascertained before hand and which also requires the educator to be willing to acknowledge the different sorts of knowledge that will come to the surface in the classroom.”

I think Hillary’s research probably was primarily focused on traditional educational structures (ie. the “classroom”), but at the time she was probably invested in working within institutions (not sure what she’s up to these days, though). Where art/activism/education intersect suggests to me a productive, critical, exciting way around of this — much like many of the alternative schools are trying.

“I suspect by your practice and work with the Think Tank you think about art/activisms relationship to education (and I don’t necessarily mean “art education”). More and more I’ve been thinking about these types of practices that attempt to implement some kind of educational tactics as a way of communicating.” [QUOTING DITE]

Maybe I hadn’t considered before your e-maiL. But the TT might be entirely about educational tactics. I think we want to affect change, we want to empower people, we want to reveal their latent powers of agency, their individual critical consciousness. And not be by telling them in some sort of patriarchal approach, but rather through a dialogical project in which we are all changed together.

Yes, let’s get a reader going! Yes, let’s start planning an art/activism/education summit in Philadelphia for this summer!

[DIM]

ps. What do you guys think about publishing this great conversation in the TT web site?

TRANSMISSION 6
NOV 5 2007
[DIM] + [DIF],

You’re absolutely right, what I’m describing is the “space between” I feel like somewhere in this space there is room for us to really create exciting, important work. Perhaps my struggle with these ideas so far is that I’ve been desperately trying to grab hold of something solid, or some language and hasn’t quite been established yet. This seems contradictory to what you’re saying, which is that there isn’t (and shouldn’t be) a language to these practices so that they can avoid co-option. I totally agree with this idea, and I love the way you talk about the TT as providing opportunities for the spaces to be dived into, while constantly moving in different directions simultaneously. Maybe my problem is that in trying to articulate what this form might look like, I’m too caught up in searching for a pre-established discourse or rhetoric that doesn’t exist, and maybe we don’t want it to. Perhaps we should focus on articulating not what this container might look like (though I can’t help but be excited by it) but instead what practices and activities can we partake in to find ourselves more frequently arriving in those (in-between) spaces.

I’ve also been thinking of a few other instances where an ‘alternative’ approach was taken to education. Red76′s project the “laundry lecture series” comes to mind ( http://www.red76.com/salem.html ). These seems like a good example of what a “guerrilla” or “tactical” educator might do. I’m not really sure quite how to talk about it yet…though it gets me excited about concrete moments when these things converge. I suppose it’s possible that the idea cold be pushed further – the laundry lecture series still follow a certain protocol of educational structure – a lecture, a Q&A, etc… What would happen if this type of informal exchange became commonplace – what if every morning on the train a group of commuters recited poetry? or what if we made zines with excerpts of society of the spectacle and passed them out in times square? I wonder what you guys think of this type of project(s)…??

The more I think about it, it seems the moments when these things converge are these moments of educational tactics – so perhaps an appropriate directorship would be of tactical education. What do you think? does Dept. for the Investigation of Tactical Education (DITE) have a nice ring to it?

I’m excited to dive into some of these readings, and a summit on these topics would be very exciting! and I agree Jeremy that this is a great conversation, I think others would get something out of reading it on the TT site. look forward to hearing more!

best,
DITE

Photo by Lucas Ihlein

For the official program, the Directors of the Think Tank that has yet to be named made a presentation about our work in order to problematize the perhaps insurmountable dilemma inherent in exporting to another locale a deeply contextualized art and activist practice. Specifically, we focused on our Publicly Held Private Meetings (PHPM). These are performative and collaborative interventions, and a format that we have used frequently in our investigations of contemporary urban issues in Philadelphia. As a critical spatial practice (to borrow a term currently much in fashion), PHPMs are held in the places directly related to the focus of the given investigation, even while considering and comparing its situations to other cities. Living, working, and organizing in Philadelphia, we rely on an intimate knowledge of the city in order to initiate and faciliate these dialogical projects. This knowledge is often gained over time through research, observation, and by virtue of simply sharing and negotiating space with others.

Traveling to another place to “make work” generally falls outside of the practice of the Think Tank that has yet to be named. This raises a number of questions for us that are relevant to the conference thematic: Can a practice rooted in a rich, nuanced interrogation of an intimately known place be relocated effectively to another, unfamiliar place? To what extent does such a localized art / activist practice rely on internalized assumptions about the valorization of indigenousness and the privileging of “authentic” spatial occupation? And what is “authentic” spatial occupation anyway? Can we even precisely locate indigenous? Circumventing this apparent impasse, we intend the presentation of our practice in this setting to act as a literal form of exportation whereby audience members may realize or acknowledge their own Directorships within the Think Tank that has yet to be named. We encouraged those potential Directors then to go forth, establishing their Departments and initiating their own critical investigations in their own localities, be they PHPMs or otherwise.