Breakfast with artist, Gregory Sale, weekend of PSU's Open Engagement Conference this month, talking about his screening of It's not just black and white: a video and mediated performance at the Phoenix Art Museum on June 20 at 7pm. The film documents the creation of an installation of black-and-white striped walls painted last year for Gregory's residency at the ASU Art Museum with the participation of inmates in a Maricopa County Sheriff's Office rehabilitation/reentry program, correction officers, and artist collaborators. Over three months, this installation at the ASU Art Museum served as an instructional platform for public forums, panel discussions, performance and social actions.
Visible Tomorrows
"A pressing need, Today our country is experiencing an extraordinary rate of imprisonment, a "mass incarceration," so high that it affects not only the individual offender, but also society as a whole, whether measured by cost, recidivism the failure of rehabilitation, or the impact on children and families."
"The seeds of this project come from a series of questions: How can a country that prioritizes freedom and democracy be the world leader in incarceration? Could this be the first generation in America to spend more on incarceration than education? Can the aesthetic focus and reflective quality of a museum be activated to build communal support and civic dialogue?"
"The plan and promise of a project, We - artist Gregory Sale and poet TC Tolbert - propose a social and aesthetic project designed to engage at-risk young adults in the Maricopa Country area who are often without familial or communal support or who have experienced foster care, homelessness, juvenile detention, adults jails or prison. They risk being caught up in Arizona's system of criminal punishment. Many have aged out of the foster care and juvenile detention systems. The challenges they face are considerable and often invisible to the pubic at large and muted in public discourse."
"Visible tomorrows, draws on previous artistic projects by Sale and on the ongoing youth and prison programs facilitated by Tolbert. This existing work addresses the issue of incarceration. Working in collaboration with Tumbleweed Center for Youth Development, we will design a series of workshops to open spaces for creating personalized visual and poetic materials that can impact the lives of these young adults. Participants will examine their personal court documents as a means to contemplate new ownership of personal narrative and an opportunity for revision. Centered around collaborative workshops and exhibitions, visible tomorrows aims at allowing young men and women to find ways to go beyond invisibility to self-recognition and the possibilities of imaging a new future."
http://asuartmuseum.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/it%E2%80%99s-not-just-black-and-white-gregory-sale-social-studies-project-6/
