September 2021 Cultural Work Roundup

/// September 2021 ///

As we continue to navigate the uncertainty of our contemporary world, we look to our BIPOC artists and organizers for inspiration, healing, and solidarity. Check out these makers and radical thinkers this month, featuring recommendations by Cultural Work Coordinator, Roshani Thakore. If you would like to include an item to a future Cultural Work Roundup, email Roshani at roshani@apano.org by the 20th of that month.

WATCH

• FROM AFAR II – This virtual film festival that reflects on personal and national memory; monumentalism; and collective inheritance. These five films question the ways we produce—and are subjugated by—the recursive images that saturate everyday life. The festival is organized by Roland Dahwen (artist, filmmaker, and the Cooley's 2020–2021 artist-in-residence) and supported by Cooley curator Stephanie Snyder. All films will be available on-demand for the duration of the festival: August 27 – September 6, 2021.

PRACTICE

• Monthly Keaton Otis Vigil – Keaton's father Fred Bryant started the monthly vigil on the 12 of the month after his son's murder on the spot where Keaton's life was taken. Fred Bryant passed away October 29, 2013. His family and community have committed to continuing the vigils every month on the 12th, until justice is achieved for Keaton, for Fred, for our whole community. Vigil is online on September 12th. If you would like log-in information, please message this page or Justice For Keaton Otis here on Facebook
• Come Thru Black & Indigenous Market – Come thru for the BIPOC-centered farmers market in Portland, Oregon. 1st and 3rd Mondays, 12-4. Masks required. 831 SE Salmon Street.
• Sharita Towne & A Black Art Ecology of Portland – A “true grandchild of the Great Migration,” Sharita Towne creates installations that are multi-voiced, poetic, and informative. As a transdisciplinary artist, Towne has built a practice steeped in the work of collaboration, cultural organizing, and arts infrastructure building. Towne’s exhibition for the APEX series is a culmination of this work that takes her to the most recent projects reflected in the city of Portland now. In the course of the year-long exhibition, Towne will change over some of the work to introduce new community projects in the winter of 2022. Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Avenue, Wednesday - Sunday, 10 am - 5 pm.
• PROTOTYPES: Portland’s Monuments & Memorials Project – Prototypes is a physical container for the discussions, debates, reflections, and questions posed by Converge 45’s Portland’s Monuments & Memorials Project (PMMP), which for the past eight months has brought people together to consider the conditions and impacts of public monuments, including those that have been removed and those that should be built. Artists featured include Cultural Work Coordinator, Roshani Thakore with Lisa Bates, Vo Vo, Roland Dahwen, Cleo Davis & Kayin Talton Davis, Steph Littlebird Fogel, Lynn Yarne, Baseera Khan and more. 1010 NW Flanders Street, Thursday - Friday, 11 am - 6 pm. On view until October 9, 2021.
• Resilience of Health and Resilience and Safety – Please join APANO community members, in a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) only space, for the next gathering of our Resilience Series:The Resilience of Health - Loving our Bodies and Minds. We will unpack some of intersections of the COVID pandemic and weight gain; what does it look like for BIPOC communities while also knowing how the disparate COVID impacts, racial inequities, and injustices and how to build awareness and practice of love and kindness with our bodies and minds. Wednesday, September 9th at 5 pm. Register here. Resilience & Safety will be the next event in the series on Wednesday September 22 at 5 pm.
• PICA’s TBA Festival – PICA’s annual Time-Based Art Festival is a convergence of contemporary art, international artists, global audiences, and local in-person gatherings. It is a time for us to come together in celebration of experimental works and ideas and to push the boundaries of what it means to make—and who can participate in—contemporary art. This year’s festival is online and in-person featuring artists such as Garrick Imatani, rise x fall (rubén garcía marrufo, jaleesa johnston, maximiliano), Holland Andrews, Anthony Hudson / Carla Rossi and more. September 16 - October 3. Limited Pay What You Can Passes at https://www.pica.org/tickets/tba21

LISTEN

• On Being - Robin DiAngelo and Resmaa Menakem: Towards a Framework for Repair – Through the ruptures of the past year and more, we’ve been given so much to learn, and callings to live differently. But how to do that, and where to begin? Resmaa Menakem’s book, My Grandmother’s Hands, and his original insights into racialized trauma in all kinds of bodies, have offered new ways forward for us all. So we said yes when Resmaa proposed that he join On Being together with Robin DiAngelo. She has been a foremost white voice in our civilizational grappling with whiteness. This conversation is not comfortable, but it is electric and it opens possibilities.
• who all gon be there? – From the brilliant minds of the Nat Turner Project, Melanie Stevens and maximiliano get together, with various guest artists, to talk about art, pop-culture, and the current state of dystopia.

READ

• Letter from the Year 2071 – Barbara Ramsey created a vision where the Black freedom movement could take us in the Movement for Black Lives takeover for In These Times Magazine. “James Baldwin once urged activists and revolutionaries to demand the impossible. We must not only demand the impossible — we must fight to make it real. This letter is grounded in the goals of Black liberation, which we view as a quest for human liberation, and it dares to imagine a world beyond racial monopoly capitalism, heteropatriarchy, war and colonialism. This letter is not intended as a manifesto or a pie in the sky, but as a small glimpse of impossible possibility.
• Yeondae’s Manifesto – Started in 2020, Yeondae is a collective of Asian transracial adoptees in Portland who stand in solidarity with our BIPOC brothers and sisters fighting for racial, social, and economic justice. Read their manifesto and follow their activities on Instagram at @yeondae.support.

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LOCAL OPPORTUNITIES

• ISM Youth Files Project – MediaRites is responding to the isolation of youth during the pandemic and its effect on mental health in BIPOC and disability communities [ages 14-21]* for our e-book and audio podcast called The ISM Youth Files. More information can be found at https://mediarites.org/ism-youth-submissions-wanted-pdf/
• APANO is hiring! – APANO is currently looking for an Environmental Justice Manager, an Asian Youth Organizer and more! For a complete listing go to https://apano.org/join-us/jobs-at-apano/

This programming message brought to you by APANO Communities United Fund, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.