01-02-2024

On NewYear’s day I did as usual!

If there is a day I do not want to start drinking eggnog or booze before the 6:30 pm mark, it is this day. Again, it reminds me too much of a family must-do day. Now, one week only after Christmas, this paragon of normalcy?

Well, yesterday’s studio time yielded some good results. It advanced my vision for a Punch and Judy Theater, the part of the installation meant to present Theater – public or not – as ‘a common’, just like Library and Capitol (congress). Once these three pieces are done, what will be left is the Urban Farm. I still give myself a year to accomplish this! Because, in the meantime, I have a kitchen to build, and a small chest of drawers for Solange (I just took her furniture order!).

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Yesterday was our first Creative Sync for 2024. A good one at that. We worked on Marcus’s search for an artist in residence. He proposed 4 young visual artists and a HipHop guy. I stuck with A … (temporarily forgot her name, sorry), and her project to open a soul food restaurant in North Charleston. Because she sees beyond the basic function of a restaurant and assigns it a long-term cultural function. My point to Marcus was that TINYisPOWERFUL is on a survival mode and cannot afford being a talent hunter. It needs someone who already is on a clear track, will bring a positive energy and expand our image. This rather pragmatic choice on my part, also informs my willingness to participate in the Union Pier Advisory Committee. I further believe that the near future may be rough going for groups like ours. The new mayor will embody a new reality in Charleston. Not in our direction, I am afraid …

Case in point, last night Democracy Now  reminded us how AOC, as she was fighting for her seat, was offered $100.000 by APAC, which proposed her a deal where, if she refused that money, it would be given to her opponent! History will show that she refused the deal and won the race! But we are not AOC, we have not been offered money. This is a cautionary tale: money may be offered, but in some circumstances, we may have to refuse it.

I bring up AOC because Victoria reported to us how she was offered some financial help by the owner of Ripple, the space TINYisPOWERFUL uses regularly for meetings.

When I asked her if it was true that the new mayor owned the Cigar Factory and whether the Ripple space was part of his property, she did not know … Which leaves me with a question about the money offered to her, (whatever the amount)!!

Right now, I am wound up! I believe we should take every occasion to PUBLICLY resist the corruptive force of money and establish ourselves as an independent player in the art in/with community world. Again, this is one of the reasons why I will go to the Union Pier meetings … if they keep me on long enough!

01-07-2024

New-Yorker Radio Hour. Subject: Ava Duvernay, her new movie ‘ORIGIN’; a book by Isabel Wilkerson and the development of an original vision of the present American political landscape, one year ahead of the 2024 elections. Originally, Wilkerson chose the concept of CASTE to denounce the situation of Black people in America. They are the American DALITS, she says.

I believe this vision has one major advantage: it brings up a word still relatively unused in the American political vocabulary. The CASTE word. Yet, I see caste as a (damning) substitute for class privilege, which means so many different things to so many different people of course, but which participates nevertheless in the structural make-up of American racism. It has been said that the French Revolution really took place on the night of August 4th, 1789. Not on July 14th, Bastille Day. That night the Convention voted the Abolition of Privileges, all privileges, as they were (and still are) the structural element which keeps so many societies in a frozen state of permanent economic and cultural injustice and oppression.

Maybe Gwylene and I will go and see the movie when she comes back from France?

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I was going to forget reporting on the gathering at Mr Koonce’s house, yesterday afternoon. Now I know that he is quite a cook; of remarkable meats and of sushi and also a pastry chef! A man of leisure then? Possibly. But sharing his house with two women, his wife and her sister (I believe) who, socially, are quite agreeable and must have had  some political clout in the democratic party at some point, both locally and in Washington! The walls are sprinkled with memorabilia and/or propaganda posters and other artifacts, mostly from the Clinton/Gore period.

So, why did I not declare my party allegiance? That I was on the Union Pier committee, and a very politically-inspired artist and … and … Who am I to really socialize with this cohort of liberal political operatives? Obviously successful economically and whose civility cannot be questioned. This reminds me so much of the Buffalo society the Kennedys (the family of my first wife) were part of, as established democrats and successful members of a dynasty of lawyers. Absolutely kind and generous but … would they consider a reform of the American cast system?

I remember when Kevin Kennedy opened his house for a Shirley Chisholm fund raiser during the 1972 presidential race. Already then I could see a disconnect between values and social mores, for lack of better words or categories to express the deep malaise which finally killed the bourgeois in me. However, please, may no one believe that I am now spitting in the soup that fed me for many years. I greatly appreciated my in-laws generosity. As for Shirley Chisholm, she was getting her contributions where the money was! Yet, none of the people I knew in my in-laws’ milieu had the least conscience of what I am talking about concerning castes.

This may be what Ava Duvernay says with her movie and Isabel Wilkerson with her book: with what we know today of the structural biases of the American society, who can still support such a CASTE SYSTEM?

01-11-2024

Why did I not yet report on the first meeting of the Union pier group?

Because it was not all that exciting and because I wanted my memory to select the most revealing moments. About forty Charlestonians, some I knew from the café or elsewhere. Some concerned with hotels, parking, affordability, rising waters … To the question: Can you describe in one word what Union Pier means to you, my answer was: reparations. Unexpected answer judging from the low-intensity rumor that followed. To the other question: what does Union Pier, the physical space, suggest to you? a young Black woman sprang up and said: Transatlantic slave trade. This one was also received with a surprised tremor. My answer was ‘a common’! Unfortunately no one seems to have heard that word before! “Uncommon?”, I was asked! No. I had to repeat it two or three times: a common. Finally I stood up and spelled it out: a space which belongs to everybody. No reaction to this one at all! Obviously there is work to do and I am sure I am not the best person to do it. At that moment, I thought of LaSheia’s authoritative voice, which would have made a difference from the start. I may have to ask her to join. Or it could be Victoria, who is so good in such public circumstances.

Still, days after, I am unhappy about my performance. Who am I but an old white man with an accent, attempting to be heard on a subject he does not own? I may ask Victoria if it would be OK to get LaSheia to come with me, if she has the time and inclination … Otherwise, the group is to meet again twice by the end of the month, one meeting being in an open house format.

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Then there was yesterday’s Creative Sync. Disturbing the way Victoria looked a bit overwhelmed, and how she noted that Gwylene would not be here for 6 weeks. It looks like she relies on her more than I thought. I hope you don’t not feel alone, doing all the work, you have a collective behind you, I said. But, I added, a collective without a collective project, in which everyone would be involved. Presently  we are all busy doing things but each doing their more or less individual thing. Not participating in a collective endeavor, due to the mostly virtual nature of our meetings, our relationships I insisted. And I repeated my question: do we know what we are missing when we do not meet in person? We rarely get to “manual art“, as Christina Wiener calls the production of things, beyond their conception, what they mean, the values they carry. At least, not at the collective level.

As a process of knowledge acquisition, an exercise in thinking, art reveals itself through practice, manual or not. It coordinates the mental and the physical.

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Early this morning, I thought: Victoria must also be worried about the upcoming State of the South Conference, where we have been asked to lead a last day, recapping  Question/Relay session. Well – why don’t we propose, as a topic, the importance of ‘in person’ interacting, in the age of Zoom? With

(1) as an introductory question: How many of you work virtually? Often/always/never?

(2) as a point of departure for the first question:

Let me introduce you to the thinking of bell hooks, the powerful African-American educator: education is an intimate process, which requires more than love of children. It requires personal and emotional connections with the classroom, in order to reach beyond the established, the expected, the institutional. Education is an in-person process.

In person, person to person and collective.

01-15-2024

Thundering development in progress: Gwylène is in France chasing frozen lakes, OK. But on her first day in the mountains of the French Jura she slipped on an icy patch and sprained her right ankle, if I understand. She spent the week-end in a small country hospital where she does not have access to WiFi or a WhatsApp connexion!

So, here I am, hardly any news, except for two quick calls, when a hospital staff lets her use the hospital landline. Not that I am too worried but some updates would help!

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I just asked LaSheia if she would come with me to the next Union Pier meeting. Her voice would carry so much better than mine, in that group of mostly white middle aged Charleston gentry.

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And now, Gwylene calls in earnest! She actually has an almost open ankle bone fracture. Direct translation from French for ‘fracture ouverte’ (ou presque!). Much more serious than we thought originally. She required surgery. The surgeon actually used plates for consolidation. But this will not stop her, I know! And Delphine is just as determined as she is. An amazing pair of women artists! We all better remain positive.

No way I will be stopped myself! As a matter of fact, this kind of challenge shakes me up enough to awaken a sense of invincibility!

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Time to go check on the tripes I prepared this morning. They are slow cooking right now. Delicious. My morale is intact!

01-16-2024

Pretty innocuous Creative Sync this morning. A lot of repetitions, going over decisions supposed to be made elsewhere, by one or two point persons. Return of the question: how to select the next artist in residence … Here my take is that I am not interested in any mode of selection. Last time I proposed some alternatives.  But this time, I let be.

Above all, we were constantly interrupted by an AI off-voice describing whatever maneuver Victoria was performing on her shared screen. I could not refrain from protesting every time it spoke and I asked that it be muted. This voice, for some deep reason, evokes Trump to me, and the way he comments on events or people, twisting reality and expecting primitive reactions from his audience. To me, this off-voice shows what the next step will be in crowd conditioning and controlling. An Orwellian voice poised to give orders. This is my first sensory perception of Artificial Intelligence. It is ominous.

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I also proposed that we adopt the phrase MANUAL ART(S), to remind ourselves that what TINYisPOWERFUL promotes is not the art of talking about the arts but that of practicing the arts and developing the spirit of the arts.

Of course, here and again, I need to credit Gabriela Wiener for this.

Not sure I mentioned, in this diary, how powerful I think the last chapter of ‘Huaco Portraits ‘ is. It so perfectly gives the whole book its sense. Otherwise, we – the readers – may have a hard time filtering its content, revealed in a rather idiosyncratic way … How she exposes her deep sense of cohesion, the coherence between her most intimate life events and the politics they suggest, parallel or dictate. Very close relationship with ‘Lecture Facile’ by Cristina Morales as well. And, I think I will find the same unity in the two books I ordered from an other Gabriela: Gabriela Cabezon-Camara, who embodies what is now known as ECOFEMINISM.

I truly believe that the future of this planet is in the hands of women and maybe men, the few men, who cannot separate their fate from that of the world. It is the basis and definition of ecofeminist ethics. And to hell with proper conventions, social, moral, sexual or otherwise – they are mostly constructs anyway. It is a matter of integrity and, yes, accountability.

01-23-2024

So many days, led not by my agenda of art-making and mind-building but by a deluge of meetings, obligations and events I cannot control. Also by Gwylène ‘in absentia’! And definitely by a wave of freezing weather, the likes of which I don’t remember around here!

This morning, there was a Creative Sync, getting the group ready for a few upcoming events of importance! Not a trickle, a deluge! Including the State of the South conference on February 5, 6 and 7th. Victoria announced also the launch of the latest NewsLetter. This reminded me that I wanted to issue an update to the October 7 massacre article which appears in it. For this purpose, I was reading over the original text and came across the Hannah Arendt quote; Evil is not Radical; it is Extreme.

What does this really mean? It asks what the difference is between radical and extreme? I believe that these words do not belong in the same paradigm. Radical is measured on a qualitative scale. Extreme is measured on an intensity scale.

“Good can be radical; evil can never be radical, it can only be extreme…”

For example, there is ‘radical love’ and ‘extreme cruelty’.