BOOM: THE ART OF RESISTANCE
A DIVERSITY OF BAY AREA ANTI-DISPLACEMENT TACTICS
ORGANIZED BY LESLIE DREYER
Viewing hours on the following Thursdays: August 4, 18, 25, and September 1, 2016 from 4-7pm each night.
You can also schedule an appointment through the contact page: http://boomtheartofresistance.org/about/
please click on each image to view full screen
Boom: The Art of Resistance
A Diversity of Bay Area Anti-Displacement Tactics
July 30 - SEPTEMBER 10, 2016
Opening REception: Saturday, July 30, 2016 4-8pm
4-5PM GENTRIFUKATION TOUR BY POOR MAGAZINE (see details below)
CLOSING EVENT & DISCUSSION FOR THE EXHIBIT: SEPTEMBER 10, 2016 4-8 PM
Let’s Talk About Ethical/Decolonial Approaches to Art and Cultural Organizing Against Displacement
HOURLY SCHEDULE:
4-5PM – OPEN VIEWING OF EXHIBIT
5:00-6:30PM – DISCUSSION
6:30-8PM – OPEN VIEWING, ANNOUNCEMENTS OF HOUSING ACTIONS, CELEBRATION OF THE MULTIPLE PROJECTS TACKLING DISPLACEMENT
FEATURING:
Amara T. Smith, with House/Full of Black Women project
Van Dell, with Qilombo and the Fight for Afrikatown Community Garden
Melanie Cervantes, with Dignidad Rebelde & collaborating with Sogorea Te' Land Trust
Casey Jones Bastiaans, with OaklandAwake
Alicia Bell, with Save East 12th Coalition and San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition
Organizing and facilitated by artist and housing rights organizer Leslie Dreyer. Co-hosted by Bay Area Society for Art and Activism
Artists and activists who’ve worked on or participated in projects featured in the exhibit Boom: The Art of Resistance are coming together to discuss best practices when doing collaborative anti-displacement work amidst an increasingly exploitative environment where Art is often used to pave the way for gentrification. The conversation aims to highlight the types of creative initiatives urgently needed by folks fighting for housing on a daily basis, while also honing practices that can prevent both the exploitation of communities facing eviction as well as the exploitation of cultural workers' labor.
ACCESS NOTES: This exhibit space - an artist's live/work space - is wheelchair accessible. The onsite bathroom is gender-neutral - yet it is not wheelchair accessible. The exhibit as a whole includes text explanations and one video is captioned.
Featuring:
Sogorea Te’ Land Trust with Jesus Barraza and Melanie Cervantes/Dignidad Rebelde
Poor Magazine's Homefulness Project and GentriFukation Tour
Qilombo’s Fight for Afrikatown
Anti-Eviction Mapping Project with Zeph Fishlyn
Amara T. Smith and Ellen Sebastian Chang's House/Full of Black Women with fillmmaker Ginika Oruche
Coalition on Homelessness with Leslie Dreyer
Heart of the City Collective with The Last 3%
SF Anti-Displacement Coalition
Street Cred Advertising for the People
And countless unnamed movement collaborators, participants and documentarians
From left to right: Dignidad Rebelde, Amara T. Smith, Coalition on Homelessness, Oakland Against Displacement (temporary affinity group), stencil design by Zeph Fishlyn
Organized by Leslie Dreyer in consultation with OaklandAwake and Bay Area Society of Art and Activism; supported by East Bay Fund for Artists and various community members.
Communities in the Bay Area are being pulled apart on a daily basis, an ongoing pattern since the colonization of Ohlone land. Unfortunately, the “real estate snakkkes and devil-opers”, as Poor Mag deems them, have sharpened their house-flipping and wealth-siphoning skills in this second tech boom. With a nod to Boom: The Sound of Eviction, a collectively made film documenting the housing crisis and affiliated activism during the 90’s dot-com era, Dreyer is organizing Boom: The Art of Resistance as an exhibition and growing visual archive of current Bay Area anti-displacement tactics. The included works represent a broad array of grassroots and coalition-oriented efforts designed to hold onto ‘home’ while laying the groundwork for just and equitable futures.
Though there are countless groups fighting displacement throughout the Bay, it can still be difficult for some individuals to find ways to plug in, and in some instances, to understand their responsibility to communities facing eviction. In mapping out initiatives, from long-haul campaigns to everyday gestures, Boom: The Art of Resistance presents critical reflections on race, class and accessibility politics within the struggles, while calling for all hands on deck.
Public shaming, land reclamation, public intervention, guerilla art campaigns, media spectacles, eviction blockades and city hall shut downs are some of the many tactics used within our local land and housing rights ecosystem. Some of the included works forefront art as the integral activist or organizing strategy, others maintain the community process as the art form, and still others incorporate design or theatrical elements but battle with Art used to usher in gentrification and gloss over displacement. As San Francisco and Oakland hemorrhage their black population at an alarming rate and the Bay becomes one of the most unaffordable areas in the world, the show calls on viewers to take action.
Public Programming
Saturday July 30, 2016 (during opening / meet at Random Parts)
4-5pm GENTRIFUKATION TOUR by Poor Magazine
Join folks from Poor Magazine in this neighborhood excursion exploring the erased and colonized cultures of the area, as they re-insert themselves, their dreams and histories in stolen land and landmarks. POOR Magazine is a poor people led/indigenous people led non-profit, grassroots, arts organization dedicated to providing revolutionary media access, arts, education and solutions from youth, adults and elders in poverty across Pachamama.
5:30 – 7:00 pm
Spoken word, shout outs, call-ins, songs, drumming and collective visioning with Casey Jones Bastiaans, Kin Folkz (Monica Anderson), Blackberri Singer, Bilal Mafundi Ali, 67 Sueños, among other inspiring anti-displacement organizers.
Community altar-making with Casey Jones Bastiaans and Kin Folkz