Soul Rebels

11:30-1:00

Participants

John Murrillo, Moderator, Writer/Poet and Professor, New York University

Sonya Childress, Firelight Media

Yasmin Hernandez, Independent artist

Walter “Bunky” Echo-Hawk, Independent artist

This workshop profiled two artists and a production company that are invested in creating and supporting art with a social mission.  The bottom line: art, as an individual artist’s creation, is inherently – sometimes inadvertently – political, and we need to support our artists for the vanguard work they are putting forth!

Panel Comments (15 min/each)

:: BUNKY

-    He’s about depicting a contemporary Native voice (versus “beads and feather” look) by using modern icons from mass media juxtaposed w/ traditional icons.

o  This builds a bridge to non-Indian viewers through their recognition of familiar images.  It helps to invite other

  people into our issues instead of creating walls. It translates my message without my saying much.

-    Envision: national Native American non profit he co-founded, focusing on Native youth outreach (suicide prevention, drug & alcohol abuse). Most immediate engagement w/ communities through multi-media workshops: About empowering them to embrace their expression.

:: SONYA

-   Her role – getting films out to community, considering creatively how to use films in organizing/education

-   Firelight Media: CA-based documentary film production company. Not just making films, but finding audiences a key part of their work. As artists, we have to build strong connections with organizers so that when viewers are moved by films, they are moved to action.

-   The idea of making film a tool for organizing arose with The Murder of Emmett Till, which outraged viewers and led to the reopening of the Emmett Till case (due to additional information presented by the film) and the mailing of circa 10,000 postcards to the Attorney General.

-   Hip Hop Beyond Beats and Rhymes: Being shown in Facing Race, this film is an ideal tool for organizers, as it speaks in the language of its audience, and it pieces together information in small thematic modules (useful for organizers).  Focus on changing minds & hearts of young folks – creators and consumers of this culture 

-   Film is never the solution, but it can put a human face to issues that affect people emotionally in ways that a lecture or article cannot.

:: YASMINE

-   I know that I’m not free and so art becomes the space where I take my freedom. I’m not a political artist, I’m a political person so everything I create comes from that sensibility.

-   One of her artistic inspirations/persuasion: the liberation of Puerto Rico

-   To understand her own history (which was not taught to her in the American school system), she violates the traditional space of American icons – recreating the notion of the hero (i.e merging Puerto Rican flag image w/ American penny, displacing Lincoln on the penny with Puerto Rican hero)

-   Her Soul Rebels exhibition in Spanish Harlem’s El Museo del Barrio stemmed from a desire to counter mainstream museum displays

o   Panels all artists who battled injustice with their work – multigenerational, multi-genre and multinational i.e. Fela Kuti (Nigeria), Eddie Palmieri, Bob Marley, Public Enemy, Reconstruction (Puerto Rico)

Audience Questions

FUNDING FOR WORK – HOW CAN WE USE ARTWORK TO SHIFT THE FLOW OF RESOURCES TO FURTHER THIS TYPE OF WORK?

-   Sonya: For previous generations, the prize/carrot was getting your work on TV.  Now, we are discovering that ownership of our own media is enormous, so we can use it how we choose

-   Yasmine: On the “Price of work” – how are we self-sustaining, supporting ourselves? What are you doing to support your artist? We DO need support from our communities b/c funding is hard to come by especially the more political the message, and the government has trends in which issues it chooses to support financially – right now, anti-war is popular.

WHERE CAN WE FIND YOUR WORK?

Yasminhernandez.com

Bunky: Myspace

www.firelightmedia.org