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Sites of Passage Official Press Release for May 25 Opening @ The Mattress Factory Museum!

2/16/2018

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The following was copied from the original (PDF) press release provided by the Mattress Factory Museum:

​Mattress Factory Announces “Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs” Exhibition Featuring Artists from Pittsburgh and South Africa

PITTSBURGH, PA (February 5, 2018) – Seven artists have been chosen to create new work in Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs: South Africa and US, an exhibition opening at the Mattress Factory on May 25, 2018. Dr. Tavia La Follette is returning to collaborate with the museum on this exhibition, the latest in a series that brings American artists and artists from countries facing human rights crises together in a virtual – and actual – dialogue. Previous projects involved artists from Egypt in 2011, and from Israel and Palestine in 2013.

In Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs, four artists from South Africa work with three artists from Pittsburgh. Each artist confronts racial politics using different mediums, explains La Follette: “We have a sound artist who archives the world around him, a filmmaker who addresses gentrification, and a multimedia artist who brings together myth and futurism. We have a choreographer who considers himself a community developer, an outsider architect who engineers castles from forgotten debris, a painter and printmaker who captures uprisings in mining towns, and a formerly incarcerated drug dealer turned art teacher who is a role model to the children around him.”

The Mattress Factory welcomes four artists from South Africa.

  • Henry Albertus recycles rubbish from junkyards to create many-leveled sculptural castles echoing architecture from all over the world in Capricorn Township, a shantytown in the Cape Town region.
  • Asanda Kupa’s works in painting and printmaking speak directly to South Africa’s dramatic socio-economic inequalities, troubled political landscape and the atrocities of the mining industry.
  • Charlie Jansen is trained as a Community Art Facilitator and muralist and works at the Butterfly Project in Cape Town, serving low income families from pre-school to adulthood.
  • Mbovu Malinga is a performing artist, specializing in theater and dance, as well as a community activist who works with children in Cape Town and the surrounding rural areas.

Three Pittsburgh-based artists will show new work in the exhibition, which runs through July
29, 2018.

  • Alisha Wormsley uses photography, video, and sculpture to examine collective memories, the synchronicity of time, and racial identity and history.
  • Chris Ivey is a documentary filmmaker whose work challenges audiences to think more broadly and inclusively on issues like race, class, and gentrification.
  • Ricardo Iamuuri Robinson is a composer, field recordist, and audio-visual artist, whose work explores the relationship between sound, image, object, and place.

An opening reception will be held Friday, May 25 from 6 – 8pm at the museum’s 1414 Monterey Street gallery.

Admission for the event is free for all ages. 
500 Sampsonia Way • Pittsburgh, PA 15212 • T: 412.231.3169 • mattress.org
Generous support for Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs:
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South Africa and US is provided by Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh, Allegheny Regional Asset District, an Anonymous Donor, the Benter Foundation, The Heinz Endowments, The Heinz Small Arts Initiative, National Endowment for the Arts, Opportunity Fund, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Pittsburgh Foundation, the Roy A. Hunt Foundation, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. 

With special thanks to the Mattress Factory Board of Directors and museum members.
About the Mattress Factory: Hailed as the best museum for installation art in the United States, the Mattress Factory invites visitors to experience “art you can get into.” Over the past 40 years, the Mattress Factory has presented and commissioned new installation and performance works by over 750 artists, both established and emerging, who have challenged themselves and their audiences through the support of the museum’s exceptional residency program. The Mattress Factory’s outreach programs serve more than 20,000 students, teachers, adults, and families annually, and its activities as a visitor attraction, educator and employer continue to invigorate Pittsburgh’s North Side. For more information, call 412.231.3169 or visit mattress.org.
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Sites of Passage Update for "Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs"

10/27/2017

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​Above is one of the first stops in Cape Town- the District Six Museum- where over 60,000 residents were forcibly removed during Apartheid, declaring it a “Whites Only” zone.  Using the Group Areas Act, the government removed an entire neighborhood, jump-starting the township communities. The above image, depicting neighborhood play, is from one of the museum's community-curated installations. 

This January (2017), the US based artists traveled to South Africa to spend time on the ground with the South African artists as research for the next Sites of Passage exhibit. Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs is the third project in the ongonig series of global exchanges.  In tandem from 2016-2018, artists from South Africa (Johannesburg/Cape Town) and the U.S. (Pittsburgh), are probing the concept of Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs  through social practice, community workshops, exhibition, and performance. 

Because the project is about giving voice and space for the artists to tell their story, Art Up begins the description of the journey, with the artists’ words…
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Reflection from CHRIS IVEY (Pittsburgh Filmmaker):

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Asanda Kupa and Chris Ivey, SOP artists at Market Theatre
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Chris Ivey with actor Sandi Dlangalala and daughter, Lula
The first journey with ArtUp to Johannesburg and Cape Town in January 2017 served as a spiritual and mental awakening; one of the best experiences of my life that opened many doors within myself as an artist.  As a filmmaker, I feel it is my duty to serve as a voice to the under-served in neglected communities.

I am an artist, but more so an African and a human being first.

Within two days of arriving in Johannesburg, South Africa I knew that I have returned home. The connectivity between myself and others living there, the environment, the air, and so on... 

An overwhelming feeling of love filled me as I interviewed strangers who openly shared their stories and history of the Black / African experience and how some were identical to my Black / American experiences.

​I loved the many looks of surprise as we talked about the issues of redevelopment, gentrification and reconnecting with our souls for the sake of generations to follow. We are living parallel lives and still learning so much from unknown experiences through our conversations and interactions.
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Market Theatre (Theatre of the Struggle), Chris Ivey at end
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Talk back after opening of "When Swallows Cry"
It is essential that the lessons that I am learning in South Africa are brought back especially to the youth and adults I serve: essential lessons of learning, about healing, and rebuilding 20 some years past apartheid versus the over 50 years at home [in the US] of still not recognizing the multi-generational harm from segregation and hundreds of years of slavery.

​We are now living in uncertain and turbulent times in the United States and we must continue to live, love and education one another. 
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Ticket to Apartheid Museum assigns each visitor a skin color, defining the path s/he takes
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Poster from Constitution Hill, fort turned prison turned museum and Constitutional Court House
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Cells where "the Robben Island of Johannesburg" collected activists like Mandela, Sobukwe, and Ghandi
​We leave the inland jungle, caves, mines, theatre and museums of “Joburg” for the salty and sometimes “sharky” waters (and world) of Cape Town.
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Jungle view from our bed and breakfast
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Meal with cultural theatre attaché Malcolm Purkey
(former director, of Market Theatre) and family

Shortly after landing in Cape Town, we learn about District Six, once a neighborhood, now a place to study the geography of racism.  Here, race was used to legally stream wealth (sound familiar?).  Communities were forced to leave so that new, rich, white communities could move in.

The District Six Museum practices an ephemeral protest today by something they call, “salting the earth”.  Through ritual activity, storytelling, walking the streets, engaging the site with graffiti and art, the community is occupying the space and the land. 
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Touring the art work of District 6.
Table Mountain hiding behind the fog.
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Mandy Sanger (in yellow) with SOP artists (left to right) Mbovu Malinga, SA artist with Ricardo Robinson & Alisha Wormsely

Mandy Sanger, our brilliant and well-informed tour guide, whose family was forced to leave, explains to us how the museum did not begin, nor is run by academics—but rather by the people who lived in District Six.  The stories are owned, collected and installed by the people, encouraging debate. Therefore, the museum is curated by the community. 
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Reflection from ALISHA WORMSLEY (Interdisciplinary Artist):

“Children of Nan” is an ongoing film series that uses science fiction and historical fiction tropes as a metaphor for the survival of black women.  Black women being the first humans.  Where better to film than the origin of humanity?  The southern tip of Africa!  “Children of Nan” begins with the Middle Passage. 

This trip gave me the opportunity to include an origin!

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Sterkfontein Caves, or "The Cradle of Humankind" is where the oldest humanoid skulls and tools ahve been discovered
(over 2 mil years old!)
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Shep, Ricardo Robinson, and Alisha Wormsley,
fresh off the plane and ready to wander
I made connections with women who would be "original women."  

The landscape and mythology there will push the narrative to really create a powerful legacy for American Black Women and will show the startling similarities between the struggles of black women in South Africa and the United States.
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Womsley, Robinson and Shep, (image by Chris Ivey)

​Visiting cultural museums, sites, and even cuisine, the artists indulge in a meal by Nadia Agherdine in her Lansdowne Western Cape home. Nadia cooks her visitors Cape Malay foods and discusses her family experiences as a woman of color in South Africa. 

​Similar to the US, the South Africans segregate humans by the color of their skin: White, Colored (or Brown in the US) and Black.  But instead of political asylum and financially stimulated migration, much of the “colored” category was brought to South Africa (similar to the slavery in the Sates) as slaves from the West Indies—forced migration through slavery. 
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Nadia Agherdine explains the various foods and where they come from
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Nadia Agherdine’s kitchen

Reflection from RICARDO I. ROBINSON (Audio Visual Composer):

I will explore the sonic journey of specific natural resources extracted from South African soil and the process they go through to become a product people will kill for. 
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Robinson records sound of Madela’s cell, Robben Island
(image by Alisha Wormsley)
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South Africa’s National Gallery
(image by Alisha Wormsley)

​The journey is not all work- there is also play!  It is hard not to go to the beach when you are staying so close it, especially if you come from Pittsburgh( PA) where there is snow on the ground in January!
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South Africa artists, Charlie Jansen, knows the best swimming holes
Why These Artists?
Because all of them confront racial politics via different mediums. 

Pittsburgh: We have a sound artist who archives the world around him through recordings (Ricardo Iamuuri Robinson), a filmmaker who addresses gentrification through various genres (Chris Ivey), and a multimedia artist who brings together myth and futurism to build a new present through a multi-media approach (Alisha Wormsley).

South Africa: We have a choreographer who considers himself a community developer (Mbouvu Malinga), a print maker/painter who captures the mining town protests and uprisings (Asanda Kupa), and a formerly incarcerated drug dealer turned art teacher who is a superhero and role model to the children in the township around him (Charlie Jensen).
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US artists returned to visit the space where our opening will take place -
we hope to see you there Friday, May 25!
Once back in the States, the Pittsburgh artists get the opportunity to meet with The Heinz Foundation and The Mattress Factory Museum team to start thinking about space and materials.  Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs opens Friday, May 25, 2018. 

Stay tuned, or if you just can't wait, follow us on instagram @SOP.endowment to learn more!
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Introducing Artist HENRY ALBERTUS - Cape Town, South Africa

3/10/2017

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Henry Albertus showing us his second story view
Henry Albertus was one of the first settlers of Vryground, or, in Afrikaans, “free ground”.  It is now more commonly known as Capricorn Township.  Thes informal settlements, or townships, are living structures set up on Council land. Because they are not designed for housing, water and electricity are not a part of the formula. 

Traditionally the houses are one story units made from corrugated metal, plastics, glass and wood.  However, Henry Albertus, who has spent his life reading and exploring various modes of the construction industry, has spent his life in Vryground breaking the traditional township house rules.  By recycling rubbish from junkyards and recycling them into many-leveled sculptural castles, Albertus has built works which echo architecture from all over the world!

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​When we first entered Henry’s house, I could hear Amy Goodman on the radio:  a familiar voice in a foreign place.  As soon as we started talking with Henry, he too, made us feel right at home.  A self-taught architect scavenger, Albertus personally hauled by hand all the building materials that he recycled from the Vryground dump, almost a mile away! He also collected items from various jobsites throughout the area where he also acquired carpentry and gardening skills over many decades.

Henry will exhibit his craftsmanship and vision for Dreamland in the entry room @ Mattress Factory, opening Friday, May 25th.

For more info, check out the official MF announcement here!
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Sites of Passage #SuperHero Puppet Workshop is a Hit!

2/24/2017

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Sites of Passage artist Charlie Jansen ran a Super Hero Puppet Workshop while we were in Cape Town.  The puppets that the kids make will come to the US with Charlie and be exhibited with Pittsburgh Super Heroes are part of his installation and residency at the Mattress Factory Museum. 

The workshops are run out of The Butterfly Art Project in the Vryground township, where Charlie grew up and now works. Kids come to Vryground from all over Africa, migrating for many of the same reasons people migrate to the States. 

And just like in the States, bedsides battling racism and class-ism, they battle other similar inner city struggles - violence and addiction.  In the Super Hero workshop, kids build their own superhero.  They have to create a story of how each hero rose from the ashes to become the hero s/he is today. The Butterfly Art Project is an art therapy NGO “encouraging creativity and healing through the arts”.  It is based out of the Capricorn School and the perfect home for Charlie and the Super Hero Puppet Project!
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Capricorn School play area, Vryground Township, Cape Town
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Capricorn School student Thurston shows off his
gender-neutral galaxy space hero!
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Students learn the empowerment of creativity
through active story telling

In January, Charlie Jansen introduced us to a neighbor who came to Vryground, the same time as his father did.

By way of introduction from Charlie, Filmmaker Chris Ivey and Art Up Director La Follette believed it was necessary to bring in a 4th artist to the mix. 

“He is a South African Thaddeus Mosley!”, claims Ivey, although, Henry Albertus mainly works in corrugated steel and found objects gathered from the junk yard.  Ivey will take his interviews and embed them in the architecture of informal settlements (townships) which will be the first installation guests walk through in order to enter the Mattress Factory Museum annex.
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Charlie on the street named after his father
who fought for reclaiming land
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Charlie looking over Vryground
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Civl Rights & Civil Wrongs- South Africa and US

12/15/2015

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In November of 2014 La Follette received an Artist Opportunity grant to travel to South Africa to investigate the next Sites of Passage project. She already had a residency at The Butterfly Art Project to work in a township school program in Cape Town. So she took the opportunity to meet with artist and activists from Cape Town to Johannesburg. This is where she refined her ideas and curated in the South African artists for the project. The new endeavor is called CIVIL RIGHTS & CIVIL WRONGS. 
La Follette split her time evenly between Johannesburg (Joburgh) and Cape Town.  Mbovu Malinga toured her throughout Cape Town, visiting creative projects based in the townships and the city.  Malinga, who is a dancer, choreographer and designer is well connected to the social practice side of Cape Town, as well as the "high art" realm. Therefore, he made a great guide for the people and organizations La Follette was seeking out. 
While in Cape Town La Follette also spent time with Angela Katschke and Charlie Jansen at The Butterfly Art Project (http://www.butterflyartproject.org), an art organization run out of one of the schools in a township in Cape Town.  Here, La Follette worked closely with Charlie to build super hero puppets with the kids, writing their own stories and inventing new heros to rise from the ashes.
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Back in Joburgh, La Follette met up with Malcolm Purkey, who is an actor, director, playwright, drama lecturer, artistic director and currently the Dean of AFDA, The South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance.  He gave La Follette one of his famous " Malcolm cultural tours", introducing her to social activists, artists and cultural leaders.  Purkey was the artistic director of Market Theatre, which played a leading role in the anti-apartheid movement.  Founded in 1976 in Johannesburg, Market Theatre, has been South Africa’s landmark “Theatre of Struggle” producing anti-apartheid plays, premiering many of Athol Fugard’s.   Under “the conviction that culture can chance society”, Purkey took over the theatre as Artistic Director in 2005 and has been an activist in the arts scene ever since.  Below Purkey is outside The Nunnery, theatre he founded while in college at University of the Witwatersrand, or Witts University.
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In June, with the help of DePaul University, La Follette was able to bring in Malcom Purkey to Chicago to brainstorm ideas, artist, itinerary in South Africa and a longer-term performance project she and Purkey are working on.  Purkey visits The Last Supper exhibit by Julie Green in Evanston , where 600 white ceramic plates decorated with cobalt blue mineral paint to depict the last meal requests of U.S. death row inmates. The exhibit questions race, class and justice issues in the US.
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​WHY NOW?
As the U.S. moves past its 50th year of the Civil/Voters Rights Act and South Africa moves past its 20th year of democracy/post-apartheid, the project will reflect on what we can learn from one another. What have we done wrong and what have we done right? How does migration play a role? How do our governments, communities and societies discern and apply our past to our present? Are environmental rights the same as human rights? What language do we use to talk about these issues? By meeting with civil rights activists, artist and historians from both countries, our aim is to use art as a platform to expose and address environmental racism and corruption.
 
In recognition of the Voting Right Act of 1965 and in preparation for the Presidential Election of 2016, Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs also aims to interact, educate and activate the next generation of voters. Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs is the third "site of passage" project. Each time we learn more and connect more artists. Once a tunnel of communication is digitally dug from one country to the next, we do not close it – we connect it. We hope to eventually build a global network of artists via Sites of Passage (SOP), the name all these projects now fall under.
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The purpose of the proposed project is to flush away hyperbole and clichés from the work. Although we want to reflect on our various governments and leaders (SA and USA)--we are not interested in embroidering platitudes of the same old conversations. We are concerned with exploring symbols, culture and repetitions in the human condition.
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IF A TREE FALLS IN THE WOODS…

1/5/2015

 
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…we all know the question and the answer. The idea that if no one is there to hear it, that it doesn’t make any noise, or its sacrifice is meaningless…is absurd. In reality, it is the audience who is meaningless.  The tree (with an audience or not) becomes a host, brewing an ecological world of new life and habitats.

If an art exhibit goes up, but it never is opened to the public, does it exist?
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​Director, Tavia La Follette, got a call on her cell saying, “Tavia, I made it out.  I am in Egypt!”  She knew immediately who it was.  The three Palestinian artists who were in the show, all were aware of one another but had never met.  Manal is a Palestinian living in Israel, Bashar is based in the West Bank and Mohammed lives in Gaza.  All of them, Palestinian but because of the way the land is separated; they can’t physically see or interact with one another.

“ArtUp had received visas for all of the artist, but because Mohammed is in Gaza, it is difficult to even leave the country. Gaza is an island.  The only way he could fly out would be to cross at Egypt.  Israel would not let him pass through”, explained director/curator, Tavia La Follette.
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Egypt had closed the border – as they often do – but there were rumors of it opening up and Mohammed packed a bag and traveled to the border to see if it was true. He was able to cross!  “Sit tight, Mohammed”, “we are buying you a ticket to Pittsburgh right now!
Three members of the delegation (La Follette, Johnson and Willis) had invitations to go to Gaza via Mohammed’s university, but they were warned that if they crossed over into Gaza, the possibility of getting back into Israel would be very slim.  Therefore, the group made the decision not to go.  This would be the first time Mohammed would be interacting with the group face to face. He arrived on Mother’s Day.
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The other artist quickly followed, although their arrival and flights had been planed far in advance.  All of the artists stayed at the Mattress Factory (MF) Museum apartments and based themselves on the North Side.  Michael and Barbra (directors of the MF), not only opened up the apartments and the museum to the artist, they also shared their home. 
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​The artists went straight to work on their installations. Having communicated with La Follette, throughout the project, the MF was working hard to make sure they had everything they needed. The list included everything from a body of a car to rubber bullets to 100s of pounds of recycled washed glass and as many black, red and green plastic hairs beads as one can get!

​They led in lectures at schools and absorbed the Pgh landscape.

Due to social media censorship, for the first time in ArtUp and the MF's history, the show was canceled just days before it was about to open.  All the work had been installed; all of the artists were safely here, working together with the community and each other to get the show up. However, outside forces stopped that from happening.
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* More information about this cancellation and images of the work can be found here: 
Exhibit Canceled
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The red warning tape that director/curator La Follette had ordered for the opening of the show--  became a mascot for the closing circumstances of the of the show. 
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The plastic tape read: “WARNING: ENTERING THIS SPACE COULD BE INTERPRETED AS A POLITICAL ACT”. Below are some images from the final installations:
The organization considers the project a success even though it didn't have a physical opening.  The organization received more requests for interviews than ever before, from across the globe, yet had to turn them down, for the sake of the artists and their livelihood.  ArtUp understands the Social Practice of this work:  that these experiences took place; that work was built around relationships and issues that will impact each artist for the rest of their life.  
 
A tree fell. It did not need to make a sound or have an audience to hear it-- for it rattled the earth.  People felt it.
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A RESIDENCY: The walls between us

9/12/2014

 
After the artists research trip to Israel and Palestine, ArtUp received funds from The Investing in Professional Artists to bring in Palestinian artist, Basha Alhroub to the US in July.

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Much of Bashar’s time was spent learning about the invisible walls that separate cultures, neighbors, and ideas from one another here in the States.  He traveled from NYC to the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont…smoking the whole way!

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Bashar cooked for us, made art with us, researched his installation, met with Pittsburgh Filmmakers and created footage for a film to open in Tunisa and Jordan in 2015. He toured The Hill District, The North side, the East End, Braddock and Homestead steel mills, museums and schools, meeting with artists, educators and community activists.

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Crossing Over

9/3/2014

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The following are a continuation of images of the artists, speakers, places visited and quotes from the Pittsburgh team:


We leave the church for the most delicious falafel, foul and hummus we've had the entire trip (and we have had a steady diet of it).  We eat in an early refugees basement establishment.  When I say basement, we are talking about stone caverns that have become cool refuges, shops and homes. We then visit Palestinian artist Munther's studio.  He and his brother Ibrahim moved back from Ramallah to start some kind of cultural life in the town where there is no awareness or support for contemporary art, no scene whatsoever. Munther's makes paintings of a Palestinian "terrorist" watching TV with his family, and doing other ordinary things. He and his brother, a young performance artist, hope to turn their studio into public gallery and, if they can raise the funds, buy the place next door to start a coffee shop and meeting place. 

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Bethlehem Studio
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At the Tent of Nations the fog comes in so quickly. Air raid sirens (test) is no test.  Its amazing sound that booms throughout the valley is meant to be the voice of an omnipotent god proclaiming their wrath.  It caught us unprepared and went unrecorded.

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Tent of Nations ( www.tentofnations.org )

We wait for the Friday prayers to end, which is when everyone goes to the wall. We walk along dirt roads, past scarecrows and a sway backed emaciated donkey and hear and see the settlers from afar yelling and waving from the precipice of the sheer rock that creates a fortress-like effect.   

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Recognizing how little I really know, I understood my role on this maiden voyage to be one of listening and learning. Our power-packed itinerary of meetings, home stays, and neighborhood tours with Israeli and Palestinian activists, artists, curators, border crossings, homestays, and demonstrations felt like a tidal wave. Coming up for air did not seem to be an option… As I continue to unpack the massive spectrum of perspectives we experienced on this first mission, I am starting to GET that there is something constructive that we might be able to do. 

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Gigapan training from Israeli artists to maker of 5 BROKEN CAMERAS, Bil'in

Tear gassed in Bil’in today and we weren't even that close to the wall. Stayed with head of bilin council, brother of director of 5 Broken cameras.  Celebrated his 8-year-old daughters birthday with extended family.  Met director too and gave him special camera .
   
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Everyone we've met has said that they want the right to return, but that they realize that does not mean they want to displace Israelis who have also been born in this land. They realize that such displacement would also be painful, but want the right to return and the right to buy and own land where they once lived, even if not reclaiming their former homes    
It was surprising and humbling to see many examples of a steadfast desire for a diverse culture. People throughout the region are finding very creative ways to refuse to be enemies despite an overwhelming infrastructure that chips away at their basic sense of human dignity and friendship on a daily basis.
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The Journey Begins...

7/31/2014

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The following are images of the artists, speakers, places visited and quotes from the Pittsburgh team.  The goal is to document their thoughts and travels through “The Holy Land”.  It is important to note everyone had different backgrounds and personal borders/limits.  Some of those limits were based on family responsibilities, some of them were legal or government imposed limitations that denied artists access.

ArtUp was able to get the Israeli artists into Palestine but unable to get the Palestinians into Israel.  The delegation spent time in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem where they spoke with arts leaders and visited museums & studios.  They traveled from Jerusalem through the Qalandia check point to Jenin (Freedom Theatre) and on to Bil’in.  From Bil’in the delegation traveled to Ramallah to Bethlehem, to Hebron and back in Israel—to Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Haifa and back home.  Quotes from the artists’ journey are below.

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Museum show titles in three languages. Explanatory texts within the museum only in Hebrew and English.  Hyla first called our attention to this.  I had focused on what was absent in the translated wall texts in English that wouldn’t indicate that the work described referenced the occupation at all.  Several works undeniably spoke to the oppression and presumably are easier to digest or overlook if not described as doing so.  

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Yehuda from Breaking The Silence  (www.breakingthesilence.org)

Fear before entering Palestine so palpable heightened by signs proclaiming that it is illegal for Israelis to enter and that to do so puts their lives at risk. Only 8% of military has direct contact. Maintain the myth. Perpetuate the fear.  Create all monsters.
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Borders, Walls & Citizenship

11/1/2013

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In the summer of 2012 Tavia La Follette, founder and director of ArtUp traveled to Israel and Palestine with the Interfaith Peace Builders Network, an off shoot organization of The Fellowship of Reconciliation.   This was the first step in the next Sites of Passage project.

Sites of Passage (SOP) took artists from three different countries: Palestine, Israel, and the United States and placed them together to discuss BORDERS, WALLS & CITIZENSHIP (the name of the show/project). These three words are charged and resonate in all three regions. The artistic dialogue occurred through a virtual and tangible art exchange process. The physical and web-based points of intersection were key to the methodology.

SOP is also the next step in the evolution of ArtUp, moving to build an international network of artistic exchange based in Pittsburgh. The Egyptian prototype took place as the U.S. entered the 10th anniversary of 911, as the revolution broke out in Egypt, stimulating the Occupy Movement here in the States, and lastly while both countries went into an election for a new leader. This made the artistic dialogue all that much more rooted in change and fueled passionate points of views.

Similarly, to the Egypt project, La Follette chose countries in conflict and politically minded artists to interact with. As the world is evolving and as the project title (Sites of Passage) alludes to, La Follette asked these artists to take a Rite of Passage towards a world that does not build walls, define borders and where everyone is a citizen.  The artists all agreed that this project had to be about human rights.

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