This session asks Académie participants to consider what it would mean for institution building to be part of their artistic practice or to imagine institutional relationships as key to the realization of their cultural work. How can art production and institution building be understood as cultural work: the conscious use of art as a tool in strengthening down-pressed communities, and more importantly the use of art to assist in the long-term viability and sustenance of human society? Can we reframe the institution by positing that institutions not only allow us to do cultural work, but can be our cultural work? If cultural work is understood as a set of processes, might the role of institutions become a way to support production and systematize methodologies?
Registration
Proof of vaccination will be required for on-site attendance
Live captioning will be provided. This is an on-site event.
Artist Bio
Louis Massiah is a documentary filmmaker and screenwriter. His award winning films include The Bombing of Osage Avenue, W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography in Four Voices, Cecil B. Moore, two films for the landmark PBS series, Eyes on the Prize II, which have been broadcast on television and screened internationally. Commissions include the five-channel video installation The President’s House, a collaboration with Lorene Cary. His work has earned him numerous awards, including a MacArthur Foundation “genius” fellowship, two Rockefeller-Tribeca and a Pew fellowship, a Peabody, and two first place awards from the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame. He is also the recipient of several Emmy nominations, including for his writing of Power! part of the Eye on the Prize series. In 2019 he was chosen to represent the United States, exhibiting 44 short films for the inauguration of the Musée des Civilisations Noires in Dakar. Massiah founded and directs the Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia.
Support
Programming support for RAW Académie Session 9: Infrastructure is provided by the Sachs Contemporary Art Fund and the Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation.
Programming at ICA is made possible in part by the Emily and Jerry Spiegel Fund to Support Contemporary Culture and Visual Arts and the Lise Spiegel Wilks and Jeffrey Wilks Family Foundation. Public and Student Engagement at ICA is supported by the Bernstein Public Engagement Fund, Suzanne Weiss Doft & Jacob W. Doft, Hilarie L. & Mitchell Morgan, the Nash Family Foundation, and by Dana McDonald Strong & Mark W. Strong.
