CHARLES GAINES MOVING CHAINS: TOWARD ABOLITION SYMPOSIUM EVENT

"Art is Business"

CHARLES GAINES MOVING CHAINS: TOWARD ABOLITION SYMPOSIUM EVENT

Building upon Charles Gaines’s mon­u­men­tal work Mov­ing Chains on Gov­er­nors Island, Cre­ative Time and Gov­er­nors Island Arts present a day-long pub­lic pro­gram on Gov­er­nors Island on May 20th from 10 AM to 5PM. The Island will bring togeth­er an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary group of artists, schol­ars, and edu­ca­tors work­ing on strate­gies for abo­li­tion in art, law, edu­ca­tion, and polit­i­cal action. This event is free with reg­is­tra­tion. View the event schedule and register here→

On the occasion of Charles Gaines’s monumental public artwork Moving Chains, Creative Time and Governors Island Arts present a day-long public program on Governors Island bringing together an interdisciplinary group of artists, scholars, and educators working on strategies for abolition in art, law, education, and political action.

The day’s workshops, talks, presentations, and walking tour center on the possibilities and limitations of achieving abolition through the law. The contested, moving, and blurred lines between people and property persists today as one of the foundations of racial capitalism, the economic and structural afterlife of chattel slavery. As scholar, and panelist, Saidiya Hartman argues, while discussing the specters of freedom, the political and legal structure of liberty is a permutation of slavery—freedom can never be possessed, only shared. Moving Chains: Toward Abolition offers an opportunity to consider how freedom can be defined outside of the contours of property, considers past examples of movements using the law in the fight for freedom, and ultimately asks whether abolition and the law are compatible or not.

Organized by Diya Vij, Curator at Creative Time, and Che Gossett, scholar of abolition and contemporary Black art, for the session panels; and artist and educator Tiffany Lenoi Jones, for the drop-in workshops.

All events are free and open to the public. Capacity is limited, please register for each of the day’s events you plan to attend in advance. See ferry schedule to plan your trip on and off the island: https://www.govisland.com/plan-your-visit/ferry

11AM-1PM: MORNING SESSION

CASTLE WILLIAMS

Grounding and Land Acknowledgement by Black Gotham Experience

Presentation by Tali Keren and Alex Strada, 28th Amendment Project

Abolition and the Law, Panelists: American Artist, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Albert Fox Cahn, moderated by Che Gossett

The panel “Abolition and the Law” brings together artists American Artist and Keemalah Janan Rasheed in conversation with lawyer Albert Fox Cahn, Founder and Executive Director of Surveillance Oversight Technology Project (S.T.O.P.), moderated by Che Gossett. Together, the panelists will discuss the intersection of art, law, surveillance, and abolition. How do redaction, bracketing, and constraint exist within the context of surveillance and the legal system? How might art become a vehicle for exposing, negotiating, and moving past the structure of the law and towards new possibilities for abolition?

Presentation by Sarah Abdelaziz, Executive Director, Abolitionist Teaching Network

1-2PM: LUNCH BREAK

COLONELS ROW

Visit a selection of food trucks at Colonels Row outside the event or other Governors Island dining spots to purchase lunch. Guests are also welcome to pack their own lunch.

Black Gotham Experience Lunch Circle: Join Kamau Ware for a talk back on the history and ideas covered in the morning session.

28th Amendment Soap Box Installation: Visitors are invited to engage by listening to these sonic sculptures that build upon the history of soap boxes as sites of collective struggle and record their own additions to this work.

12-3PM: DROP-IN WORKSHOPS

COLONELS ROW

Drop into multigenerational artmaking workshops and gatherings to collectively imagine freedom while learning about the possibility, necessity, and stakes of teaching abolition today. This program is organized by Tiffany Lenoi Jones with Akiea “Ki” Gross and Noor Jones-Bey, grantees of the Abolitionist Teaching Network.

2-5PM: AFTERNOON SESSION

CASTLE WILLIAMS

Presentation by artist Russell Craig, Right of Return

Architectures of Freedom, Panelists: Torkwase Dyson, Saidiya Hartman, and Rinaldo Walcott

Scholars Saidiya Hartman and Rinaldo Walcott will think alongside and in concert with artist Torkwase Dyson about how freedom might be actualized and spatialized, the places freedom inhabits and takes. What are the architectures and infrastructures of freedom? How might freedom be shared, rather than monetized, privatized and racialized as property? What is the role of art in making freedom(s) possible in the midst of slavery’s global social and aesthetic afterlives?

In Conversation: Charles Gaines and Christina Sharpe

Join artist Charles Gaines and scholar Christina Sharpe in an intimate conversation on Gaines’s monumental work Moving Chains through the lens of Sharpe’s groundbreaking framework of “Wake Work,” introduced in her influential book, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Duke University Press, 2016). The two will discuss aesthetic strategies to address race and power in order to reorient our ways of seeing and being and doing in the wake of slavery and the United States project.

5:00 & 5:30PM: Governors Island ferries depart for Manhattan

6:00PM: Last ferry to Manhattan departs