AAF Broadcast Series
About the Artists Against
Fascism Broadcast Series
Artists Against Fascism Broadcast Series hosts panel discussions with leading artists, activists, scholars, and community builders on a variety of subjects under the larger topic of how art practice and creative intent can be utilized in anti-fascist resistance. As artists, we seek to bring together the personal and the political, putting knowledge and subject matter in a social context. We believe that this negotiation of perspective is a crucial component to opposing the rise of fascism by cultivating a collective social consciousness that is research based, analytical, and fluent in thoughtful debate while also being empathetic and supportive of one another.
Scroll down for broadcasts and bios for our panelists.
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Direct Democracy: Building Cooperative Economies
A conversation with Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson and Michelle Eddleman McCormick of Cooperation Vermont
Broadcast Episode 04, 6pm EST, 5/23/2022
The Artists Against Fascism Broadcast Series returns for a conversation with Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson and Michelle Eddleman McCormick of Cooperation Vermont.
This free, public event is hosted by AAF with support from VCFA Alumnx Affairs and will be livestreamed on zoom. Advanced registration required.
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Scroll down to learn more about Akuno and McCormick.
Broadcast 04, Panelist Bios, Kali Akuno and Michelle Eddleman McCormick
Kali Akuno is co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, and served as the Director of Special Projects in the administration of Mayor Chokwe Lumumba of Jackson, MS. His focus was supporting cooperative development, introducing eco-friendly and carbon reduction operations, and promoting human rights and international relations for the city. Kali also served as the Co-Director of the US Human Rights Network and the Executive Director of the Peoples’ Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF) after Hurricane Katrina. You can learn more about Cooperation Jackson here.
Michelle Eddleman McCormick is General Manager for the Marshfield Cooperative, flagship project for the newly founded Cooperation Vermont for which she serves on the board of directors. Michelle is also the Coordinator for Regeneration Corps, a collaborative project bringing the Just Transition framework into schools across Vermont while working with students on regenerative agriculture projects, strengthening local climate change resilience strategies. Previously Michelle was the Director of Business Development for a global travel company where she focused her energy on curated faculty led programs for universities. She has a background in community organizing and operating mutual aid projects including being the lead coordinator for the Common Ground Lower 9th Ward project in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. You can learn more about Cooperation Vermont here.
Holding Space for Equity and Ceremony in the Climate Movement: A conversation with Jacob Johns
Broadcast Episode 03, 6pm EST, 3/28/2022
Join AAF for a conversation with artist and grassroots activist Jacob Johns. Originally from Mesa, Arizona and having grown up a member of the Akimel Oʼotham and Hopi nations, Johns draws continuously from his cultural heritage, using traditional ceremonial concepts, with an intent to take us one step closer to mindful planetary consciousness at each event, rally or movement. In 2015, he worked in collaboration with several organizations to hold ceremony in honor of the 125th anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre. The focus was not on the tragedy, but on the release of genocide and the healing of the collective consciousness of humanity. He once spent over six months traveling back and forth between North Dakota and Washington State, organizing supply runs and supporting the front lines at Standing Rock to prevent construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. His latest work involves using land healing ceremony, disruptive humanitarianism and mass mobilization to demand climate justice for BIPOC and economically disadvantaged communities who are already feeling the effects of the climate crisis and being met with indifference from the U.S. government.
“The outdated models of how we live on this planet are failing. We need new paradigms that uplift the planet and heal our world. My organizing efforts have focused on multiple interconnected issues involving social justice and minority rights, as well as environmental protection…Only by standing in solidarity can we overcome oppression.” - Jacob Johns
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Countering Disinformation and Exposing Authoritarian Manipulation
Broadcast Episode 02, 4/27/2021
Artists Against Fascism Broadcast Series Panelists for our April 27th broadcast (6:30 PM EST) include: Derek Curry, Jennifer Gradecki and Steven Kurtz of Critical Art Ensemble (CAE). All three of our guest artists are pushing boundaries and triggering authority by uncovering the inner workings of systems of disinformation, surveillance, bio-tech, and ecological damage. To act against these forces, they promote and encourage information activism, media literacy, public engagement, public interventions, mock situations, and mockstitutions. Moderated by Jennifer Cerutti, Karolyn Greenstreet and Vincent Kral. Our discussion will be followed by Q & A with the panel.
This program is presented and organized by Artists Against Fascism with supporting partnership from VCFA Alumnx Affairs. We hope you will join us on April 27th!
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Broadcast 02, Panelist Bios, Derek Curry, Jennifer Gradecki and Steve Kurtz
Derek Curry (US) is an artist-researcher whose work critiques and addresses spaces for intervention in automated decision making systems. His work has addressed automated stock trading systems, Open Source Intelligence gathering (OSINT), and algorithmic classification systems. His artworks have replicated aspects of social media surveillance and communicated with algorithmic trading bots. Derek earned his MFA in New Genres from UCLA's Department of Art in 2010 and his PhD in Media Study from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2018. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University in Boston.https://derekcurry.com/
Jennifer Gradecki (US) is an artist-theorist who investigates secretive and specialized socio-technical systems. Her research has focused on social science techniques, financial instruments, technologies of mass surveillance, intelligence analysis, artificial intelligence, and social media misinformation. She received her MFA in New Genres from UCLA in 2010 and her PhD in Visual Studies from SUNY Buffalo in 2019. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University in Boston. www.jennifergradecki.com
Curry and Gradecki often collaborate, having presented and exhibited at venues including Ars Electronica (Linz), New Media Gallery (Zadar), Media Art History (Göttweig), NeMe (Cypress), The New Gallery (Calgary), ISEA (Vancouver), ADAF (Athens), and the Centro Cultural de España (México).
More about Curry and Gradecki:
Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival Panel Discussion, Entangled Infiltrations: New Media Exhibition Launch
Art Machines: ISCMA – Machine Learning and Art Panel 4 (Part I): Jennifer Gradecki and Derek Curry
Steven Kurtz, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Art, is a founding member of the internationally acclaimed art and theater group Critical Art Ensemble (CAE). Founded in 1987 by Steven Kurtz and Steve Barnes, CAE is an award-winning collective of artists of various specializations—including digital imaging and web design, wetware, film/video, photography, text art, book art, and performance—dedicated to exploring the intersections between art, technology, political activism, and critical theory. For over three decades CAE has produced and exhibited art that examines questions surrounding information and communication technology, bio-technologies, and environmental struggle. The collective has performed and produced a wide variety of projects for an international audience at diverse venues ranging from the street, to the museum, to the internet, and has been invited to produce projects for many of the world’s leading cultural institutions such as The Whitney Museum and The New Museum, NYC; Documenta, Kassel; The Corcoran Museum, Washington D.C.; Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA; The ICA, and The London Museum of Natural History. CAE has written eight books on the intersections of art, new media, and political economy. The group’s most recent book is Aesthetics, Necropolitics, and Environmental Struggle.
Projects and book downloads are at critical-art.net
More about Steve Kurtz and CAE:
The Influencers 2010
Toxicity, Representation and Social Control
Friendsgiving 2020 - Humberto Ramirez welcomes back former faculty Doug Ashford and Steve Kurtz.
Democracy Now! Interview with Steve Kurtz, Art in a Time of Terror...
Common Ground, Artists and Anti-Fascism
Broadcast Episode 01, 10/16/2020
Artists Against Fascism Broadcast Series
Panelists for our first broadcast on October 16th include Mark Bray, Terresa Moses, and Malamas Sotiriou. We will explore language manipulation, historical propaganda, and strategies for identifying, understanding, and opposing far right extremism from a creative perspective.
This program is presented and organized by Artists Against Fascism with supporting partnership from VCFA Alumnx Affairs. We hope you will join us on October 16th!
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Broadcast 01, Panelist Bios, Mark Bray, Terresa Moses, Malamas Sotiriou,
Mark Bray is a political organizer and historian of human rights, terrorism, and politics in Modern Europe. He wrote Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook and Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street. He is currently a lecturer at Rutgers University and co-edited Anarchist Education and the Modern School: A Francisco Ferrer Reader.
Terresa Moses is the Creative Director of the Minnesota-based activist organization Blackbird Revolt - a platform for conscious creatives looking to transform their communities. Moses is also Assistant Professor of Graphic Design and Director of Design Justice in the College of Design at the University of Minnesota as well as the creator of Project Naptural and a co-collaborator for Racism Untaught.
Malamas Sotiriou is a member of the Antiauthoritarian Movement of Greece and of Micropolis Social Centre based in the city of Thessaloniki. He co-founded an antifascist-antisexist gym where combat sports are taught. And for four consecutive years, he has helped organize an Antifa Martial Arts Tournament in Thessaloniki, an event in which hundreds of antifascists from all over Europe take part.