5 Questions

Organized by AREA Chicago and Creative Time, Inc. this online interview project features the responses of Chicago artists and art administrators to questions related to connecting art to social justice movements, building local audiences and social networks, and sharing economic resources. Many of the people interviewed for this project were part of the Art & Activism retreat that I attended back in January - it is interesting to hear their thoughts about art and social change in this place-specific context.

http://5questions.areachicago.org

Though some of the concerns are specific to the city of Chicago, there is also a lot to ideas that are pertinent to the conversations around the Creative Providence Cultural Plan, as well as the growing sense of the need for artists and designers to take a relational approach to their creative practice which recognizes their role as citizens and change makers.

The questions:

1. Who is your audience, and how does your work mobilize it towards strategic local concerns?

2. Given that the ways we make money impacts the type of culture we produce, how does the local economy effect your art practice? How do you work to obtain and share resources?

3. Describe a local cultural event that productively expanded the social networks that your practice operates in. That is to say, the event produced a new sense of community that had political potential.

4. As a politically engaged artist or organization, how do you and/or your practice relate to existing social movements?

5. These conversations come out of a nation-wide concern about the fate of democracy. How do you see your projects tying into a larger national structure? Is organizing nationally productive? What are its limitations?