Join Michelada Think Tank on Monday, June 29 at 7pm for the launch of Race, Art, & Survival. This project is part of our summer residency at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions and in conjunction with Chats About Change.

In this kick-off session we pose the question, “If there were a PoC Survival Guide for artists, what topics would you want it to cover?” This think tank will serve to “crowdsource” content for the survival guide we all wish we had. Artists and activists of color are invited to a conversation where we share the relevant issues and survival skills encountered and employed by communities of color working in the arts.

Come have a michelada, vent, and let’s figure out how to help one another.

White allies who’d like to attend are welcome as respectful observers, giving space for the concern of artists and activists of color.

More about the project:

Are we so busy surviving that we forget to be radical?

This summer Michelada Think Tank (MTT) will inhabit the LACE Project Room with a humorous and critical exploration of survival under a framework of institutional racism in the arts. Through a series of weekly think tank sessions, MTT will bring people together to talk about survival strategies for artists of color working in a predominantly white art world. The knowledge generated in these discussions will be compiled and published as a “PoC Survival Guide” in LACE’s Project Room, and later as a book. This guide will be a tongue-in-cheek look at how artists are impacted by race. If artists of color can come together as a community to make survival easier, we can then begin to foster more radical artistic practices.

MTT will be holding think tanks at sites where communities of color are working; some of the sessions will be open forums at LACE while other sessions will take place elsewhere.

Race, Art, and Survival – Michelada Think Tank & Chats About Change is a continuation of the Chats About Change series, a project organized by artists Robby Herbst and Elana Mann, which was initiated with a symposium in January of 2015. Chats About Change asks questions, wages debates, and supports artists and activists seeking experimental ways to affect Southern California and beyond.