From Inside Higher Ed:

My project is online, here

Abby, Han, Julia, and I put together our posters and arranged them on easels. Our opening reception was a great opportunity to engage with our audience. I enjoyed discussing our weekly visits to RCF with a friend from my Arabic class. We shared some of our experiences and I talked about my project and what I learned. I also enjoyed a conversation with a professor and was inspired to make some changes to the website. It was exciting to see everyone’s projects, to discuss mine and show the website, to talk with others in the 360, including the professors. The food situation was great—Meera and Tong helped me pick it up from Wyndam (Tong took care of ordering and arranging it). I think the exhibit reached a large audience and people enjoyed and learned from it.

Visual representation of my work:

http://artsofresistance.wix.com/criminals#!the-good-in-others/jbcwo

During one of those whatthefuckamidoing (???) moments, I emailed Jody asking how much I should put on the website, what is the quantity of content I should have? She answered:

The event went so differently from what I expected. Being so wrapped up in the last minute changes that I was making to the entire structure of my own project. I missed out on witnessing the powerful strides everyone else was making on theirs. In terms of what I did: my job was to work on my own (two) projects and then planning and leading the socratic discussion. I did end up doing a few extra things, but I think we all did; it was such a group effort overall.

it’s hard for me to name what i did, partially because i feel like this was such a group effort. not to downplay what individuals did, but the groups felt way more cohesive than did the final events in the identity matters cluster. actually… much of my reflections here on the final events come as a comparison to the last 360 event that i did with the identity matters cluster.

anyway, i suppose a quick rundown of my contributions: the website, largely based in using sula and joie’s pieces; the idea of the cafe; planning of the cafe; going off the seat of my pants for the rules and guidelines of the space; a handful of lively conversations with gallery viewers.

i dunno that there’s a visual representation of the website beyond just linking to said website, so that’s here [link]. 

as for what i was “attempting”, here’s an excerpt from the website:

I thought that I might push the work of incarcerated transgender artists and art depicting incarcerated transgender individuals.

This semester, like the past many semesters, has been one of racial turmoil on this campus. Incidents of racial profiling combined with the outward racism of some of our peers on the anonymous forum Yik Yak resulted in an emotional explosion from minority, and specifically black students, on campus. The week of this turmoil, following which the group BMC Coalition was formed to create racial change on campus, there was an SGA meeting in which certain students bravely spoke up about their experiences. They identified instances of surveillance and over-policing of people of color and the relative indifference of many of the white and nonblack people of color on campus in response.

I began this project believing that I would do a concrete, and very explicit representation of the connections between Native American boarding schools and prison. There were many similarities between the two that I could find, especially after conducting deeper research. I planned on showing these connections through an easily understood guide, a complex visual that would trace these connections through time. At one point I thought I would expand it into a timeline. But then I ended up changing everything in the last two weeks of working on the project, doing a complete 180, deciding to focus on the “art” part of the Arts of Resistance.