Art, Instituting, and Friendship: Towards the Internationalist Future

On December 13th, 2020 at 3 PM EST Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Anti War Forum hosted HEKLER for the discussion:

Art, Instituting, and Friendship: Towards the Internationalist Future

In Episode 3 of AWF, HEKLER members and collaborators Nataša Prljević, Joshua Nierodzinski, Farideh Sakhaeifar, Shimrit Lee, Dena Al-Adeeb, and Hồng-Ân Trương will contribute to a 45-minute presentation reflecting on the philosophy and structure of HEKLER as well as their collaborative projects including; Clear-Hold-Build, a group exhibition that examined the lasting trauma of global counterinsurgency and A People’s Tribunal: 28 Exhibits, a performative tribunal that brought together a group of artists, activists, and scholars to account for the impact and interrogate the rhetoric that has fueled the lasting trauma of the U.S. War in Iraq.

We discuss what is the responsibility of contemporary artists to be active agents for social and political change?

How can the synergy of artistic, educational and organizing strategies confront the institutions of imperialist violence while celebrating collective resilience and international solidarity?

Presentation is followed by Q&A with HEKLER and DSA artists and activists.

DSA ANTI-WAR FORUM (AWF) is a series of conversations with artists and scholars around war, U.S. foreign policy, and International left solidarity curated by Farideh Sakhaeifar & Katayoun Vaziri

Farideh Sakhaeifar is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist, educator born in Tehran, Iran. Sakhaeifar’s work investigates the politics of conflict, collective history, and narration.

Katayoun Vaziri is an Iranian-born visual artist who draws on a wide range of cultural references to question the linearity of political and social narratives

HEKLER is an autonomous platform and transnational community of art and cultural workers that fosters critical examination of hospitality and conflict through collaborative programming, pedagogy, and archiving. It is initiated by artists Nataša Prljević, Joshua Nierodzinski, and Jelena Prljević in Brooklyn, NY.

Shimrit Lee is an educator and curator based in Brooklyn. She teaches at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, and is currently working on a book about efforts by museums to redress histories of colonial violence.

Dena Al-Adeeb is an artist-scholar-activist-mama born in Baghdad, Iraq and is currently based in Oakland, California. Dena is the University of California, Davis Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the American Studies Department. Dena is working on a book titled: The Architecture of War: Petrocultural Engineering and the U.S. Invasion of Iraq.

Hồng-Ân Trương uses photography, sound, video, and performance to examine histories of war and immigrant and refugee narratives through a decolonial framework. By interrogating archival materials, she examines the production of knowledge through structures of time and memory. Her interdisciplinary projects are premised on the concept that aesthetic battles are also political and ideological battles.

Nataša Prljević is an artist, curator and co-initiator of HEKLER. Her work focuses on collaborative and collective practices of instituting and organizing, conflict analysis and polyvocal learning.

Joshua Nierodzinski is an artist, curator, and organizer concerned with the politics of food and the psychosocial dynamics
of dining.