Mobile Agora Project, 2016-
MAP is an itinerant outpost for cultural + economic + political exchange taking residence in public markets throughout Southern and Baja California. Through a series of collaborative in-site workshops, performative actions and artistic interventions, the project invites publics to consider the parameters by which citizenship is/can be (re)constituted in a moment when national boundaries like the US/Mexico border are simultaneously erased by economic policies and bolstered through anti-immigrant criminalizing policies. |
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The first iteration of the project, MAP:LA, took place at the Santa Fe Springs Swap Meet in south Los Angeles during June 2016. This pilot version of the project featured collaborations with Manos Unidas Creando Arte, an artisan cooperative of women designing economically + environmentally sustainable crafts with material sourced from their communities in Santa Ana, CA, RAIZ, a youth activist group organizing against the criminalization and deportation of immigrant in communities living + working in Orange County and Los Angeles, and the Tijuana-based DIY-editorial Kodama Cartonera. More information and documentation of programming can be found on the project blog: map-la.tumblr.com
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One of MAP’s intentions is to collaborate with immigrant-rights groups to facilitate workshops within the market. For MAP: LA, we worked with Orange County- based RAIZ (now called Resilience Orange County), a chapter of the Immigrant Youth Coalition, and members of the Spurgeon Intermediate School Social Justice Club, to design + facilitate a workshop on the aesthetics of protest in the Santa Fe Springs Swap Meet.
Participants were invited to articulate their political demands on mylar balloons in response to the political rally cry “What do we want?” as immigrants/youth of color/latinxs/chicanxs/etc. To conclude the workshop, a march was undertaken through the market flying the balloons in place of picket signs. The workshop was also facilitated as part of MAP:TJ in collaboration with the Comité Magonista Tierra y Libertad. During both interventions some participants took their balloons with them to carry through the market and back to their communities, while others chose to leave their balloons as part of the MAP archive. |
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