Posted: January 3, 2018

 “Organize Your Own: The Politics and Poetics of Self-Determination Movements” is a exhibition and event series that started in Philadelphia and Chicago in early 2016 and is now traveling to other cities. OYO features new work by contemporary artists and poets that responds to the history of the mandate from the Black Power movement to “organize your own” community against racism.

Exhibition opening reception and artist talk
by participating artist Dan S. Wang:
January 18, 4:30-7:30pm

Screening of American Revolution II at The Bunker SLO:
January 24, 7:00pm

Exhibition duration:
January 18 - February 16

Even the singularity of a unique historical time that is supposedly distinct from a measurable natural time can be cast in doubt. Historical time, if the concept has a specific meaning, is bound up with social and political actions, with concretely acting and suffering human beings and their institutions and organizations. All have definite, internalized forms of conduct, each with a peculiar temporal rhythm. - Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past

 Fifty years ago the members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) made a historic call. SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael wrote “One of the most disturbing things about almost all white supporters of the movement has been that they are afraid to go into their own communities – which is where the racism exists – and work to get rid of it. They want to run from Berkeley to tell us what to do in Mississippi; let them look instead at Berkeley… Let them go to the suburbs and open up freedom schools for whites.”

Organized by Daniel Tucker, “Organize Your Own: The Politics and Poetics of Self-Determination Movements”, is a touring exhibition and event series that started in Philadelphia at Kelly Writers House (January 14 – February 17, 2016) and Chicago at The Averill and Bernard Leviton Gallery (March 3 – April 9, 2016), with events taking place in both cities throughout the exhibitions. The project will continue to tour between now and the end of 2018. Organize Your Own features new work by contemporary artists and poets that responds to archival materials related to the history of white people organizing their own working-class white neighborhoods in Philadelphia (the October 4th Organization) and Chicago (the Young Patriots Organization) in keeping with the mandate from the Black Power movement to “organize your own” community against racism.

This Exhibition is Generously Sponsored by: Marcy Adams, John and Deb Spatafore, Diane and Pat McKeague, Margaret Korishelli, Susan and Budd Dressler, 1AngryOldLesbian.org,
Julie Frankel

About opening reception lecturer Dan S. Wang: Dan S. Wang (b. 1968) is a writer, organizer, blogger, and printmedia artist living in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. Dan’s texts have been published internationally in journals, exhibition catalogues, and book collections. His art projects circulate constantly in functional activist settings and through artistrun networks. Along with seven others he cofounded Mess Hall, the renowned experimental cultural space in Chicago that operated from 20032013, and regularly works in groups, including in Compass, Red76, and Madison Mutual Drift. For the year 2013 Dan was named a Fellow in Arts and Culture Leadership from the Rockwood Leadership Institute of Oakland, California.