2016 Common Field Miami Convening

Making Institutions Care: A Conversation Between Recess and Canaries

2016 Common Field Miami Convening
Little Haiti Community Center, Miami, FL
October 22, 2016 
4:30-6pm

The Common Field Convening is an itinerant annual gathering created by and for the field of visual artists’ organizations.

Recess will host a discussion with Canaries, whose project Refuge in the Means is underway at Recess. The Canaries practice centers on self-care and collective-care and this conversation will consider how the network of care that exists within the collective takes shape and evolves within the public context of an art institution. In light of contemporary conditions including unrelenting capitalist pressures on time and labor, society’s engrained ableism, and the widespread influences of medical industrial complex, care is a political issue that demands sustained attention and systematic change. Both Recess and the artists will consider the stakes and implications of using an institutional platform to address this issue through sustained, interpersonal work. Finally we will ask if rigorous visual art can double as radical social practice without sacrificing the quality of creative or activist agendas.

The Common Field Convening Miami 2016 focuses on arts organizing in a time of accelerated capitalism. The four-day program includes panels, breakouts, skill-shares, tours, and celebrations. This Miami convening is organized by BFI (Bas Fisher Invitational), Cannonball, Dimensions Variable, and Locust Projects, with an alliance of Miami organizers and support from national Common Field staff and members.