WEEKLY RELEASES // AUG-DEC

The Outro Message to Artists-In-Presidents: Transmissions to Power is a soundscape bringing together messages from across the 21 episodes, and new reflections from contributors on their participation in the project. In this immersive composition, voices from throughout Artists-In-Presidents speak to the challenges of performing power, the local contexts and conditions underpinning their messages, and the urgency to reimagine leadership.

Over the past four months, twenty-one transmissions and portraits from artists, activists, public intellectuals, and writers have radically reimagined political power and possibility. This international assembly of contributors were invited to position themselves as world leaders who speak directly to the people, describing their vision for the future and how we get there. Together, they compose a rousing collection of imaginative proposals for the leadership we need in this moment of crisis and possibility.

Outro Message produced and composed by Olivia Bradley-Skill.

Excerpted clips from transmissions and interviews by Raji Aujla, Roy Dib, Irmgard Emmelhainz, Macarena Gómez-Barris, Emily Johnson, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Mkomose (Dr. Andrew Judge), Raqs Media Collective, Fariha Róisín, Adrian Stimson, Melati Suryodarmo, Paulo Tavares, Françoise Vergès, Ravyn Wngz.

WELCOME MESSAGE

Dear Friends,

I continue to think about how we use words and performance to rally the people around us to keep faith: that some day we will all be free, someday we will be free.

From the ways that governments around the world capitalize on our interests to the ways that movement leaders or artists actually push cultural transformation—we are witness to an array of performance strategies that shift our collective agreements with each other. The thing is that many of us inherited a long legacy of western white male embodiment of leadership. AND many of us are looking for new ways to express vision, power, and collectivity outside of the one-man-hero story and beyond the capitalistic Imperial American idea of world power.

I thought it would be helpful for us to continue this public exercise in leadership and power with a group of International and Indigenous artists, writers, public intellectuals, and performers. SO, I am very excited to announce that The Blackwood (University of Toronto Mississauga), and I have created a version of Artists-In-Presidents that decentralizes the United States!! Together we have commissioned 21 artists from around the world to address our nation(s) and relations now.

Inspired by Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Depression-era radio broadcasts called the “Fireside Chats” as a framework for speaking frankly and directly to the people, Artists-in-Presidents replaces the one-man hero story that plagues our histories and governing bodies around the globe, and complicates calls for unity by asking, “What messages do we need to broadcast to our nation(s) and relations now?” What does it look like when artists assume authority of our collective future? What other modes of power become possible?

A previous iteration of Artists-in-Presidents was presented alongside the 2020 US presidential election campaign, produced in partnership with UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance and Stanford Live Arts. Artists-In-Presidents: Fireside Chats for 2020 brought together fifty artists to assume authority over our collective future and to address the nation over podcast, social media, and in a virtual gallery. Now, commissioned in 2021 with the support of the Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto Mississauga. Artists-in-Presidents: Transmissions to Power brings together artists from across Turtle Island, England, Bahrain, France, Mexico, Afghanistan, Indonesia, India, and Lebanon, envisioning new local and global propositions for leadership.

With the support of the Blackwood, I offer all Artists-In-Presidents access to professional speechwriters and technical support in creating their unique presidential addresses and portraits. For Artists-in-Presidents: Transmissions to Power, 21 audio addresses and presidential portraits from artists as leaders will be released every Friday from August 6 to December 17, 2021 here and at blackwoodgallery.ca.

Take good care,

Constance Hockaday