Thursday, September 27, 2012

CREATIVE TIME: Hentyle Yapp

On October 12, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts are partnering to host a live-streaming of the Creative Time Summit, an annual conference in New York that brings together cultural producers--including artists, critics, writers, and curators--to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world. To jump-start the conversation in advance of the event, attendees have been asked to submit a paragraph on a keyword associated with one of the summit themes: Inequities, Occupations, Making, or Tactics. This posting is by Hentyle Yapp, graduate student in Theater, Dance & Performance Studies at UC Berkeley.

Keyword: Occupation

Occupation connotes not only space, but also work.  The Occupy "Movement" reminds us of the former, where groups enter a public space and live, exist, eat, celebrate, agitate, and protest.  Occupation also reminds us of work, vocation, and an identity - what's your occupation? what do you do?  I'm curious how these two connotations intertwine.  Of course, class disparities between different vocations or the have/have nots of an occupation lead to the current iterations of the Occupation of space.  However, how does the movement itself become an occupation itself?  In what ways does the Occupy "movement"/social protest become work, vocation, or an identity?  And how has social protest and identity intertwined historically?

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