An invitation to come by to check out a Glass Material Library at SFAI!
Who: Cedric Tai is an un-disciplinary artist, educator, and friend who thinks through sculpture, talking, writing, performance and experimental exhibitions to hone in on neurodivergent experience, labor and politics.
What: Glass Material Library (Test tiles experiments you can explore with your hands / an attempt to represent 'neurodivergence' in glass)
I'm excited about the next artwork others may make for themselves as inspired by these test tiles whether someone is familiar with glass or not.
Where: The semi-private library in the Santa Fe Art Institute, 1600 St. Michael's Drive #31 (Note: Guests must respect if visiting may require silence as artists-in-residents have priority in this space.)
When: March 9th - March 23rd, 2022. Open Daily from Noon - 5 pm
RSVP here: https://calendly.com/mr_ceedric/rsvp (with more details in the RSVP like where to upload your proof of vacc. & directions)
Why:
- An excuse to get out of the house / I don't have to go anywhere as an artist-in-resident
- An excuse to invite you to come to the Santa Fe Art Institute (especially for mental health hikes I host on campus, Friday mornings)
- An excuse to touch glass when you're normally not allowed to touch art
- An excuse to connect with another artist
- An excuse to say I had a solo show this year and now not have to do anything for the rest of this year
"Let's Not and Say We Did" (2021)
20'' x 17''
Materials: 'Curious Glass' and Color Line Screenprinting Ink,
1 of 3 artist proofs.
With the design help of Mark Allen of Machine Project, I created a series of glass poster advertisements for an epic ADHD event that supposedly couldn't be seen due to COVID.
I sent e-mails and social media posts to my professional contacts about the belated event and continuously re-iterated that it Definitely took place months ago boasting 18 sponsors, to take place simultaneously between MOMA PS1, Ford Field in Detroit, and the Egyptian Pyramids.
Can we address the absurd ambition and bravado of arts professionals still communicating / maintaining / expecting a high level of productivity, merit, and needs during a worldwide pandemic?
"ND Time Bandits: Co-Adventures in Reshaping Time" (2021)
As part of 'Art Rise' (20 outdoor art installations up for @WhyWeRise) LACMA used its construction fence along Wilshire Blvd. to put up: 'The Mind's Eye: A LACMA Poster Project'.
For Mental Health Awareness Month Lisa Mark commissioned Scoli Acosta, Andy Alexander, The Revolution School, Favianna Rodriguez, and Kerry Tribe to use "various strategies to communicate the vast range of cognitive and affective processing styles that are encompassed within the human experience."
I sent out my ADHD Guide for/by Artists Zine and my brochure "How to Advocate for Yourself at the Doctors Office" preparing to chat with other artists who came together in Jennifer Moon's 'Revolution School' to discuss making a big public poster. We were each grappling with how we felt and identified based on researching #Neurodiversity, and we decided to stick together as #NDTimeBandits.
Everything from our bios to the research process itself (where we created 'bad' memes to take the edge off of the otherwise heavy and complex implications of diagnosis and chronic and mental illness) was done with such care, vulnerability, abundance, radical self-compassion, and consideration that it is the most meaningful fun I've ever had collaborating on an art project.
We built a functioning time machine which bestowed us with more time to make more than 1 poster...
We defied the belief that ADHD/neurodivergent folx don't do well in group projects, nor can be expected to be able to pull off a strict 2D poster prompt. On the contrary, we playfully and openly questioned the paternalistic way that neurodivergent people too often are not consulted; so we used the poster as a 'scrooging' opportunity and show how to expand neurotypical expectations.
We shared values and shared the work load: dreaming, building, and even successfully deploying a 'Time Machine' that provided us with more time. It was a holistic celebration of all of our strengths and created space for each of our varied individual passions.
We are an open collective of artists, magicians, activists, hackers, academics, psychokinetics, witches, scientists, healers, empaths, thieves, chemists, archivists, gamers, freaks, friends, allies, and enemies (aka Superheroes and Scroogers) who meet fortnightly. Beginning in 2020 as a Commonwealth and Council Summer School program, "The Revolution: Operation Scrooge and League of Superheroes," was facilitated by Jennifer Moon. Members of Rev School can form action teams actualizing projects that embody and animate
The Two Principles of The Revolution:
1. Always* operate from a place of abundance**
2. Always choose the most expansive*** route
* Always means pertaining to any manner of actions that can be deemed revolutionary.
** Abundance is knowing you are enough for the mere fact that you exist.
*** Expansive is reaching beyond binaries, hierarchies, and capital.
Note: One can *only* decipher the most expansive route when one is operating from a place of abundance. The most expansive route can change from moment to moment, as we move through space and time, and based on continually shifting specificities of entanglements and intra-actions with apparatuses, bodies, and material-discursive practices that co-produce ethico-onto-epistem-ologies.
We believe the primary reason someone holds onto power and resources is because of unacknowledged, unprocessed, and unloved trauma.
A Scrooger is someone who actively befriends their traumas and, therefore, can have expansive relationships with another person's traumas.
A Superhero is someone who actively offers alternatives to carceral-based institutional apparatuses that have become naturalized.
#ndtimebandits
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