 Hey, good morning Good morning. Is anybody watching the game right now? Okay, cool. Don't tell us just put just All right, thank you anyone this or all day sweet The first poem that ever wrote me was penned in 2001 I Was a high school junior noticing a paradigmatic and personnel shift on my block our same old hood trauma and triumph was met With new neighbors escalating rents and what was at that time A barely noticeable cultural transition I documented a present and imagine the future of my west oakland block Shared that poem at a youth speaks teen poetry slam Use it as my college entrance essay paraphrase it for a newsweek article and this poem wrote me into a life of artistry I attended new york university as an undergrad My advisor was daniel banks who was trying his damnedest to create an aperture in academia Wide enough to fit a curriculum on hip hop theater and performance studies Around the same time I was asked to help get a fledging youth speaks madison off the ground A plucky organizer there willy-nay was attempting to create space in the region And ultimately at the four at the local four-year institution to create a pathway to true diversity in higher education And also a route for young arts practitioners to gain credentials in their craft At the same time I was offered a seat at the table within the future aesthetics cohort as convened by la donna Roberta uno alongside camila forbes clad valentine james cast mark joseph paul floris setagetta quicken rock Jeff chang everyone At this table I began to see myself as an artist for the second time in my career In the company not just of the folks who created work that moved me But also in the midst of artists at the brink of newness Folks who had yet to understand the reach impact and power they'd wield in ten years time It is a particular privilege to be able to study the folks you admire on a thursday And be able to put their collective theory into practice on a friday I'd sit with daniel and unpack a willpower play Then i'd leave an interim meeting where clad valentine discussed his hopes for the hip hop theater festival bay area I'd take a weekend trip and end up at uw madison teaching the young folks who would become the first cohort of first wave My privilege is not lost on me. I know that it was not happenstance rather quite intentional I am the fruit of a collective labor The crop of a creative ecosystem designed to allow the next generation to speak for itself For the sake of this conversation, I started coming of age as an artist around 26 My son who is now 14 was four months old when I first met our convener roberto uno And i'd say that the framework then was the choreography of representation How do we get all these talented bodies aligned? And what force must we use to take our narratives to the center special in the theaters in the galleries and in the centers? In 2016 I wear my hamilton t-shirt to a poetry reading at georgia tech There are 18 year old freshman and 70-something year old professors who greet me after the show with generous mumbling about my poems And then wide open sincere curiosity Yo, can you get me a ticket? On the southern campus full of elite young engineers and biotechnologists in training Every color creed and stripe loves a hip hop Broadway musical Most have never seen it Hamilton is the theater's version of the bootleg recording your cousin sent you of red alerts Midnight said on kiss fm in 1983 It is not from your city, but you know this music by heart and you want to represent Kendrick performed a hip hop theater piece with fire and west african dance at the grammy's We elected obama in 08 and survived long enough to watch them go to cuba in 2016 and marriage equality And we got hamilton So we won right By those tropes of representation, isn't this what our victory was supposed to look like? So let's begin with the truth that this has never just been about representation Though it's always been a meaningful metric and clearly oscar still so white and fucking girls really lena dunham Through what white magic did you pre sage and manifest the disappearance of black people from brooklyn? However? The conversation that we entered as artists and educators at the turn of this century was never just about representation, but about accountability Um about we as living legacy A relationship to the social contract has played out through artistic curation intentional pedagogy and land stewardship liberation theology What do the young poets say all the time get free? The question 15 years ago was who gets to make theater? Who gets to make the season? But perhaps today's question has learned from mistakes and raised the stakes So we now ask who gets to make the city in an era of resegregation Who gets to make a new world and how? Well here we are Undivorced from our other selves We are in our bodies as artists as children of migration And as staff at this place You can imagine that ybca is positioned to work like many cultural institutions Connecting to its environment through the primacy of its own aesthetics driven by a mission to provide socially engaging content Less than intentionally impacting its social environment through active energetic reciprocity But when we were hired here, no one mandated us to stop being ourselves Everything we are is everywhere we've been So that doesn't just mean that we could continue to make objects like dances or plays or poems It means that from an administrative perch we apply an artist's thinking to curation Engagement and administration And the real life mission of this place that we're supposed to administer is generate culture that moves people With a ridiculously talented staff with a particularly intuitive leader Make culture Not harbor it not watch it go by Generate culture Remaps ambition is to systematize an ongoing dialogue between a network of culture makers And ybca shares that ambition We invest resources in a consistent relationship to alternative narratives and stakeholdership in answering macro social questions So what happens when you've been trained in dialogue and creative? Inclusive community investment alongside the people in this room and can't get their voices out of your head What questions are you then responsible to answer as you and your team begin pulling the levers of a place like this? You ask Can we imagine the artistic curation of community activation? Is it possible to pedagogically choreograph social justice? Ybca asks itself can we design a social practice built on the instigations of a curated few? Can we manage the life cycle of an idea build an ecosystem of creative individuals to respond to that idea? Nurture those responses with artistic interactions and then harvest the results in the form of public policy Consider the life cycle of a law imagine it cynically and insinuate that few ideas become law nowadays without first being tampered with by moneyed interests That said perhaps the only thing more powerful than private funds is public will When ybca describes its mission as generating culture that moves people the bet that we're making is that we can activate How art influences the public imagination that we can actually design a process whereby a highly dynamic Inquiry spawns culture and as jeff chang so eloquently distills culture precedes policy So our new curatorial design begins with the belief that social change begins with the artists that are asking the right catalytic questions And we can organize our community to refine reframe and respond to those questions in a way that can seduce the public will We do this in six parts As a staff members board we nominate and decide upon a list of culture makers that we call the ybca 100 We bring k members of this group together in a summit that looks like this Welcome to your baguana center for the arts I want you to consider the life cycle of a question As nurtured by a cultural incubator Our job here is to make social incubators for creative change We need more and different kinds of people gathering around those deep poetic questions Pretty much the most important part of what we're going to do today is going to be the moment where we turn it over to you We invite you to participate and subsequently we ask you to invite others A question comes into your head a problem comes into your head. What happens when we don't change hearts? How does the body wear trauma? What is it that you really believe that the institution Needs to be in order to be viable A viable entity in the society in which it serves. How do you break through? The shutdown the disembodiment the disengagement that happens. How would curbing food waste Better prepare us to face the challenges of climate change The job of the artist in this day and age is to put people into positions where they can actually feel An experience in their own body What you're trying to communicate if we don't change us we don't change the world Who do we need to be? So that was last october We will convene our next YBC 100 in november of 2016. I invite you guys to come through From all the questions that were Expressed at our last event our staff got together and Essentially distilled them down to three And these questions then become the prism through which we do our curatorial work for the next 12 to 18 months So what we're asking ourselves right now is can we design freedom? What does equity look like And why citizenship? We solicit responses to these questions from our multiple publics And we eventually invite 90 ybca fellows to undergo a year's worth of curated experience and meetings Over the course of that year our fellows break down into small working groups and use ybca curated events and curated artists as a Complicating ground to digest the inquiry in an art framed way today on campus. We'll have 30 ybca freedom fellows who are answering our first question Can we design freedom? We'll also have about 65 different artists Creating or expressing through 29 different projects all throughout ybca's campus Responses to the questions What is a healthy ecosystem and why work? These questions were distilled from the previous year's YBC 100 process so you can See how this is working What's what you're seeing here are responses to one of our prototype YBC 100 process We brought young gene lee here who asked us What's on the other side of your body's joy? And what's on the other side of your body's shame? This is an image from kandace antique wicks and tommy shepherd who created a song cycle about the history Of black shame in response to those questions This soccer workshop happened right outside the building This is dania cabello who did an intergenerational workshop Featuring the sport that she loves in response to the question. What's on the other side of your body's joy? This whole kind of spectrum of Inquiry and response is also reflected in our market street prototyping festival where we ask very bluntly Who gets to make the city or what does the future of this city's main thoroughfare look like? And again in terms of the pedagogical continuum. We have these public responses to active artistically driven questions From public response. We move into public affirmation Where ybca integrates the responses and the process into our brand profile to heighten the visibility of our creative ecosystem in the public imagination So you can see our brand new signs are out front. We're the center for the art of doing something about it We're the center for the art of progress When balmouti teaches class. We're the center for the art of yas Which is always my favorite So if culture proceeds policy this cycle of asking refining Prototyping and celebrating begins to take root in the public will Impacting public and private partnerships and eventually inspiring shifts in local law What that looks like I don't know I have no idea but I can imagine So yes as art center, we bring together activists philanthropists artists technologists and Humanitarians, but who we curate for our stages is based on the belief that the burning questions these people are asking Are the fertile ground for the world we want to make We are inviting our multiple publics to refine the questions of these instigators to essentialize them down to digestible and publicly Actionable components to join us in our building and around our region in a shared exercise of art framed civic curiosity We've talked a lot about demographics this weekend, but underneath it Our emotional conversation is asking for the elimination of the american pathology that there are a chosen few And the rest of us are just auditioning for our humanity I speak I write I teach I full-time artist. I make screenplay. I worry Less than my slightly older counterparts did about whether or not my art will be seen I went to la got an mfa I dreamt audacious enough to start seeing myself and us on screen I'm old to the kids now At 31 I find myself still the youngest in most rooms still at a table design for equity and visibility Still in the company of the same relative personnel But time has shifted the meaning and impact of our work Youth speaks turns 20 today Q-tip is at the kennedy center Clyde is at smu high arts has a brick and mortar on the upper east side jeff and jeroma at stanford Alternate roots has provided strategies for survival in mississippi Favis reached internationally international acclaim mark deb and I are here And robberta has made yet again a home for us all inside of art change us We have become yeah, we can clap for that We have become in so many ways the institutions we wanted to be in the early aughts We fought for visibility and equity with our blue haired legacy counterparts Tonight we rocked the symphony hall mark's writing opera hamilton hamilton hamilton We fought for access and we won But also we know that the stakes have changed We have more visibility than ever but in a twitter amplified world We also have more static through which to cut All it takes is a roll call land brown Garner Grant to remind that yes, we are further than we hoped but we're still a long way out We remind ourselves that we have already witnessed shift in public policy that we collectively are directly responsible for changing the landscape of the field For charting the shifting demographics and for making the art irresistible And one that draws the right folks to the table for the right conversations It is imperative Imperative that we work now work thoughtfully and build a model that allows us to pool the resources of our collective institutions And leverage it against a system designed obviously to kill us We offer an idea A program structure that moves intentionally from inquiry to impact Our adversaries have designed systems that effectively incarcerate us and deport us We are literally wondering aloud. Can we design? freedom We don't claim to have the answer but like art change us. We're going to keep asking the probing questions Until the resolution comes Thank you Thank you. Thanks So, uh, we're going to open up for questions comments feedback criticisms. We're going to ask that You use the microphones at the live stream audience Um, can also hear. Um, they're giving a loot hands up. So what up live stream? We love you Any questions concerns response? No calling response community. We have a question from it looks like Dalak breath weight the wrath of the breath weight y'all still inspire me. I just wanted to say that Thanks D My question is Okay, carlton looks like he has a question Thank you for your presentation and for the work that you're doing here ybca. Um, so looking at the trajectory of the process from bringing in the people in the community to Engaging these questions that will lead to The change in policy What i've seen in in my community in mississippi is that Even the cultural shift that happens If we're not working also to put people in positions of power In decision-making spaces that the that the community can be rendered You know irrelevant in terms of the decisions that happen that are not in connection to the culture of the community So how does that also play into your ecosystem? for you Oh sweet. Yeah I get the softball I taught high school when I was 21 and um I I remember going home thinking that um, I Failed the kids in my classroom Um This happens I think to many educators to many of us that struggle on a on a daily basis You're not just you're not having the greatest day Um Then maybe Five years or ten years Later you come across those same kids that are in the classroom and find them thriving Um, you run into a person like working or maintain a relationship with someone like this person who I met I think at first when you were 16 14 young younger And I and carlton I respond in that way because um I don't think that we can actually systematize the results I think that what we can do is lay a platform for inclusivity and collective vision um and Proceed with some faith And also some direction that the leverage that we achieve the the cultural magnitude of the work um is like a wave to use another Jeff chang metaphor that's clearly my mentor in all things like socially progressive But yeah to actually operate In this in this way where the sheer physics of the public imagination is what um sweeps the entire community into our Our systemic ambitions I would also say that I was moved by the idea that piper would share space with us yesterday and with with you on that panel And I think there's something to be said for creating space where Folks of color young folks of color can see that sort of visibility as well Folks of color from their neighborhood policing folks of color from their neighborhood in positions of power at a city level At a state level. So we're hoping that we make ybc a not just a home for creative civic action, but also civic civic action I would say maybe as a as a final component that we have a chief of civic engagement. His name is jonathan mosconi we work with local members of The ybca 100 and as and through our prototyping festival to Essentially curate these strategic partnerships to land these Public land these responses in the public realm in different ways So since we're really just kind of at the beginning of the process It'll be interesting to see How these responses land outside of this physical space And what the response An instigation for inclusivity looks like the last bit I'd say is that our freedom fellows our fellows groups in general aren't restricted to artists But are inclusive of taste makers policy makers and and elected officials Question over there Wait, we need to get a microphone to you Oh, there's one there's two over there. My bad Thank you. Oh That's so nice. We got two people of color trying to figure out who gonna speak first Age before beauty I I would just wanted to ask it speaking of inclusivity Um, you know, I I know the field has talked or used the metaphor of an ecosystem actually for a really long time, but real ecosystems in nature are Extremely complex. Yes and sustainable I feel like what we have built as humans In this in this cultural realm Isn't really very sustainable And we also have all kinds of spaces now that we have built all over the place and it's not clear How they should be used or continue to be used or who has access to them and Actually a lot of a lot of different things about the landscape that that we work in and also the one that we Think in and that We live in and believe in So I'm wondering if within the folks that you're inviting into this discussion If you're thinking about inviting scientists And evolutionary psychologists and I'm you know thinking about unconscious bias and all kinds of things that really impact Of the things that we are making and creating and reacting to Yes, and yes and so the first thing I'd say that Next door today is part of our field of inquiry at our public square We're actually presenting the real-life ecosystems as well. So you can see that modeled in our work. So you can see creative and Nature-friendly walk through san francisco hear bird calls and see those Replicated by a cellist in our front door gallery, but beyond that. Yes We have someone who works at nasa as part of our freedom fellows group We have someone who works in public law and public policy as a professor at uc-berkeley as part of our fellows group So our fellows group is pretty reflective of what we hope is a sustainable actual ecosystem in the bay area You sir had a question. Oh, is it for me? Also first, let me say thank you for your shared leadership and In this process of how art creativity and culture can really be The tipping point for social change My question I work with a nonprofit organization that sits on the campus of a public high school And so we use art To really take young people or really challenge young people to use art in many different ways And they're on campus life So i'm curious where do where do young people fit in this framework when I say young people I'm specifically talking about middle and high school students and would you folks be interested In creating if it's already not in place a model for young people to go through this same process I'm using their own creative and artistic skills to Challenge and think about problems that affect them every day Yes to all that that's the softball. Yeah Yes to all that Young people are included in our fellows So um for many years we've had a program at ybca called the young artists at work or yaw and for Most of that time I think the The mission of the program was to use the curated work here in the building to shape A kind of artistic development for young people but along with The kind of shift in trajectory of the entire institution we've begun to think about The work that we do with young people not so much in terms of nurturing young artists But really in terms of nurturing young activists through an art frame So our youth fellows are going to begin responding to the same questions that the fellows who apply Either to the prototyping festival or to the ybca fellowship program Undergo so these young people Meet twice a week three times a week There's actually a convening of many of them happening right now and they'll be in the space throughout the building There's a program called team force that's happening in the sculpture court today And it's by design and by intention that as we hold our field of inquiry as you guys are here That we have about 200 youth that are going to be in the building as well participating in these same questions Any other questions Garth Oh In the back and then garth Hi, thank you so much for that really inspiring presentation and So I wonder about you know, you we've talked about demographics and what you're talking about is a different way of thinking and organizing the arts field altogether And yet there are so many of us working in so many different ways so many different aesthetics Um And so many voices jostling to be heard truthfully and who have waited for so long So how do we shift that mentality of now when can it be my turn? It's um, you know, even in this horizontal playing field. There's so much. So how can we shift that mindset? You know How do we shift the mindset? I think by example I I have this memory of being in this space Of being in this space My first week on the job and um the way that the way that it panned out I pretty much had to get our season together in two weeks Upon starting. No, my son just walked in. Sorry clothes You know lights my world up. Okay, so um So I had about a week maybe maybe two weeks to get our season together and I remember thinking Tag i'm i'm looking at this season and um, I don't have enough I don't have a gay latino choreographer in my season like I remember having that thought Of essentially adopting what I think happens in curatorial offices all over the country Which is okay. There's a there's a demographic box that I have to check that I haven't I haven't checked yet and and my next thought after that after really wrestling with it for a while was I'm not here to do what Anybody else would have done in this position. I'm here to be me Which is um why we started today just talking about our biograph our biographies and Kind of charting a path that begins with artistic and creative impulse and manifestation so I think so often There's this kind of gravitational pull towards conventional center that We feel attracted to that there's something about Convention that has felt right and so we want to adopt those practices and mores I don't know how else to Be different other than to To breathe differently To actually manifest our personal agendas and have the courage to stick with them I don't I don't know if there's um A federalist paper You know, I don't know if there's a manifesto that we could write to distribute among the field that will Like a magic wand shift perception. All we can do is have the courage to be who we are First of all, I just want to thank you both for continuing to be an inspiration to Me myself colleagues at my organization and the field in general. You just never stop. So thank you for that A lot of organizations cultural organizations are understood By the aggregation of historically what was presented in those platforms Okay, so those the those are the cultural products that those Platform that those organizations have been the platform for Now all of those organizations are in the four mission sector. They're not just in the not-for-profit sector So they were started for a particular purpose to have an effect in the world. So if People's understanding is based on the product over a long period of time And the purpose or the mission so far in the background what i'm seeing here and trying to emulate is That you are being super intentional and transparent about the process And manifesting it as something that people can see be invited into and participate in So a profoundly and radically different Product if you will or experience is playing out on this particular platform So different than what we often think about cultural organizations as being a platform for What experience do we go to such and such a theater for it's to see a show in that theater? Yes, but that's not what I saw here. Yeah, so can you please speak a little bit? to your experience of confronting the challenges expected and unexpected of Doing something so profoundly different in a space where people thought they understood What was supposed to happen there? Yeah, yeah I'm not gonna answer this. Okay, the No, i'm gonna drag you back here Because we can come at this in in many different ways, but the the place where I like to start is the moment after the show because A lot of times what happens is You come into a theater you see a performance. You're deeply moved. You're you know, you're you're inspired And then what? You know So part of The design of this process is to use that moment of inspiration or to anticipate the moment of inspiration and to transpose it in time to a year before the show Or a year and a half before the show and to gather Thinkers that are responding to the same questions that the theater maker was responding to in making the work So today Folks are responding to questions of labor and ecology in the same way that grisha colman is So the idea is you don't see grisha colman's show and then say wow that was Terrible or that was amazing or that was whatever it is that you feel You actually Identify and articulate the questions that are driving this particular artist and you invite folks into the inquiry well in advance It doesn't take away from Being a center that presents artistic objects. We still present dances and but But these objects are kind of curricular That there's an underlying an intentional learning And responding that's part of our curatorial process Then I think it's It's also important to say that our cultural product is a changed world like We're not Doing this so that people can have a good time in the theater That will happen. We're not doing this just so people will be moved in the galleries. That's awesome We're doing this because this is an urgent time in our in-human history I mean every moment has been urgent But for reasons of climate for political refraction for Disturbing dialogue and because we are the stewards of a resource like this it would be irresponsible to do anything but Identify a changed and more equitable and inclusive world A community that thrives on inspiration as the cultural product So I would say I pause and I made the face because I was trying to figure out how honest that could be The hardest thing for me is to say I don't know in front of anyone And so to say I don't know in front of a room of my colleagues on a daily basis Saying that the art that I'm making now is about curation about designing the right people to be in the room And planning for long-term civic change And I'm not quite sure how we're going to get there But we're going to try it this time this way With our ideals our mores our values in place Using resources that we've never had before but have now And we're going to make something that works. And so I feel every day like A mad scientist I've put all the right things into the into the graduated cylinder And I know there's going to be a reaction and I'm I'm charting for the the reaction that I'd like And hoping that we get there and then optimizing as we go forward Also, I think it's just super quick I think it's important to say one that we do this as family That you know Deborah Cullen in and her leadership the curatorial staff the senior leadership that That we are slowly Holistically buying in I will not say that there hasn't been tension But we are getting there and the iconography that we showed you earlier that appears around the neighborhood and around this building Being a center for the art of doing something about it Is an outward manifestation of Several years of inward working, but I think it's it's critical to note that as artists We are often sometimes in your cities Called upon to Do a workshop and leave Right like we come in And we perform and we do a workshop and there's so much happening And then we go now Most institutions the majority of institutions in this room Only bring us to the spaces as part of a larger spectrum or a larger kind of continuum And that's what makes The national performance network for instance So such a vital and viable organization is that or consortium of organizations is that most of those organizations have long term Goals in terms of this kind of change, but very often An institution will bring us in very specifically to do the work so There's a problem and a show and a q&a is supposed to solve it So what we're attempting to build here is An instrument where we can move outside of that kind of like hyper dynamic Combustible moment and really think about the slow burn to create systemic change and I'd say finally we're not alone So we we shouted out john musconi lucia san roman is just joined as our chief of visual arts Um, rebecca radriga is also in civic engagement. I mean art. I could name all 70 folks on our staff But it's a dynamic group of folks who have all begun Begun to break down as a group and I think that there's some power in that as well We have these two last questions and then we're gonna we're gonna go show you guys some thanks Uh You guys are great. What you're doing is really wonderful. It's prompted a lot of questions in my mind that in some ways the project is About cities the artistic speech of the city or this the speeches in the city But and this notion of citizenship is very Very central, but I guess that leads me to the question about governance and democracy And how you or your contribution fits into these larger sort of reimaginings that I hopefully remap. Well leader charge on Yes How do we get shinaka elected? How do we get greg hodge elected mayor of oakland? Is that what you think? We we we know that that's part of it as well. We know it's a huge part of it We're starting to tackle this and we're hoping to engage like I said earlier We're hoping to engage people who have their eye on public office in our process at the beginning so that it's not new Once they're in office that they're inundated and engaged from jump But yeah, that's part of the thing too and we that's why we have someone like tom decayney here yesterday. That's why My father who was also an elected official was here in the room yesterday, so It's it's why it's why we're a polling place We're polling place on it. So, you know for folks that are voting in the california primary for folks that vote in the national election They come here to vote We understand our role in civic life and in electoral politics is tenuous because we We have a relationship with the city the origins of this place come out of the redevelopment agencies here in the state of california. We are tethered in different ways to political process, but I but I I think about Nationally who we've elected and why who becomes a viable candidate and how and it absolutely goes back to this premise that Culture awakens the public imagination in a different in a way that shows up. I think in Electoral manifestation for better and for worse, you know Our friend donald trump is Is A viable candidate in part because because we've had a generation of reality tv that Indicates that there is a winner or a loser at the end of every 30 minute cycle or every 60 minute cycle So he emerges as a as a kind of viable demagogue in this Climate because the culture has pointed us in that direction So What culture are we making that then makes shinaka a viable candidate 20 years from now? not interested The other thing i'd say is i'm i'm of the generation and and group that's not necessarily interested and i think that's also What's really powerful when we talk about democracy not in the american imagination, but in the true meaning of the word We have folks who i know don't believe in the electoral process in conversation at a polling place Take this hammer, which we'll go see immediately after this session Is space for cultural dissenters to actually have a voice and be seen by elected officials So we're mindful of it and we're at the beginning of it, but I think we actually are a home for for dissent and for action There was one final question and then we out Yeah, just want to say thank you so much for having us here wonderful inspiring presentation I come from a small institution that recently reinvented itself And I think is trying to emulate and embrace a lot of what you are all are trying to do And so my question I just heard our executive director talk a lot about the pushback and the resistance and the kind of challenges that You know she and the rest of the board and the staff had had to overcome and i'm really Pretty ignorant about the center truthfully and I would just love to learn a little bit more about Your process of change the challenges you face the resistance and how you address those problems as you've started This really amazing process and thank you Thanks That calls for a very Strong adult beverage Over over time We yeah, yeah I I was I was having a conversation with a trusted friend the other day and Happened to look on the wall and I saw a An image in a frame And we were talking about how people perceive How how people perceive this space and I said You know people can look at this square that's on the wall and Know that you're supposed to kind of Put an image in it and hang it on the wall and that's how they use it But someone else might take the same square and put it on their head and be like this is my hat This is a fly hat And in many ways This is all about conditioning How we take different shapes how we take different objects and how we relate to those objects You know, maybe you've had the experience of reaching into your pocket and they're two identically textured pieces of fabric in your pocket and one is a one dollar bill and once a five dollar bill and But they're really just kind of Random pieces of paper We've assigned value to these things. We have been conditioned to assign value So I think most of us and this speaks maybe to guard's question too I think most of us have been conditioned to approach a place like this in a particular way And have gotten into this gig very specifically to apply that conditioning in in real time So it is hard to Uncondition or recondition or retexture arts professionals to think about Cultural product or cultural progress as the ultimate product of our labor I think this is why we work so in response to the question that's happening across the street why work we work so that The next generation can speak for itself like that's you know, that's a real thing Now we can talk about the intricacies of that in an unamplified space Um, so the next thing we're going to do We're going to walk over to our other building to gfb and the director of visual arts the chief of visual arts here At ybca lucia stanwaman is going to talk us through Two of the shows that are up in our galleries Take this hand will be the primary and then we also invite you to see samara golden From there we'll go as a group and see the brisha kohman visual installation Which is the counterpart to the show you saw last night And then we'll have maybe some time for questions. We'll be back in this room at 3 30 for an invitation From carlton and james and that will be our day Thank you so much. Well, um, it'll be our day It'll be the end of our day It'll almost be the end of our day after that at at four o'clock after we close formally here Everything that we've been talking about is manifested in the public square that begins at four o'clock So one of the reasons why we describe this process to you in this way and plan for this In this way is so that you can get a sense of what we're trying to build So we strongly encourage you to come over between four and five o'clock before Many of you go to the you speak slam tonight. Um, finally just in this moment I think we should just call out The the family that's on staff at arts change us So if you don't mind if you could just like throw a fist up if you're here I see capena Over there capena alapai. Can you? Yeah, sweet Down in front Right down in front is our homie daniella alvarez sweet The homie the show me, uh, dallas texas's own Uh, christen calhoun is right there. Uh, I don't see him. Maybe he's out there kainoa Kainoa Right in front and right in front Um in the wings telling me i'm running way over his time Is toran more Guru of logistics hotel information registration and manusha give it up for namiko uno sweet sweet Uh, my homie elizabeth web and I were backstage making all things happen with visuals There she goes. There she goes. There she goes. Um before we call out ladonia I want to call out two folks on our staff that have been made this day possible specifically jody fetter Yes, I know she's here, but we can clap for her. Yes As well as maya rosa. Yeah And then finally but certainly not least ladonia the one who brought us into the room the head of all the five families mrs. Roberta Donatella All right y'all thanks again for taking this time To be introduced to the day on saturday. We'll be back here at 330, but we'll see you across the way right now Well, well, how about we take a three minute bio break and then i'll meet you here and i'll walk you over to the gallery Meet you right out front of the theater. Thank you so much. Thanks guys