Open Engagement 2007-2019

Open Engagement is an artist-led initiative directed and founded by Jen Delos Reyes committed to expanding the dialogue around and serving as a site of care for the field of socially engaged art. We highlight the work of transdisciplinary artists, activists, students, scholars, community members, and organizations working within the complex social issues and struggles of our time. Since 2007, OE has presented ten conferences in two countries and six cities, hosting over 1,800 presenters and over 7,000 attendees. In addition, OE managed a publishing arm, and assembled a national consortium of institutions, colleges, and funders all dedicated to supporting artists engaged in this necessary and critical work.

Open Engagement from 2015-2018 convened a national consortium of institutions and organizations dedicated to supporting socially engaged art. Representatives from A Blade of Grass, California College of the Arts, Oakland Museum of California, Queens Museum, and University of Illinois at Chicago School of Art & Art History who worked closely with the Open Engagement core team to shape and situate the itinerant conference from 2016-18.

Each year from 2016-18 focused on a singular theme, exploring major issues at play and at stake in socially engaged art. The themes and sites for those conferences were: POWER in Oakland in 2016, JUSTICE in Chicago in 2017, and SUSTAINABILITY in New York in 2018. Annual programming was selected from an open call for proposals, under the direction of an appointed curator from the region and selection committee comprised of national consortium members alongside local partners, artists, educators, students, and other invested community members and organizations.

Since its founding in 2007, Open Engagement has grown significantly each year, widening its scope and reach, as well as serving as an important site of professional development and education around socially engaged art. With the formation of this consortium and next three conference locations confirmed, OE aims to create a site of care and dialogue for practitioners, institutions, and communities.

Beginning in 2019 Open Engagement is embarking on a hiatus to re-assess and evaluate the needs of the field. This will take the shape of a survey, residencies, retreats, and a series of public conversations across the US and beyond.

www.openengagement.info

OE Archive

 2019 — Research Triangle, North Carolina — Emergent Futures: State of the Field

Arts Administrators Bill of Rights (PDF)

2018 — Queens, New York — SUSTAINABILITY (Catalog, PDF)

2017 — Chicago, Illinois — JUSTICE (Catalog, PDF)

2016 — Oakland, California — POWER (Catalog, PDF)

2015 — Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — Place and Revolution (Catalog, 2.9MB PDF)

2014 — Queens, New York — Life/Work (Catalog, 2.9MB PDF)

2013 — Portland, Oregon — Contexts, Publics, Institutions (Catalog, 682KB PDF)

2012 — Portland, Oregon —  Economies, Politics, Education, Representation (Catalog, 1.6MB PDF)

2011 — Portland, Oregon — Making Things, Making Things Better, Making Things Worse (Catalog, 4MB PDF)

2010 — Portland, Oregon — Art and Social Practice (Catalog, 10MB PDF)

2007–2012 — OE Anthology

OE Ten Year Reflection: Jen Delos Reyes

May, 2018

Ask Me About Sunsetting

Sunsets are beautiful. It is unclear whether or not this statement is operating as an affirmation or an incantation. I am telling myself this because I need comfort. I need beauty. I need to come to terms with the fact that I am about to sunset a project I have been working on for the past 12 years. I have spilled a lot of ink on the subject of Open Engagement since 2006, the first being what felt like endless revisions of my graduate thesis paper picking apart every aspect of the first conference in 2007. This was followed by years of writing materials for the conference, essays, chapters, introductions, blog posts, and emails ad infinitum. The last thing I want to do is write something that might end up in the wasteland of TLDR.

I have been trying to write this reflection since December of 2017. I kept avoiding it. The truth is I am only working on this now because I am flying back to Chicago after giving a workshop to the Public Practice MFA students at Otis and the WIFI on the plane is not working. These are the kinds of details I like to know about writing. Why did someone choose to face it? What are the real conditions of creation?

The final form that this ten year reflection has taken is inspired by a field trip I took my ART 101 students on this spring.  This class is full of all of the newly minted art majors at the school and as such I think it is important that they visit the wide range of arts institutions in our city. One of the more unorthodox museums that I take the class to is the Busy Beaver Button Museum. Located in the office of the modest button operation is the world’s only button museum. The collection wraps around the walls of their main office and is organized by types and tropes of buttons from political, self-referential, art, entertainment, to “Ask me about…” buttons.

We were given a tour of the collection by the two founders of the business who were friendly, open, and enthusiastic. After the visit a student told me the most meaningful part of the experience was encountering these two people who were clearly so passionate about what they do, and what they put out into the world. I am grateful for the reminder. Inspired by that experience I have decided to make my ten year reflection a series of buttons which are ultimately short lessons I have learned each year of the conference. The lessons themselves are footnotes to my life, but also to these badges.

Every single staff member I saw at Busy Beaver was wearing a button of their own choosing. This did not feel mandated, their selections felt like they resonated with joy, and also with personal meaning and significance. There are a total of eleven buttons produced for this reflection on Open Engagement. The first serves as the title of this essay*. The other ten buttons each correspond with a specific year of the conference and the most important personal lesson or memory from that iteration of the conference. I could see myself wearing each and every one of these. For me they represent growth, power, vulnerability, and acknowledgement. I hope that these statements will also connect with you, and that if I see you out in the world wearing them I will know that we share a belief, an education, a community.

Right now I am in the habit of talking about Open Engagement in terms that feel final. I know that stems from exhaustion and burnout. The reality is that this not truly an end point—collectively we are taking time as an organization for deep reflection. We are checking in with ourselves, each other, and the field. The earth will complete a rotation and morning will come again. What that new beginning will bring we can’t know, and that is part of the beauty of it. If you see me in New York at Open Engagement 2018 wearing an “Ask me about sunsetting” button, talk to me. I hope I tell you it is more beautiful than I could have even imagined.

Somewhere between sunny Los Angeles and a snowy Chicago,

Jen Delos Reyes

April 18, 2018 

2007

Made something from nothing

This was the first year of the conference and the final year of my MFA. Open Engagement was my graduate thesis project. I learned through doing. It was the most important part of my graduate education, and it was self-organized. It was something I had never done before.

That structure for personal education ultimately became the foundation of collective learning and doing. When I was at Portland State University co-directing the MFA in Art and Social Practice from 2008-2015 I incorporated organizing OE as a pedagogical framework.

2010

Women are the workers of the world

At the end of the first  OE conference at PSU all of the volunteer organizers of the conference were asked to stand for a moment of acknowledgement. Every single person identified as a woman. OE has since it’s inception been largely woman powered and femme fronted.

2011

Public is powerful

The Paul Ramirez Jonas lecture from OE 2011 continues to be the most powerful artist talk and reflection on the idea of “public” I have seen.

2012

Embodied knowledge

I have said many times that OE values multiple forms of knowledge, including embodied knowledge. For Fritz Haeg’s keynote lecture he requested a set up in which we removed a large portion of chairs and replaced them with yoga mats.

2013

Tell me how you really feel

At the final celebratory moment of OE 2013 I was approached by a conference attendee. It was a dance party, the room was filled with energy and a levity until the person confronted me with brutal criticism of the event (which was of course framed as coming from a place of care). I left the party in tears. I am thankful for all of the call-outs the conference has received over the years, we have grown from it, but there is a time and place for this to happen. Some moments should be reserved for collective joy, it is a principal OE stands by.

2014

We are the institution

This year felt like the first time Open Engagement was seen and framed as an institution. We were the target of institutional critique.

This statement on the button is taken from my favorite Andrea Fraser essay, “From the Critique of Institutions to anInstitution of Critique.” It for me is a reminder that we all are responsible for the institutions we uphold.

2015

Together

This was the year that the Open Engagement national consortium was founded. It brought together organizations and schools from coast to coast to move the conference across the country to explore a three-year trilogy of themes: POWER, JUSTICE, and SUSTAINABILITY.

2016

Support Magic

This was the turn of phrase we used in our first, and only, fundraising call to the OE community.

2017

Always for love

Never for money, always for love. I continue to donate my time to make Open Engagement happen. But as we asked in our curatorial statement for 2018, “ What happens to our labors of love when love is no longer enough?”

2018

Nothing forever

OE 2018 does not need to be over for me to know that “nothing forever” is the most important lesson and statement for me at this moment in my life

An Open Letter on Open Engagement 2016 from Jen Delos Reyes

Chicago, IL

May 14, 2016

Distant friends,

I woke up at 3:00 am this morning with the dream that we could write each other beautiful, thoughtful letters in which we share our thoughts, open up dialogue, and support one another. There is a way we can talk to each other here that is different than public address. I have my own letter writing practice that was inspired by the poet and Black Studies scholar Fred Moten. I was once at a talk of his where he read several gorgeous, rich, and vulnerable emails he had written to his friends and colleagues. It was a reminder of how I want to communicate and how I want to reflect on what I encounter in my life. I send these letters almost every week to a group of about twelve friends and those letters all begin with the same greeting I have used here. If you are reading this letter I assume you are a friend or acquaintance of Open Engagement.

From one of Moten’s poems,
the absence of your letter shines in absent distance.

While this was not a letter I had planned to write it feels long overdue. It has happened almost every year since Open Engagement began in 2007: people love to point out the whiteness of the conference, whether it be the presenters, the attendees, or the content itself. I have learned that this will happen even when, factually at this point, by assessing the statistics of our 264 presenters, we are a minority white conference. Even though Open Engagement published our data on the breakdown of presenters and local representation, reviews continued to quote statistics that were collected from Google searches on presenters done by an artist group not affiliated with OE, instead of the self-identified information collected by the conference. The reviews of the conference this year, in particular ones that have run on Temporary Art Review, focused heavily on diversity, access, and inclusion. I witnessed through my own networks of friends and professional acquaintances how different the comments and posts were between women of color who shared the reflections from Temporary Art Review, and white colleagues. While the latter mostly wanted to make the space to share their critical insights, I want to thank the women of color who posted very different questions to their social media, ones about movement building, resources and allies, and who made visible in all of this a point that is neglected over and over: Open Engagement is founded and directed by a woman of color. In response to a reflection written by multiple authors for Temporary Art Review on Open Engagement 2016 my friend Kemi Adeyemi shared the article and some of her thoughts:

How many people of color does it take for white people to not complain about whiteness? Or, put another way, when is the unpaid work a woman of color puts into organizing conferences keynoted by folks like Angela Davis “too white”? Or, put another way, how confusing is it to have people of color operate within institutions? Do people of color thinking, writing, and making have to do so OUTSIDE of institutions *in order* to be legible as effective or legitimate? Or, put another way, why don’t white people just do (and pay for) this radical work themselves instead of waiting/watching/expecting for us to do it “the right way”?

Her point hit close to home because she knows through friendship, proximity, and personal experience the intimate costs of what it takes to do the work of organizing. She also knows explicitly that I am the only person on the OE team that is not being paid for my work on the conference. I made a decision to donate my time in order to keep our costs lower and therefore be able to charge a lower entry fee. This is a classic example of what artist J. Morgan Puett calls a “martyr-don’t”. Until this year Open Engagement had been a free conference and I was prepared for a challenging transition to a paid model. What I had braced myself for was a critique of the cost of the conference.

There were some who publicly lamented the move to a paid model, even some that actively protested. But the reality is that the conference has never truly been free. In Marilyn Waring’s 1999 book Counting For Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth, she examines the unacknowledged and unaccounted labor of women on a global scale and makes visible these contributions. Acknowledging this aspect of the conference is also to ask: Why is this the case? Why is it that more men are not contributing more time and energy to making this site possible? At the end of the 2010 conference the volunteer planning committee stood up for a moment of recognition—every single member of the team was a woman. From the direction, to the graphic design, social media, selection committee members, and volunteers, year after year the overwhelming majority of the people who pushed Open Engagement forward were women. A large part of how we were able to pull off the conference was that very few people were paid for their work. (Starting with the 2014 conference in Queens, all of the OE team members are paid for their labor, including myself for 2014 and 2015. It was my decision this year to not be paid.)

Working with allies like A Blade of Grass, the Queens Museum and the rest of the newly formed Open Engagement National Consortium—the Oakland Museum of California, the California College of the Arts, and the School of Art & Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago—we are working to move this conference forward in a way that reflects our values, commitments, and beliefs, and a large part of that means valuing the labor that makes the conference possible. These groups contribute financially annually to help realize the conference, as well as taking turns acting as host and contributing staff time. However, this alone is not enough to adequately support the conference’s growth, sustainability, or to properly support the OE team.

There are those who are critical of why we choose to collaborate with institutional partners, and the formation of the Open Engagement national consortium. These relationships are necessary in building a sustainable movement. These are allies who are working collectively because they understand that movement building takes resources, energy, and collaboration to achieve sustainability.

It is safe to say that most people who attended the Angela Davis keynote on Sunday night of Open Engagement 2016 left with an affirmation that the work of artists is crucial in the work toward social justice. How can one evoke the words of Angela Davis’s call for softness and care and not have the capacity to model the loving criticality this field and world so desperately needs? If we are truly going to be able organize and support one another so we can move toward radical change, we need to enact our values in the world through our actions. While it creates an important site of reflection, writing think pieces on radical organizing is not the same as doing the important work of building community. Over the years the conference has been praised for embodying its values. It is not a typical conference. It creates feelings of openness, support, and care. The conference values multiple ways of knowing and sharing. The work of artists is directly built in to the structure of the event. There is a focus on local and community investment. The conference is organized through an open call for proposals, which are selected by diverse committees comprised of artists, educators, funders, professionals, and community members. When the conference receives criticism delivered without properly researched knowledge of the planning process, compassion, or a spirit of camaraderie, it can impede a movement, instead of building up systems of support. As Angela Davis stressed, it is possible to have criticality and care.

At 5:30 am, as I began to wrap up this letter, my friend Randall Szott had just posted a quote from Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker’s essay, “This Present Paradise”:

Knowing that paradise is here and now is a gift that comes to those who practice the ethics of paradise. This way of living is not Utopian. It does not spring simply from the imagination of a better world but from a profound embrace of this world. It does not begin with knowledge or hope. It begins with love.

Szott’s post reaffirmed my belief that Open Engagement continues to be a necessary and critical convening for all people who are engaged in transforming the world through creativity and radical imagination. What makes it so critical is not its ability to hold and generate academic reflection, but to serve as a site of care. Open Engagement operates from a place of love, and a desire to create space to build up a community of support for the people engaged in this crucial work. We are asking ourselves challenging questions around local context, representation, access, inclusion, diversity, and community value as we work with you to build this site. In our work it is necessary that we enact what we value and what we want to see in the world. To continue the above quote, recommitting ourselves to the ethics of paradise is just what we need now.

All love, always, in all the ways,

Jen

About Open Engagement In Print

Open Engagement In Print is a publishing imprint dedicated to the creation and distribution of printed matter focused on socially engaged art. OE In Print features edited volumes, artist conversation series, and small publications that highlight the work of Open Engagement presenters and beyond.  Proceeds from OE books go toward the Open Engagement conference and keeping it a low-cost event.

OEIP004

 Say It While You Still Mean It: Conversations on Art & Practice Volume 1 presents nine conversations with key figures in the field, recorded by Bad at Sports at past Open Engagement conferences and featuring new introductions for each. Edited by Terri Griffith, Duncan MacKenzie, and Richard Holland.

Say It While You Still Mean It: Conversations on Art & Practice Volume 1 is available for purchase online.

OEIP004

I’m Going to Live the Life I Sing About In My Song: How Artists Make and Live Lives of Meaning is the first book from Open Engagement Founder and Director Jen Delos Reyes. This book will provide inspiration for readers to see how they can creatively shape their own lives with purpose and meaning. It looks at how artists have used their creativity to shape the world they want to see and taken steps towards creating the lives they want to live.

I’m Going to Live the Life I Sing About In My Song is available for purchase online.

OEIP003

Place and Revolution In Conversation: Rick Lowe and Lisa Lee is a small book featuring a conversation that took place at Project Row Houses in Houston, Texas. The conversation was conducted in anticipation of Lowe’s keynote presentation at Open Engagement 2015 — Pittsburgh, the same year that he received the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship.

Place and Revolution In Conversation: Rick Lowe and Lisa Lee is currently out of print. A digital copy will be available on this page shortly.

OEIP002

The second title in the OE In Print catalog is Open Engagement: Looking Back, Looking Ahead. It is a short history of the Open Engagement conference written by Founder and Director Jen Delos Reyes, with an eye to the future of the conference. Included are write-ups of each conference, plus an essay describing the genesis of Open Engagement. The publication embraces transparency with the inclusion of budgets and sponsors for each year.

Open Engagement: Looking Back, Looking Ahead is currently out of print. A digital copy will be available on this page shortly.

OEIP001

The first title in the OE In Print catalog is The Questions We Ask Together, edited by Gemma-Rose Turnbull. At the closing of the 2013 conference, participating attendees generated 100 questions addressing the practice of socially engaged art. In 2014, the OE Blog featured 100 responses to these questions. Now, the short essays have been combined into a printed volume.

The Questions We Ask Together was released in Pittsburgh in April 2015 and sold out immediately. The second edition was released in 2016. The second edition is available for purchase for $20.

UIC

The UIC SCHOOL OF ART & ART HISTORY is committed to the health and wellness of our students, faculty, and staff. We are working hard to create a stigma free environment that promotes a culture that ends stigma around mental health conditions and promotes support, awareness, and empathy.

Each semester the UIC SCHOOL OF ART & ART HISTORY will offer a series of interventions, workshops, and events that focus on what we are calling Critical Care.

THIS INITIATIVE encompasses addressing mental health community building, and creating and maintaining a balanced lifestyle. Holding the space in our creative practices to maintain our personal well-being, give into public exuberance, maintain relationships, face our emotions head on, and build community is what makes it possible for us to continue to do the important work of artists and scholars in the 21st century. 

Portland Art Museum

Talking About Museums in Public

Talking About Museums in Public was organized by Jen Delos Reyes and brought together a group of Portland artists to encourage public conversation and thinking about the role of museums in people’s lives in the 21st century. Projects will took place in the month of June throughout the city and at the Portland Art Museum. Participating Artists include Erin Charpentier, Michael Horwitz, Ariana Jacob, Laurel Kurtz, Travis Neel, Sandy Sampson, and Travis Souza.

From June 6–13, 2014 Trimet riders could bring in their ticket, or monthly and annual pass to the Portland Art Museum and receive one free admission. This free access to the museum was inspired by a partnership from 1976–77 where the Museum worked with Trimet to organize a museum month. Anyone who bought a monthly Trimet pass got a free admission ticket to the museum. Download PDF Catalogue

Shine a Light: A Night at the Museum Catalogue

Cover image: Ariana Jacob
Editors: Jen Delos Reyes & Lisa Ciccarello

Design/Layout: Matt Livengood
Edition of 1500

Download PDF here.

Short Verses in Small Spaces

“Short Verses in Small Spaces,” were micro-readings set in small spaces in the Portland Art Museum perfect for a short reading with a intimate audience. These readings and the locations selected reflect what poet Lisa Ciccarello describes as the New Intimacy poetry movement.

Poets Sarah Bartlett, Lisa Ciccarello, Matthew Dickman, Donald Dunbar, James Gendron, Emily Kendal Frey, and Rodney Koeneke each gave poetry readings in the sometimes overlooked spaces of the Portland Art Museum, such as storage closets, in-between spaces, and more.

Polyphony

What is the effect when artworks are perfectly visually combined in a space? When it is the right combination, does it look like a perfect harmony sounds? In Polyphony Jen Delos Reyes selects a set of short vocal harmonies inspired by The Beach Boys to pair with four of the sculptures in the Portland Art Museum’s contemporary and modern collection. Each sculpture is literally given its own voice that it contributes to a four-part harmony. The effect when standing in the sculpture court is like being surrounded by a group of harmonizing singers.

Background Music Audio Tour

In this original audio guide created for the Portland Art Museum, Artist Jen Delos Reyes and Musician Daniel Osborne pair musical selections with a sampling of work from the museums permanent collection. These songs not only operate as background music for the pieces, but were chosen because of the additional information the songs provide the artwork. Pick up one of the museums iPod Touches to take this tour and receive the accompanying zine describing the musical pairings. Download Tour Zine PDF