AGENCY | URGENCY: Learning with the Global South, an academic alternative program conceived by Tiffany Chung
Winter | Spring 2020-2021
Art Department, University of California-Santa Barbara, USA
AGENCY | URGENCY: Learning with the Global South is a multi-platform program organized by artist and UCSB Department of Art Alum, Tiffany Chung, as an academic alternative in response to the current and urgent demand drawing upon the imagination and agency of artists in social and political change. U.S. museums and academic institutions are confronting their own complicity in systemic racial inequality and socio-economic discrepancy that are rooted deeply within their existing structures and institutional operations. There remains a wide gap between acknowledgement and action, as the powerful resistance to change is palpable, yet inevitable. If artists were to play a more central role in transforming our institutions, they would be tasked with an enormous responsibility of filling such a ‘power vacuum’, without prior training or preparation. Within these challenges, AGENCY | URGENCY brings a cohort of contemporary artists, curators and arts presenters from across the globe to join the faculty, students and alums in the Art Department for the informal study and dialogue around the various de-colonizing strategies by art producers from the global south/south of powers – their works challenge established narratives and structures, unpack different forms of knowledge production and cultural dissemination, embrace collectivity and connectivity in interdisciplinary art practice, community engagement, and global solidarity. The program will be conducted in multiple ‘insertion points’ over the winter and spring quarters of 2021 at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a series of thematic discussions and workshops to be facilitated by international guest artists and curators.