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CONTEMPORARY SLAVERY
June 3 - August 5, 2011
Opening Friday, June 3, 2011 / 7-9pm
EXHIBITION * ARTISTS * SYMPOSIUM * STATEMENTS * PUBLIC EVENTS * SUPPORT
CONTEMPORARY SLAVERY, a project of SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics) and the second annual ECOAESTHETIC exhibition, investigates various forms of contemporary slavery—from human trafficking and the sex trade; to the exploitation of farm and domestic workers, immigrants and prisoners; to sweatshop, bonded, and child labor—through a bombardment of images taken by leading photojournalists documenting this issue. A symposium will unite scholars, humanitarians and activists in dialogue in order to draw critical attention to this under-recognized local and international issue.
According to the United Nations, it is estimated that more than 27 million people are enslaved worldwide, “more than double the number of those who were deported in the 400-year history of the transatlantic slave trade to the Americas.” In his seminal text Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, Kevin Bales, one of the world’s pre-eminent experts on modern slavery, defines contemporary slavery as distinguished by the low cost of slaves, high profits, surplus of potential slaves, and the disposable, short-term as well as hereditary relationships between slaves and slave holders or traders. From prison labor in America to sex trafficking in Southeast Asia, and child soldiers in Africa, CONTEMPORARY SLAVERY exposes the horrors of slavery that still exist today in all corners of the world.
Contemporary Slavery exhibition conceived by Papo Colo.
According to the United Nations, it is estimated that more than 27 million people are enslaved worldwide, “more than double the number of those who were deported in the 400-year history of the transatlantic slave trade to the Americas.” In his seminal text Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, Kevin Bales, one of the world’s pre-eminent experts on modern slavery, defines contemporary slavery as distinguished by the low cost of slaves, high profits, surplus of potential slaves, and the disposable, short-term as well as hereditary relationships between slaves and slave holders or traders. From prison labor in America to sex trafficking in Southeast Asia, and child soldiers in Africa, CONTEMPORARY SLAVERY exposes the horrors of slavery that still exist today in all corners of the world.
Contemporary Slavery exhibition conceived by Papo Colo.
Exhibition organized by Herb Tam, Associate Curator; Lauren Rosati, Assistant Curator;
Jeanette Ingberman, Executive Director; and Papo Colo, Artistic Director.
Symposium conceived and organized by Mary Anne Staniszewski, Associate Professor, Department of the Arts, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY. Symposium coordinated and organized by Herb Tam and Lauren Rosati. Additional advice and support from Mark Looney.
Jeanette Ingberman, Executive Director; and Papo Colo, Artistic Director.
Symposium conceived and organized by Mary Anne Staniszewski, Associate Professor, Department of the Arts, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY. Symposium coordinated and organized by Herb Tam and Lauren Rosati. Additional advice and support from Mark Looney.
ARTISTS
Ian Berry
Anindya Chakraborty
Kay Chernush
Jodi Cobb
Ricardo Funari
John Hulme
Stefan Irvine
Bruce Jackson
Naser Khan
Jennifer MacFarlane
Tiana Markova-Gold
Robert Miller
Jesse Pesta
Antonio Rosa
CONTEMPORARY SLAVERY SYMPOSIUM
SATURDAY, JUNE 11 / 10am-6pm
Reception / 6-8pm
Tickets: $5 - Single Panel; $20 - Day pass with lunch at Exit Art
Schedule:
10:00-10:30am - Coffee
10:30am-12:30pm - Panel 1: The Long Chain of Slavery from Plantation to Prison
12:30-1:30pm - Lunch
1:30-3:30pm - Panel 2: The Slave Next Door: Local and Global Labor
3:30-4:00pm - Coffee
4:00-6:00pm - Panel 3: Trafficking, Sex Workers, Migration and Slavery
6:00-8:00pm - Reception
"OUR SLAVERIES"
In the past thirty years, due to globalization, new media
technologies, and shifts in social, financial, and political patterns,
there has been a recognition and resurgence of a wide range of human
rights abuses commonly known as "slaveries." From traditional forms of
lifelong servitude to forced labor in the sex, prison, farm, and
domestic workers industries, as well as debt bondage, slavery persists
internationally both in ancient and modern forms. This symposium is
intended to bring together diverse communities, controversies, and
conversations to address these varied but related concerns.
Not
all slaveries were abolished in the United States in 1865 with the
thirteenth amendment. One type remains sanctioned by the state, which
is "punishment for crime." The first panel, "The Long Chain of Slavery
from Plantation to Prison," will examine the legacy and contemporary
guises of slavery in relation to prisons in the United States and
abroad. The second panel, “The Slave Next Door: Local and Global
Labor,” will investigate current forms of what are more commonly
understood as traditional slavery. These can be hidden, as is often the
case with domestic workers, or in plain sight, as seen with many
restaurant workers, or in contexts where such servitude has been
accepted as traditional custom and law. The third panel, "Trafficking,
Sex Workers, Migration, and Slavery," will deal with types of "slavery"
that have perhaps received the most attention in the United States and
internationally: forced labor and trafficked persons in the sex
industry.
The increase in--and/or visibility of--these
disparate forms of human suffering and exploitation are linked to some
of the following often intertwined factors: a rise in migration; more powerful corporate globalization; inequitable
redistribution of wealth; conflicts within and among states; changes in
criminal justice and prison labor policies; racial, gender-based, and
other forms of discrimination; and new media technologies. This
symposium is intended to ignite and inspire new creative possibilities,
ideas, and strategies for understanding and dealing with one of the
distinguishing features of our time: “our slaveries."
-- Mary Anne Staniszewski
The Long Chain of Slavery from Plantation to Prison
10:30am - 12:30pm
Moderator: Eddie Ellis
Panelists: Gloria Browne-Marshall, Scott Christianson, Joanna Weschler
Eddie Ellis is the founder-director of the Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions, an independent criminal justice think tank formerly at Medgar Evers College, City University of New York, where he is a Research Fellow with the Dubois-Bunche Institute for Economic and Public Policy and was an adjunct instructor. In 2006, he was a member of the Transition Team for Criminal Justice for New York’s Governor–elect Eliot Spitzer. He has served as a consultant on justice policy issues to the Domestic Policy Advisor to President George W. Bush and for numerous organizations including the Council of State Governments, New York State Black and Puerto Rican Legislative Caucus, National Black Caucus of State Legislators, Soros Foundation’s Open Society Institute, and the Vera Institute of Justice. Ellis is the host and executive producer of the critically acclaimed weekly public affairs program, “On the Count: The Prison and Criminal Justice Report,” broadcast over WBAI-FM in New York City.
Gloria Browne-Marshall is a former Civil Rights attorney, teaches Constitutional Law as well as Race and the Law classes at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Professor Browne-Marshall is the Founder/Director of The Law and Policy Group, Inc. as well as a playwright of seven produced plays and the author of the books Race, Law, and American Society: 1607 to Present, The U.S. Constitution: An African-American Context, and The Constitution: Major Cases and Conflicts.
Scott Christianson is an award-winning author, investigative reporter, documentary filmmaker, curator, and human rights activist specializing in American criminal justice and slavery. He has published hundreds of articles in The Nation, the Village Voice, The New York Times, Washington Post, Mother Jones, the Journal of American History, and other newspapers, magazines and journals. Some of his books include With Liberty for Some: 500 Years of Imprisonment in America; Condemned: Inside the Sing Sing Death House; Freeing Charles: The Struggle to Free a Slave on the Eve of the Civil War; and
The Last Gasp: The Rise and Fall of the American Gas Chamber. Christianson has helped several wrongfully-convicted prisoners gain their freedom and a film he directed with Egmont R. Koch made its debut this month on ARTE (France) and WDR (Germany).
Joanna Weschler is the Director of Research and Deputy Executive Director of the Security Council Report, an organization affiliated with Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, which she joined in 2005. From 1994 until 2005, Weschler was the United Nations representative for Human Rights Watch. As the first person appointed by Human Rights Watch to this position, Ms. Weschler developed and articulated HRW's strategy toward the United Nations. Prior to her position at the U.N. and the Security Council, she was the Poland researcher for Helsinki Watch; Brazil researcher for Americas Watch; and Director of HRW’s Prison Project. She has conducted human rights investigations in countries on five continents and written numerous reports and articles on human rights.
The Slave Next Door: Local and Global Labor
1:30-3:30pm
Moderator: Ron Soodalter
Panelists: John Bowe, Benedetta Rossi, Barbara Young
Ron Soodalter has pursued a variety of careers. With degrees in American History, Education, and American Folk Culture, he has worked as a teacher, folklorist, museum curator, scrimshander, Flamenco guitarist, television producer, and author. In addition to his two current books, Hanging Captain Gordon and The Slave Next Door, Soodalter has recently written for several publications, including Smithsonian, The New York Times, Civil War Times, and New York Archives, and is a featured columnist for America’s Civil War. He is the recipient of the International Regional Magazine Association's 2010 Gold Award. An acknowledged authority on both the historical and modern-day slave trade, Soodalter currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Abraham Lincoln Institute.
John Bowe has contributed to The New Yorker, GQ, The American Prospect, PRI's "This American Life" and others. He is currently a contributing writer with The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy. He is a recipient of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award; the Sydney Hillman Award for journalists, writers, and public figures who pursue social justice and public policy for the common good; the Richard J. Margolis Award, dedicated to journalism that combines social concern and humor; and the Harry Chapin Media Award for reportage of hunger- and poverty-related issues.
Benedetta Rossi is RCUK Fellow in International Slavery at the Department of History of the University of Liverpool (United Kingdom). She is Director of the MA Program in International Slavery Studies and exiting co-Director of the Centre for the Study of International Slavery (CSIS). She works on the history of government, labor, mobility, and slavery in West Africa. Her edited book Reconfiguring Slavery: West African Trajectories has recently been published (2009) and she is currently coordinating a publication project on slavery and migration in West Africa.
Barbara Young is the National Organizer for the National Domestic Workers Alliance. She was a domestic worker for 17 years, and is well acquainted with both the exploitation domestic workers face and the potential of domestic workers to organize for lasting change. She is an active member of Domestic Workers United (DWU), one of the NDWA’s founding affiliate organizations, and has provided consistent and inspiring leadership for the NDWA since its founding.
Trafficking, Sex Workers, Migration and Slavery
4:00-6:00pm
Moderator: Tiantian Zheng
Panelists: Jennifer MacFarlane, Norma Ramos, Dina Francesca Haynes
Tiantian Zheng received her Ph.D. in Anthropology at Yale University in 2003, and currently teaches as Professor of Anthropology in the department of Sociology / Anthropology at SUNY Cortland. Her book Red Lights is the Winner of the 2010 Sara A. Whaley book prize from the National Women’s Studies Association for its significant contribution to the topic of women and labor. She is the author of four books on sex, gender, migration, HIV/AIDS, and the state: Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Postsocialist China (2009); Ethnographies of Prostitution in Contemporary China: Gender Relations, HIV/AIDS, and Nationalism (2009); HIV/AIDS Through an Anthropological Lens (2009); and Sex-Trafficking, Human Rights, and Social Justice (2010). She also edited an issue of the Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies titled “Anti-Trafficking, Human Rights, and Social Justice in Wagadu” (2008).
Jennifer MacFarlane is a Brooklyn-based humanitarian photographer. In 2006 Jennifer traveled to Cambodia to do a story with Marianne Pearl for Glamour magazine on the brothels in Cambodia and Somaly Mam, a heroic woman who has risked her own life to rescue these girls. Jennifer realized that their stories needed to be told and has used every opportunity to raise awareness about this subject (from exhibiting her photos in fashion boutiques in SoHo and spearheading innovative events) to bring attention to the beautiful young girls who stole her heart in Cambodia.
Norma Ramos is a longstanding public interest attorney and social justice activist. She is an eco-feminist, who links the worldwide inequality and destruction of women to the destruction of the environment. She currently serves as the Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), which is the world’s first organization to fight against human trafficking internationally, now in its twenty-second year. She writes and speaks extensively about the commercial sexual exploitation of women and girls as a core global injustice, and has appeared on such shows as Charlie Rose, Larry King Live and Tavis Smiley.
Dina Francesca Haynes is a Professor of Law at New England Law, Boston, where she teaches courses related to immigration, international law, ethics, refugee and asylum law, international women’s issues, human trafficking and Constitutional law. She spent a decade practicing international law, in such positions as Director General of the Human Rights Department for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and as Human Rights Advisor to the OSCE in Serbia and Montenegro. She has also worked for the United Nations, serving as a Protection Officer with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (Croatia) and has been received positions with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (Rwanda and Afghanistan). Professor Haynes was also an attorney for the United States Department of Justice and clerked on the Constitutional Court of South Africa. She researches and writes in the areas of human trafficking, labor exploitation, immigration law, human rights law, post conflict reconstruction, international organizations, humanitarian law and migration. She has published one book on post conflict reconstruction in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and has another (co-authored) book with Oxford University Press, entitled On the Frontlines, on the topic of gender and post-conflict reconstruction out in September 2011.
STATEMENTS
ETERNAL SLAVERY
It is the fastest growing criminal industry and predicted to eventually outgrow drug trafficking.
The human mind is a predator.
Class struggle produces slavery.
Nations, faith, tribal hate, profits with any color, endure.
Run baby run, back-to-back, front-to-front, caught by freedom and by the fire done.
Liberty is the right to own and know; borrowing, knowing, taking control.
Addicted to being imposed upon by enchantment?
When Leadership manipulates Intelligence,
Whose master is it? The slave that is not, was it?
As humans reproduce, business multiplies: more cheap labor, semi-slaves.
The masters are few, their assistants many…
as the photographer’s vigilant eye of the camera captures
images that account for humiliation, visual claustrophobia, and corruption.
An assorted aesthetic emerges as a portrait / landscape of
natural and human interventions, building resources for actual art.
The narrative of geo-politics, the distribution of our world:
are we slaves of countries, territories, and origins?
Criminal and legal slave masters intermingle with the religious and patriotic…
Dancing with the poor and miserable, making love to war.
Does culture matter that we obey without complaint?
Evils call in aesthetic format, reproducing the obvious, hidden barbarism of our species: Domination.
With motivation, our masters inform us that this trend will continue.
With new ways of production, technology is where our dreams go.
Are interest and supremacy part of our genetic tree?
Yes, humans destroy, possess, lie, and eat themselves.
It is the fastest growing criminal industry and predicted
to eventually outgrow drug trafficking.
The human mind is a predator.
Class struggle produces slavery.
Nations, faith, tribal hate, profits with any color, endure.
Run baby run, back-to-back, front-to-front, caught by freedom and by the fire done.
Liberty is the right to own and know; borrowing, knowing, taking control.
Addicted to being imposed upon by enchantment?
When Leadership manipulates Intelligence,
Whose master is it? The slave that is not, was it?
As humans reproduce, business multiplies: more cheap labor, semi-slaves.
The masters are few, their assistants many…as the photographer’s vigilant eye of the camera captures
images that account for humiliation, visual claustrophobia, and corruption.
An assorted aesthetic emerges as a portrait / landscape of
natural and human interventions, building resources for actual art.
The narrative of geo-politics, the distribution of our world:
are we slaves of countries, territories, and origins?
Criminal and legal slave masters intermingle with
the religious and patriotic…Dancing with the poor and miserable, making love to war.
Does culture matter that we obey without complaint?
Evils call in aesthetic format, reproducing the obvious, hidden barbarism of our species: Domination.
With motivation, our masters inform us that this trend will continue.
With new ways of production, technology is where our dreams go.
Are interest and supremacy part of our genetic tree?
Yes, humans destroy, possess, lie, and eat themselves.
Invent a form of power and you will escape the labyrinth.
We are slaves and masters of our powers, masters of the image: slaves to history.
Slavery is everywhere when power is kidnapped in our souls’ entrance.
Crimes against humanity will grow and the artist will let you know.
Ego is the tool of equals but unmanageable when it is overgrown,
and the reason that slaves will walk the planet as long as we live.
Exploitation becomes dependency, but as long as there are more good people than bad ones, artists can archive the image of humans depending on each other for their abuses.
Hope is on the horizon to resolve this abomination.
Ego is the tool of equals but uncontrollable when the machine breaks.
Rule your craft and the mind will bounce to other ways of control.
Freedom is the right to own and know.
Addicted to being imposed upon by enchantment?
Leadership manipulates Intelligence
We are slaves and masters of our powers, masters of the image: slaves to history.
There is a vision that when we surpass our present intellect the conflict of staying alive, or not, will be the difference between slavery and freedom.
Run baby run, back-to-back, front-to-front, what is left is everything and nothing at all;
riding the moment in all its form.
-- P.C. / Manhattan, 2011
I see a beautiful photograph, but it depicts the extinction of thousands of people, animals and plants. Words are swept by wind, images erased by memory but words also are recalled by sounds and
metaphors cemented by history.
Humans consume the planet and science facilitates its digestion.
Destruction and rebuilding are laws of science, the rule of nature and the scenery of the landscape.
“We are the world,” says the popular song, but the world is not us.
We are residents and are temporary. Abuse is the final stage of annihilation and we are pushing the boundary of tolerance. The planet will implode with our mismanagement.
Doing something about it is better than lamenting our destiny. Art can be helpful.
Publicity is always propaganda. Art is the invention of solutions with the artist’s free will.
We push innovation by denouncing catastrophes in a beautiful way.
Any medium is acceptable but photography or moving pictures are the most compelling; words can be complements of images or vice-versa.
The photographs in this exhibition are the tip of the iceberg of how hot and cold, deformed and reformed, our planet turns out to be.
-- P.C. / Manhattan, 2010
“Images transfix. Images anesthetize...After repeated
exposure to images it also becomes less real…In these last
decades, ‘concerned’ photography has done at least as much
to deaden conscience as to arouse it.”
“Photographs furnish evidence...In one version of its utility, the
camera record incriminates.”
“What determines the possibility of being affected morally by
photographs is the existence of a relevant political
consciousness.”
-- Susan Sontag, On Photography, 1977
PUBLIC EVENTS
Tuesday Evenings, JULY 5 - 26, 2011
Digimovies Screenings on Contemporary Slavery
Bar at 7pm / Screenings at 7:30pm
DIGIMOVIES is a new movie theater at Exit Art exclusively
devoted to presenting digitally-produced independent cinema. Outfitted
for state-of-the-art presentation, the 70-seat DIGIMOVIES theater provides an intimate and lively setting for screenings and discussions.
DIGIMOVIES conceived by Papo Colo. Screenings organized by Matthew Freundlich, Project Manager.
Support provided by the Rockefeller Foundation Cultural Innovation Fund.
SCHEDULE
All non-English language movies are subtitled in English.
VERY YOUNG GIRLS
(July 5) is an exposé of the commercial sexual exploitation of girls in
New York City as they are sold on the streets by pimps and treated as
adult criminals by police. It takes us into the work of Rachel Lloyd, a
sexually-exploited youth-turned-activist, who started the New York City
organization GEMS (Girls Educational and Mentoring Services) to help
victimized young women escape their pimps and find another way of life.
The screening will be followed by a Q & A with Janice Holzman,
Director of Communications and Development for GEMS.
(Directed by David Schisgall and Nina Alvarez (2008); 83 minutes; DVD; English)
LOS HEREDEROS (The Inheritors)
(July 12) is a highly-praised Mexican documentary that immerses us in
the daily lives of families who survive only by their unrelenting labor.
The indelible impression conveyed by The Inheritors, in which everyone -
from the frailest elders to the smallest of toddlers - must work,
reveals how the cycle of poverty is passed on, from one generation to
another. The Inheritors screens at Anthology Film Archives, September
9-15, 2011. For more information, visit www.anthologyfilmarchives.org.
(Directed by Eugenio Polgovsky (2008); 90 minutes; DVCam; Spanish)
STOLEN
(July 19) is an award-winning documentary film that uncovers slavery in
the Polisario Refugee Camps in the Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara.
The story follows a Saharawi refugee separated from her mother, since
she was a toddler, and reunited through a UN family reunion program. The
screening will be followed by a Skype Q & A with the directors.
(Directed by Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw (2009); 77 minutes; HDCam; Spanish, English and Hassaniya)
GHOSTS (July
26) tells the story of Ai Qin, an illegal immigrant who is smuggled to
the United Kingdom so she can support her son and family in China.
Re-enacting the events leading up to the Morecambe Bay tragedy of 2004 -
in which a gang of Chinese cockle-pickers found themselves trapped by
the fast-moving tide - Ghosts employs non-professional actors,
hand-held cameras, natural light and true-life locations. The screening
will be followed by a talk with Patrick Radden Keefe, author of The
Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American
Dream.
(Directed by Nick Broomfield (2007); 96 minutes; DVD; Mandarin)
TUESDAY, JUNE 14 / 7-9pm
SEA Poetry Series, No. 7with poet Tonya Foster, artist Jesse Pesta and scholar Salamishah Tillet
The SEA Poetry Series emphasizes diverse ways in which poets address social and environmental issues in their work. Presented in connection with specific SEA exhibitions, the series aims to investigate and expand the exhibition theme through the lens of contemporary poetry. After each reading, an artist from the exhibition or a community member working within the exhibition theme briefly responds to the poet. Past poets in the series have included Jonathan Skinner, Marcella Durand, Laura Elrick, Michael Leong, Ed Menchavez, Phil Metres, James Sherry and Julie Ezelle Patton.
SEA Poetry Series conceived and organized by E.J. McAdams, poet and Associate Director of Philanthropy at The Nature Conservancy, New York City. $5. Cash bar. Q and A to follow.
Tonya Foster is the author of poetry, fiction, and essays that have been published in a variety of journals from Callaloo to The Hat to Western Humanities Review. She is the author of A Swarm of Bees in High Court (Belladonna Press) and co-editor of Third Mind: Creative Writing Through Visual Art. She is currently completing a cross-genre piece on New Orleans, and Monkey Talk, an inter-genre piece about race, paranoia, and surveillance. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the City University of New York Graduate Center. A recipient of a number of fellowships, notably from the Ford Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and City University of New York, Foster teaches at Bard College. A native of New Orleans, she writes and resides in Brooklyn.
Jesse Pesta is a writer, photographer and a Page One editor at The Wall Street Journal. He has lived and worked as a journalist in New York, India, Hong Kong and small-town America, where his family published a more-than-century-old local newspaper. In 2009 he traveled to Cambodia as a photographer for a project on modern-day slavery published in Marie Claire. The images that resulted from that project are on view at Exit Art.
Dr. Salamishah Tillet is an Assistant Professor of English and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of the forthcoming book Reconstructing Slavery, Reimagining Democracy: Race and Civic Estrangement in Post-Civil Rights America and the co-founder of A Long Walk Home, Inc., a non-profit organization that uses art therapy and the visual and performing arts to end violence against girls and women. She is a regular contributor to the online magazine, The Root, and is currently working on her next book project on Civil Rights icon, Nina Simone. In 2010, she was a finalist for Glamour Magazine's "Women of the Year Award" for working with young women to end sexual assault and dating violence in their communities.
This event was funded in part by Poets & Writers, Inc. with public funds from New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.
EXHIBITION SUPPORT
This exhibition and symposium was supported by a major grant from the New York Council for the Humanities. Additional support provided by the Puffin Foundation. General exhibition support provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Bloomberg LP; Jerome Foundation; Lambent Foundation; Pollock- Krasner Foundation; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn; and public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.