Moving Chains: Toward Abolition

Creative Time

A daylong public program bringing together artists, scholars, and educators working on strategies for abolition today.

Governors Island

On the occasion of Charles Gaines’s monumental public artwork Moving Chains, Creative Time and Governors Island Arts present a day-long public program on Governors Island bringing together an interdisciplinary group of artists, scholars, and educators working on strategies for abolition in art, law, education, and political action. The day’s workshops, talks, presentations, and walking tour center on the possibilities and limitations of achieving abolition through the law. The contested, moving, and blurred lines between people and property persists today as one of the foundations of racial capitalism, the economic and structural afterlife of chattel slavery. As scholar, and panelist, Saidiya Hartman argues, while discussing the specters of freedom, the political and legal structure of liberty is a permutation of slavery—freedom can never be possessed, only shared. Moving Chains: Toward Abolition offers an opportunity to consider how freedom can be defined outside of the contours of property, considers past examples of movements using the law in the fight for freedom, and ultimately asks whether abolition and the law are compatible or not.Organized by Diya Vij, Curator at Creative Time, and Che Gossett, scholar of abolition and contemporary Black art, for the session panels; and artist and educator Tiffany Lenoi Jones, for the drop-in workshops. All events are free and open to the public. Capacity is limited, please register for each of the day’s events you plan to attend in advance. See ferry schedule to plan your trip on and off the island: https://www.govisland.com/plan-your-visit/ferry Please note: Event registration does not guarantee entry. Entry is on a first come, first served basis until capacity is reached.

EVENT A﻿CCESSFerries to Governors Island are wheelchair accessible with ramps that lead on and off the ferry. There is an uphill incline after getting off the ferry near a set of concrete stairs and an accessible ramp.Wheelchair-accessible trams leaving from Soissons Landing at the Governors Island ferry stop are available to guests, please contact programming@creativetime.org to arrange for travel to the event by tram. All presentations and panels will have ASL interpretation. For questions or to request other accommodations, please contact programming@creativetime.org. We ask that any requests be made within 5 days of the event in order to facilitate.

FULL S﻿CHEDULE (TEXT VERSION)10-10:45AM: BLACK GOTHAM EXPERIENCE WALKING TOURSOISSONS LANDINGJoin founder of Black Gotham Experience, Kamau Ware, to walk the River Years tour on Governors Island. The pathway chosen by Ware explores the colonial patterns that have informed a cen­turies-long rela­tion­ship with what are known today as the East River, the Hud­son River, and New York Har­bor. The tour leaves from Soissons Landing where the Governors Island ferry arrives at 10AM sharp and returns to Castle Williams prior to the morning session. Access note: Attendees should be prepared to walk or move over paved ground and uphill inclines. 11AM-1PM: MORNING SESSIONCASTLE WILLIAMSGrounding and Land Acknowledgement by Black Gotham ExperiencePresentation by Tali Keren and Alex Strada, 28th Amendment Project Abolition and the Law, Panelists: American Artist, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Albert Fox Cahn, moderated by Che Gossett The panel “Abolition and the Law” brings together artists American Artist and Keemalah Janan Rasheed in conversation with lawyer Albert Fox Cahn, Founder and Executive Director of Surveillance Oversight Technology Project (S.T.O.P.), moderated by Che Gossett. Together, the panelists will discuss the intersection of art, law, surveillance, and abolition. How do redaction, bracketing, and constraint exist within the context of surveillance and the legal system? How might art become a vehicle for exposing, negotiating, and moving past the structure of the law and towards new possibilities for abolition? Presentation by Sarah Abdelaziz, Executive Director, Abolitionist Teaching Network1-2PM: LUNCH BREAKCOLONELS ROW Visit a selection of food trucks at Colonels Row outside the event or other Governors Island dining spots to purchase lunch. Guests are also welcome to pack their own lunch. Black Gotham Experience Lunch Circle: Join Kamau Ware for a talk back on the history and ideas covered in the morning session.28th Amendment Soap Box Installation: Visitors are invited to engage by listening to these sonic sculptures that build upon the history of soap boxes as sites of collective struggle and record their own additions to this work.12-3PM: DROP-IN WORKSHOPSCOLONELS ROW Drop into multigenerational artmaking workshops and gatherings to collectively imagine freedom while learning about the possibility, necessity, and stakes of teaching abolition today. This program is organized by Tiffany Lenoi Jones with Akiea “Ki” Gross and Noor Jones-Bey, grantees of the Abolitionist Teaching Network. 2-5PM: AFTERNOON SESSIONCASTLE WILLIAMSPresentation by artist Russell Craig, Right of Return Architectures of Freedom, Panelists: Torkwase Dyson, Cameron Rowland, and Rinaldo Walcott Scholar Saidiya Hartman and artists Cameron Rowland and Rinaldo Walcott will think alongside and in concert with artist Torkwase Dyson about how freedom might be actualized and spatialized, the places freedom inhabits and takes. What are the architectures and infrastructures of freedom? How might freedom be shared, rather than monetized, privatized and racialized as property? What is the role of art in making freedom(s) possible in the midst of slavery’s global social and aesthetic afterlives?Three Types of Freedom, performance by Rena AnakweA live sound collage inspired by the rhythms of waterways, abolition and the pieces of light crackling at the surface when considering “how to (truly) get free.” Featuring sounds from Charles Gaines’s Moving Chains, Anakwe creates an improvisational live score featuring field recordings, found sounds, cassette tape, voice, tank drum and synth textures.In Conversation: Charles Gaines and Saidiya HartmanJoin artist Charles Gaines and luminary scholar Saidiya Hartman for an intimate conversation on Gaines’s monumental work Moving Chains, with Hartman stepping in to fill the place of the previously scheduled Christina Sharpe. Gaines and Hartman will discuss aesthetic strategies addressing race and power within the United States project, in order to reorient ways of seeing, being and doing amidst the afterlives of slavery. Considering Christina Sharpe’s framework of “wake work,” introduced in In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Duke University Press, 2016), the two will theorize on the capacity of art to engage with the contours of Black life that emerge in the wake.5:00 &amp; 5:30PM: Governors Island ferries depart for Manhattan6:00PM: Last ferry to Manhattan departs

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Moving Chains: Toward Abolition

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