The latest installment of Vital Conversations just dropped!
“When they come for your neighbors, will you cooperate, or will you resist? Many of us think that we have an easy answer to this question, but in truth, we are asked to confront our complicity in small acts of violence every day.
In Fall 2024, Los Angeles County released a Request For Proposals seeking artists to create temporary artworks at “RV homeless encampment sites . . . intended to enhance and beautify areas after an RV resolution, including any barriers erected to discourage RVs from returning once they have been removed.” This RFP asked artists to make a choice—to be complicit in covering up the displacement of unhoused people living in RVs, or to resist.
Local artists chose to resist…”
Graphic Notation by Hayk Makhmuryan captures the learnings from this conversation.
WHAT IS VITAL CONVERSATIONS?
Our movements for justice and liberation are fractured. People are isolated and under attack: hunted on the streets by immigration agents, threatened with deportation for their political expression. And it’s become increasingly clear that we can’t turn to our elected officials for guidance.
At the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, we’re returning to our roots: gathering wisdom from our communities through honest, creative conversations. We're launching Vital Conversations, a new multimedia series where USDAC team members sit down with thinkers, artists, and organizers to ask big and small questions—and make beautiful things in the process.
Each conversation will spark a public offering– videos, zines, comics, music– and we invite you to engage with us in real time. This isn’t about answers. It’s about each of us practicing collective imagination in a time of fear and fragmentation, modeling the kind of community that resists isolation and inspires action. Join us! Let’s learn, create, and organize together.
