18th Street Arts Center

“Democracy vs Privatization” – This Semester at UC

On March 4, 2010 thousands of students, workers and faculty across the UC Public School System protested mismanagement of funds and a 32% increase in their annual tuition, reduction in course offerings, massive layoffs of workers, lecturers and full time faculty and a lack of fiscal oversight of the University of California’s budget. In this climate, the move toward privatization of the UC Public School System is seen by those at all levels of California’s school system including K-12 as an agenda intended to further line the pockets of a handful of wealthy private business owners acting as Regents, or a closed governing body capable of making policy decisions that will effectively curtail access to public education to low income students in the state of California. This panel invites participants in the growing resistance to this shift to discuss the tension between democracy and privatization and the responsibility of the state regarding access to public education. This panel is coordinated in collaboration with artist/theorist Cara Baldwin. Micha Cárdenas, Brett Stalbaum, Amy Sara Caroll and Ken Ehrlich have been invited to lead this discussion with a particular focus on issues of institutionalized racism and classism as well as systemic denial of access to information and active research.

Cara Baldwin is a Ph.D. student in Art History, Theory and Practice at University of California, San Diego. A 2001 graduate of CalArts MFA program and recipient of the Soros Foundation Open Society Grant for the establishment of the Los Angeles Independent Media Center, Ms. Baldwin is currently a contributing editor for Version, a journal of contemporary theory and art. Throughout 2000 she acted as a founding member and co-editor of the Journal of Aesthetics & Protest editorial collective whose activities include the print and online publication, Journal Press, a public lecture series, curatorial work, public art projects, and activist organization. Its serial publications are distributed internationally and are available online. With the editorial collective of the Journal, Baldwin has contributed to Civic Matters, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles; Fine Print: Alternative Media, P.S.1, New York; Atlas Project, Pist Prota, Copenhagen, Denmark; and the documenta 12 Magazine Project Archive, Kassel, Germany. She has also presented work in museums, universities, art colleges, and recently in the international Mexico City Book Fair, A Los Angeles Llegaron y por Hollywood se Pasearon. In 2007 she participated in The Performing Archive-Restricted Access, an exhibition by Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz. Her work was published in the periodicals Bedwetter, InterReview, and MAKE_shift, as well as exhibition catalogues for Transformed, The Contemporary Art Center, Virginia, Poetics of the Handmade and This Is Not to Be Looked At: Highlights from the Permanent Collection, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. 45 years of Art and Feminism, Bilbao Fine Arts Museum. Through her work in MOCA’s Curatorial department she contributed to the realization of several exhibitions of contemporary art with explicit political content including: WACK! Art and The Feminist Revolution, Poetics of the Handmade, and Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas.