5/29: Grandmother(s)’s Kitchen Presents:
Tin Can Phone
Team Tin Can phone recording their podcast.
Join Tin Can Phone, Master Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr. (MAMBSJ), People For Mutual Education (P4ME), and City Repair for day two of the Village Building Convergence!
When: Saturday, May 29th at 6:30 pm Pacific Time. Film screening to start around 7 pm and last for approximately 2 hours.
Registration Required: click here for ticket options!
Location: Parklet at SE Uplift Office
3534 SE Main St, Portland, OR 97214
The event is a screening of film documentation from a community picnic in September 2020 that Tin Can Phone and MAMBSJ hosted in Portlander, inspired by the role of Grandmothers who convene large groups of friends and family over holidays and celebratory life events. At this physically distanced event the stage was set for participants to enjoy the company of friends and family while in a space with new friends and neighbors doing the same. Tin Can Phone, as an inclusive collective of presently and formerly incarcerated artists, facilitated dialogue around their self-exploration and how to engage people that have been significantly harmed by incarceration.
The structure of the gathering will allow folks to meet new people by using a measuring stick to place guests of the event exactly 6ft from each other. Participants are encouraged to exchange words with each other about how they're doing, to share experiences and stories about their lives, as well as engage in dialogue about the state of our city, nation, and world.
The goal is that this space will offer community members a collective respite from the solitude of quarantine by encouraging them to spend time with people they don’t already know, while at the same time providing a platform for folks to reflect on some of the unsettling things happening in our local community and beyond. The hope is that by nourishing the body and the mind, Grandmother(s)’s Kitchen will inspire participants to organize around building a better and brighter future.
Event facilitated by Peole for Mutual Education and the City Repair Project. Supported in part by SE Uplift.
Tickets:
Visit our TICKETING PAGE CLICK HERE
Attendnance is by sliding scale donation. BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and other marginalized communities encouraged to attend for free. All proceeds will be split to the causes putting this event on.
Speaker Bios:
Daniel Bluestein
Artist statement comming soon.
Tin Can Phone
Tin Can Phone is as an inclusive collective of presently and formerly incarcerated artists who facilitate dialogue around their self-exploration and how to engage people that have been significantly harmed by incarceration.
Master Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr.
”My formal title: Master Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr. refers to many things. The use of my full name in professional matters is a formal nod to the man who gave me my name, Michael Bernard Stevenson Sr. Constantly insistent on putting Artist in front of my name is a nod towards the one thing I’ve contributed to my identity beyond being my father's son.
I am a queer, non-bianary, person of Italian and African decent through slavery.
In my work I’m concerned with matters of agency, service, ritual, relationships, love, and a gaze towards the future. These ideas, and others, manifest themselves in my work with young people, currently and formerly incarcerated individuals, food and gathering around it, and other less well canonized aspects of my practice.
I am trying to make a living as an artist, and at times, I experience waves of success. However when audited, my fiscal splendor as an artist and creative has yet to gently impinge on the debts that I owe for being trained in the ways of the American Artist. The paradox of which, has become a part of my practice as well.
While my work is primarily centering community and cultural investment and rarely centering capitalist values, I am always interested in my ideas and labor being compensated.”
People For Mutual Education
We are People for Mutual Education, a group based in Portland, Oregon who work collaboratively to assemble resources, synthesize existing information, and share knowledge on racial and social (in)justice. We do this by creating pamphlets for distribution through door-to-door canvassing and online, as well as presenting learning opportunities that feature Black public thinkers, scholars, and community members. Our goal is not to be the gatekeepers of knowledge, but rather, to offer a platform and a space for those who have been resisting oppression and fighting for liberation to educate others, so that the spread of information and means to take action runs as wide as it does deep.
People for Mutual Education, currently an all-volunteer initiative, was curated by a Black person to further advance the efforts of local and national activists working for racial justice. For too long, the antiracism movement has relied on the (unpaid) labor, energy and resilience of Black, Indigenous, and people of color. By using unpaid white labor to compile resources, People for Mutual Education redistributes the wealth of time within the local movement for racial justice, economic equity, and collective liberation.
