Join us for Sesnon Speak Up Series:
All events are online via Zoom. Registration required
This series provides a safe space for students and the UC Santa Cruz community to engage with ideas generated from our programmed exhibitions.
Fall quarter 2020 programming:
October 21, 2020 Speak Up
Barring Freedom: Conversation with the Curators
Join us for a conversation with Rachel Nelson and Alexandra Moore, co-curators of Barring Freedom, a contemporary art exhibition engaging issues of prisons, policing, and justice, on view at San José Museum of Art October 30-May 9, 2021. Attendees will be encouraged to participate in the discussion.
November 12, 2020 *Special Event *
Opening webinar for What Makes Us Human: An Art + Genomics Convergence
12:00 P.M. to 1:00 P.M.
The event will feature a tour of the virtual exhibition hub and a panel discussion with artists Angélica Dass and Gina Czarnecki signing in from Spain and the UK, and David Haussler, Scientific Director of the Genomics Institute at UC Santa Cruz. Moderated by curator Jennifer Parker, and Isabel Bjork, Executive Director of the Genomics Institute, with introductions by Shelby Graham, Sesnon Gallery Director.
Register here
November 18, 2020 Speak Up 5:30 P.M.
Planting Abolition and the Solitary Garden
Learn about the Solitary Garden at UC Santa Cruz, a participatory public sculpture and garden project by award-winning artist jackie sumell in collaboration with Tim Young, who is currently on Death Row in San Quentin State Prison. Participate in a discussion on how planting can relate to a broader vision of a landscape without prisons. If abolition is about building new systems, modes of being, and networks of care that make prisons obsolete, in what ways goes gardening fit into a broader abolitionist agenda? In what ways does relationship building with plants - through creative, embodied use of them - align with “planting” abolition?
A brief introduction to the Solitary Garden by IAS staff followed by planting abolition discussion facilitated by Color Study Group.
Register here
December 2, 2020
Speak Up: Lessons of the Moment
This event follows the December 1st Visualizing Abolition event, Abolition Then and Now featuring filmmaker Isaac Julien and historian and cultural theorist Robin D.G. Kelley.
Join us for a conversation with filmmaker Isaac Julien and Jennifer Baszile, Assistant Vice Chancellor of the Division of Student Affairs and Success and Executive Director of the Career Center. Students are encouraged to attend and ask followup questions after screening Lessons of the Hour.
Sponsored by the Arts Division and Porter College.
Register HERE
December 9, 2020 Speak Up 5:30 P.M.
Speak Up: Undoing Time
A Conversation with Sharon Daniel
In this event we will share clips from Sharon Daniel's mixed-media installation series Undoing Time and her new interactive documentary, Exposed. Following the screenings, we will have an open discussion on prison labor and the incongruity between the conditions of prisoners and the promise of constitutional freedom.
UC Santa Cruz professor Sharon Daniel is a digital media artist who creates interactive documentary artworks addressing issues of social, racial and environmental injustice, with a particular focus on mass incarceration and the criminal justice system.
Presented by the Sesnon Art Gallery in collaboration with the UC Santa Cruz Institute of the Arts and Sciences.
Register HERE