Ronni Kimm & Eric Holdener
A Walk with Theaster Gates — Stony Island Arts Bank
A conversation with Collective Future
Photography by Russell Hamilton
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“We always think about the future as a process instead of a place.”
Eric Holdener
Transcript:
“The challenge historically has been that when people of color organize radically ambitious, highly functional cultural institutions – the Black Panther party, economically viable communities like Tulsa, Oklahoma, the genius organizing of the civil rights movement and the NAACP – that in each of those moments, there has been a white supremacist impulse to destroy those viable institutions. So, the question remains, how do we build cultural institutions that are allowed to thrive given the truth of institutional subjugation and individual subjugation?” Gates asks. “I’ve also found that museums’ investment in Black people and people of color has often been tied to their ability to finance other larger white artist initiatives, so there’s still the sharp pain of inequity.”
Ronni Kimm
“We don’t want to be predictive because we don’t want to have a passive view. With the process of imagining the future, you are actually able to influence it.”
Collective Future's home studio in Silver Lake, Los Angeles
“We had a dinner based on the premise of what Mars could be, thinking not just from the side of science fiction or pure science, but rather what would culture be like on Mars? What would it be like to actually create a new civilization?”
“Mars is really one massive design constraint, and design constraints breed incredible creativity.”
A Speculative Dinner on Mars, at Future Studio, Los Angeles, March 30, 2019.
“We believe that everything is a system and all systems are interconnected—that’s what allows us to do the kind of work that we do.”
“Technology can feel both pervasive and inaccessible.”
“The kinds of new models that technology enables are both a disruption and a massive opportunity and these are not just available to large businesses and corporations, but are actually really available to individuals. How you harness that opportunity is a larger question about how you organize yourself as an individual, or a community, or a movement, or a business.”
