How to Build a Fire: Survival

October 26, 2018
8pm

STORYTELLERS:
JP Howard
Rachel Rear
Alexander Cavaluzzo
Kalyaní-Aindrí Sánchez

Artist Khaled Jarrar explores the impact of modern-day power struggles on ordinary citizens while seeking to maximize the social potential of artistic interventions. The act of selling his blood on Wall Street, where so many have sold their souls, or had them stolen, for the pursuit of wealth is such a heavily loaded and controversial act, exhibiting his strong connection to his social justice work.

What does it means to commodify the body (blood & skin) for profit, survival, to promote an agenda, to be noticed? What does it mean to own a piece of a person? buy someone’s blood? Why would one want to? Who might actually? The idea of sacrifice – being a martyr vs. selling out; the thin line between prosperity and poverty. What isolated you from prosperity – racial and ethnic identity? trauma and struggle? gender? What did isolation/alienation look/feel like – corruption, militarized societies, gendered spaces of violence, profit from war, political conflict? forgotten neighborhoods? Have you ever experienced being under military occupation/power? Did you ever feel the individual responsibility to do something in places of conflict? What did you do to deal with the feeling of alienation? did you create?

Created five years ago, How to Build a Fire is a community storytelling series where a diverse group of individuals share real-life, personal narratives centered around a different theme each month. At times funny, at times sad, their stories weave together a broad illustration of the human experience. How to Build a Fire takes place at Open Source Gallery -a welcoming, nurturing, intimate, safe environment- where, monthly, one can see a new exhibition installed by an array of up-and-coming and established visual artists. Every year, poet and event founder Terence Degnan partners with Open Source Gallery to select two new co-hosts/curators of “HTBAF.” This year’s curators are poets Shafina Ahmed and Phillip J. Ammonds.

Can’t be with us in person? Watch on Livestream: http://livestream.com/opensource