front cover of #exstrange
#exstrange
A Curatorial Intervention on Ebay
Marialaura Ghidini & Rebekah Modrak
Michigan Publishing Services, 2017
#exstrange: a curatorial intervention on eBay presents the #exstrange exhibition project, which transformed one of the largest marketplaces on the web — eBay — into a site of artistic production. This book documents artworks, reveals the aftermath of auctions and correspondences between artists and bidders, and features essays by lead curators Marialaura Ghidini and Rebekah Modrak, cultural critic Mark Dery, journalist Rob Walker, media and material culture scholar Padma Chirumamilla, guest curator Gaia Tedone, and artist and writer Renee Carmichael.
 
Over 80 contemporary artists and designers created “artworks as auctions” for #exstrange between January 15 and April 15, 2017, each using the elements of the auction listing—descriptive text, images, pricing, and categories—as tools of production.
 
Works include artist Lucy Pawlak’s collaboration with the Beat Officer to sell a series of clay objects as missing evidence from unexplained events in Mexico; IOCOSE’s sale of instant protests in the category “Specialty Services” where buyers chose the protest mantras, and outsourced performers demonstrated; and Susanne Cockrell & Ted Purves’ offering of a stick-gun with the memory of their son’s play in “Entertainment Memorabilia.”
 
Featured artists:
10.000 • Lanfranco Aceti • AILADI • Aysha Al Moayyed • Nasser Alzayani • Mary Ayling • Georgia Banks • Ann Bartges • Yogesh Barve • Kim Beck • Ajit Bhadoriya • Natalie Boterman • Sophia Brueckner • Carmel Buckley • Renee Carmichael • Alessio Chierico • Mia Cinelli • Susanne Cockrell • ConnX • Da Burn Gallery • Julia del Río • Tyler Denmead • César Escudero • Nihaal Faizal • FICTILIS • Eryn Foster • John D. Freyer • Elisa Giardina Papa • Angela Glanzmann • Maximilian Goldfarb • Archana Hande • Abhishek Hazra • Adam Hewins • Megan Hildebrandt • Joey Holder • Masimba Hwati • Regin Igloria • IOCOSE • JODI • Geraldine Juárez • KairUs Art+Research • Katerina Kamprani • Kamilia Kard • Tara Kelton • Matt Kenyon • Stephanie LaFreniere • Eno Laget • Nicolás Lamas • Martin Lang • Taekyeom Lee • LEXX Exhibitor Space • Lloyd Corporation • Silvio Lorusso • Breda Lynch • Garrett Lynch • Eva and Franco Mattes • Kembrew McLeod • Kathleen Meaney • Maria Miranda • Crisia Miroiu • Joana Moll • Martín Nadal • Norie Neumark • Xi Jie Ng • Maeve O'Neill • Chiara Passa • Lucy Pawlak • Sreshta Rit Premnath • Niko Princen • Ted Purves • Renuka Rajiv • Luis Romero • Armando Rosales • Robert Sakrowski • Alessandro Sambini • Sarah Ancelle Schönfeld • Anke Schüttler • Guido Segni • Chinar Shah • Jenine Sharabi • Yastika Prakash Shetty • Anupam Singh • Gagan Singh • Ishan Srivstava • Isabella Streffen • Surabhi Vaya • Wang Yue • Wu Jiaru • Yashaswini • Laura Yuile • Carlo Zanni • Huaqian Zhang
 
Guest curators:
Latifa Al Khalifa • Bani Brusadin • Peter Dykhuis • Fred Feinberg & Lu Zhang • Harrell Fletcher • Tamara Ibarra • João Laia • Nora O Murchú • Domenico Quaranta • Gaia Tedone • TSAO Yidi
 
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front cover of Trouble in Censorville
Trouble in Censorville
The Far Right's Assault on Public Education and the Teachers Who are Fighting Back
Nadine M. Kalin and Rebekah Modrak
Disobedience Press, 2024
From Florida, whose “Don’t Say Gay” law prohibits K-12 instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation, to Texas, which is shuttering libraries in schools, America is in the middle of a far-right war on public education.
 
Now, for the first time, K-12 educators from across the nation give readers a teacher’s-eye view of the radical right crusade to take down public education, coordinated by well-funded, well-connected far-right political interests. Christian nationalists hell-bent on erasing the line between church and state, white supremacists opposed to a curriculum that teaches the enduring effects of anti-Black racism, political action committees, such as Moms for Liberty, calling for the banning of novels featuring LGBTQ+ people, and profiteers eager to divert taxpayer dollars into private schools are mounting a relentless attack on teachers, the students they serve, and the commitment to public education that is a cornerstone of democracy. “It’s a phenomenal, unprecedented moment that we’re in,” says a librarian, recently retired from her Texas school. “It’s surprising how many people don’t know what’s going on. I talk to reporters who have no idea. And they’re reporters.”
 
In Trouble in Censorville, public school teachers from states as far-flung as Florida, Texas, Kentucky, New Jersey, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Washington describe, in their own words, being threatened, stalked, doxxed, ostracized, smeared as “pedophiles" and "Marxists," placed on leave, and fired for teaching historical truth and racial justice, supporting LGBTQ+ students and, in one case, for wearing "insufficiently" feminine attire. Their stories bring readers face-to-face with the human cost of these attacks, which range from social isolation to pent-up anger over institutional betrayal to the terrible toll on teachers’ mental and physical health.
 
And yet, teachers are fighting back. They’re mobilizing colleagues, parents, and community members who share their faith in the freedom to read, the freedom to think critically, the freedom to challenge small-minded provincialism. Their stories of frontline resistance, collected here, provide a battle plan for confronting censorship, rallying support, and mobilizing a grassroots defense of public schools.
 
Their gripping testimonials are enhanced by a timeline that situates today’s far-right war on public education in the context of American history, moving briskly from Reconstruction to the anti-left and anti-gay fearmongering of the McCarthy era to the Black Lives Matter movement to the Trump presidency.
 
Terrifying, infuriating, and inspiring, Trouble in Censorville sounds the alarm for a democracy on fire.
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