When we call for prison abolition, we are not imagining the isolated dismantling of the facilities we call prisons and jails. That is not the project of abolition. We proposed the notion of a prison-industrial-complex to reflect the extent to which the prison is deeply structured by economic, social and political conditions that themselves will also have to be dismantled...So prison abolition requires us to recognize the extent that our present social order – in which are embedded a complex array of social problems – will have to be radically transformed.
-Angela Davis, Abolition Democracy
From July of 2013 through April of 2014, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) Young Artists at Work (YAAW) program undertook a thematic, arts-based investigation of freedom, using the Prison Industrial Complex as a crucible to interrogate the institutionalized and intersecting systems that inhibit justice in our country. In conjunction with the 2013-14 YBCA season, the YAAW Program engaged its trademark multidisciplinary arts practice as a pedagogical lens to examine the complex matrix of oppressions that collude to perpetuate mass incarceration in America, and began to theorize strategies for intervention, change, and liberation.
During the 2013 Summer Intensive, students engaged in social-justice trainings around histories of race and capitalism, interrogating privilege, queer and feminist theory, and critical literacy of the judicial system, as well as strategic and technical trainings on mobilizing art as a vehicle for social change. A historically multidisciplinary program, the Young Artists at Work expanded the scope of aesthetic study to include visual art, performance, film/video, storytelling and digital media practices to unpack the complicated relationship between American social and political economies and the contemporary crisis of mass incarceration.
Over the course of the 2013-14 year, the Young Artists at Work engaged in a collaborative devising practice, activating their research and activism to create a multidisciplinary arts experience presented in the Spring of 2014. This final creative offering comprised the disciplinary interests of all YAAWs with particular emphasis on collaborative process, critical theory and research, social practice, and oral history and documentation, as well as a de-emphasis of didacticism in favor of a contemporary aesthetic approach.
Beginning with Angela Davis’ Are Prisons Obsolete and continuing through the present-day fight to prevent a new San Francisco jail, the 28 teen artist/activists-in-residence of the YBCA Young Artists at Work program spent nine months becoming scholars of, participants in, and contributors to the critical field of abolitionist work. They partnered with some of the nation’s foremost anti-prison activists and community artists, dug deeply into the intersection of art and social justice, and articulated the manifold ways in which collaborative creative processes can be vital tools in the fight for freedom.
We invite you to witness the range of creative and personal perspectives that these Young Artists have brought to bear on one of the most crucial dialogues of our time - and to engage in that dialogue with us - now, and moving forward into the future.
- Jova Vargas and Laurel Butler
Co-Creators of the Envisioning An Abolitionist Future curriculum
-Angela Davis, Abolition Democracy
From July of 2013 through April of 2014, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) Young Artists at Work (YAAW) program undertook a thematic, arts-based investigation of freedom, using the Prison Industrial Complex as a crucible to interrogate the institutionalized and intersecting systems that inhibit justice in our country. In conjunction with the 2013-14 YBCA season, the YAAW Program engaged its trademark multidisciplinary arts practice as a pedagogical lens to examine the complex matrix of oppressions that collude to perpetuate mass incarceration in America, and began to theorize strategies for intervention, change, and liberation.
During the 2013 Summer Intensive, students engaged in social-justice trainings around histories of race and capitalism, interrogating privilege, queer and feminist theory, and critical literacy of the judicial system, as well as strategic and technical trainings on mobilizing art as a vehicle for social change. A historically multidisciplinary program, the Young Artists at Work expanded the scope of aesthetic study to include visual art, performance, film/video, storytelling and digital media practices to unpack the complicated relationship between American social and political economies and the contemporary crisis of mass incarceration.
Over the course of the 2013-14 year, the Young Artists at Work engaged in a collaborative devising practice, activating their research and activism to create a multidisciplinary arts experience presented in the Spring of 2014. This final creative offering comprised the disciplinary interests of all YAAWs with particular emphasis on collaborative process, critical theory and research, social practice, and oral history and documentation, as well as a de-emphasis of didacticism in favor of a contemporary aesthetic approach.
Beginning with Angela Davis’ Are Prisons Obsolete and continuing through the present-day fight to prevent a new San Francisco jail, the 28 teen artist/activists-in-residence of the YBCA Young Artists at Work program spent nine months becoming scholars of, participants in, and contributors to the critical field of abolitionist work. They partnered with some of the nation’s foremost anti-prison activists and community artists, dug deeply into the intersection of art and social justice, and articulated the manifold ways in which collaborative creative processes can be vital tools in the fight for freedom.
We invite you to witness the range of creative and personal perspectives that these Young Artists have brought to bear on one of the most crucial dialogues of our time - and to engage in that dialogue with us - now, and moving forward into the future.
- Jova Vargas and Laurel Butler
Co-Creators of the Envisioning An Abolitionist Future curriculum
