Inter[SECTOR]: "Decarceration and the Arts" (Part I)

The CAC is excited to present Inter[SECTOR], online conversations bringing together artists, activists, and policy-makers to discuss critical issues facing society today.

Inter[SECTOR] begins with Decarceration and the Arts, a four-part series with San Francisco-based artist Jo Kreiter, Artist Director of Flyaway Productions and creator of the "The Wait Room", a spectacular aerial work that depicts the trauma and challenges faced by incarcerated people and their families, that will be presented at the CAC in Spring 2021. In an effort to build community dialogue, Jo will engage with local activists and policy makers on the front lines of ending mass incarceration.

Decarceration and the Arts (Part I): Jo Kreiter and Alanah Odoms

Friday, May 8 at 5 pm CST on Facebook Live

Join us for a pre-recorded conversation on Facebook Live featuring artist Jo Kreiter and Alanah Odoms, Executive Director of the ACLU of Louisiana as they discuss recent efforts to support the rights of incarcerated people during COVID-19 and beyond, and how this work aligns with Jo Kreiter's piece "The Wait Room," coming to the CAC in Spring 2021.

Watch the recorded Interview on Facebook

Part I Links - How You Can Help:

• ACLU Louisiana
  • Visit laaclu.org
  • GIVE or become a member of the ACLU
  • SIGN petitions to elected leaders to stand up for the incarcerated
  • EDUCATE: read Justice Can't Wait: An Indictment of Louisiana's Pretrial System
• ESSIE Justice Group
  • Visit essiejusticegroup.org
  • DONATE to support their work
  • GIVE to a bail fund in your community
  • SHARE Essie's ongoing campaigns to #EndMoneyBail

Check out more episodes in our "Decarceration and the Arts" series:

Part II with Ivy Mathis

Part III with Ausettua Amor Amenkum and Kathy Randels

ABOUT JO KREITER

In 1996, Jo Kreiter founded Flyaway Productions, an apparatus-based dance company that advances social issues and explores the range and power of female physicality. Under Kreiter’s artistic direction, Flyaway creates dances on architectural and fabricated steel objects raised off the ground, with dancers suspended from two to 100 feet in the air. Kreiter/Flyaway are recipients of four Isadora Duncan Dance Awards, as well as awards from institutions like the Center for Cultural Innovation, the California Arts Council and the Creative Work Fund. In the book Moving Sites: Investigating Site-Specific Dance Performances (Routledge, 2015), Kreiter’s work is referenced as an example of “the politically-driven work of the experienced and prolific site dance artists.” Her work, "The Wait Room," is a dance performance installation that exposes the physical, psychic, and emotional burden of incarceration for women with imprisoned loved ones. Via a series of custom-made chairs suspended by a counterweight system, the project invokes the balancing act women have to maintain when stripped of emotional and economic support from their partners and family. Learn more at flyawayproductions.com

ABOUT ALANAH ODOMS

Alanah Odoms Hebert, leading civil rights attorney and the first African American woman to be named executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana. Hebert is committed to upholding the powerful organizational legacy of staunch defense of the Constitution and Bill of rights, with the new charge to apply a lens of racial and gender justice to all of the affiliate’s work. She is committed to reducing mass incarceration and fighting racial injustice in Louisiana, as well as expanding the ACLU's collaboration with historically marginalized communities. Initiatives under her leadership include: a comprehensive statewide data assessment of Louisiana's prolific pretrial injustice system, and a campaign to end private prison driven immigrant detention. Read her full bio