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

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 III with Jo Kreiter, Ausettua Amor Amenkum, and Kathy Randels

Friday, May 29 at 5 pm CDT on Facebook Live

Join us for the next installment of Decarceration and the Arts next week on Facebook Live! Jo Kreiter, Artistic Director of Flyaway Productions, will be joined by Ausettua Amor Amenkum and Kathy Randels, co-founders and co-directors of The Graduates, a performing arts ensemble for formerly-incarcerated women. The panel will discuss how The Graduates provides an artistic and activist platform to help the formerly-incarcerated move forward after prison.

Watch recorded interview on Facebook

Check out other episodes in our "Decarceration and the Arts" series:
Decarceration in the Arts Part I with Alanah Odoms
Decarceration in the Arts Part II with Ivy Mathis

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 AUSETTUA AMOR AMENKUM

Ausettua Amor Amenkum is Big Queen of the Washita Nation, Artistic Director of Kumbuka African Drum and Dance Collective, and the Performance Director and choreographer for The Graduates, a New Orleans-based performing arts organization comprised of former members of the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women (LCIW) Drama Club. The Graduates use their personal experiences with the criminal justice system to create performances that reach out to young at-risk women; give a window into incarceration's effects on individual lives; and encourage those who have the power to shift current policies to do so. Learn more at thegraduates.net

ABOUT KATHY RANDELS

Kathy Randels is a native New Orleanian, a theatre artist/educator, and the Artistic Director of ArtSpot Productions. She studied, lived and worked in Chicago from 1987-1994, receiving a Bachelor of Science in Performance Studies in 1991 from Northwestern University. Upon returning to New Orleans in January 1995, she founded ArtSpot Productions. A performance artist who writes and produces her own work, Randels has performed her renowned one-woman show Rage Within/Without nationally and internationally since 1991. She founded the Drama Club at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in 1996 with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Learn more at artspotproductions.org