Gaye Chan presenting at Asian American Studies Conference

Gaye Chan (faculty) will be presenting "Eating In Public : Against the New Hegemony of Blood and Soil" at the upcoming Asian American Association Conference as part of a panel on art and pedagogy.

Presentation Abstract:
The idea – and increasingly the practice – of the commons is once again invigorating political theory, popular culture and popular imagination. In Chan's presentation, She will examine “Eating in Public,” a collaborative project she co-founded in 2003 by planting food without permission on land awkwardly designated as both private (under the ownership of the Bishop Estate, an indigenous Hawaiian Trust) and by the state as 'public'. A key element of “Eating in Public” is the eschewing of modernist identities of nationhood, ‘race’ and binary gender roles and an imagining of a common ground sustained through shared practice rather than abstract and hierarchical affiliations.

Using “Eating in Public” as the vantage point, Chan will analyze our contemporary usage of Anarchist and Marxist politics coupled with the deployment of contemporary art practices as tactics in disrupting assumptions by both the right and the left.