In order to acquire a growing and lasting respect in society, it is a good thing, if you possess great talent, to give, early in your youth, a very hard kick to the right shin of the society that you love.
- Salvador Dali
This spring, our 11th grade literary and cultural studies class will take on a vast non-fiction and persuasion project under the name
CITY AS TEXT.
We take our lead from the lives of the revolutionary artists we studied this fall -
Jackson Pollack, Tupac Shakur, The Last Poets, Andy Warhol, Dorothy Dandridge, Salvador Dali, Banksy, Piri Thomas, Katherine Dunham, Sidney Poitier, Diana Ross, Pablo Neruda, Gwendolyn Brooks, Frida Kahlo, Audre Lorde, Spike Lee, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jimmy Hendrix, Rita Moreno, John Cage, Kara Walker, Richard Pryor, Pablo Picasso, La Monte Young, Nikki Giovanni, William S. Burroughs, Nina Simone, Keith Moon, Milla Jovovich, Billie Holiday.
Our task over the next four months is to produce documents, artifacts, reflections and responses to our environments (our selves - brains/hearts/actions, our classroom, our school, our campus, our Fordham neighborhood, the Bronx, our homes, our city, our state, our nation, our world).
Our focus of exploration and research is three-fold:
1. Environmental Justice and Sustainability
2. Social Life, Cultural Memory and Heritage, Political Justice
3. Artistic Response, Meaning-Making, and the Value of Expression
Our mission: RADICAL INTERVENTION INTO OUR COMMUNITIES THROUGH CREATIVE ACTIVISM.
