Public Service
Public Service is a spin-off web series launched in 2023. Inspired by Stuart Hall’s call to redirect media towards “the public service idea” to address diverse publics, Public Service retools the Internet as a space to foreground BIPOC artists, designers and storytellers. Each episode features conversations that highlight strategies to catalyze radical change in the culture industries–and beyond, while paying homage to thinkers and creators that came before us.
Episode 1: A conversation featuring Angela Dimayuga, Andrew Thomas Huang, and Anamik Saha with Death Angel, Rob Allen, Christy Essien-Igbokwe, and Stuart Hall.
Representation doesn’t just matter for minoritized perspectives: it has a métier. The ethics of how we are made “seen” has great stakes. Erasure, whitewashing, cultural appropriation, and tokenism are forces that cultural practitioners of color have faced since the advent of the cultural industries as an extension of colonial rule. Rather than seeing these issues as mere symptoms of the logics of white supremacy, how intrinsic are these techniques to our existing systems of cultural production? From film to cuisine, what platforms and strategies can BIPOC cultural producers initiate to be seen and heard on our own terms?
Credits:
Directed, edited and produced by Esther M. Choi • Graphic design by Studio Lin • Production assistance by Kapish Cheema • Music by Esther M. Choi . Closed captioning in English is provided.
Episode 2: Visions and Visionaries featuring Grace Wales Bonner and Antwaun Sargent with Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, Poly Styrene, and Edward Said.
The early work of acclaimed designer Grace Wales Bonner responded to how Black culture was addressed in fashion. The process of representation-as-translation, for Wales Bonner, draws from the modern African diaspora to suture—and propel forward—the histories of Black artists and intellectuals in African, American, and European cultures into something at once familiar and projective. When imagining new aesthetic approaches rooted in one’s identity and heritage, how might artists and designers of color engage in this endeavor by looking to history and collaborative modes of cultural production as resources? How can we imagine new sensibilities and self-definitions related to our layered, diasporic identities and histories with self-determination, complexity, and care?
This conversation was recorded in January 2023.
Credits:
Directed, edited and produced by Esther M. Choi • Graphic design by Studio Lin • Production assistance by Kapish Cheema • Music by Esther M. Choi. Archival images from @WalesBonner, walesbonner.net, and @SamanArchive. Closed captioning in English is provided.
Episode 3: Know Where You’re Coming featuring Guillaume "Gee" Schmidt and Esther M. Choi with Los Crudos, Willi Smith, and bell hooks.
Cultural workers are being urged to create cultural infrastructures that prioritize equity and justice. But what are the ethics, practices, and logics we should consider to develop outcomes for collective empowerment? In this conversation about building creative platforms that can change the way we live, make, and work together, Guillaume "Gee" Schmidt (Patta) and Esther M. Choi look to the soft power of streetwear and the subcultures of hip-hop and hardcore punk in past decades to consider how concepts of collectivity, criticality, and connection may have changed with the rise of neoliberalism and global capital. Are there aspects of these subcultural movements that could help us reimagine leadership, emancipatory politics, advocacy, and action to produce radically different futures?
This conversation was recorded in August 2023.
Credits:
Directed, edited and produced by Esther M. Choi • Graphic design by Studio Lin • Editing assistance by Mary Hanna • Music by Dirty Ghosts. Closed captioning in English is provided.
Episode 4: Lesson Plans featuring Heather Fleming, Jaffer Kolb, and Deanna Van Buren with Angela Davis, Grace Lee Boggs, and Arundhati Roy.
If the goal of decolonization involves dismantling the master’s house, it also requires developing new worldmaking practices based on equitable resource distribution, community-centered infrastructure, and restorative justice. What actions can artists, designers, and storytellers take to increase access to resources and encourage self-determination for BIPOC communities? How can restorative economics and wealth redistribution repair historical harm while empowering these communities? Do strategies need to be tailored to specific localities, or can they be planned in advance? And for BIPOC cultural workers, what are the possibilities and pitfalls in testing new ethics of worldmaking—often neglected in conventional education—that challenge existing systems?
This conversation was recorded in January 2023.
Credits:
Directed, edited and produced by Esther M. Choi • Graphic design by Studio Lin • Production assistance by Kapish Cheema • Editing assistance by Mary Hanna • Music by Esther M. Choi. Closed captioning in English is provided.