Mike, I’ve not recently read through XMCA’s Manual of Web Etiquette J but I hope this is an acceptable use of our shared space. XMCA colleagues, I would like to alert you to an initiative being launched by a former colleague of mine, Kaustuv Roy. Kaustuv left LSU in 2008 on the verge of getting tenure (he has two books) in order to move back to India to be in solidarity with oppressed peoples. Two years later, he’s determined a course of action and has decided to invest himself in using art as ameliorative to the social disintegration of impoverished communities. (Please see the attached 2-page preamble to his application to register a non-profit Community Arts Center.) During his 5 years at LSU, I had the pleasure of many conversations with Kaustuv, and learned something of the apocalyptic vision of our social and political disintegration that was growing within him, eventually expressed in his 2008 book Neighborhoods of the Plantation: War, Politics and Education (https://www.sensepublishers.com/product_info.php?products_id=536&osCsid=1a7). The Community Arts Center movement is his way of responding constructively, using art to tap “dormant energies in the collective that allows for a peculiar extension of self into the community.” Eventually, once incorporated as a non-profit, Kaustuv’s Center will need financial support. In the meantime, I invite you to explore Kaustuv’s plan (attached), as well as the stunning and utterly relentless vision of the state of spiritual, social, and material slavery of the world as expressed in Neighborhoods of the Plantation. If you are moved to contact Kaustuv to inquire into his progress, or to see some of his own art work, I know he would be appreciative (kaustuv_r@yahoo.com). David
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Community Art Centre.doc
Description: Community Art Centre.doc
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