How do you throw a brick through the window…

How do you throw a brick through the window… is a research initiative comprised of a symposium, artist-led workshops, and exhibitions, co-organized by Tufts University Art Galleries with the John Michael Kohler Arts Center taking place from 2024–2026. The research initiative invites artists to engage the radical questioning of writer, artist, astrologer, and disabled non-binary Korean-American activist, Johanna Hedva: “How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed?” Written in the aftermath of the 2014 Black Lives Matter protests, and now rethinking Hedva’s text in the wake of 2020 protests for racial equity and COVID-19 pandemic, this long-term research project considers the troubling of public streets as de-facto sites for civic action and able-bodied action as the measure of protest. Instead, participating artists offer research on various forms of embodied dissent informed by disabled, cripped, sick, mad, and healing frameworks and methodologies in past, current, and future projects.

Image: Yani aviles, Acknowledgments (sky at sunset, invocations for the Missing), 2022. Offset print on paper, endless copies, 22 x 28 in. Front side references: artist’s image of the sky at sunset, New York Times article “She Tired of Convent Life” published 1 Jan 1892, back side references: Quote from Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman pg. 227–228, artist’s poem “Poison Ivy Invocation for the Missing” and seed visualization meditation, artist’s diagram reframing the Karuna Center for Peace- building’s model “Breaking the Cycle of Violence and Revenge.”