New York artist Shani Peters seeks Kickstarter funding for public art project "We Promote Knowledge & Love"
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| Shani Peters in Harlem passing out a promotional flyer for her public art project We Promote Knowledge &Love. |
THIS PROJECT WILL BE FUNDED IF AT LEAST $3,000 IS PLEDGED BY THURSDAY, AUGUST 18, 2011, 1:01 PM EDT. AS OF THIS POST $1, 315 HAS BEEN RAISED.
ABOUT THIS PROJECT
Have you ever walked down the street, had a random flyer shoved in your hand, gave it a quick scan, and thought ‘what a waste of paper?!?’ The We Promote Knowledge & Love project turns that experience inside out and floods the Harlem, NY community with street flyers of unexpected substance while awakening the sleeping giants of the neighborhood's legendary past.
We Promote Knowledge & Love is a social practice, community art performance project that borrows the aggressive street advertising tactics of pawnbrokers in urban communities as a vehicle to promote knowledge, self-empowerment, and love rather than commerce or monetary wealth. The project engages the community in which it is enacted through the dissemination of familiarly designed flyers that encourage uncommon exchange. Volunteers for the project wear custom screen printed sandwich boards that read “We Promote Knowledge & Love” imitating the design of those worn by the “We Buy Gold & Diamonds” pawn broker promoters-for-hire on busy street corners (in Harlem, and beyond), and pass out flyers featuring insightful quotes from thoughtful historical figures.
We Promote Knowledge & Love has been enacted 3 times in small groups of 2-6 individuals in Brooklyn, Harlem, and at the Bronx Museum of Art. Each of these rounds have been warm up’s for we’re planning this time… an over-the-top, parade inspired performance complete with 40+ volunteers, over-sized paper maché replica heads of the quoted historical figures, and the dissemination of 10,000+ wisdom-rich flyers, to be passed out to an audience of 900,000+ during one of the countries largest annual parades: Harlem’s own 42th Annual African American Day Parade.
With the funds raised through this Kickstarter campaign we will be able to the put words of Malcolm, Martin, Marcus, Fredrick, and Harriet directly into the hands of a generation who largely view these phenomenal individuals as mere black history-month quiz answers or names on street signs. We all know the schools and libraries are under-funded… let’s give an introductory lesson to what they’re missing!
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