Democracy & Vulnerability: Recaps by the Student Council
The Wende Museum, dublab radio and the Thomas Mann House are continuing their monthly virtual program series! This year’s series focuses on the annual topic of the Thomas Mann House, Democracy & Vulnerability.
The Student Council consists of a team of highly engaged, talented, and diverse high school, undergraduate, and graduate students who invite prominent guest speakers to discuss topics relating to art, culture, politics, and society. In conversation with academics, journalists, politicians, and artists, the students will explore the various threats to democratic institutions and principles worldwide, as well as strategies to potentially overcome these threats.
Democratic processes are dynamic, inclusive, and human-centered but at times also messy, arbitrary, and even contrary to democracy itself. How should a democracy deal with its own vulnerabilities? What are the responsibilities of a democracy toward the most vulnerable in its populace? How do democracies need to evolve to deal successfully with increasing global levels of ecological, geo-political, and economic precarity? How much vulnerability can a democracy endure?
Watch all previous student council interview on our YouTube channel or listen to them as podcasts on dublab radio!
June: Ajuan Mance
In June, the Student Council was lucky enough to speak with the immensely talented and extremely thoughtful Ajuan Mance, a lifelong artist and professor of African American literature at Mills College in Oakland, California. The Council used the opportunity of an interview with Mance to focus in on how building a more democratic world requires us to consider the impact that mass culture has on society. Throughout the conversation, Mance explained how diverse representations in art can encourage members of democracies to push back against discriminatory narratives that keep marginalized groups from accessing the benefits of an allegedly free and open society. By creating and popularizing diverse images of Black lives in America, Mance aims to complicate the stereotyped and objectified images of Black communities that have long characterized cultural representations of Black Americans.
The conversation began with a discussion of Mance’s distinctive artistic style. In all of her works, ranging from the portrait series 1001 Black Men to the children’s book What Do Brothas Do All Day?, Mance aims to engage with artistic forms that, in her words, “are seeking to tell a story.” As a result, her art is often reminiscent of comics, relying on vibrant colors and heavy-black outlines. When asked about her artistic inspirations, Mance revealed that her choice of color is twofold: on the one hand inspired by an interest in stained-glass windows, Mance also uses bright colors to connect the figures in her works to the African ancestry they carry.
When pushed to explain the specific kinds of figures she aims to represent, Mance told the Council that intersectionality is one of the driving forces behind her artistic practice. She explained how various forces (both historical and contemporary) have created a series of one-dimensional images used to not only disingenuously represent Black Americans, but also push forward discriminatory cultural codes that reinforce the racism riddled throughout American life. In response to such images, Mance’s art aims to provide counter-representations that depict Black people as diverse, multifaceted, joyful, and free as everyone living in a true democracy deserves to be.
It was interesting to hear Mance discuss some of the challenges she faces in her work, especially while writing for younger audiences. She reflected on the ways that even she can be caught off guard by the discriminatory representations she has internalized. It was powerful to hear Mance tell Council members that it’s okay to make mistakes; the most important thing is to be open to keep learning.
In my eyes, one of the conversation’s greatest takeaways was Mance’s deep belief that one does not need to actually produce artistic forms in order to work towards the goals that drive her artistic practice. Mance explained that everyone has the power to work to diversify their understanding of marginalized groups and she encouraged Council members to critically reflect on the kinds of people represented in the culture they consume in order to ensure engagement with a wide variety of perspectives. Doing so is one small, yet concrete way, to work towards building a stronger democracy.
A recap by Emma Larson
About our speaker:
Ajuan Mance is a Professor of African American literature at Mills College in Oakland, California as well as a writer and artist. Throughout her comics and illustrations she uses the elements of humor and bright colors to explore race, gender, and power, and the people and places in which they intersect. Her work has appeared in a number of digital and print media outlets, including most recently The Women’s Review of Books, Blavity.com, BET.com, Transition Magazine, Buzzfeed.com, KQED.org, The San Francisco Chronicle, NYTimes.com, KPIX News, and Publisher’s Weekly.
May: Catherine Opie
This May, the Wende Museum and Thomas Mann House had the exuberant pleasure of hosting a conversation with photographer and professor Catherine Opie. Opie’s work on redefining the portrait, as well as her deep profile in picturing the queer community all over California, set the stage to discuss the role that photography plays in our current social climate as well as to explore the ways she has navigated through photography.
The conversation began with a short anecdote about Opie’s recent travels to Norway to capture portraits of blue mountains. She explained the ways in which she has continued her experiment of ‘poking holes’ in the natural way of understanding language as it pertains to photography. This idea is key to understanding much of the artist’s work, as the audience is tasked to question and reorganize their preconceived understanding of a photograph already at the first glance at one of her pieces. Opie’s thought process can be perceived as dada-esque in its delivery– a sort of twist at your arm, forcing you to look again and again until you think you really understand what the piece entails. A sort of democratic, impartial viewing experience is presented to anyone who has the opportunity to see her pieces.
Near the beginning of the interview, Opie posed a question to the Council that informed much of the language and conclusions to be had for the rest of the conversation: “How are all of you?” In the midst of nationwide college campus protests, strikes, and calls to action, the topic of photography does not just exist as a medium of visual artistry but as a bastion of social struggle. Democracy and vulnerability within photography is explained through the truth sought from a photo. As photography has become more and more accessible, its use as a cultural means of communication has transformed exponentially in recent years–especially in the presentation of human experiences all around the world. Social media and the internet play a deceptive role in undermining the once high-held presumptions of photography, which Opie feels to be so detrimental to the further denaturing of the photo.
Opie later explained her strategy with respect to the subjects of her photos. Subjects are asked to move into an “interior space” by Opie asking them to “close their eyes” and “think about their favorite place in the world.” This allows for the sense of vulnerability and ultimate humanity found in her portraits. Opie sees that this vulnerability of her photography makes the audience want to know and be with the subject of the photo.
Opie’s understanding of and science behind the photograph is something that could be translated to anyone’s life, to fully experience. Her attention to vulnerability and questioning what is known in her photography provides anyone with the tools to not only stop and take a second look at her photography, but to reexamine everything they once felt they already knew.
A recap by Biruke Dix
About our speaker:
Catherine Opie is an American fine-art photographer and educator. Opie studies the connections between mainstream and marginalized society. Merging conceptual and documentary styles, she creates pieces relating to sexual identity; to the relationship between the individual and the space they inhabit; and to the tensions between the constructed American dream and the diverse realities of its citizens. Opie has had numerous solo shows, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2006); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA. Her work has appeared in the Whitney Biennial, the Melbourne International Biennial, and SITE Santa Fe Biennial (2006).
April: Allison Lee
In our interview with Allison Lee, we travel back in time as she speaks admirably of her grandfather, revealing the most important thing that he owned: his library card. He believed “that’s how he could open more doors and travel,” she expressed to us in our discussion. This library card, as simple as it was, served as a gateway into knowledge and inspiration. With her lifelong dedication to promoting human rights, Allison Lee has made it her mission to discover the intersection between the literary world and social justice through serving as PEN America’s Director of Los Angeles.
Allison describes the journey we take through personally encountering literature, as a “discovery in what a book or a story could mean for a person, and how important those stories are.” She explains that PEN America is dedicated to highlighting those stories, ultimately granting her a “gift to serve and return to herself.” With the rise of book-banning legislation in the United States, the council discussed the urgency of combating harmful laws that suppress unheard or marginalized voices, especially those from LGBT, POC, and female-identifying communities. This led me to then wonder the role of the writer, the pen, and PEN America, in regards to social justice, inclusion, and times that call for difficult conversations. Allison expressed her belief in the highlighting of all voices, as she stands for the right of freedom of expression for all, being not just the “unification for one voice, but allowing for the multiplication of all voices to exist, be protected, and be heard, which includes protesting PEN America.”
So, what are we called to do in the midst of this everlasting war on the pen? How do we remain unfiltered in a democracy under the looming fear of censorship and erasure? Even with the pen being fought against, we as a council were reminded of the significance of our humanity, its beauty and intricacies alike, as we shared our personal joys with one another. I personally was reminded of this essence during a special moment in the interview, as Allison shared with us two poems by Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer and Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, that reminded her “you can not ever take away the intimacy of a single human life.” Allison emphasized the crucialness of recognizing this intimacy as she reminded us that, “at our very core when we encounter humanity with a curious spirit there’s a joy and a beauty to that connective tissue.” With this, we discovered that maybe the answer is remembering humanity, whether that be through writing, learning from one another, or simply just existing in harmony.
A recap by Zora Nelson
About our speaker:
Allison Lee serves as PEN America’s Los Angeles Director. She was the Chief Development Officer for TIME’S UP, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting gender equity and ending sexual violence in the workplace. She has previously served as Vice President of External Affairs at Bet Tzedek Legal Services, where she worked, among other things, to launch their Rapid Response Family Immigration Project and Transgender Advocacy Program. Prior to that, Allison served for eight years as the founding Executive Director of American Jewish World Service — Southern California. Allison received her B.A. in Political Science and American Studies from Tufts University.
March: Triston Ezidore
March was a special month for the Student Council. We had the pleasure of interviewing Triston Ezidore, who is not only the youngest speaker so far to visit the Council, but also, at 19 years old, the youngest elected official in the history of Los Angeles County. Currently studying Political Science at USC and serving as Vice President on the Culver City School Board, Ezidore exemplifies the passion and drive that is characteristic of today’s youth. Throughout the hour-long conversation, the Council was able to see how well-spoken, observant, and devoted Ezidore is.
Much of the interview touched upon the significance of and necessity for representation in education. Children spend immense amounts of time at school, and it is there where they meet role models and find inspiration. Ezidore told the Council about the district’s Black Literature Camp, which was part of his Black Student Achievement plan. In addition to working with its students to reach expected reading levels, the camp offered students the opportunity to engage with Black authors. He mentioned that most kids left that program wanting to be writers and concluded: “you can’t be what you can’t see.” This was an example of Ezidore’s fight for equitable education and against the educational discrimination that many students, including himself, have endured. His core belief that “those closest to the pain should be closest to the power” aligns with his focus on increasing minority representation. He went on to explain what this saying meant to him and how it frames his work: “How we unlearn and uproot racist and harmful policy is not to exclude those who have been affected…who have suffered the repercussions of harmful legislative practices and priorities.”
The Council and Ezidore continued the conversation by discussing how the 2020 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement led him towards political activism. He explained how these two events “put a spotlight on government and how government can affect our communities.” He joined other young people in ensuring their voices were heard and continues to do so.
When asked about other factors that can make a democracy weaker and thus vulnerable, Ezidore had an interesting answer: exhaustion. He argued that “There are so many campaigns and elections to focus on, we ask people to vote, we tell people that everything’s on the line in every single election…I’m not sure that our communities are seeing the outcomes that they were promised…and so asking them to show up and show out with the same amount of urgency and fierceness can lead to a lot of exhaustion.” This observation proves Ezidore’s closeness to the people in his community and the attention he dedicates towards them.
Finally, Ezidore described how he and numerous other young politically involved individuals have encountered skepticism and lack of support because of their age. Ezidore’s response to this, and his recommendation for other young activists, is that “this conversation about age […] is second to the issues at hand. […] Young people are qualified and professional every day.” This further shows Ezidore’s genuine interest in working towards bettering his community with all the resources and power available to him.
Triston Ezidore was a unique and wonderful guest speaker. He is a noteworthy example of Gen Z’s power and potential to be(come) strong figures in the future of our democracy.
A recap by Amy Cabrales
About our speaker:
At 19 years old, Triston Ezidore made history as the youngest elected official in the history of Los Angeles County and the first black male to serve on Culver City Unified Board of Education. As a recent high school graduate, Board Member Ezidore is a staunch advocate in building a school district in which all students can thrive. He currently works as a Youth Employment Manager with the Housing Authority of the City of LA, and has served his community as an Equity Specialist, Legislative Organizer, and committee member on the District’s Equity Advisory Committee, Restorative Practice’s Committee, Positive Behavior and Intervention’s Support Committee, and the Sexual Assault and Misconduct Reform Committee.
February: Friedemann Karig
For the second episode of the Democracy and Vulnerability series, the Student Council spoke with the Thomas Mann House fellow Friedemann Karig, a journalist and author from Berlin whose recent work focuses on the histories and practices of protest movements. Karig became interested in the topic during the 2019 climate protests that swept across Germany, wondering what kind of effects such protests could actually achieve, whether certain tactics resulted in more policy changes than others, and how protesters sustained their pursuit of political transformation. This research has become a book, Was ihr wollt: Wie Protest wirklich wirkt [What You Want: How Protest Really Works], that was just released on March 14, 2024.
This is not Karig’s first book, however, and the Council opened up the conversation by asking him how his creativity and love of writing influences his politics. He responded that he lives off of stories, that they nourish him and shape his worldview. Stories, he said, train the human “muscle” of fantasy, which he described as the ability to see the world as it could be. Hope and fantasy are thus deeply connected, and he suggested that contemporary protest movements could benefit from a return to some of the more utopian boldness of the 1960s.
The majority of the Council’s questions invited Karig to dig a bit more deeply into his research’s findings, asking about which protest strategies seem the most effective and what advice he would give to organizers dealing with heightened cultural polarization and the growing presence of extremist ideologies in the political mainstream. Even as he emphasized the importance of maintaining a utopian vision, Karig noted that successful protests usually begin with raising awareness at a local level and adapting to each unique context, slowly breaking the status quo and helping people believe that a better future is actually possible. Karig said that generating political momentum was less about convincing one’s opponents than about persuading people in the opportunistic middle. This perspective sharpens a movement’s focus and makes change seem more achievable, an essential part of preventing burnout and cynicism.
The conversation ended with a reflection on what sources of hope Karig and the Council’s panelists turn to in their daily lives. While each answer was different, they shared a belief in the importance of community and cultivating a deep connection to all the living things that surround us. This commitment to hope was perhaps the most prominent theme in Karig’s talk, reminding listeners that although the constant news of surging extremism is both terrifying and exhausting, we do not have to give extremists the power to define what futures are imaginable, and through strategic, local actions it is possible to build solidarity and political will that can change the world for the better.
A recap by Matthew Jones
About our speaker:
Friedemann Karig is a journalist, author, and moderator from Berlin. He studied media science, politics, and economics and has written for Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, Spiegel Online, and Deutschlandfunk, among others. His nonfiction book Wie wir lieben was published by Blumenbar in 2017, followed by his debut novel Dschungel (Ullstein, 2019) and the nonfiction bestseller Erzählende Affen: Mythen, Lügen, Utopien — Wie Geschichten unser Leben bestimmen, (Ullstein, 2021). His novel Die Lügnerin will be published in September 2023 by Ullstein.
January: Sophie-Charlotte Opitz
For the very first episode in our Democracy and Vulnerability series, the Wende Museum and Thomas Mann House Student Council welcomed media scholar and curator Sophie-Charlotte Opitz. The Council opened our discussion by asking Opitz to define memory studies and its role in her work. She insightfully described the field as one that explores individual and collective perceptions of social, political, cultural, and technological shifts throughout history. Memory studies isn’t necessarily about the past, but how we use it — in this sense, memory studies holds a correlative relationship with visual culture. Evoking George Orwell’s words, “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past,” Opitz argues that who controls the image controls society.
The Council shifted to the topic of protest art and technology, another defining focus of Opitz’s work. She connected past movements with contemporary struggles, by linking the momentous Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-Ins during the Civil Rights Movement to the more recent virtual sit-in model — in which activists simultaneously access targeted websites, causing them to crash with an overflow of traffic. During the COVID-19 lockdown and simultaneous Black Lives Matter protests, virtual sit-ins expanded into the gaming sphere, spreading such actions across games from World of Warcraft to Animal Crossing.
Deepening our reflections on technology and justice, Opitz explained how Artificial Intelligence systems often produce discriminatory patterns and materials. This is no accident, given that such programs pull from image databases and internet archives which naturally mirror our human-made visual culture — and of course, such sources are undoubtedly biased toward the representation of white males. Highlighting its need for a radical overhaul, our discussion came to the conclusion that AI can perpetuate oppressive structures given the high probability that we, as viewers, remember and internalize such content. To combat its replicable systematic silencing of marginalized narratives, Opitz stressed the dire need for creative resistance and the inclusion of global perspectives in AI advancements.
As the episode drew to a close, Council members sought Opitz’s opinion on a critical debate: Is there hope for the future of AI? Her response was less than optimistic. AI poses several concerns, including its aforementioned inclination to discriminate, its inaccessibility, and its dangerously deceptive qualities. However, not all hope is lost — Opitz recognized artists and activists who seek to revolutionize AI, such as Computational Mama, who holds accessible and educational workshops on AI artmaking, with a pointed awareness of its shortcomings.
A recap by Sara Abrahamsson.
About our speaker:
Sophie-Charlotte Opitz is a media and memory studies scholar and curator. She studied philosophy and art education at Goethe University Frankfurt and subsequently completed her doctorate. In 2019 she began her curatorial practice as a fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart and afterwards worked internationally as a curator and director in museums in Germany, Switzerland, and England. In addition to her monograph „Bilderregungen. Die Produktionsmechanismen zeitgenössischer Kriegsfotografie“, she regularly publishes in academic journals, exhibition catalogues, and photography books, especially on aspects of collective memory cultures and global image politics. She is a 2023 Thomas Mann Fellow. In her project, she is researching new forms of protest which strengthen political visibility during critical times.
The 2024 Student Council
Sara Abrahamsson is a fourth-year student at UCLA studying Art History and French. As a culmination of her artistic and academic interest in political graphics, Sara is currently writing her senior thesis paper on the internationalist poster art of post-revolutionary Cuba. Upon graduating, she plans to continue working in museums before pursuing graduate studies in Art History or Art Conservation.
Amy Cabrales is a First-Generation fourth-year undergraduate student at UCLA, studying Sociology and the Russian Language. She is a Mexican-American, Los Angeles native born in Lynwood, California. Her career interests include cross-cultural education via museum work or language instruction and immigrant resettlement, while her academic interests include immigrant integration and self-identity across immigrant generations. She is anticipating returning to Almaty, Kazakhstan for the 2024–25 academic year to inform these interests and advance her Russian proficiency.
Elsa Coony is a fourth-year student at the University of California, Los Angeles double majoring in Global Studies and German. She has previously worked at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as both a docent and translator and is excited to join this year’s council. In the future, she hopes to pursue a career in international development.
Biruke Dix is currently a 2nd year student at UCLA studying Applied Mathematics. He joined the Wende Student Council in 2024 and is deeply invested in the ever-changing properties of art as well as social habits. He hopes that he can create language and conversation that promotes the spread of cultural shifts and social justice.
Matthew Jones is a third-year PhD student in Claremont Graduate University’s Cultural Studies and Museum Studies program. His research currently explores how sites connected to authoritarian regimes function as pilgrimage destinations and what strategies states and institutions employ to reduce extremist attachment at these sites. He is thrilled to continue his training with the Wende Museum through this collaboration with the Thomas Mann House.
Emma Larson is a master’s student at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute of Russian, Eurasian, and Eastern European Studies. There, she focuses on the gender, social, and political history of Central Asia. Before starting at Columbia, Emma taught English in Kazakhstan with the Fulbright Program. She graduated from Williams College with degrees in History and Russian in 2021.
Zora Nelson is a current undergraduate student at New York University, where she is studying Harp Performance and Media, Culture, and Communication. As an east coaster born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she discovered the Wende Museum in the summer of 2022 and is honored to be a part of the council. With a passion for writing, Zora sees a future in storytelling to promote social justice.
Lexi Tooley is a current sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania majoring in Political Science and Art History, minoring in Chinese Language and Culture. She is originally from Los Angeles, California, and attended the Archer School for Girls. Lexi has been working with the Wende Museum for the past 2 years. She looks forward to continuing the search for truth and examining the vulnerability of democracy through this program!
