Short Summary:
Daniel Tucker is a Chicago-based artist, writer and organizer that develops documentaries, publications and events inspired by his interest in social movements and the places in which they emerge. His work has been exhibited at institutions including Mass MoCA (2004) and the Chicago Cultural Center and his writings and lectures on the intersections of art and politics have been presented in a wide variety of contexts internationally. As a consultant he has worked for numerous activist and art organizations including the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts (2010-11) in Santa Barbara and Creative Time (2008) in New York City and founded the arts, education and activism journal AREA in Chicago which he edited from 2005-2010. He has collaboratively released the short documentary Retooling Dissent (2002), the book Farm Together Now (2010) and edited three extensive catalogs of his projects Trashing the Neoliberal City (2007), Visions for Chicago (2011), and Note’s for a People’s Atlas (2011). He is currently coordinating the irregular exhibition venue Art In These Times, editing the online oral history project and archive Never The Same and working on a feature length documentary video while pursuing an MFA at the University of Illinois at Chicago. miscprojects.com
Detailed:
Daniel Tucker (b. 1983, raised in Argentina and Kentucky, USA) has worked as a cultural and political organizer in Chicago for over ten years, initiating a number of large-scale local projects and events. His particular focus has been on documenting social and cultural movements and the places from which they emerge. Most of his work exists in a blurry line between documentary, advocacy, journalism, curating and art-making and deals with themes of political imagination, localism, hidden history, economy and community. All of his projects utilize careful consideration of audience and distribution and involve significant research and relationship building to have effective and lasting impact.
From 2001-2005 he contributed to collective art projects such as Department of Space and Land Reclamation, StreetRec (producers of the documentary Retooling Dissent), God Bless Graffiti, and numerous interventions about affordable housing in Chicago – which is summarized in the pamphlet “Trashing the Neoliberal City: Autonomous Cultural Practices in Chicago from 2000-2005″ he co-edited with Emily Forman. From 2005-2010 he edited AREA Chicago - the print/online publication dedicated to researching and networking local social and cultural movements in Chicago. In his time at AREA he co-edited 9 magazines, organized nearly one hundred public events including the “How We Learn” series and the “Infrastructure” series as well as collaboratively organizing the Notes for a People’s Atlas of Chicago which eventually expanded to 20 international cities and was published in a catalog and web archive.
In Chicago he has consulted for cultural, activist and research organizations including the Center for Urban Economic Development at UIC to the Metropolitan Tenants Organization. He has also worked outside of Chicago as a facilitator for Creative Time, the National Alliance of Media Arts and Culture, and the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts (where he edited State of the Arts, aka the SOTA blog). As a consultant, he has helped non-profit organizations of various sizes organize public programs and work to evaluate and advance their communications work. He has served on the advisory board’s of the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest and Threewalls SOLO exhibition program and is currently on the advisory boards for Art & the Public Sphere journal and the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials project.
His collaborative projects have been exhibited internationally in venues ranging from Mass MoCA and Hyde Park Art Center to public plazas, bus tours and rooftops. His writings have appeared in Afterimage, Chicago Journal, Clamor, Proximity, BootPrint, Next American City, H-Art, Art Agenda, the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest and in the books “A Guide to Democracy in America” (2008), “Experimental Geography” (2009), “Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements, & Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States” (2010), and “Visions for Chicago” (2011). In 2008 he co-organized “Town Hall Talks” with Nato Thompson, in which 100 socially-engaged artists in 5 cities were interviewed. He has lectured widely about the intersections of art and politics. His book of interviews with activist farmers, Farm Together Now: A Portrait of People, Places and Ideas for a New Food Movement, (with co-author Amy Franceschini and photographer Anne Hamersky) was published by Chronicle Books in late 2010 and was picked by Michael Pollan as the best food book of that year.
Funding for his projects has been obtained from public and private sources oriented around art, social justice, and cross-cultural exchange such as the Andy Warhol Foundation’s Propeller Fund, CEC Artslink, the Graham Foundation, MacArthur Fund for Arts & Culture at The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry at the University of Chicago, Stockyard Institute/Weitz Family Foundation, The Crossroads Fund, the Fire This Time Fund, The Danish Art Council, European Cultural Foundation, Ministry of Culture – Republic of Croatia, the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and the Illinois Arts Council.
He attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, earning a BFA with a focus in exhibition organizing and documentary video in 2004 and is pursuing an MFA at the University of Illinois at Chicago from Fall 2011-Spring 2013. Tucker roasts coffee and makes peanut butter for his neighbors, and lives in an affordable housing cooperative on the northwest side of Chicago with his companion Lauren. He works out of an office/studio in a refashioned darkroom of In These Times magazine where he and Lauren run the occasional art gallery Art IN THESE TIMES and where he and Rebecca Zorach house the Never the Same archives and oral history project on Chicago’s rich critical art history.
See miscprojects.com
