Artists to present speeches in creative reimagining of FDR’s fireside chats
"A retired presidential ship inspired artist Constance Hockaday to flip the script of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s fireside chats, just in time for the 2020 election.On March 12, 1933, in the midst of economic depression and deep national divide, FDR urged American citizens to turn on their radios. For the first time in history, people virtually welcomed a national leader into their homes. He directly addressed Americans with words of hope and unity.
Nearly a century later, on a hunt for a ship to house her floating social club, Hockaday stumbled across the USS Potomac, the same vessel on which Roosevelt wrote and read some of his chats, according to Hockaday, tethered in the San Francisco Bay. Inspired by the historical implications of the ship, she said she began to imagine a reformatting of these fireside chats, one where national addresses would be given by citizens.
The incubation period of this project began in 2015, but Hockaday was unable to gain funding until this year, after partnering with the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA. Having begun Sept. 18 and running through Nov. 13, CAP will share each artist’s “State of the Union Redress” video on its website, across social media and as a podcast.
“Our national narratives of liberation are pretty flawed,” Hockaday said. “They have excluded and erased the voices of indigenous people, women, Black people, brown people (and) those with disabilities. … If we’re going to get different kinds of people in power, we’ve got to start performing public leadership in a different way.”
Hockaday’s proposed alternative: Artists in Presidents."— Zinnia Finn, Dep. 22, 2020
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Daily Bruin website.
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