What does the right to safety actually mean in this city? In this country, now? In this world? Who gets to be safe? Who doesn’t? And why? These questions are at the core of a project presented as part of FRONT International called A Color Removed. In this project, the color orange is removed from the city of Cleveland as one removes the orange tip from a toy gun. The orange objects reassemble in SPACES all summer in 2018, and the monochrome assemblage of orange votives, each with a different story by the one who removed it and put it there, becomes an open community organizing space for fearless listening around the right to safety. From Palestine to Iraq to Syria to Chiraq, from Cleveland’s Cudell Commons to Cleveland’s locker room banter, who gets to live a dignified life is a question born of inequality. Help us brainstorm how this project is going to happen. Mark up the city and fill up the summer with your proposals for community organizing space: reading groups, revisionist history town halls, trauma yoga, story telling, policy agitation …

Join artist Michael Rakowitz, writer RA Washington, Jeremy Bendik-Keymer, and SPACES Executive Director Christina Vassallo, to kickstart the summer stage of A Color Removed. Please bring orange items you’d like to displace, your internal map of Cleveland, and your ideas for how to activate the supersaturated orange display at SPACES, from July 13th – September 30th. We are going to make this event a live think-in for all who come.

The program is presented as part of FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, in lead up to its exhibition An American City: 11 Cultural Exercises, July 14-September 30, 2018