Phillip Agnew

TED Talks Daily · A love story about the power of art as organizing | Aja Monet and…

• How Should the Heart Be Measured

  By what is done, not what one feels. Art as organizing is not only concerned about artists’ intentions, but their actual impact. Great art is a dialogue, not a monologue.

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• What Do Aja Monet and Phillip Agnew Say Actually Moves People?

  In their TED Talk, Aja Monet and Phillip Agnew say laws never change culture, but culture always changes laws, and that data rarely moves people while great art always does. About five months before they met, Phillip told a friend he would only settle down if it was a collision. They moved into a small house with a big backyard in Miami. Aja says Phillip pulled her out of a stretch of loss in which artists were used to numb people while still collecting awards, and movements felt like funerals. They decided art was organizing: an anchor, not an accessory. The backyard became where neighbors, artists, and organizers came to sit still.

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• What Is Art

  Art is organizing. It is also an anchor, not an accessory to movement. Art possesses rhythmic communication, coded emotional cues, and improvised feelings of critical thought.

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• What Do Aja Monet and Phillip Agnew Say Communities and Relationships Are Really About?

  On TED Talks Daily, poet Aja Monet and community organizer Phillip Agnew talk about falling in love and about the tie between great social movements and meaningful art. They take the audience to Smoke Signals Studio in Miami, the home and community art space they share, where they are building a refuge for neighbors and creators. The episode presents that room as their answer to distraction, anger, and anxiety. Communities and relationships, in their telling, are not only how movements get built. They are also how serious art gets made, with other people in the room.

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• How Did Philip Help Aja

  As the exterior world exhibited so much sadness and grief, Aja sought community. When she met Philip, he brought so much love, truth, and joy in her life, and he pulled her out of isolation.

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• What Did Poetry Reveal to Aja Monet

  During the impact of Hurricane Katrina, she discovered the impact of poetry. Poetry revealed to her that it was a way for people to not only articulate their feelings, but a way to work toward change and do something about it.

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• How Did Art and Organizing Become the Answer to Anger and Anxiety

  Philip Agnew and his group of friends created a movement and traveled around the world, and to Palestine in 2015. Aja Monet found her way to books and poems.

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