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SUPPORT THE IAA

In less than 5 years,

the IAA has become a locally, nationally, & internationally recognized success story.

The IAA wins big

for three reasons:

  • The IAA uses innovative curatorial practices and gallery spaces that allow diverse conversation and unique aesthetics while still maintaining an academic and professional reputation.  

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  • The IAA prides itself on producing and promoting academically peer-reviewed “aesthetic education” standalone art exhibitions that also function as supplemental materials for social activism or legal action. We also use gallery spaces to navigate scientific and technological controversies during a time of rampant institutional distrust.

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  • The IAA collects voices of all kinds in its art and advocacy, including advocates, lawyers, educators, students, and more.  This seamlessly integrates voices not often heard in art advocacy circles with established methodologies.

We all know new media technology is tearing our lives, communities, and country apart. In our polarized world, it’s often difficult to have civil and meaningful conversations about digital ethics, race, public health, disability, and scientific controversies. 

This inability to talk to each other about common struggles – especially when freedom of artistic expression is under threat – scares the hell out of all of us. And the time to fix it is quickly running out.

 

But we can still win; Whoever you are – regardless of your politics, faith, or identity – the Institute for Aesthetic Advocacy seeks to break down digital divides, support diverse and disenfranchised artists, and promote cross-cultural and solution-oriented conversation through innovative curatorial practices and gallery spaces. 

Since 2017, the IAA

has already:

  • Revolutionized post-COVID exhibition spaces with our ground-breaking international digital art exhibition, Contaminated

  • Educated advocates, lawyers, communities, and politicians on the dangers of post-digital surveillance with Plugging In, our partnered art exhibition and community education event

  • Mobilized digital ethics advocates on race and technology with our art exhibition, Digital Rights are Civil Rights

  • Published several articles on posthuman art and narrative medicine in CICA Museum exhibits, articles in Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, and more.

  • Received grants for work on environmental illness (including a Minnesota state grant)), blah blah (grant Y), and so on (grant Z)

  • Exhibited its own work in juried art shows and collections, locally and internationally, including: Infectious Madness, Social Justice through Artistic Expression, and Medical Unreliability and Sick Girl Theory.

  • Curated new communities of diverse artists and patrons on topics ranging from digital civics to public health

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  • Catalyzes civic engagement and curate under-served community voices by translating complex issues into easy-to-understand:
     

    • Local, national, and international art exhibitions and installations;

    • Academic research and publications;

    • Educational materials for attorneys, teachers; citizens, and advocates.
       

    Our own body of work is motivated by the same goals that guide our exhibitions of other artists' work.  We want to use aesthetic experiences as a means of engaging the general public with digital and biomedical harms that would otherwise be invisible to the naked eye or too bogged down in esoteric jargon.

  • AI BIAS

    • Digital Rights Are Civil Rights

    • #NeighborsNotNumbers
      (outside link to institute for digital humanity)

    PRIVACY & SURVEILLANCE

    • Digital Rights Are Civil Rights

    • #NeighborsNotNumbers
      (outside link to institute for digital humanity)

    PRIVACY & SURVEILLANCE

We all know new media technology is tearing our lives, communities, and country apart. In our polarized world, it’s often difficult to have civil and meaningful conversations about digital ethics, race, public health, disability, and scientific controversies. 

This inability to talk to each other about common struggles – especially when freedom of artistic expression is under threat – scares the hell out of all of us. And the time to fix it is quickly running out.

 

But we can still win; Whoever you are – regardless of your politics, faith, or identity – the Institute for Aesthetic Advocacy seeks to break down digital divides, support diverse and disenfranchised artists, and promote cross-cultural and solution-oriented conversation through innovative curatorial practices and gallery spaces. 

Since 2017, the IAA has already:

  • Revolutionized post-COVID exhibition spaces with our ground-breaking international digital art exhibition, Contaminated

  • Educated advocates, lawyers, communities, and politicians on the dangers of post-digital surveillance with Plugging In, our partnered art exhibition and community education event

  • Mobilized digital ethics advocates on race and technology with our art exhibition, Digital Rights are Civil Rights

  • Published several articles on posthuman art and narrative medicine in CICA Museum exhibits, articles in Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, and more.

  • Received grants for work on environmental illness (including a Minnesota state grant)), blah blah (grant Y), and so on (grant Z)

  • Exhibited its own work in juried art shows and collections, locally and internationally, including: Infectious Madness, Social Justice through Artistic Expression, and Medical Unreliability and Sick Girl Theory.

  • Curated new communities of diverse artists and patrons on topics ranging from digital civics to public health

​

The IAA’s story – of artists, curators, advocates, patrons, and politicians putting their differences aside to work together – is the story we desperately need to hear right now to help heal our country.  And the story the arts community needs as a guide to upholding its commitment to free expression and acting as a platform for dialogue.

 

BUT THE IAA NEEDS YOUR HELP. TODAY.

​

The IAA has had a weird year. And to keep winning the fight for everyone's digital wellbeing, we need some quick assistance.


During the holidays last December, the IAA’s Creative Director was hospitalized after a violent crime in his home in North Minneapolis. A small group of donors -- privately and respectfully -- raised $10k in a week to keep the IAA (and IDH) alive.

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Thanks to those generous people, the IAA scored two major victories  in 2022:

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  • Holding a national art exhibit – All Bullets Shatter – that functioned as both a cathartic community event and an organized call to action for invaluable and  - finally -- as a true, third-party non-profit.

  • Receiving a Minnesota state grant for an art exhibit intended to raise awareness around environmental illness, chronic illness, and disability (an exhibit that was featured in Dreamsong galleries and shown on the cover of X magazine)

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Additionally, we are in the process of producing (and eventually publishing) three different books. (Stayed tuned with these; we’ve already got literary agents)

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  • The Wet Marketplace of Ideas is an experimental book that documents a text thread shared between a few members of the IAA and their (credentialed) friends. It is a brutally honest – and at times hilarious – look into the cultural politics of COVID, Cancel Culture, modern politics, and more.

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  • After Autism: Medicalization, Selfhood, and Ethics In the Age of ASD is a part-theory-part-narrative book being written by Steven Pederson (the IAA Director of Communications and independent artist) that draws both from his personal narrative and from his disciplinary background to interrogate the ways in which popular framings of the autism “epidemic” prevent us from asking more meaningful questions about agency and social context.

​

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The IAA’s story – of artists, curators, advocates, patrons, and politicians putting their differences aside to work together – is the story we desperately need to hear right now to help heal our country.  And the story the arts community needs as a guide to upholding its commitment to free expression and acting as a platform for dialogue.

 

BUT THE IAA NEEDS YOUR HELP. TODAY.

​

​

​

The IAA has had a weird year. And to keep winning the fight for everyone's digital wellbeing, we need some quick assistance.


During the holidays last December, the IAA’s Creative Director was hospitalized after a violent crime in his home in North Minneapolis. A small group of donors -- privately and respectfully -- raised $10k in a week to keep the IAA (and IDH) alive.

DONATE

SUPPORT THE IAA

The IAA is now on the verge of scaling up as a vital and subcontracted partner to the Institute for Digital Humanity to protect the digital rights and well-being of all citizens in 2024. But here's the problem: The IDH was just re-incorporated last month. And their bank account just opened last week.

 

So with three weeks left before IDH and IAA student staff return to work, we need a quick cash infusion into the IDH and the IAA to win this ballgame.


(If you’re convinced the IAA’s proven strategies will help heal our X post-digital future, please donate now. Or keep reading to learn our fundraising goals.)

DONATE

Digital Rights Are Civil Rights: Race and Tech

International juried art exhibition and civic forum.
Minneapolis, MN and online.  February 2021.
 

In partnership with:

The Institute for Digital Humanity 
The Institute for Aesthetic Advocacy

ACLU Minnesota
Native Youth Arts Collective;
North Central University
Post ME Coalition
Councilman Steve Fletcher (Minneapolis, MN)

SUPPORT THE IAA

The IAA is now on the verge of scaling up as a vital and subcontracted partner to the Institute for Digital Humanity to protect the digital rights and well-being of all citizens in 2024. But here's the problem: The IDH was just re-incorporated last month. And their bank account just opened last week.

 

So with three weeks left before IDH and IAA student staff return to work, we need a quick cash infusion into the IDH and the IAA to win this ballgame.


(If you’re convinced the IAA’s proven strategies will help heal our X post-digital future, please donate now. Or keep reading to learn our fundraising goals.)

Plugging In:
Tech & Surveillance

Art and Community Education Event
Minneapolis, MN and Online.  October 2021.
​

In partnership with: 
 

ACLU Minnesota I Reclaim the Block
The Institute for Digital Humanity

Safety Not Surveillance  I  Post ME
Tulane Valley Creates (Portland, OR)

Councilman Simon Troutman (Richfield, MN)

Councilman Steve Fletcher (Minneapolis, MN)

Digital Rights are Civil Rights: Race and Tech

International juried art exhibition and civic forum.
Minneapolis, MN and online.  February 2021.

The murder of George Floyd made it clear to the world that systemic racism is a life or death issue for people of color in our country.  This issue has only become more pressing in light of recent technological developments:  racist facial recognition software; predictive policing programs that target minorities;  and discriminatory algorithms (in employment, healthcare, education, and criminal justice) that violate our privacy, threaten free speech, and replace human judgment with encoded systemic inequity.
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Thank you to our partners;

ACLU MN; Native Youth Arts Collective; North Central University; the Institute for Digital Humanity; the POSTME Coalition; and City Councilman Steve Fletcher.