Enjoy a complimentary cup of coffee and join Fred Schmidt-Arenales, Penn MFA candidate, for a conversation inspired by artist Cauleen Smith’s ICA exhibition Give It or Leave It. The discussion will focus on the reference within the exhibition to the black radical feminist group, the Combahee River Collective. Participants will learn about the collective’s history and will consider the shifting implications of the term “identity politics,” which they are credited with coining in their 1977 Combahee River Collective Statement.

Fred Schmidt-Arenales is an interdisciplinary artist based in Philadelphia. He has worked at Slought Foundation, Sundance Film Festival, Rooftop Films, and Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, on programming, exhibition planning, installation, and coordination. Fred co-produces Reconnaissance, an independent audio documentary series investigating the construction of narrative in political life, and has presented performance and video work at venues like Künstlerhaus Halle für Kunst und Medien, Graz; Links Hall, Chicago; The Darling Foundry, Montreal; Abrons Arts Center and Dixon Place, New York; Kunsthalle Wien, and WUK, Vienna. He has given lectures and taught video and media courses and workshops at places like the University of Pennsylvania, The University of Chicago, Harold Washington College, and FIT. Fred is a current MFA candidate at the University of Pennsylvania.