Submit a public art piece to the Executive Dis/Order Project
The Pedagogy Lab, the Center for Feminist Futures at UC Santa Barbara, and The Abusable Past invite you to submit work to Executive Dis/Order, a public art and pedagogy project.
Recent U.S. executive actions focused on eroding DEI, re-entrenching gender binaries, dismantling environmental protections, and accelerating deportations are reshaping higher education and public life through anticipatory compliance. The Executive Dis/Order Project rejects that compliance. We are collecting anonymous testimonies, confessions, reimaginings, and creative expressions in response to the growing political crackdown on DEI, marginalized scholarship, and academic freedom. We are building a visual archive of resistance through redaction, erasure, annotation, revision, and personal testimony that expose, subvert, or reimagine executive power.
Collected works may be included in downloadable lesson plans, microsyllabi, and future exhibitions. All materials will be shared under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license so others can reuse and adapt them for teaching, research, and activism.
What to submit
Your Executive Dis/Order piece can take any form. We seek digital and multimedia art and narrative projects featuring artistic and textual expressions of experiences, opinions, or fears regarding executive power and its effects on democracy. Whether your submission is a critique, a personal story, a symbolic representation, new actions, or a reimagining of power, this project aims to collect and share these voices in a powerful visual dialogue.
One page is preferred, but multimedia entries are also welcome.
Examples include:
Annotated, amended, or redacted documents (e.g., executive orders, policies, memos, rejection letters, other public domain/government communications)
Visual art: Collage, illustration, digital remix, photo essays, handwritten notes, scanned fragments
Original counter-orders: Speculative policies, manifestos, poetic decrees
Optional prompts if you’re not sure where to begin:
The moment I knew I had to leave was ____.
If I vanish from academia, remember me for ____.
They took away our funding, but they can’t take away ____.
I never expected to feel unsafe in my own classroom because ____.
When I read the new policy, all I could think was ____.
How to submit
Prepare your piece in a digital format. Please make sure any text is legible and high-contrast. We prefer the following file types:
Images/visual art: .jpg/.jpeg or .png
Text: .doc/.docx
Audio: .mp3 (please provide a transcript, if possible)
Video: .mp4 (please provide a transcript, if possible)
Do not include identifying information. If greater anonymity is needed, consider using a burner email or submitting through a trusted colleague.
Upload your work through the submission form for review.
By submitting, you agree to have your work released under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license.
If you have questions about formats, licensing, accessibility, or anonymity, you can email thepedlab@gmail.com (no need to include your name).
