Community Arts Caucus (CAC) Column: Spring 2023

Collaborating With ChatGPT

In this column, we have collaboratively edited (using strikethroughs to omit generated text and boldface to designate AI-generated text) a call for a new Co-Director that was generated by ChatGPT—one of many emerging AI technologies that responds to a request for information by making their best version of a text. In this process of redaction and addition, we call awareness to the subtleties of our practices and together consider the possibilities and limitations of new technologies and tools. We play with the generated text as a material for us to challenge, uphold, tear away, and bring awareness to the ideas we consider together. Our text is an experiment with making things collaboratively. We reflect on and enact the spirit of CAC and our hopes for its future.

Attention all members of the Community Art Caucus Dear Community Arts Practitioners,

We are pleased to announce that we are accepting applications for a In our collective attempt to nurture new ways of working together by exploring leadership models that emphasize care, reciprocity, and shared responsibility, The Community Art Caucus Co-Directors are looking for someone to join us in envisioning what shared leadership could be. Acknowledging that with new leadership comes new ideas and processes, we are intentionally working toward change and recognizing that bringing a new member into this group is part of that desired change. new co-director to join our leadership team. As a growing community of artists and art enthusiasts, art educators, and community based practitioners we believe that this is an exciting opportunity for someone who is passionate about art and community building and sustaining community arts spaces.

The ideal candidate will have experience in organizing community events, managing a team, and a strong interest in contemporary art. We, the current co-directors, hope to continue writing, thinking, and making changes to the structure and forms of CAC in reflection and observation on what CAC is, has been, and can be. They should also be able to demonstrate a commitment to promoting Through the reimagining of leadership structures, we are working toward deconstructing, challenging, and embracing the multiple layers and complexities that exist in creating spaces that honor diversity, equity, and inclusion in the art world. We acknowledge the complicated relationship the art world has to other creative spaces when considering how art is made, understood, lived, and received beyond the historically framed and valued understanding of art that is dependent on hierarchies of where art belongs and how art is acknowledged

As a collaborative member of the co-director co-directing team, you will work closely with the current co-directors director to shape the vision and direction of the Community Art Caucus. You will might help to plan and execute events, manage our social media accounts, and collaborate with other organizations and artists to promote our mission. The way that we as co-director distribute responsibilities is based on our abilities and needs.

If you are interested in applying, please attend our Town Hall Meeting Friday, April 14th, 2023 from 12:30 pm send a letter of interest and a CV to [insert email address]. If you are unable to attend NAEA Conference in San Antonio, Texas but interested in being a co-director please send us a video expressing your interest. The deadline for applications is [insert deadline]. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you,

[Your Name] Angela, Carina, Paulina and William
Co- Directors Director, Community Art Caucus

While editing the ChatGPT-generated text, we realized we nearly rewrote much of the document. It did not have the collective voice we have established over 2 years’ worth of cowriting and editing. Our slow approach to reformatting content and wanting to show our hand enabled a collective reflection on words. The words became more like material, as opposed to words belonging to someone else. We were faced with confronting and speaking to the cliche design of the letter and the AI’s approach to discussing a living organization’s need in our ever-changing world.

As leaders, thinkers, writers, researchers, and artists with beautifully complex social, racial, ethnic, and gendered identities, we had to sit with the sentence, “They should also be able to demonstrate a commitment to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in the art world.”

Column by:

Carina D. Maye, William Estrada, Angela Inez Baldus, Paulina Camacho Valencia, CAC Co-Directors, with ChatGPT