Artists-In-Presidents

  • Constance Hockaday

Artists-In-Presidents is inspired by Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Depression-era Fireside Chats. FDR took office during the Great Depression, when the nation’s economy was decimated and trust in government was at an all-time low. Under these conditions, Roosevelt began to speak directly to the public via a series of radio broadcasts dubbed the “Fireside Chats.” His aim was to address Americans’ greatest concerns. The Fireside Chats were the first time that a US President’s voice entered the living rooms of everyday Americans. Never before had an American President spoken so frankly and intimately with the citizens of the country. In intricate poetic detail, Roosevelt unfurled an accessible vision for a unified American public and called upon citizens to participate in democracy as an act of faith.

Today, Americans face the massive social and economic fallout of a global pandemic which only accentuates existing disparities in our communities. Like Depression-era FDR, we have arrived at a moment of crisis and possibility. We are not calling for a Fireside Chat re-do, but rather an acknowledgment that many of the national narratives of liberation have erased Indigenous voices and the voices of people that make up the majority of this country—Black, LGBTQIA, people of colour, people with disabilities, and women. An update is overdue. This project seeks to recast the office of the President as a multivocal entourage.

Artists, writers, performers, and musicians from a wide range of cultural realities were invited to assume an authority over our collective future and to define what we could become together as a nation. Each artist created a presidential portrait and a “State of the Union Redress” that describes their vision, with dramaturgical advice from retired presidential speech writers.

Directed by visual artist Constance Hockaday, Artists-In-Presidents: Fireside Chats for 2020 is produced in partnership with UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance and Stanford Live Arts. In 2021, the Blackwood Gallery at the University of Toronto Mississauga will support the micro-commissioning of 21 new Artists-In-Presidents. Pending the pandemic, the project will further evolve into a full print publication, a gallery exhibition, and ultimately will bring people together for live performances and readings aboard FDR’s retired presidential yacht in the San Francisco Bay. Stay tuned.

Listen to the podcasts and visit the full virtual gallery at artistsinpresidents.com.





Constance Hockaday is a queer Chilean-American from the US/Mexico Border. She is a director and visual artist who creates immersive social sculptures on urban waterways. She has worked with the Floating Neutrinos since 2001, and collaborated with Swoon’s Swimming Cities projects, sailing floating sculptures along the Hudson, Mississippi, and the Adriatic Sea (2006–09). In 2011, she created The Boatel, a floating art hotel in New York’s Far Rockaways made of refurbished salvaged boats—an effort to reconnect New Yorkers to their waterfront. Her 2014 piece All These Darlings and Now Us highlighted the displacement of San Francisco’s queer community: more than 1000 people watched peep show performances on a raft of retrofitted sailboats featuring artists from two recently shuttered iconic queer businesses. Hockaday holds an MFA in Social Practice and MA in Conflict Resolution. She is also a Senior TED Fellow and an artist-in-residence at The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA.

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