Last night, in solidarity with the National Day of Action for Higher Education, Berkeley-based artist Michele Pred projected the phrase “Money For Science, Not Oligarchs” onto UC Berkeley‘s Sproul Hall.
Artist Projects ‘Money for Science, Not Oligarchs’ onto UC Berkeley Building
The Berkeley Faculty for the Freedom to Learn held a rally on Sproul Plaza earlier in the day, in protest of the recent detention and deportation of several international students around the country. The rally, part of a national day of action for higher education, sought to “defend basic principles and freedoms” and “to manifest what UC Berkeley can and must be,” according to a statement from the organizers.
“Right now, higher education is really getting attacked in terms of funding and federal grants,” Pred said in a phone interview. “It’s outrageous and frightening to have science funding cut this way. There are thousands of important research projects that are losing money, or have already lost money. We’re in a crisis.”
Pred’s UC Berkeley projection was not her first. For the past six months, the conceptual artist has been projecting political statements onto public property around the country in response to a variety of issues dear to her heart.
On March 25 (Equal Pay Day), Pred projected an image of a briefcase with the words “equal pay” on the side of San Francisco’s Federal Building. Earlier in the year, Pred covered the side of New York’s Guggenheim Museum with a projection of 100 words recently flagged by the Trump administration in relation to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Pred also projected the phrase “Biden, publish the ERA” on Washington, D.C.’s National Gallery of Art back in November 2024.
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Pred has previously expressed herself in large scale via billboards featuring her feminist and pro-choice artwork. (During the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, for example, she put up a rendition of the Stars and Stripes made out of birth control pills accompanied by the phrase “My Choice My Vote”.)
Pred’s move into projections follows in the footsteps of other Bay Area artists including Christy Chan, who led 2021’s anti-racist Dear America project, and Alan Marling, who first gave Pred tips on how to make her own projections. Pred cites Barbara Kruger and U.K. activist group Led by Donkeys as other influences.
Pred came up with the plan to put up a projection at Sproul Plaza just two days before the rally.
“I like to respond quickly [to political issues], and with the projections, you can be very immediate,” she said. “These issues in education have been prevalent in the news this week and it made me want to seize the moment. Being able to respond in real time is helpful. The artwork is therapy.”
Her projection at UC Berkeley felt, on some level, like a full-circle moment for Pred. Her father, Allan Pred, was a professor of cultural geography at UC Berkeley for over 40 years and, in Pred’s words, “extremely political.” Pred has been attending rallies at the university since her parents first took her to anti-Vietnam War protests there in the late 1960s. She was a baby at the time.
“It’s in my blood, it’s in my DNA,” Pred said. “To do this in Berkeley was really going back to my roots.”
