Morgan Bassichis, Visiting Artist Lecture 2022

Through this interactive performative lecture, interdisciplinary artist, educator, and writer Morgan Bassichis performs a series of musical compositions where they think about what it means to explore an artistic practice through a series of questions, as well as weave together networks of care through radical acts of subversive kindness. Bassichis asks a series of open-ended questions throughout their musical performances which take on the importance of Jewish radicalism, eloquently explaining that there does not need to be tension between Jewish safety and Palestinian liberation, and the importance of striving for Palestinian liberation. Bassichis draws on their religious identity to create a more heterogeneous understanding of what it means to be Jewish, and how to let go of identities that can seem so fixed and permanent. Bassichis forms these thought processes by telling the participants of the need to push back against capitalist and incarceral binaries of right and wrong, to be weary of different forms of labor that gets invisibilized, to draw from humour as a survival strategy, and to articulate difficult truths in order to believe what they are saying. Bassichis explains they are always striving to find inherent joy in their work, both through giving joy and receiving joy.