Lecture Archive

Laura Owens gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking about her interdisciplinary practice which spans drawing, painting, video, sculpture, textile, and artist books. For Owens, it has always been important to create paintings that don’t have any one preferred point of view, but instead change depending on the way a work is framed and altered, or that can be arranged in different ways. Owens then talks about the installation and design of the rooms in which her paintings are hung. Owens is interested in the marginalia of a room, and how those details can be utilized to bring the viewer’s eye to places that are not the main focal point. Owens reflects on her use of decoration and pattern making as two concepts that she explores in her work. These concepts allow her to challenge what is or isn’t considered art, or what is considered too feminine, or too kitsch. Owens ends her lecture by reflecting on the friendships and the relationships one makes in the art world. Owens tells the participants that they don’t need many friends, solely a select few good ones. She encourages the participants to think about friendship as just as important as a studio or materials, as it will support them in their lives as artists.

Art critic, writer, cook, and storyteller Aruna D’Souza gives a lecture at Skowhegan. D’Souza frames her talk with the following question: How will art teach her to be less of an asshole in the world, and how will art teach her to live in ways that are gentle, fierce, ethical, and political? D’Souza asks this of all art she looks at, even art that isn’t meant to be overtly political and world changing. This question helps D’Souza gain meaning of a work and the lessons a viewer may attain. Throughout the lecture, D’Souza shares slides and videos of artists she has written about over the years who have taught her what the picture of a new world could be. Murmuration–which she defines through the natural instincts of animals to flock in complex herds, like birds or fish–is a concept that D’Souza regularly reflects upon to imagine new forms of solidarity and creates an experience of movement and loss that is tied to the notion of becoming an immigrant. D’Souza shares how the artists she has written about have taught her the importance of depth with one’s materials, as a method for artists to move backwards into history. D’Souza describes a spirit of generosity in the ideas of holding space without stealing space, consumption of air without stealing another’s air, and the creation of space in a way that leaves space for the people around them. D’Souza urges artists to decide what a career looks like for them and how to make that career happen. Another idea D’Souza reflects on in her lecture is opacity. She encourages the participants to be conscientious about what  they reveal and conceal. D’Souza describes opacity as a consideration and understanding of the stakes of what being opaque means stating that it’s not just a matter of closing off all communication, but instead choosing what is and isn’t communicated. D’Souza ends her lecture by telling the participants to be strategic in art making, to think about what they want to portray or offer up in their work (and what they don’t), and to avoid opacity with themselves. D’Souza states that they must understand why they are making their art, and what the stakes are of withholding meaning in their work.

Shauna Moulton gives a lecture talking about her performance, film, sculpture, photography, video, and installation practice. Moulton begins her lecture by talking about her experience as a 2004 Skowhegan participant and the lifelong friendships she made that summer. Moulton then goes into great detail discussing Cynthia, a character she created, which has become her performance alter-ego. Moulton explains how Cynthia was first developed during graduate school from a series of dresses embedded with medical devices. At first they were meant to be sculptures and photographs, and eventually turned into performances and films. Moulton discusses various cultural influences and genres that impact her performance-based work, such as soap operas, experimental film, internet culture, children’s television and film, and set design; all of which function as material for her performances. Moulton mentions the freedom she finds in the limitation of working with one alter ego. This limitation allowed her to work with humor. It gives Moulton parameters which enable her to tackle new scenarios she is interested in depicting. For example, Cynthia is the version of Moulton that looks into a bathroom mirror and worries about aging, or Cynthia is a version of Moulton that stares at a wall and wants to go into a portal that will lead to a better world. Ultimately for Moulton, Cynthia has become a springboard to deal with all kinds of emotions the artist has grappled with over the decades.

Sofía Córdova discusses her interdisciplinary practice which spans music, collaboration, installation, film, video, writing, and performance. A major theme in Córdova’s work is the exploration of her term, “socialist realism,” as it helps her confront a codex of ineffable encounters with truth, and with the perception of history. Córdova explains to the participants how she often works through series. Another theme in Córdova’s work is the loneliness of culture in a world subordinate to the cult of capitalism, alongside the hope that within knowledge new social conditions are possible. Córdova is interested in labor, particularly histories of labor organizing and the creative output that comes from these movements. She then talks about sound, as a component of her work that allows her to explore the phenomenological encounters between sound and objects. These phenomenological encounters lead to cerebral encounters with the contents of an object, which then manifests itself in her videos. Language is another concept Córdova investigates in her practice, recognizing the failure of inherited political taxonomies, while exploring a new form of language in sound and performance. She describes this combination of sound and performance as being in motion. Córdova understands her inherited language as one of fugitivity, which is a language of subterfuge, code, and of “under the table” communication as a means to avoid authority. Córdova constantly seeks to decentralize her work, which has allowed her to explore new forms of care. The form of care she describes allows her freedom to create work that feels far richer and closer to the world she is trying to envision, and also allows her to invite other people into the work. Córdova ends her lecture by describing her desire to convey discomfort in her work, as only by sitting in discomfort can we explore tensions and ultimately find resolution.

Naomi Rincón-Gallardo presents a performance which is then followed by a lecture discussing her interdisciplinary practice. Rincón-Gallardo mixes and matches borrowed and discarded materials as part of her process. Rincón-Gallardo sees her artistic practice as a labor of underworld making, which allows her to acknowledge an intimacy with danger and death as forces that expand their domain horizontally. These mythic, political underworlds that Rincón-Gallardo creates are imagined from the necropolitical nation that Mexico has turned into over the last two decades, ever since the so-called war against narcos. The Mexican political situation unleashed plural forms of unofficial wars involving naturalized violence, a multiplication of femicides, disappearances, and forced displacements, a proliferation of clandestine graves, and an expansion of military and paramilitary forces. Rincón-Gallardo seeks to understand the history of formerly colonial territories and how they are often marked by the continuum of neocolonial disorder, dispossession and the spreading of necropower. Rincón-Gallardo seeks to create a materialized attempt to frame and host embodied forms of collective belonging and ritual. She explains that at times these materializations are ephemeral, and other times they are long-lasting. Rincón-Gallardo believes that artists need to collectively imagine conditions of living where many worlds can fit. This then allows them to pay attention to what can still be repaired, sustained, and cared for, despite multiple ongoing collapses. Ultimately, for Rincón-Gallardo, her works are offerings that imagine entanglements of earthly creatures together with death, an aspiration to rehabilitate affection, emotions, interpersonal bonds, and the desire to craft horizons of transformation. 

Sahar Khoury gives a lecture talking about her interdisciplinary practice which spans sound, drawing, video, sculpture, and installation. Khoury shares archival tapes and recordings of her family which she uses as raw material for her practice. Khoury talks about her interest in the collective versus the individual, and about her use of an anthropological lens to understand her context. She sees this lens shaped not just by family and upbringing, but also by environment in its entirety. Khoury goes on to discuss how she became an artist through community and queer culture, rather than pursuing a formal arts education. Khoury talks about the process of mixing high and low culture, the relationship between kitsch and craft, and use of everyday materials and found objects, all described as important aspects of her work. Khoury discusses her current work, going into themes of collective mourning and denial as a political tool. Khoury also discusses work with institutions, encouraging the participants not to decline exhibition opportunities, and to show their work as much as possible as a way to change peoples’ consciousness. Khoury’s lecture ends with a frank conversation with the participants about the economic challenges and realities of being an artist, and gives advice on how to build a stable life as artists.

Interdisciplinary artist Karthik Pandian gives a lecture talking about his artistic practice at Skowhegan which spans–but is not limited to–installation, film, performance, drawing, collaboration, and writing. Pandian sees himself as a conductor of energy. This idea has guided his artistic practice. Pandian has always been drawn to materials that can transmit political, historical, and aesthetic energies. He explains how the multi-year projects he embarks on take different manifestations and then emerge in different forms. Pandian shares how he has always been fascinated with the direction of a group of people that bring complex histories, ideas, forms of embodiment, and textures. Pandian asks: how can he conduct that energy into something, and do it while also thinking about care as an everyday necessity? For him, care is something that is not just a fragment or a source of information, but also an energy force that can be prioritized to fight back against the mindless consumption of information. Pandian shares how accountability to himself and his collaborators in performance has taught him to not make art to please others. For Pandian, his work has his name on it not because of authorship but because of responsibility. This has allowed Pandian to create art that can reenchant and recover some of the deepest knowledge that the earth and spiritual realm holds, which ultimately requires a desire to surrender that knowledge. Pandian ends his lecture by hoping to express a deep capacity for kindness in his life and work as an artist, and for his desire to maintain belief in reimagination of the world. 

Eduardo Navarro gives a lecture talking about his interdisciplinary artist practice. Eduardo shares with the participants how his need to create art comes from a desire to create an experience where one can allow something to transform themselves from within. That desire has more meaning than the mechanism of being paid for or exhibiting art. Navarro talks about his experience with meditation and how that inspired him to truly inhabit other creatures or ways of being. Navarro talks about his collaborative work with nature, animals, his surrounding landscapes, and with other performers. The transformation creates a synchronicity that is visible over time. Navarro then talks about his drawing practice, stating how he has always found clairvoyance in the practice. Navarro describes releasing art into the world as like having children: you cannot control what the art will do while trying to protect it. Navarro also discusses the release of work for interpretation by others. He states that once a work has a life of its own, it takes pressure off of him. For Navarro, art is synched to an energy that is pre-human, which allows him to let go of human consciousness completely.

William Villalongo gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking about his interdisciplinary practice which spans painting, sculpture, drawing, collage, work with black velvet cut paper, and curatorial practice. In his work, Willalongo continually comes back to visibility in the Black subject over many iterations, encompassing notions of cultural erasure, contested histories, and healing. Villalongo’s practice is material, and he formally fights with painting as a model for seeing. Villalongo is concerned with the absorption and reflection of light, anthropomorphism, natural and celestial formations, fragmentations, obscurity, and mythmaking. Villalongo’s interdisciplinary work seeks to question the Black presence as something simultaneously hyper visible and in constant danger of erasure. Villalongo thinks about bodies as holding histories across time, as malleable entities, as forms that can vanish and recollect themselves, that can traverse geographies and transplant themselves as a form of resistance, and how bodies are also sites of healing and liberation. Ultimately, Villalongo will always grapple with how to create work about the body without the body being present as an issue at the heart of his work.

Teresa Baker gives a lecture talking about her painting and drawing process. Baker works in a wide range of material, with a specific focus on artificial turf. Baker is drawn to this material’s rigidity and the way it holds yarn. Other materials Baker has explored include willow, hay bale rope, buckskin, and cotton wood bark. Her interest in the landscape and the materials she works with comes from her relationship to the land, specifically being born and raised on the Fort Berthold Reservation in central North Dakota, where she is a part of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara nations. This upbringing and her ties to the northern plains landscape has instilled Baker with strong bonds to the land, and has grounded her work as an artist. Baker continuously considers expansive methods of working with material and ways to express the artist’s hand through it. Other explorations within her work include: the relationship between artificial and natural materials and how this relationship reflects adaptability in humanity and culture; the life and decay; the consideration of beauty in harshness; the importance of imperfections; and the constant effort and hope to make work feel visceral. Baker then goes on to talk about the importance of working with abstraction and design as a site from which to explore the endless symbols of identities. Baker seeks to continuously explore these symbolic identities with every single work, as each piece–with its unlimited possibilities of the materials the artist works from– is also a reaction to the last. Baker ends her lecture with advice to the participants: to be open to the unexpected when things don’t go their way, and to also understand their meaning of “home,” as the landscapes they have an intimate relationship with may become a grounding force.

Artist Mariel Capanna gives a lecture discussing the history and process of fresco. Capanna teaches the participants how to build a relationship to fresco, the rich history that fresco has had with Skowhegan over the decades, and how frescoes are one of the few mediums that are materially able to hold and tell time. Capanna shows images of frescos across centuries and around the world, encouraging participants to walk around the barn and look at the frescos on the walls. Capanna goes into highly precise detail talking about how frescos are made, and the relationships between pigments, water, aggregate (riverbed sand), and slick lime putty. Capanna explains how the paint consists of pigment, plus a binder—water that becomes the lime putty inside the plaster, then forming the wall or substrate in a fresco painting. The lime is the support and the binder of a fresco painting, and is made of limestone, a sedimentary rock made of calcium carbonate. Limestone is an abundant material, accounting for 20 percent of sedimentary rock on the planet that has been formed through the accumulation and compression of organic matter such as skeletons, sea urchins, and corals. Capanna describes how the limestone is crushed into very small rocks and heated at 1100° Celsius in a lime kiln. Water is then added to the lime in a process called slaking, which is an exothermic chemical process that generates an enormous amount of heat. Through this exothermic process, calcium oxide is converted into calcium hydroxide: lime putty. The development of strong lime putty requires time to achieve maturation. Once aged lime putty is created, it is added to a mixing bag, softened by using a hoe, and then sand is added to form a sturdy and malleable lime plaster. With the plaster formed, it can be applied to a substrate (rigid yet porous surfaces like brick, wood, steel). After the surface is created, several successive layers of plaster are added, with each layer serving as a stage and sponge for a subsequent layer. Each layer is then re-wetted before the next layer of plaster is added. Following the final layer of plaster, pigments can be painted onto the surface with brittle brushes.

Artist Mike Cloud gives a lecture at Skowhegan during the summer of 2025, talking about his painting and pedagogical practice. For Cloud, painting is a contemplation of a skin, of the painted film, and sculpture is a contemplation of a volume that is created by the work. Cloud states how he has always been curious about the discussion of portraiture in a modernist way. For Cloud, greatness in a work of art must be a social relationship between artists. Cloud comments on how Black artists used white art as formal inspiration, but they were not negotiating the social position of the artist, which showed itself in criticism during the 1990s.

Cloud tells the participants that artists know that art has the power to change the world, and there’s an eternal argument about how that happens. Does it happen by teaching people something or does this happen by showing people something? Cloud shares how his work has also been inspired by folklore and mythology, because it teaches him how artists exist to typify strategies of representation. Cloud states that in art, one is trying to stand out against commodities. This is a process called counter-reification. Cloud is aware that artists exist in an oppressive aesthetic: all of our aesthetics are oppressive. Artists are aesthetic free agents and it is up to them to make things that are not like the things around themselves. Sometimes those things can interact with and subvert the oppressive aesthetic, even if it is just for a moment.

Cloud then speaks about how social consciousness is acknowledging in a work of art one’s social position in a world, which can be almost impossible to abstract, even though Cloud tries, however it is automatic in performance because the artist can see their social position because they see it in their body. Cloud has always understood himself as an abstractionist, and the point of abstraction as it was told to him was to make works of art that had no subject. Cloud always think of ways to accomplish that. Cloud feels that the world lacks meaning because it lacks perspective, and this is why he chooses stories out of the newspaper more or less at random to see if he can remove their meaning by robbing them of perspective and make monochromatic paintings by robbing them of a colour scheme. Humour and emotional surplus is another part of the ambiguity that Cloud seeks in his work. This is where the viewer comes to it thinking they will have to do something emotionally, and then they don’t so they have something left over. Cloud ends his lecture by stating that in order for artists to show an alternative world, they have to somehow be from it or in it, but he does not think that is true because he also thinks that everyone lives in a prison that has no outside. There may not be a value in escaping if one can never leave, but Cloud argues there is a value. There is a value in art showing an alternative, and there is a value in artists constantly escaping a prison, if even momentarily.

Dineo Sehsee Bopape gives a lecture talking about her artistic practice which spans poetry, music, drawing, sculpture, sound, and working with earthen materials, in particular soil mounds. Bopape begins the lecture by asking the following question: What does it mean to be dispossessed of land, and what does it mean to have no water, or sky? Bopape states how song and dance is a very big part of her work and life, and how this informs the research-based practice she has built, which consists of establishing personal connections with specific geographical, cultural, and political histories. Bopape tells the participants how people live not just in this reality but in other realities as well, and asks the question how does an artist’s work exist in multiple realities? Bopape states that art making has the ability to heal people in different ways, and when we connect to another person’s work, we acknowledge their existence which is a deeply spiritual thing and an important part of an art practice. Bopape then speaks in length about the way in which she views the earth and water being carriers of ancient memory, and the connection this has to her architectural interests which draw from African architectural philosophies about what space should do and how space holds these memories. Bopape then goes into detail about having a political practice as an artist and how that has allowed her to work with African philosophies, especially with the history that she has where African indigenous practices were violently erased in some areas. To be digging up and reclaiming this history is very important to Bopape.

Sandra Gamarra Heshiki gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking about her figurative paintings, drawings, and textiles where she also on occasion works with fabric and adds it to her paintings. For Gamarra Heshiki, she is interested in exploring the circulation of images and how to navigate information systems. Gamarra Heshiki creates visual exercises based on a critical approach to studying colonialism and questioning the established orders in the imaginaries of both Spanish and Peruvian societies with respect to the historical moment of which there are two stories combined. Gamarra Heshiki also explores the theme of neocolonialism which is still prevalent in Spain and related to many Latin American cultures with a focus on the Indian Context. Gamarra Heshiki speaks about how she built a project on a conflict space, showing how the region of Latin American nations is intimately linked to the birth of Spain and Europe itself and how a critical look of these two legacies is key to building other forms of coexistence. Gamarra Heshiki speaks about the importance of exploring symbols and metaphors that have a connection between Latin America and the Western world. One such symbol is the mask: which conceals identity as a tool of otherness and otherness intrinsic to the self. For Gamarra Heshiki, the mask is the instrument for knowing the stranger within. Gamarra Heshiki ends her lecture by stating that she believes in the ability of art to create safe spaces to harbour difference, contradictions, and even conflict.

Choreographer, dancer, and performance artist Miguel Gutierrez gives a lecture at Skowhegan. Gutierrez sings, dances, and shares screenings of his performances and choreography works throughout his lecture. For Gutierrez, his work often reverts to a solipsistic exploration of self engagement and is an exploration of his archive. For Gutierrez, the usefulness of the archive is only how it lives in the present: how it speaks with, argues with, soothes, fails, and is re-imagined by the now. Collaboration is another important touchstone for Gutierrez, and he speaks about how he works with fashion designers, set designers, other dancers and performance artists in his work. Gutierrez stresses how he appreciates these design collaborations over multiple projects because this kind of collaboration also allows Gutierrez to make space in the apparatus of theatre. Making this kind of space has become important for Gutierrez, who stresses the importance of what kinds of tools are needed to function for a space to run successfully. Every space has its own tools, with some of those tools being oppressive. It is up to the artist to learn how to subvert these tools. Gutierrez then speaks about his dance practice and how so much of it is about talking and being in dialogue. Gutierrez speaks about the process he is going through to undo the trope of the patriarchal choreographer. Gutierrez ends his lecture by stating that dance is about presence and combining a weird conflagration of things that ultimately creates a feeling.

Choreographer, Dancer and Performance Artist Trajal Harrell gives a deeply vulnerable lecture at Skowhegan. Harrell immediately speaks about the various highs and lows he has experienced in his career, sharing with the participants many intimate details of his life as an artist. Harrell speaks candidly to the participants about addiction and how everyone has an addiction they struggle with: addiction to power, addiction to sex, addiction to money, addiction to Netflix. Harrell stresses that addictions are everywhere and one has to be able to talk just as much–if not more– about addiction then they talk about race, class, and sexuality. Harrell states that in his practice, he has worked towards building a language of talking about the reality of pleasure and escape, and the importance of self medicating. Harrell states that everyone is a junkie on some level, and Harrell uses the word junkie because it is something that we can reclaim because it is a part of us. Harrell then speaks about his dance practice, and his exploration into conceptual post modern dance. For Harrell, the fashion shows of the 1990s were very influential for him because he found more diversity in those spaces than in the dance world. Fashion helped Harrell think about how one can use material culture to perform in their bodies and allowed him to make the dances he wanted to see. Harrell shares more life lessons with the participants, urging them to embrace their weakness, vulnerabilities and imperfections because this is what makes them human, and can also be a form of strength. Harrell connects this to dance as well, stating that dance is not just about strength but also about weakness. Harrell tells the participants to reflect on the following questions: How can we acknowledge our weakness? How can we acknowledge the drug addicts and the disabled and the people who are cast out of society? Harrell warns the participants that they can be at the height of their career and be totally unhappy, giving them the example of how he won the Venice Bienniale’s Silver Lion and experienced unhappiness. Harrell passionately shares that these ideas of success or what one wants does not make one happy, and it can really eat them up and it is not cliché. Harrell states that it is important to the participants that they forgive themselves, accept themselves, and to give themselves a break. The participants must ask themselves the following question: Is my heart getting bigger, is my heart getting wider? Harrell ends his lecture by urging the artists not to represent the lifestyle like millionaires and billionaires, because artists are the weirdos with alternative possibilities and they have a place in society. They have to offer a vision of something else, and they have the opportunity to show a different reality and a different possibility for people, especially in a world that has become so corporate, branded and individualistic. It is up to artists to resist that.

Please note that the full recording of this lecture is not available for research request.

Liz Magic Laser gives a lecture at Skowhegan speaking about her performance and video work. Laser speaks about how she approaches her role as someone who not just works as an artist but also as a journalist and researcher. Some of the themes Laser addresses include representations of emotion, neediness, aggression, hysteria, vulnerability, loss of identity, the representations of excessive emotionality, and brainwashing. Much of Laser’s work starts out by selecting an institutional or quasi-public site like the bank, a prison, a hospital, or museums, where behaviour is shaped by regulated spatial quotes. Laser tries looking for a text or scenario that will produce a kind of generative fiction with the place, and tries to introduce scripted material or misbehaviour that is about making views visible by crossing their boundaries. Laser speaks about her interest in how politicians appropriate modes of the confessional from reality tv and how they stage these kinds of emotional ruptures as a tool of public persuasion through acting techniques that are used and misused to secure political power. Laser’s work continues to trace how these tools from psychotherapy and spirituality are appropriated and used to regulate and optimize public behaviour and employees behaviours and working methods. Laser in particular addresses her observations in noting how reality television producers psychologically manipulate and cajole people into doing things that conflate their personal traumas with political affiliations. Laser sees the appropriation of new age thinking, compulsive workaholism, and the use and abuse of therapy as another important conceptual focus of her work. Laser also sees psychology as a questionable and creative area of inquiry that is used to manipulate people. Laser is interested in interviews with consumers in order to fine tune one’s output and advertising to maximum effect such as the scrolling on our phones which was based on slot machines. These are the kinds of intimate details that Laser gets really excited about: exploring aesthetics, arts, and performing arts that are used to control and dominate us in different ways.

Cultural theorist, author, writer, academic, and professor Catherine Liu gives a lecture at Skowhegan. Liu speaks about the dangers of how difficult it has become for people to find their way to a shared reality in the hyper development of technocratic and liberal ideologies of domination: AI, trauma culture, etc. Liu asks, why is the artist and their process important to an account of what is broken down in the development of the political subject and what we know as our democracies? Liu states that the trauma identity has become something that’s been ideologically produced so that the individual subject has to fit him or herself into a liberal narrative that is bad for art, bad for democracy, and bad for the achievement for individual subjectivity. Liu states how mass human thriving through creative engagement with the shared world is not something capitalism wants to see realized. Art and creativity has become entirely reified as objects and processes. The artist has become caught between bohemianism and entrepreneurial hustle, which allows people to see a peculiar example of thwarted individualism. Liu tells the participants that we are not ready to become political subjects which is why we have to embrace completely clichéd professionally managed identities in our pursuit of both research, knowledge, and art itself. Liu says that one should not be satisfied with the way we have talked about art, nor should we be satisfied with its institutions. Critical theory itself has become a part of the culture industry, mined for profits and circulations by allegedly not-for-profit organizations like university presses and universities. Liu warns that authentic play and aesthetic experience to resist algorithmic domination has become difficult in today’s climate, and the professional class fetish for radicalism and novelty has dominated left-liberal spaces for so long that many people have given up questioning their principles. For Liu, intelligence may serve creativity but it is not creative in and of itself. Liu gives an example about how we think and play which has now become so determined by silicon valley, and how real estate and development is ruled by billionaires. Liu passionately states that we have to break up these monopolies and take back the world, especially because the art world is directed by the will of the donors. For Liu, her left liberal practices is not about taking things away from people and showing our virtue by depriving people of things, and she tells the participants of the importance to build mass movements of trust between people so that we can understand what is actually happening in the shared reality of our world. In order to do this, everyone should be speaking to each other so we become more powerful, because in a post industrial democracy, we all need each other more than ever in the creative process. Liu ends her lecture by telling the participants to be serious about their art work, and not just please people, because the best forms of art reaches the widest spectrum of human emotions.

Guadalupe Maravilla gives a lecture at Skowhegan that explores his wide and vast interdisciplinary practice, which includes–but is not limited to– sculpture, sound, installation, painting, social practice, music, and performance. Maravilla begins the lecture by speaking about his experience as a Skowhegan participant in 2009 and the positive impact it had on him and his work. For Maravilla, he has long been interested in creating healing rituals (that are sometimes site-specific), which show people the tools they can develop in order to heal themselves. For Maravilla, healing rituals came out of his experience of dealing with cancer, surviving the war in El Salvador, and coming to the United States as an undocumented immigrant. Maravilla in particular speaks about how sound has always functioned for him as a medicine, and he sees his cancer as a blessing that has allowed him to become the artist he is today. Maravilla shares how he creates various community circles in New York City where he is based, which allows him to transform those circles into spaces for healing that is provided for undocumented communities. Maravilla then speaks about also creating cancer ceremonies in museum spaces and works with the gong to utilize it as an object that can function as a healing tool. Maravilla states that the more he can activate these sculptures, the more powerful he feels that they can become. Another important part of Maravilla’s daily practice is meditation. For Maravilla, meditation has become his armour that allows him to have discipline in every part of his life as an artist. Maravilla ends his lecture by stating that art can be utilized as a force that can pull people into healing, and for Maravilla it allows him to use money from institutions to create a space so healing can occur and mutual aid can happen.

Shimabuku gives a lecture at Skowhegan, talking about his work which focuses on site specificity, social practice, collaboration, video, performance, working with nature and animals and addressing key themes such as humour, escape, and freedom. Shimabuku uses themes of playfulness and humour to talk about the process of being a student and learning, and not necessarily being an artist in order to demonstrate his abilities and what he can do. For Shimabuku, having a studio space is not necessarily a part of his practice. Shimabuku tells the participants that he would rather work in more site specificity whether they are cities, landscapes, and particular neighbourhoods, stressing in particular all the site specific work he has done in the United Kingdom and France. Simabuku also states how he considers cooking–which he does a lot of–to be an important part of his artistic practice because he sees his kitchen as a part of his studio. Shimabuku ends his lecture by stating that he always wanted to utilize his artistic practice to discover new processes and emphasize the importance of being patient and slowing down. Shimabuku never wants to hurry as an artist, and if sometimes his artistic projects only happen once a year or twice a year, that is completely fine with him.

Anna Tsouhlarakis gives a lecture at Skowhegan. Tsouhlarakis comments on the importance of not being defined or called as an interdisciplinary artist, and speaks candidly about the many mediums that she makes art in, including but not limited to: video, sculpture, drawing, collage, and performance. Tsouhlarakis goes into detail speaking about her experiences learning traditional and indigenous forms of art and how her dad – also an artist– inspired her when she was growing up. Tsouhlarakis in particular spoke about turning to performance which she loved activating, because it didn’t have to be stagnant and it could live on in a different way. Another important revelation for Tsouhlarakis was when she took a Federal Indian Law course at the Yale Law School, learning about treaty rights, historical agreements between the US and Tribes, and tribal sovereignty under the guidance of the federal government which was an important part of Tsouhlarakis’s development as an artist. For Tsouhlarakis, this idea of native art always having to teach someone something and always having to be serious and only deal with spirituality and myth was something she has always fought against. Tsouhlarakis speaks about how humour is very important in her work and it is a strain that has maintained throughout all of her practice. Tsouhlarakis then speaks about photography and how it can be used as a tool for documentation because it implies one doesn’t know everything that happened in a space, only providing a snippet. Exploring the landscape, such as New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona and thinking about how the landscape and Navajo creation stories deal with one’s understanding of multiple worlds is another topic Tsouhlarakis touches upon. Tsouhlarakis tells the participants how she never wanted to rely on her artwork to make money and that selling and the market is not the sole focus for her of being an artist. Instead, Tsouhlarakis makes what needed to be made, and what she felt needed to be made and not what anyone else felt needed to. Tsouhlarakis ends the lecture by addressing the following questions: What does decolonization look like and does she believe in it? What action would make the indigenization happen and how could Tsouhlarakis illustrate that through sculpture and artwork? Tsouhlarakis addresses these questions by saying she is not interested in deconstructing something, or ripping something apart but instead wants something to keep going or to evolve. Ultimately, Tsouhlarakis is not a solitary artist that works alone, but likes to be in community, and likes talking to people. This is why Tsouhlarakis teaches, because it helps her navigate a community and have a separate income outside of just the market.

Artist Gala Porras-Kim gives a lecture at Skowhegan. Porras-Kim begins by talking about her relationship to architecture and scale, and how these frameworks influence her drawing practice. Porras-Kim then talks about objects, specifically objects and archives that belong in museum collections, the ongoing functions of these objects in museum spaces, and how she approaches this from the institutional perspective. Porras-Kim continues her lecture by talking about her practice of writing letters to museums and archeological institutes to reconsider the way in which they make conservation and restoration decisions. Porras-Kim is specifically interested in historical objects within institutions, how their original functions are still ongoing, and finding ways to assure that an object’s current life within an institution doesn’t overshadow what the original intention is meant to be.

At the core of Porras-Kim’s interest in institutions are ideas around museum conservation, institutional critique, and how to generate a collecting practice. Porras-Kim approaches this collecting practice by also thinking about how to approach the individual histories of historical objects that are flattened and how to account for infinite other versions of museum objects in a museum. Porras-Kim looks at this from the audience perspective and works backwards. Porras-Kim then goes on to speak about her interest in the form of the triptych, and how this informs her interest in sound as well. Porras-Kim often uses constructed sound from geographical environments as well as sound constructed by the artist herself for her work. Porras-Kim ends her lecture by asking the following question: How can one account for infinite other versions of museum objects in a museum?

Dave Mackenzie gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking about his artistic practice which spans video, performance, writing, sculpture, paintings, and choreography. McKenzie talks about his work having the potential to produce relationships, and how he would imagine an object in its production and distribution if it were to have another life. McKenzie then goes on to talk about the sounds a painting can make; the sound it makes when a reception knocks, the sound it makes when it is in a crate, the sound it makes when its in a box, the sound it makes when its on the wall. For McKenzie, all these sounds are a possibility; the possibility that the painting could be forged and formed for viewers to come together differently in order to produce new ideas. McKenzie then speaks about effort and labor and how one can understand these things from the sense of feeling that one has to find another path and another way of thinking. This type of thinking has led McKenzie to also be interested in movement; particularly those with a certain type of body. McKenzie continues in his lecture by focusing on some current interests in his practice: an interest in the perverse, an interest in ideas of spectatorship, the resistance to being watched, making the farce more farcical, and the success that comes in the act of making, and how everything that comes after making is excess. McKenzie ends his lecture by thinking about the audience and how this comes from the desire that the audience remain imaginary.

Jacolby Satterwhite gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking about his vast, interdisciplinary practice which includes– but is not limited to–animation, drawing, painting, sculpture, performance, and installation. With the history of painting in particular, Satterwhite talks about the propagandistic ways that paint was used in 16th century Europe to promote the Protestant and Catholic faith: painters were commissioned to teach the illiterate to follow kings and queens. It is these kinds of histories that Satterwhite explores in his work. Satterwhite also works with the archive of his mothers poetry, music and drawings as a way to create new forms of interdisciplinary and performance art. Satterwhite specifically speaks about the need to work with old archives in order to create something new. Other major themes in Satterwhite’s work include his relationship to autobiography, ritual, and voodooism. Satterwhite then talks about the importance of utilizing craft from ancient practices as a way to figure out what the line is between contemporary American practices and African diasporic practices. Satterwhite explores this line by utilizing craft from ancient practices such as beading, sewing, dance, costume, and masquerade in his work. Satterwhite also touches upon his interest in animism, phenomenology, the surrealism embedded in the isolated American south, black abstraction, black feeling, esoteric thought, and black avant-garde beings.

Danielle Dean gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking about her practice which includes–but is not limited to–video, performance, writing, watercolour and gouache drawings, animation, sculpture, and installation. Dean begins her lecture by posing the following questions: What happens if one can not disentangle what is real or not? What gets passed through family or media? Does ones subjectivities get affected or even constructed in relation to capitalism? How do our behaviours, languages, and relationships get interpolated by things like advertising and soap operas? How does one become a consumer and how can one integrate products into one’s emotional life in relation to normative gender roles? One way in which Dean approaches these questions is through performance, specifically by reenacting and reinterpreting archives of advertising as well as confronting the material history of advertising. Dean begins by creating assemblages by combing through the scripts of political speeches; often thinking about where the speeches came from which informs how the narrative or context is created, where the performance happens, and where the video is shot. Dean also looks at layers of appropriation and how corporate brands appropriate from political rhetoric. Dean then speaks about her ongoing interest in the reality of a film and how it not only has an effect on all of us but also becomes a material that is present with us and formulates real consequences. Dean continues on in her lecture by reflecting on how even though language is something that lays itself over objects and defines us, language can also be approached as something being meshed up and entangled together. Dean ends her lecture by stating how she is continuously curious about the exciting potential of how history can be accessed through materials: especially materials that exist in archives.

Nicole Awai gives a lecture about her interdisciplinary practice as an artist which spans-but is not limited too– drawing, painting, sculpture, and collage. Awai first begins talking drawing, and how for her, it has functioned as a place to create multiple perspectives. For Awai, drawing is a medium where one thing can be many things to many people. Awai then speaks about her relationship to collage, and how she first approached this medium by cutting up paintings she would make and rearranging them while still wanting the viewer to stay in the place of drawing. Working in these mediums has allowed Awai to take on a new relationship with time as well; it becomes elastic, and the present and the past become one for Awai. Awai then poses the following questions in her practice: What is real in the Caribbean diasporic landscape? What does it mean to make a painting that paints itself? It is these questions that gradually allows Awai to move from the two dimension and three dimensional. Awai also speaks about the afro-asian body that is connected to a history of being in the United States, particularly how these bodies functions as monuments. Thinking about these bodies in this way has led Awai too further think about transmutation and transition: when something becomes one thing and then morphs into something else. Awai ends her lecture by speaking about chance; how a lot of the work is also about chance: what works, what fails, what surprises Awai. For Awai, there is a risk and a chance involved in being an artist. None of what she can do is prescribed in anyway, and what this has taught Awai is that she has honed the skill of being prepared for and responding to anything.

Georgia Sagri gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking about her artistic practice which spans painting, writing, sculpture, video and performance. Alongside her lecture, Sagri shows a series of video performances while reciting a series of essays and writing. Sagri begins her lecture by talking about her endless curiosity where performance becomes a medium of inhabitation: a breaking apart of labor, time, and the available, untouched body. Sagri is interested in the posthuman era, the mass advertised body in the service of profit making and the body’s exhaustion of well being. Sagri examines the pathological conditions of the body in the hyper capitalist era which dooms us to immune illnesses: stress, discomfort, asthma, insomnia, panic attack, anxiety, fatigue, nausea, food disorder, paranoia, mania, arthritis, depression, and addiction, just to name a few. Some of the techniques Sagri employs in her performances are breathing, movement, and voice. Sagri is interested in using these techniques to also think about how others around her can also build their own routine of self recovery, and what it looks like to create a shared practice that is open-ended. Sagri continues to speak about her exploration of the body. She first does this by looking at the Greek economy; where workers must constantly perform to retain their livelihoods, and then the digital economy; where personal branding and the performance of a curated identity are essential for social and professional success. Sagri says that the body becomes the site of production and consumption leading to continued stress and burn out. Sagri ends her lecture by stating that at its’ core, her practice is about bringing people back to form some kind of connection and trust because of all the fear and anxiety in the world. By bridging this trust, Sagri seeks to provide a soft space where the viewer can also just relax.

Rodrigo Valenzuela gives a lecture talking about his interdisciplinary practice which includes–but is not limited to– film, video, photography, and installation. Valenzuela talks about first coming to the United States from Chile from a working class background, and working various labor jobs throughout New England. The idea of maintenance and labor is intimately intertwined with Valenzuela’s upbringing which he touches upon throughout his lecture. Valenzuela is aware of thinking about how one shouldn’t have to be forced to work themselves to death while making art that criticizes labor. Valenzuela strives to be an artist where work ethic is not the only value he possesses. Valenzuela also shares in his lecture how being in the US eventually led him to start studying philosophy which has given him a unique perspective to how he approaches thinking about art. In Valenzuela’s practice, he is drawn to the form of the telenovela to explore the lack of representation of working class women in television as well as the flaws of representation. Another theme that Valenzuela discusses in his practice is architectural space and place. For Valenzuela, he is concerned about reflecting on the architectural ruins of a place as well as architecture and its relationship to imperialism. Valenzuela poses the question, Why do people have a nostalgia for how things used to be? Valenzuela is aware that the US doesn’t have any ruins or places for learning from their own past. Instead, the US is a country of active denial which is very different from countries such as Mexico, Peru, and Italy. In countries like these, the city is surrounded by ruin everywhere, which can allow people to learn from failure and from the past.

Dana DeGiulio gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking about her interdisciplinary practice as an artist which spans writing, collage, assemblage, painting, performance, and drawing. DeGiulio talks about how her practice is interested in making connections to the real. DeGiulio explores this by having the need to have a structure for her work where she can pour her agitation and grief into and then use that as a building block to construct her practice. This allows DeGiulio to have her practice hold her in a way that provides stability. DeGiulio then speaks about the need to build a genre driven practice. For DeGiulio, being a perceptual painter allows her to look at the environment that she was built in, and built around that environment in order to let the paintings be what she needs them to be. DeGiulio speaks about the material ecology of a studio and work space, and how having something to hold her together allows her to turn her body into a legible gesture, which helps her find the female form; a female form that can be mobilized into a sign, and how that can be a container to explore her painting practice. For DeGiulio, painting is how she takes care of herself in order to be able to attend to things: to feel her guts, breathe, and engage with the reptilian parts of her brain. All of this helps DeGiulio be in the world.

Iman Issa gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking about her artistic practice which spans drawing, photography, sound, sculpture, writing, text, and installation. Issa begins her lecture by posing the following question: how does one represent a personal relationship to the places, events, and figures around oneself and the places one inhabits? Issa explains that when she first moved to New York, she began utilizing her training in photography, and started photographing New York as a way to make the city become familiar. Issa realized that perhaps what she was recognizing in these spaces was not the presence of a familiar element but rather the absence of a distinguishing detail. It was the very emptiness of these spaces that trended them familiar. Issa then states that another question which is a part of her practice is: how does one bring an image of a space into a moment of definition, and how important titles are to her work. For Issa, titles and their relationship to artwork are also connected to her relationship to language ,which is also very similar to her relationship to form and text. Issa then speaks about the importance for her to think about how one can translate a two dimensional form or an image in one’s mind into a three dimensional form. Issa follows these thoughts she has as precisely as possible in order to see what types of responses are generated. Issa then goes on to state the importance she has on herself to be very precise in finding the exact elements in her work in the way that they appeared. Even if sometimes there is an object that appears in her mind as an artist, it can take a long time for Issa to find that object in real life, and Issa has accepted that. Issa ends her lecture by stating that a lot of the forms she creates in her work deal with meaning, which gives her the courage to avoid excess in her work. Sometimes this refusal to avoid excess can make the work become a part of the conversation of minimalism, which Issa is also very interested in.

Interdisciplinary artist and professor Daniel Bozhkov gives a lecture at Skowhegan where he talks about his vast interdisciplinary and pedagogical practice. Bozhkov’s work has always been rooted in collaboration, especially collaborating across a wide range of disciplines: science, physics, mathematics, ecology, music, carpentry, just to name a few. During his lecture, Bozhkov specifically talks about his collaboration with Dr Alu in Austin Texas: where they explored meta materials to learn what make objects partially invisible, and most recently how he has focused his research on creating a circulator of acoustic waves that challenges the theoretical symmetry of the physical laws under time reversal transformation. Bozhkov talks about how interdisciplinary collaborations allow him to sustain his curiosity about the world, and specifically about universities. For Bozhkov, the university is a very special place of gathered expertise and knowledge, but also how one can be in university but not of the university, how is it possible to parasite over systems that were originally created as very racist structures, and how one can utilize something that is already organized and too rigid. Bozhkov continues to speak about collaborative research in his lecture, and how it helps him arrive at ideas that can turn into a type of materialization so one can palpably grasp or experience it in a variety of ways, even if some of those ways are negative. Bozhkov states that the artist is a very unusual type of figure within the culture at large: both almost useless and irrelevant and at the same time– to the people who pay attention– perhaps the only hope for the current state of the world. For Bozhkov, being an artist allows him the ability to shape shift as a natural instinct and face the world and do so accordingly. This allows Bozhkov to be aware of a deep, embodied knowledge of the world’s surroundings and to examine the hyper specificities of the situation he is in. Bozhkov ends his lecture by urging the participants to reflect on three thoughts; the first is that the people who are truly smart and interested in what they do also need to collaborate and work with artists, the second is that philosophy is not wisdom, but it’s the love of wisdom when one is looking for something, and the third is to think about care: how care can extend the scale of what we are doing which doesn’t always been bigger, but maybe smaller as well, for the more one can see care, the more they can connect to it and extract knowledge from it.

Artist Trenton Doyle Hancock gives a lecture at Skowhegan where he talks about his interdisciplinary practice which includes–but is not limited to–printmaking, graphic novels, video, performance, painting, drawing and works on paper, and animation. Some of the core themes in Hancock’s practice are examining narrative, re-narrative, religion, childhood, his relationships to toys, and the exploration of archetypes.

Hancock begins by first talking about his painting and drawing practice, and how he is interested in what the boundaries of support are for a painting or drawing. Hancock then starts talking about how the company he created called “TDH Properties,” allows him to include his vast interdisciplinary practice through animation, toy design, and more creative interests as a way to no longer neglect his other curiosities. Hancock then starts talking about his interest in the graphic novel, and what it would look like to take the graphic novel design into the painting realm. For Hancock, this aesthetic would have to be something physical that offers something the flat page can’t do, which has led to Hancock experimentation with more materials.

Animation is another medium that Hancock discusses at length in his lecture. Hancock particularly reflects on the shape of the square in his animations because they feed off of television references which have also shaped his painting references: sitcoms, cartoons, horror anthologies, etc. Reflecting further on his identity, Hancock probes into what the Black church means for Blackness in America and what this means in terms of buying into the American dream, or, the contract of being an American. Another theme that Hancock reflects on is futurism; which for Hancock is a place where he can be himself when he enters the space of the video game, comic book, or toy culture. Hancock also reflects on themes of perfection and utopianism, which are themes he pushes back against because there will never be a version of truth in these ideologies since they include no acknowledgment of one’s trauma. For Hancock, the idea of heaven is a way to pacify someone into a state of not thinking critically of ones surrounding and themselves, and Hancock’s work is a document of his back and forth with these contradictions. Hancock explains that as he grows older, his work grows with him and he grows with his work. This is a good thing because the work has acted as a mental stabilizer, and it has been Hancock’s therapy and a way for him to create a safe space. Hancock ends his lecture by stating that he knows he is always done with a piece as soon as his hand stops working.

Philosopher, writer, literary critic, and professor Timothy Morton gives a lecture at Skowhegan. Morton begins his lecture by reflecting on what it means to create a meaningful life, and how this is predicated on the possibility of meaning less. For Morton, beauty (which he sees as a fundamentally trans phenomenon), ambiguity, and irony are the ultimate anti-facist death rate chemicals. Morton tells the participants that how they treat each other is how they will treat the biosphere. For Morton, if someone wants to destroy the master/slave template, they also have to destroy the subject/object template which is a function of that. Morton then starts doing meditation exercises with the participants throughout the lecture, and explains how meditation has allowed him to become a pollyanna where he can try to see the good in everything and find overlaps in people rather than contradictions. Whenever Morton is reading, he approaches the pollyanna methodology to also find the gateway to utopia in the literature he reads. Morton then starts reflecting on grief: how grief is the past correctly deployed as a kind of inner body work to give the future a massage so it can be different, and how grief is the one thing in the world that is bigger than one’s ego. For Morton, the anti-chamber of grief is panic which comes from the word pan that means everything. As soon as panic sticks to someone, the grief will come, and eventually the body will learn to relax. Morton ends his lecture by telling the participants that everyone needs to grieve more, and grieve more collectively.

Interdisciplinary artist, activist, and teacher Gregg Bordowitz gives a lecture at Skowhegan. Bordowitz talks about the joy he has found over the years in teaching, activism, video making, writing, drawing, and printmaking. Bordowitz strives to infuse all of his work with radical pedagogy, and this has helped him cultivate his interdisciplinary practice. Bordowitz shares that the greatest joy he has received is by inhabiting genres and mixing them with other genres in his work as an artist. Bordowitz then goes to explain the difference between being a transdisciplinary artist, a multidisciplinary artist, and an interdisciplinary artist. For Bordowitz, being a transdisciplinary artist means being completely interested in defeating and dissolving the boundaries between mediums for the purpose of producing new and emergent forms. A multidisciplinary artist means to wear many hats, work in many mediums and still retain the disciplinary boundaries among mediums. An interdisciplinary artist is someone who bounces off the walls and among defined disciplines to produce friction and conjugation in their respective practices. An interdisciplinary artist also hopes that parts of the defined boundaries and disciplines rub off on each other. Bordowitz is also discusses his investment in exploring notions of stillness in his work which has made him reflect on the ways he approaches his own practice. He then begins to talk about institutions and the role they play in his life. For Bordowitz, no institution is monolithic and no institution is beyond navigation, interrogation and change. Poetry also plays an important role in Bordowitz’s practice, because it has made him reflect on the collective nature of authorship, and the ways in which crisises end, exist, and begin. Bordowitz ends his lecture by stating that the most radical thing art does is that it brings people together and creates audiences that have never imagined themselves sitting together.

Architect, Artist, and Professor Walter Hood gives a lecture at Skowhegan. Some of the themes Hood speaks about in his lecture are the conceptual and physical ways in which he has interrogated ideas around the landscape, how to give landscape meaning and representation, and his attempt to recover things that are often in plain sight. Hood reflects on how his training as a professor, architect, and artist gives him the courage to make work that deals with justice, memory, and history. Hood then begins to speak about the concept of ethno-autobiography, and how for him it is a way to think about his presence on earth as research, and how his story can influence decisions that he makes. Hood also reflects on the role monuments play in our lives, and how societies often build moments to make sure certain historical events don’t ever take place again. Hood states that this reflection on monuments has made him contemplate how we can learn to witness something even if we don’t understand it. Hood ends his lecture by telling the participants that as they continue to change and grow, their work will also change and grow together for the better, in ways that they can’t even begin to anticipate.

Carolyn Lazard gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking about their interdisciplinary practice which spans video, installation, sculpture, writing, photography, sound, among others. Lazard begins their lecture by reflecting on the importance of repetition, and how this has allowed them to approach the way they think about their practice. One such way has been through their exploration of images; particularly with the ways in which images are withheld, the opacity and inclusion of images, and how photographic documentation is not the only way in which an image, memory, or moment in history can exist. Lazard then moves on to talk about subject matter in their practice such as the relationship between exploitation and co-dependency, luxury, excess and wealth, and different conceptual frameworks to approach our understanding of time. Another part of Lazard’s practice is durational performance, and they talk about  the ways in which aesthetic value is produced through testing the physical and psychological stamina of the artist. Lazard asks the participants how we can rethink durational performance and the kind of work artists can do to stay alive and reproduce themselves in the economic system that we are in. Lazard also reflects on how studying the black body has been critical to the development of modern medicine, particularly with the ways in which black people’s reproductive capacity has been the very engine for the United States economy. Lazard continues to focus on economies of care in their work, asking the participants how the media views disabled and chronically ill people, and what it can mean to bring hospitals to museums as a therapeutic gesture. Lazard then speaks about the importance of opacity. For Lazard, opacity means to create art work that feels fundamentally unknowable, which is something they wants to protect. Lazard continues by stating the frustrations they feel as a marginalized artist, due to the demands on them to be more available, legible and clear. Lazard ends their lecture with the hope that art can transform society.

Diane Severin Nguyen gives a lecture at Skowhegan exploring her interdisciplinary practice. Nguyen begins her lecture by examining the role of victimhood; how victimhood prevents people from excavating the body of the other, how victimhood is an impetus for transformation, the relationship victimhood has to power, and how moving away from victimhood as a position allows artists to respond from and require new kinds of movements and ideologies in their practice. Nguyen also reflects on her interest in teenagers because of the impressionability she sees in them as well as the conviction that they possess. Nguyen shares with the participants her collaborative work as well, particularly when working on video installations. Working collaboratively has allowed Nguyen the ability to find political consciousness. Nguyen then talks about her interest in photography, particularly with the way she can make an image as sacred as possible and how images can move from something that is profane to something that becomes sacred. Nguyen continues her exploration into photography, stating that it is the medium that in many ways determines who lives and who dies, how photography is about the momentary and the importance of trying to find the moment in which something new emerges, and how photography is also about revealing what’s inside of the image as well as what is revealed outside of the image and how the outside of the image is important to the composition. Nguyen also reflects on the symbol of the star in her work, and how it is something that recurs throughout her practice, whether it represents an authoritarian state, the aspiring pop star which wants to ascend economically, or the star as a five limbed body; the body being reduced to its limbs.

Ajay Kurian gives a lecture at Skowhegan where he shows a series of slides that looks at his interdisciplinary practice which spans sculpture, collaboration, performance, video, writing, installation, painting, drawing, among others. Kurian explores the role language has played for him as an artist, particularly in his sculptural work, and how this has informed his writing practice. Throughout the lecture, Kurian shows a series of videos and images, and presents his writings to the audience. Kurian’s writing explores many themes, which include but are not limited to critical theory, science fiction, diasporic histories and its intersection with gender, race, geography and class, the politics of animals, plants, food, nature, gardens, autobiography, and pop culture. One of the questions Kurian thinks through his practice is how to be rooted without ground, and how that is connected to his diasporic existence. Kurian speaks on this further, stating that migrations can lead to people no longer recognizing their own roots, and how we can come to terms with being rooted without ground.

Candida Alvarez gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking in depth about her painting and drawing practice. Alvarez explains how painting has always been a process and mystery for her, and how she has tried to approach these mysteries by exploring autobiography and camouflage. Alvarez then speaks about drawing, and how drawing allows her to develop her skillset in composition, particularly with how artists can build; whether it is building structure, an armature, or the bones inside ones body. For Alvarez, the tool that has always taught her composition has been the pencil. Alvarez then goes on to speak about the importance of building texture and pushing scale and surface in her practice. Alvarez arrives at this by working with drawing and layering it over with her painting. Alvarez enjoys the conversations that happen between paintings and drawings, and actively works at not creating a hierarchy between them. Alvarez continues her lecture by stating the importance of letting go of pressure in order to create whatever she wants. Alvarez says that when she lets go of this pressure, she allows herself to follow what she loves, and how painting gives her the freedom to be herself. Alvarez tells the participants how creativity is the most wonderful gift that they can share with one another as human beings, and that in order to be creative, one has to always be courageous and say yes to the things they want for themselves. Alvarez continues her lecture by highlighting the necessity for artists to be sharing by urging them to always find a way to give; it’s not just what artists make, but it’s what they do and how they give back. It can be challenging to be honest with oneself as an artist, but it can be done by taking risks and say yes to the things one wants. Alvarz also reassures the participants by telling them that this is a slow journey; there will be mistakes that will be made but mistakes are always invaluable. They will learn through their mistakes, know that they are never alone, and embrace the community they create for themselves. Alvarez ends her lecture by encouraging the participants to always stay open, trust their intuition and work hard. If artists work hard enough, they will start to realize that there are certain things they are attracted too, and this will guide them in their life as artists.

Shaun Leonardo gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking about his interdisciplinary practice which spans painting, drawing, video, installation, sculpture, performance, social practice, workshops, and collaboration. Some of the themes that Leonardo explores in his work are power, masculinity, spectacle, and failure. Leonardo tells the participants that when he came to Skowhegan himself, he learned how to be present, be a better listener, and find courage to be afraid in order to become a braver person and artist. Leonardo then speaks about some of his collaborative social practice, particularly reflecting on one project where he invited four groups, all who have a unique relationship to the incarceration and criminalization of Rikers Island, whether they were court involved youth, formerly incarcerated individuals, corrections officers, or legal practitioners both in prosecution and defense, to contend and struggle with each other. For Leonardo, social practice has also allowed him to become a better performance artist, because his performances have helped him manifest his struggle with his own self and allowed him to envision his form in order to shed discomfort and fully express his body. Drawing has also helped Leonardo configure questions he has explored in his image-making, particularly through his interest in boxing and fighting. Notions of invisibility and visibility is another theme Leonardo talks about in his practice. For Leonardo, the invisible man always struggles with himself due to his experience of being hyper visible through stereotypes that precede him in any room he enters, and how this hyper visibility can render him invisible, because people just want to see the version they wish too. Leonardo states how this reflection of invisibility and visibility is linked to an experience of blackness that follows him everywhere he goes. Leonardo eventually talks about how he has started to decenter himself and reach outward to call people into his practice, which has allowed him to move further and further into a semantic philosophy starting with the body. This decentering has allowed Leonardo to ask himself a series of questions: how do we locate truth, and how can we find and contend with the lack of humanity in the world? Leonardo then starts to conduct an interactive workshop with the participants, where he leads them to respond to a series of phrases and words through the movement, gesture and posture of their bodies. Leonardo ends his lecture by once again revisiting the idea of truth, by reflecting on how we can locate different types of truths in each other and within ourselves, as uncomfortable as that can be.

Steve Locke gives a lecture talking about his interdisciplinary practice which spans drawing, painting, portraiture, bookmaking, and sculpture. Locke states that his work has always been about love; he paints the people he loves and allows visual art to give him the freedom to explore his sexuality. Locke tells the participants to reflect on the fact that people won’t last, but art will last. This reflection has also made Locke think about the way in which he approaches colour in his paintings. For Locke, colour has been a way of talking about emotion, and not just thinking about it as a system. Locke says that this spiritual connection with painting has made him realize that God makes artists in the world in order to show people the things they need to see, and that artists pay attention to things that are often ignored. Locke then reflects on the history of portraiture, which for him has always been about a history of power. Locke says that this reflection on portraiture has made him ask the following question: How do we make a picture that troubles the sense of masculine power which is baked into portraiture? Locke also reflects on the importance of race in his work, saying how he wants to create art work that includes all people of colour, and to live as an artist without blaming anyone. 

Jason Hirata and Park McArthur present a lecture together talking about their interdisciplinary and writing practices. They begin the lecture by exploring a longstanding theme in their work, examining the relationship between looking at the normal and the banal. The artists talk about how this looking weaves throughout their day to day life. Hirata and McArthur also speak about the presence of artist foundations and estates, especially the ways in which they preserve art work, advocate for art work, and are primarily structured around a solo artist practice. Hirata and McArthur discuss how the estate or foundation model can help create a more social view of art history, so that practices that were once deeply entangled or imbedded within one another as art can be better understood historically or preserved moving forward. McArthur then speaks about printmaking, and how it taught her to see the ways in which artists were making their work together due to the materiality and techniques of printmaking, which exceed one person’s capacity. The lecture then shifts to Hirata who talks about his work as a videographer, working as an editor, producer, and sound designer with other artists who also have wide interdisciplinary practices. The conversation moves back to McArthur who speaks about disability, and how it is something to be proven to an outward arbiter, whether that’s social security, or accommodation, or access in an institutional setting. This has made McArthur realize that there are intractable ways in which art is circulated that can be fetishistic, and how artists can push back against this by through shared practice and methodology.

Constantina Zavitsanos has an interdisciplinary practice that spans sculpture, installation, sound, and text. Zavistanos view themselves as an instrument that produces ideas through their chosen mediums. Zavistanos speaks about the importance of not knowing as an artist and embracing the things they can’t do. They reflect on this further by stating that they have a responsibility to produce a better world even if that means the destruction of the current world’s epistemology. Zavitsanos then tells the participants to reflect on the fact that their life and art are not so distant from each other, and to take seriously how blurry those spaces can be from each other. Other themes that Zavistanos explores in their work are the histories of performance and disability, questions of vagrancy, interference as a way of holding difference at odds, and what it means to resist traditional forms of work and not be able to work. Zavistanos ends their lecture by telling the participants of the importance of always figuring out their own ethics as an artist.

Ahmet Öğüt gives a lecture at Skowhegan where he talks about his interdisciplinary approach to making art which spans sculpture, painting, performance, collaboration, site specificity, drawing, video, text, and social practice. Öğüt talks about his commitment to collaboration in order to explore themes of intervention, humour, and integrity, which he stresses are incredibly important for both artists and art institutions to have. Öğüt talks about the importance of always questioning oneself and how that allows people to continue developing sincerity and integrity as artists. Öğüt stresses that if artists and institutions don’t have these qualities within themselves, they will collapse.

Alison Saar gives a lecture talking about her interdisciplinary practice which spans sculpture, printmaking, found materials, and textiles. Saar explains her relationship to wood carving in particular and how she uses her sculptures to play with scale in order to explore themes of narrative, materiality, the real world and the spirit world, the complexities of identity, and working with the body. Saar talks about the importance of understanding racism and bigotry, and how understanding these complex topics means arriving at the essence of them. Saar explains that once we understand racism and bigotry, we can combat it. Saar also reflects on her love of German expressionism, and how this has guided her in the various themes she is currently exploring in her work, one being paying homage to the invisibility of labor workers–particularly custodial and janitorial staff in hospitals–and where she hopes these themes will take her next as an artist.

Suzanne McClelland gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking about her interdisciplinary practice which spans photography, thinking about photography as text, painting, the book form, writing, sculpture, and installation. For McClelland, looking for transparency and opacity are themes that she is interested in exploring through writing and visual art. McClelland talks about the need for her as an artist to identify things by categories, how to include peripheral vision in one’s work, and thinking about the domestic space as a landscape. McClelland further explores her interest in thinking about what it means to unpack moments missing from history, in particular through an intimate study McClelland conducts of the Southern Poverty Law Center to understand what has been omitted from official narratives. Naming these types of lost histories for McClelland is important, for it becomes as valuable as reproducing or reflecting a body. McClelland also talks about the role that sound plays for her as an artist, acting as her teacher. McClelland mentions the importance that the voice plays with sound, and how it is something that has not been as clearly addressed as the body. For McClelland, sound is also tied to music, especially with the way that music connects her mind and body together. McClelland elaborates further with this, saying that music has the potential to bring people together in ways that can become powerful. McClelland then begins to talk about her painting process, explaining how paintings are made on and with fabric, touching on the history of fresco in particular which acts as a way for her to understand the extraordinary feeling that comes with touching something and the importance of letting surface and material merge. McClelland states that fabric continues to remind her of something that can be used to protect oneself, show who we are with it, be mindful of the surface and weave of the fabric, and be aware of what the cut of a fabric can do to someone’s body. As McClelland continues her lecture, she reminds the participants of the need to always look back on old work; and if one thinks about doing something in a different way, it is important to act on that. McClelland states that this helps her come to terms with the fact that if one person can take some pleasure out of one thing she puts into the world and they have access to it, McClelland can feel a tiny bit of peace. McClelland ends her lecture by telling the participants the importance of listening and acting on what they hear, not wanting to have her friends and family deal with things that should not be here, and making art in a way that can become available in order to allow people to share their thoughts with it in a satisfying manner.

Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme give a lecture at Skowhegan talking about their interdisciplinary practice which spans writing, film, video, installation, and performance. The artists also talk about ideas of sharing and mentorship, which explore the ways in which they think about how to redistribute the sources and information they have access to others around them. At the core of their work is the relationship that the artists have developed to being intentional with their breath; to be aware of their breath and its intimate relationships to the Palestinian condition, which they have been very aware of from a very young age. The artists question what it means to reflect on their presence as Palestinian artists and how that presence is constantly interrogated. The artists draw from the different materials in their work to not just survive but to create new possibilities for themselves. Abbas and Abou-Rahme also reflect on the dangers of colonial time and how it fossilizes everything, closing off the ability to imagine and root oneself in a sense of futurity. However, the artists also say that pointing at the incomplete nature of colonialism can create a sort of resistance, due to the anxiety that this resistance creates for the colonizer when they are forced to reckon with the incomplete nature of their project. The artists ends with saying that this type of reckoning for the colonizer can create spaces of resistance which the artists are interested in occupying, and how that space is haunted by the people who continue to resist colonialism.

Abigail DeVille gives a lecture at Skowhegan spanning her vast, interdisciplinary practice which includes–but is not limited to–painting, sculpture, video, film, photography, installation, costume design, performance, writing, theatre and textiles. At the center of DeVille’s work is the importance of centering love in everything that she does; whether it is in the things she makes, the research she is doing, the story she is trying to tell, the materials she is collecting, the conversations she is having, or the bits of information that seem meaningless but that can ultimately become reshaped and recontextualized in different spaces. DeVille eloquently continues her lecture by explaining the need to dismantle internalized self hatred and to reflect on how the power of words, the power of voice and the power of a message have to carry over generations and plant seeds in people in order for them to understand the ways that they can see themselves.
DeVille continues her lecture by talking about the importance to set her practice up by a series of questions. Some of the questions are: How does DeVille understand history? How can DeVille see differently? What is the truth? What does it mean to make art centered on love? What is a practice of liberation? How can DeVille make space for others? DeVille also draws on the concept of the black hole, exploring the ways in which it can be seen as a metaphor for historical erasure. DeVille draws on this metaphor to think about invisible histories and invisible conversations and using this form as a compositional device to talk about things that are glaringly evident or histories that are not named. DeVille explores these ideas further by reflecting on the notion of the unchartered interior chaos; how there’s an infinite amount of unknowingness embedded in all of us and how we can draw on this to question how much we actually understand ourselves, our intentions, the decisions that we make from day to day, the things that we ingest, what things stick, what things we throw away consciously or unconsciously and all of the factors that make us who we are in the moment. These kinds of reflections have allowed DeVille to have a deeper recognition of self. DeVille continues her lecture by talking about the revolutionary impulses that live within all of us, and how this allows her to reflect on the future in a way that acknowledges both the past and the present. As the lecture comes to a close, DeVille reflects on the importance of an artist’s role to question why the world and the society has become the way it is, to think about how to tell a story that has been purposely smudged out through the material waste of the present, and how this has to do with consumption and desire; particularly to be aware of the ways in which there are forms of slavery put into place that give us pleasure whether we are consciously or unconsciously thinking about it. DeVille closes her lecture to once again returning to the idea of love; how for DeVille research is love, reading is love, sharing information with people is love, and tricking people into learning new things or creating new experiences for people is a loving act.

Kota Ezawa gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking about his interdisciplinary practice which spans drawing, painting, animation, sculpture, video, and music. Ezawa begins his lecture by talking about the importance for him to approach video as a sculptural medium and how working with photographs and translating them to digital drawings has allowed him to work with obsolete and new technology. This translation that can happen helps Ezawa to heighten the emotional content of a photograph that is now presented as a digital drawing. Ezawa talks about his process of studying historical images which he observes is something that people have been doing forever through borrowing and remixing. Ezawa particularly mentions the Pictures generation, and how they were able to create a natural evolution of image making through remixing, sampling, appropriating, and borrowing. Ezawa says that by picking images he finds important, he gives himself the freedom to allow these images to become a part of a permanent record and to document things very effectively. Ezawa states how painting and drawing can be a super effective way to document things, and how they possess a power that drives people to want to build collections out of them. For Ezawa, his digital drawings have also led to him creating animations, and the ways in which he chooses his subject matter very intuitively in order to learn alongside the viewer. Ezawa’s animations allow him to think about flatness which he is interested in exploring as a surface. Ezawa continues his lecture, explaining how his work is driven by the need to understand the ways in which journalism and non-fiction can be used to recreate moments from history. Ezawa discusses his relationship to sound and image, and how for him, the two work best when they have an interesting relationship which can lead to moments of tension and conflict. Ezawa ends his lecture by commenting on differences between blue collar artists and white collar artists, the inherent ways in which art by itself is political, his commitment to practicing as an artist in the United States because of the art and music that has flourished here, and how making art is no longer just about himself but about the the interaction and dialogue with the viewer.

Kukuli Velarde gives an intimate lecture at Skowhegan talking about her relationship to Peru as a Peruvian-American artist. For Velarde, thinking about her work as creating documents has led her to also give importance to valuing the idea over the object. Throughout the lecture, Velarde dances to Peruvian music and shows images of her performances, paintings, and ceramics. Velarde reflects on the history of Peru as a continuum and how Peruvian culture is like a river; one can redirect Peru’s past but one can never direct its waters. Velarde explores the ways in which her work has continued to think about the consequences of European invasions and the intricate cultural strategies of resistance and negotiations, especially that of the original inhabitants of Peru. Velarde states the ways in which her aesthetic practices have been dismissed, erased, or belittled by the dangers of colonialism and how Velarde fights back against this through her refusal to engage in art historical, theoretical and literary movements that deny her existence as an artist. Velarde also talks about the role that motherhood has played in her work, and how the pain of separation from her daughter can be read as the pain of separation that happens within the political landscapes of the US-Mexico Border. Velarde ends her lecture by telling the participants how she has arrived at being okay with the impossibility of knowledge and dealing with the unknown.

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.

Lonnie Holley and Matt Arnett have an intimate conversation about Holley’s experience overcoming the barriers, struggles, and prejudices he faced growing up in Alabama to become the internationally renowned self taught artist he is today. While the two speak to one another, a slideshow plays in the background of Holley’s visual art. Holley also shows moments from his film and video work, and speaks about the many lessons he learned that shaped him into the artist he is today, particularly lessons from his grandmother who imparted to him not to be afraid and relinquish fear. Holly states how the love he experienced from his grandmother shaped his commitment to children, education, and always visiting schools. Throughout the lecture, Holley sings and plays music and shares many words of wisdom with the participants, whether it is to always build a community to give and draw strength from, not to get so caught up in a type of love that can strangle you, and to share love as a force of generosity and responsibility. Holley talks about the kinship he feels between being a musician and a visual artist, and how the two are like siamese twins, operating in order to support one another. Holley also tells the participants to use their talents and what they have in order to get what they need, to learn how to give and educate oneself, and not to waste time dwelling in jealousy, animosity, and greed. Holley ends his lecture by stating that he uses the love that he has received from the people around him who have uplifted him and has transferred this into his art.

Sam Moyer gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking about her sculptures, installations, paintings, prints, and drawings. At the core of Moyer’s lecture is the idea of transformation; how can one make the photograph as a sculpture, the sculpture as photograph and how do we relate our work to the body and the space in order to let them be multiple things at once? Moyer is also interested in text, thinking about how to take a found object and translate it through writing, particularly poetry. Moyer reflects on what it means to unpack ideas of appropriation and other people’s images, and to choose images that work in a repetitive way in order to create more of an equality for the photograph among other materials. Moyer reminds the participants to try and give themselves credit for the work that they are doing. Moyer tells the participants that they will always be making choices and decisions that will help them figure out the composition and crops that are interesting to them. Moyer also states the importance of taking risks, respecting their work, and not to transfer ideas of self worth onto their work. Moyer then begins to talk about the theme of erosion in her work and the importance that this plays for her as an artist to understand how to take things apart in order to build something new and the power that this holds in revealing the mechanism of something. For Moyer, exploring erosion allows her to reflect on themes of gravity, time and the illusion of weightlessness vs weight. Moyer states that when she presents her paintings, she strives to create a feeling that the human can respond too and can relate to their body. Moyer then shifts gears and talks about the program she works on with her husband–artist Eddie Martinez– entitled Free Arts NYC which is a not-for-profit that works to empower youth in underserved communities through art and mentoring programs.

Beatriz Santiago Muñoz gives a lecture talking about her practice which mostly spans film and video. For Muñoz, a way in which she needs to and is attracted to the use of a camera as a social object is because of the ways that it provokes the possibilities of relations and third subjectivities that are not possible otherwise. Muñoz states how responding with and thinking to a place requires her to break up her own notions of thinking. Muñoz tells the participants of the awareness she has of her identity as a thoroughly colonized human being, and how this forces her not to trust what she sees as a neutral image, leading her to put obstacles in front of the ways in which she is trained to see. Muñoz also comes from thinking with the place of the Caribbean which requires her to experiment. This experimentation allows Muñoz to become interested in the living that occurs between the ocean and the shore, and how this occupies a space that is much more bigger and monstrous when one is so directly affected by the rise of the ocean or the hurricane. Muñoz continues her lecture by showing clips from her video and film work, explaining to the artists the ways in which she is interested in transformations that appear in our unconscious, and how she uses the process of the unconscious to explore displacement and condensation. Another theme that Muñoz shares with the participants is her relationship to debt; what one owes, how it dictates the possibility of future life, and how living outside of debt can lead to death or escape. Muñoz explores the theme of debt further, asking what it means to be completely excluded from even the conception of participating in an economy, and how not owning anything means that one doesn’t exist at all. Muñoz ends her lecture by stating that thinking about art making allows her to have an encounter with the world which can lead to improvising and how this improvisation can create a type of experience and alertness that the artist is ultimately interested in using for her film and video work.

Linda Goode Bryant gives an experimental lecture at Skowhegan, where she talks about her many decades of work as an interdisciplinary artist, gallerist, writer, film-maker, and community organizer. Goode Bryant begins her talk by creating a space for the participants to question the hierarchical model of the traditional artist lecture, and instead creating a space where they can talk amongst one another that goes underneath the conversation in order to arrive at a place of respect and love. Goode Bryant speaks about the early days of her legendary gallery, Just Above Midtown, and how it became a space that taught her how to care for herself by learning how to care for others. Goode Bryant stresses the importance of Just Above Midtown being a space that had the freedom, arrogance and power to not be defined by dominant structures. Goode Bryant talks about the many exhibitions and programs she had at the gallery, and how it taught her to seek out the good rather than avoiding the bad. One of the biggest resources Just Above Midtown had was debt, which allowed the gallery to flourish because there was no opportunity cost in the kinds of programs and exhibitions that the space cultivated. Goode Bryant also shows an archival film that depicts some of the many artists who participated in Just Above Midtown, including David Hammons and Senga Nengudi to name a few. Following the screening, a discussion takes place where participants use the history of space and geometry as an entry point to have an intimate conversation around power, desire, things that are not seen, the transience yet permanence of building, and nurturing and supporting one another in times of precarity. The participants ask questions and share many thoughts and responses amongst one another, such as reflecting on what it means to live in times of dominant structures, and how one can think about changing the problematic nature of dominant structures. Other questions that are asked are: How can artists imagine something different for themselves, and what are some of the resources artists can have to create that? How can workers fight back against some of the exploitative and abusive ways in which universities treat their adjunct teachers? How can artists operate from a place of abundance rather than a place of lack? How can artists deconstruct their inherent privileges and oppressions? Once the participants finish speaking, Goode Bryant elegantly ends the conversation by stating that there is joy in this room, even if joy is not something that is being talked about. Goode Bryant states the importance of not losing sight of joy and to hold tight to the possibility of something different; that acting as opposed to too much talking is what gets work done. Ultimately it is one’s actions that dictate what artists can do.

Steve DiBenedetto gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking about his painting and drawing practice. DiBenedetto talks about the idea to explore ruptured moments and historical cultural conflicts as an entry point into creating his work. DiBenedetto often combines two different resources that he is drawn to in his work to create antidotes that can operate within the trajectory of art history and music, one example being pairing the work of Paul Cezanne with Led Zeppelin. This process has led DiBenedetto to become interested in speed and motion in his paintings, which allow him to also explore a relationship with the viewer where both the artist and the viewer can see speed and motion as something slow.

Chitra Ganesh gives a lecture talking about her interdisciplinary artistic practice spanning drawing, painting, writing, comic books, performance, installation, sculpture, sound, and textiles. Ganesh, a Skowhegan alumni from 2001, also shares experiences of her time as a participant, reflecting on how Skowhegan was the place that taught her how to step outside of her comfort zone and cultivate new skills as an artist. Ganesh recounts her earliest memories of encountering visual art to the participants; when she was a young child growing up in New York City and was presented with constant visual encounters and interventions in public spaces. Ganesh remembers noticing how ephemeral works occupied space through being hand drawn and inscribed onto advertisements, as well as her exposure to a lexicon of icons and objects drawn from Hindu/Buddhist iconographies and Bollywood posters. This led to Ganesh’s practice slowly evolving to her interest in the cyclical nature of time and the space of the gutter: where science fiction and myth meet as a way to bring submerged stories to the future. Ganesh ends her lecture by focusing on two recent projects: one at the Rubin Museum and one at The Kitchen, and reflects on how she continues to search for and find gaps and fissures in her visual experiences as an artist, dissecting and reassembling disparate images that stay with her.

Artist Sung Hwan Kim shows a series of film screenings and participates in an intimate conversation with the participants. His video work touches upon many ideas which include his relationship to South Korea, architecture, culture, and language formation. Kim probes at the question of asking what people are observing when they spend time with a work of art through the most basic of intuitions. Kim seeks to find signifiers of how people perform bodily reactions when looking for something in a story. This methodology of working has led Kim to see the world being built as a structure that is nurturing and full of posterity.

Sondra Perry gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking about her interdisciplinary practice which spans ceramics, animations, performance, installation, sound and video. At the Core of Perry’s work is this interest to try and understand what it means to be a vessel, and how her work can be used to create a psychic space through movement, chaos, and a reflection on her own autobiography. Perry is interested in working with video’s materiality to create a solid firmness of moving images which has also led to her interest in screens and projections. Perry also talks about her interest in video projection as a way to bring large groups of black people together and how these groups can become obscured. This process has allowed Perry to reflect on the importance of care, myth, and lies. Perry says that the longer we build relationships with people we work with, the more they can surprise us. This observation has led Perry to deepen her interest in what people are doing inside of images which is separate from portraiture. This has led her to the acknowledgment that their identity is theirs. Perry also talks about her projects leading her to dismantle binary ideas around good vs. evil and truth vs. lies, because this can lead to communities of colour creating commonalities with white people so healthy conversations can begin. Perry ends the lecture by talking about two projects. The first one is a work she made entitled Resident Evil where she became interested in the body and architecture, leading her to reflect on images. The second project Perry talks about is her role critiquing the flow of money in the institution of the MoCA in Cleveland. Perry uses the MoCA in Cleveland to talk about how Museums can be seen as a body that is infested with Bacteria, and how structure of a modern business can be directly related to how plantations are run. She uses the former land of MoCA Cleveland which was red-lined and exists through the suppression of Black communities. 

Interdisciplinary artist Lan Tuazan gives a lecture at Skowhegan focusing on the last 10 years of her practice. Her work– which spans photography, sculpture and installation– looks at history and space as a way to occupy the social. Tuazan tells the participants that as artists, we are always historically bounded and will continue to arrive at moments in history at particular times. Tuazan also reflects on her interests in the structures of ideology and how she sees it as something founded on an economic base held up by the cultural state apparatus to reproduce power. Tuazan explores these ideas by mentioning a long term project she is working on entitled The Trilogy. Other interests Tuazan reflects on during her lecture are the way artists form their relationship to space and urban planning, thinking about artefacts and the cultural apparatus of museums, how museums represent culture, geology, cross sampler splicing, and coming to terms with the fact that nothing remains fixed.

Teresita Fernández gives a lecture at Skowhegan of her interdisciplinary practice spanning sculpture, video, installation, and photography. Fernández roots her lecture in an ongoing interest in landscape: a landscape that is not passive but seeing the landscape as an idea where one can have larger conversations about place. Fernández tells the participants the importance of always recalibrating where we are and who we are as artists. She frames this question of where we are culturally, racially, socially, historically, geographically, psychologically, and environmentally. Fernández says that sometimes turning one’s back to something as a way of seeing can help unveil what we don’t see. It can lead to us anthropomorphizing the landscape. She uses this notion of turning away to inject vulnerability in her studio practice. Fernández is also interested in blindness and how it is more about not seeing an erasure. One can rephrase blindness in terms of the variety of not seeing: shadows, darkness, inaccessibility, cloaking, peaking, squinting, hiding, camouflaging. Fernández ends her lecture by reflecting on the material of gold in her work. Fernández seeks to use gold as a way to refer to the colonization of history and as a material that is always about the history of landscape, land, conquest, power and erasure. Ultimately for Fernández, the notion of the landscape as a human continues to contain collective and erased memory. 

Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade– two thirds of My Barbarian– give a lecture at Skowhegan talking about their individual and collaborative practices spanning the last 19 years. Their work is rooted in looking at performances in different national contexts from the 1960s which borrowed liberally and promiscuously from international national leftist politics, importing them to specific black political contexts. Gaines also talks about his current trajectory as a professor and writer, and Segade talks about his project of exploring a science fiction narrative about intergalactic colonization. The two artists reflect on My Barbarian being a space where they can respond to spectacles and play with a received understanding for how narrative unfolds in their work. Other notions of interest in their work includes questions around cultural appropriation, seeing genre as a tool to play with questions that are quotational, referential and research based, the relationship between theatre and politics, and the importance of working with groups. Gaines and Segade then go onto talk about how My Barbarian is working with a project called the post living anti-action theatre which adapts political theatre sets to learn how to collaborate with a larger group and the pros and cons of scaling up. My Barbarian ends their lecture playing music for the participants and creating a group exercise for all of them to perform. 

Artist and filmmaker Lucy Raven gives a lecture at Skowhegan showing a series of films and slides. Raven is concerned with ideas of how one can be seen through the many fragmented lens of colonialism, power, and state violence. Raven is interested in how these ideas can be related to materials ranging from many different sources she draws from including: the imaginary fantasy of Hollywood to the production of global copper in China and Nevada. Raven ends her lecture in a desire she has to create a horror film that resists a narrative to resolve something and instead focus on one’s daily experiences of horror.

Artist Juan Sánchez gives a lecture at Skowhegan spanning his photography, collage, and painting practice. Sánchez talks about his experiences growing up in New York being influenced by the muralist art he saw in the city depicting Black and Brown communities. Sánchez also talks about his formal process: how he layers his paints and prints to add a richness so viewers can engage with the work but also contend with the issue that he is addressing: colonialism, identity, and social issues. 

Silvia Federici gives a lecture talking about the exploitative nature of Capitalism through a historical and feminist lens. Federici talks about the period of the Witch-Hunt in the middle ages, linking it to the rise of the capitalist system, the start of the slave trade, and the beginning of peasants having their lands taken away from them. Federici reflects on the importance of re-appropriating wealth so societies can reorganize the way they reproduce themselves based on cooperation and community, and not through the exploitation of human labor for wealth which has led to isolation, fragmentation, and alienation. Federici comments on how the US is the leading country in the world on how to separate people, and how this can be resisted by documenting and building a collective memory of past struggles. For Federici, the importance to re-appropriate history from below can lead to one coming to terms with the past and develop solidarity with the living and the dead.

Josephine Halvorson talks about the importance of observational painting and how it has become a record for her to create experiences in real time. Throughout the lecture, Halvorson uses personal anecdotes that have shaped her painting practice, whether it is through her travels, her days as a student, or her continued engagement with art history. Halvorson also reflects on the sense of duty that she embodies with having a pedagogical practice, especially with the importance to preserve and transmit knowledge. 

Through engaging with sculpture, site-specificity, and installation, Dave Hardy’s practice speaks on ideas around family histories, ideas around moving, and the possibility of bringing art to people through engaging with local communities. For Harris, thinking about structure is also important, giving the artist the chance to reflect on objects that are tenuous and the tenuousness of material (foams, glass, metal). Hardy also reflects on his time as a participant at Skowhegan, and how that experience allowed him to develop his interests in labour, craft, and work, leading him to think about what it truly means to be an artist. 

Simon Leung centers his talk around creating a politics of difference and ethics, and what that has meant for him in his practice. Throughout the lecture, Leung shows slides of his work engaging with various media including site specificity, video, photography, opera, and his twenty year collaboration with the artist Warren Niesłuchowski. As the lecture unfolds, Leung allows the listener to understand how ethics and difference have intersected with the many projects throughout his oeuvre, also illustrating the various politics he was involved in at different stages in his life as an artist. 

Throughout Jeanine Oleson’s lecture, she reflects on her interdisciplinary practice and the important ways in which this practice has been shaped through collaboration. Olson reflects on thinking about the audiences and their role as witnesses, and using performance as a way to connect to each other through language and place. Oleson also speaks about the importance the movement of information has through material, resisting singular forms of making connected to documentary form, and recent participatory projects where she interviews ordinary people’s preparedness for catastrophe.

Artist Henry Taylor uses the approach of autobiography and portraiture to guide his lecture at Skowhegan. Throughout the lecture, Taylor plays music, and shows slides of his paintings, drawings and sculptures. Some personal anecdotes that he reflects on to talk about how his practice has been shaped include the influence of family and friends, oral history, the landscape of the United States and his travels to experience different continents and cities. 

Julieta Aranda reflects on the ways in which having a conceptual practice has allowed her to deal with issues around time paradoxes, power structures, and systems of representation. Throughout the lecture, Aranda shows a series of drawings, films and photographs over the last twelve years. Aranda further reflects on different systems of representation with a specific focus on images that don’t meet the eye, how to map out images and ideas through equations and data, and the ways in which dealing with the boundaries of history has allowed Aranda to challenge her own performance with history. Aranda ends her lecture with thinking about how artists can align themselves with larger systems of measurement, and contemplating on science fiction futures that don’t quite materialize. 

Film-maker Kevin Everson talks about his process as an artist through showing his photographs and films. Everson reflects on how he originally started taking photographs with a wide lux camera, using 35mm film and repositioning the frames of his photographs to include people of african descent posing, performing with objects of representation, or making art. Everson later on makes the switch to films, talking about themes in his work which range from duration, labour, class structure and the importance of materiality. Throughout the lecture Everson also reflects on the importance of working with subject matter that comes from found footage, and the need to also sometimes reenact found footage.

Fritz Haeg begins his lecture by talking about the importance of conversations artists should have with one another, building community, and the role artists have to play in nurturing the people they allow into their lives. Throughout the lecture Haeg spoke about his time as an architect living in Los Angeles inside a geodesic dome, and his interest in ecology, gardens, design, and performance. Haeg also reflected on the travels he did as an artist, spending time in 15 different cities and planting gardens for families. Haeg then spoke about his current trajectory as an artist, living in Salmon Creek Farm, a plot of land purchased in 2014 which he now operates as a commune-farm-homestead-sanctuary-school hybrid. Haeg also spoke about the role Salmon Creek farm has played in his life in thinking about the global art complex, creating a space that surpasses individual projects and utopian thinking, and channeling the energy he feels as an artist into production and change.

Artist Lyle Ashton Harris reflects on the history of Skowhegan and reminds the current participants about the importance of building connections there as a way to create stability for what to come next. Harris shows slideshows of his photographs to the soundtracks of Grace Jones, reflecting on family relationships and a documentation of his life from the late 1980s and early 1990s. For Harris, photographs allow him to explore the power of archives and their ability to offer counter narratives. Mural printing is another form that Harris works with as a way to deal with language, notions of ambivalence, the idea of mirroring, and collaboration. Harris reflects on the romantic notion of African American identity and how it keeps him connected to communities in other geographical places, while also placing him a little bit on the outside through his queerness. Harris then reflects on what it means to appropriate icons, giving them elasticity through sculpture, photography, and installation. Finally, Harris ends his lecture talking about the power of art to claim a space that once wasn’t given, and how this can lead to thinking about the past as a way to reimagine the future and create an organic element of coming together.

Fred Moten structures his talk around the importance of having a writing practice that resides in an interstitial space. Moten defines this space as the difference between writing with and writing about, and how this has allowed him to write with works, write alongside with works, and explore collaboration. Throughout the lecture, Moten plays music, reads from his various written pieces, reflects on work that has inspired him, and shares personal anecdotes. Moten ends his talk by stressing the importance of always practicing; and how being in practice allows him to think in relation to spontaneity.

Anicka Yi uses a scholarly approach and an open ended discussion to give a lecture that creates a thinking process of her ideas in an intimate manner. Yi structures her talk around the evolution and changing conception of the human species, also dwelling on what the function and value of the human species lie in the current present and going forward into the future. Yi reflects on how these conceptions of the human species have changed through many ways, including but not limited to the digitization of human life, biocolonialism, and the growth of genetic fetishization.

Artist Angela Dufresne gives a lecture where she shows a series of paintings, drawings, videos, and performances. Dufrense centers her lectures around the need for paintings to be seen as a social practice. Throughout the lecture, Dufresne speaks about family histories, the complex relationships between the importance of radical empathy, the importance for artists to constantly push boundaries, and the important roles painters play in making work that can sustain time.

Interdisciplinary artist Torkwase Dyson gives a lecture thinking about ideas around infrastructure, architecture, nomadic practices, political abstraction, the body, and the more specific connections these have with black history and spatial politics. Showing a series of sculptures, drawings, paintings, installations, and video work, Dyson continues to reflect on the body as being a placeholder to understand the complexities of slavery, and as a site for geography.

William E Jones begins this lecture by playing the music of Maria Callas, Greek American Opera Singer. The lecture is then broken into two parts. The first part of the lecture is a screening of Jones’ film, Fall into Ruin which tells the story of Jones’ relationship with Alexander Iolas, a Greek art dealer. The second part of the lecture is an open conversation between the participants and Jones. Some of the topics that get discussed include preservation vs ruins, oral history, and seeing different types of linear time when looking through archives. 

Artist Dave McKenzie gives a lecture speaking about his performances, sculptures, and installations. Throughout the lecture. McKenzie also talks about the impact being a Skowhegan participant had on him in 2000, showing a piece he made during that time and how it has become meaningful for him. McKenzie also talks about his body as a tool for language, and how making a work of art is akin to the process of surviving and negotiating. This thought process has allowed Dave to understand the necessary importance of not taking being an artist for granted. As the lecture continues, McKenzie also reflects on the relationships between visibility and hyper visibility, appearing and disappearing, and how developing a writing practice has allowed him to think about the similarities it has with his drawing practice. 

Interdisciplinary artist Dean Moss gives a lecture that shows a series of his videos, collaborative work, and performance pieces. Moss’s work covers a range of ideas that have arisen both from individual and collective thought processes with himself and fellow artists. Moss speaks about the many collaborative works he has done with artists as a way to think through different sets of ideas; whether with Laylah Ali it is the relationship with the black box and the white cube, or exploring ideas of eroticism and exploitation with Yoon Jin Kim. Moss reflects on the relationship that also develops between audience participation and the community of artists that engage with his work through performance. 

Interdisciplinary artist Mario Ybarra Jr gives a lecture that covers his wide-ranging practice over the years which has incorporated drawing, painting, sculpture, site-specificity, social practice, and collaboration, among other mediums. Ybarra Jr begins his lecture by reflecting on the six key mandates that have allowed him to develop an artistic practice: Intent, content, context, production, distribution, and documentation. Yabarra Jr shares personal anecdotes of on his experiences growing up in Wilmington California, reflecting on larger ideas of identity, class structure, and family history. For Jr, being an artist is seeking to express a notion of freedom, and to use art as a vehicle for our ongoing education that can lead to always being a life-long learner.

In this lengthy lecture, interdisciplinary artist Nayland Blake gives a comprehensive view of their artistic practice, showing over 200 slides of their work. Touching on themes of identity politics, sexuality, social practice, and collaboration, Blake consistently asks themselves what are the things in their life that they are not letting into the work, and what happens when they allow external forces to become a part of their life and work. Blake also talks about design language in their practice, whether it is with BDSM or sculpture, and how for them, working with objects has given them the ability to express a rhetoric of functionalism. Blake then tells the participants the importance of giving themselves constant art assignments and having a daily drawing practice as a way to always think through ideas.

In this intimate lecture through slides and conversations, Ron Gorchov speaks about is life as an artist, his many years in New York, and the work of other artists who have had an impact on him. Gorchov touches upon the development of the art world, and how it has now functioned in a way that wouldn’t exist without the legacy of Skowhegan. Gorchov also speaks to the legacy of constructive criticism that he has received over the years from his colleagues, and the importance that this can have on an artists development. Gorchov mentions that this intensive feedback has allowed him to go beyond himself as an artist, and that it can lead to the psychological changes all artists can embrace. Finally, Gorchov advises the participants that if they really have a desire to do something, they will find a way to do it. 

Ralph Lemon starts his lecture by doing a reading for the participants, while a video projection is played behind him. Lemon speaks about his ongoing experiment with movement, performance and body work; the fragility of his existence, and how all of these ideas intertwine with Lemon reflecting on socio-political histories, whether it is the date the Black Panther Party was founded, to constant incidents of police violence in the United States. Lemon uses these socio-political histories as a way to talk about the profound sadness and horror of slavery, the need to always reflect on rage, and seeing race as a material to think about using in the studio. Lemon also speaks about his complex relationship and exchange with Bruce Nauman’s wall floor positions 1965, starts a conversation with the faculty, staff and participants about Dana Schutz, and urges the participants to find their own open casket, in reference to Schutz’s controversial painting at the 2017 Whitney Biennale. 

Through a series of printmaking, drawings, and paintings, artist Judith Linhares gives an autobiographical lecture that reflects on themes of personal narratives, geographical landscape, and family histories. Themes of pedagogy, domesticity, populism, and feminism are also ideas that entered Linhares’s practice as an artist throughout the 1960s during her years of teaching in Oakland public schools and the 1970s. Linhares reflects on external influences that have continued to impact her practice as an artist, whether it is her relationships to comic book illustrators to painters such as Poussin and Matisse. Linhares also mentions the desire she has to create paintings that is for everyone. Being raised in an egalitarian, working class, pro-labour environment are beliefs Linhares holds onto, as she comments on global themes of hierarchy, power, and authority which she notes seem to have grown to prominence. 

Eileen Myles begins their lecture by talking about their experiences living as young poet in New York during the 1970s, their years as a professor at USCD, and the important, deep relationship they had developed with their late dog, Rosie, which continues to live on long after Rosie’s death. Eileen also talks about the act of writing as a form of visual art and performing, and does a reading of some of their written works. Myles talks about the importance of titling their writing, and the power that can come in claiming a poem through the title. Myles reflects on how their writing has turned into a practice of thinking out loud to the page and the rituals that arise from this relationship.

Interdisciplinary artist Wu Tsang speaks about her practice that weaves in video, performance, and grassroots activism. For Tsang, voice, reenactment and appropriation are all ideas that help shape her work. Voice in particular allows Tsang to address questions of representation and questions around liveness and images, allowing her to reflect on the fantasy of community; a fantasy that Tsang has come to realize can only at times exist temporarily through these act of representation. For Tsang, exhibiting her work in a white cube setting and dealing with institutional contexts of art viewing has led to all kinds of gazes being attached. Tsang also talks about her ongoing collaboration with Fred Moten, and the importance of constantly discussing ideas about art with a community. Tsang’s conversations with Fred in particular has led to the two of them coining a phrase entitled “devotional documents”: image making as a ritual practice. Tsang comments on this phrase as a way to allow people to see the image as being a window that provides a possibility of capturing our sociality as not something that is always accurate, but as something that can be lovingly distorted in order to add new truths. 

Artist Yael Bartana gives a lecture talking about her interdisciplinary practice rooted in film and language, and how these ideas are used in her work to approach a wider audience. Throughout the lecture, Bartana screens a series of her films, and speaks about ideas around history, politics, propaganda and the need to foster a political imagination through revisiting collective memories of nation and state. Baritone talks about how these connections in her work have ultimately led her to think as a way to imagine new realities. Bartana also talks about the need to focus on narratives of women in collective histories, collective vs individual state rituals, propaganda as a way to act towards reality, and ying symbolism to critique nationalism history.

Artist Louis Cameron begins his talk by honouring the victims of the pulse Nightclub massacre, reading their names to everyone. Cameron then begins his lecture reflecting on his own trajectory of being apart of Skowhegan through many years: as a participant, then a dean, and now apart of the faculty. Cameron speaks about his interdisciplinary practice spanning painting, found material, drawing and collage. Whether it is the graffiti murals, to Cameron’a series of Monochrome paintings exploring them of surveillance, to a series of portraits he constructed entitled Have you Seen us, that viewers would normally find on milk cartons. Cameron’s work touches upon issues of power, race, history, and privilege. 

In this lengthy Lecture, Interdisciplinary artist and curator Robert Gober talks about his upbringing attending Middlebury College as a student and then making the move to New York City in the 1970s. Gober talks about this decade as an artist, and how painting became an economic means of making work. This also allowed Gober to become more interested in imagery then painting. Gober also reflects on the doll house series, and how for him it connected to larger ideas of autobiography, and the symbolism of houses. Gober goes on to talk about the physicality of making objects in the world as something simple, human, and primal that allows for things to be recreated again to exist. Gober also speaks about his role as a curator, and how it allows him to bring in new sensibilities that being an artist didn’t reward him. 

Interdisciplinary artist Piero Golia talks about his practice rooted in collaboration and participatory art. Golia talks about his experiences navigating being an artist in LA, and focuses particularly on his individual practice as well as his collaborative practice, specifically the Bar Mountain School. The project Bar Mountain School, started in LA at the back of a bar with Eric Wesley, was a way for Golia and Wesley to invite fifteen students who invite artists to create an easy platform of access for everyone. This project has also allowed Golia to think about making work without too many didactic choices. 

George Lewis talks about his practice as an interdisciplinary artist, composer and musicologist, and how this practice is rooted in his interests in Oral history and Ethnography. Lewis also speaks about the importance of site specificity for him as an artist, whether it is working with the toilet tap and water industries of Houston to create collaborative installation work, or looking at the power dynamics between the San Diego Arts and Culture Commission and the Metropolitan Waste Water District. Lewis then goes on to talk about his work with audio and sound installation, drawing upon ideas of cultural fluency to create vivid portraits of rural southern life among African Americans during the depression, the Great Migration to the urban North, and the troubled racial history of the United States.

Interdisciplinary artist Joanna Malinowska begins her lecture at Skowhegan by talking about a video piece she made for the 2012 Whitney Biennal, and how that particular video has allowed her to think about creating work that finds different ways to appropriate elements from a range of different ideas: whether they be historical ideas such as the gold mine rush in the United States, her time spent in the Yukon, Canada, drawing on soft sculpture as an interest in anthropology and ethnography, site specificity whether in New York or Poland, or collaborating with a range of different people ranging to create work. Malinowska also talks in length about her project for the Venice Biennale, where she collaborated with three colleagues to go to the village of Cazale in Haiti and present the Polish Opera Halka, intertwining her interests in colonial histories, site specificity, and using film and installation as a way to capture these performances and stories. 

In this lecture, Nicole Miller talks about her work as a video artist showing a series of videos. For Miller, the aspect of screening and shooting is a big part of the work, for it allows a new type of art experience to be created through the way representation and images are related. Miller also views looking through the lens as looking at a mirror. Miller talks about active viewing, and how it can reach into a new reality. For Miller, the screen is not a sounding board of reality but an influencer of reality. This allows Miller to hopefully give the viewer a chance to be more actively aware and less in a dreamlike state. Miller also uses the idea of documentary as a divide in her work, pointing out the influences of images and representation into the real world. Miller is also a true believer of the use of images and representation, for it allows her to use the document of someone talking about a past trauma and connect it to bigger ideas of the real and the reality, and how this is affected by images.

Rebecca Morris begins the lecture by talking about her own experiences as a participant in Skowhegan 22 years ago, and the impact that it had on her as an artist for years to come. Morris then talks about her painting practice exploring ideas of how one can mark time with date, as well as the many mediums she works with to construct her paintings: watercolour, solvent, oil. Morris then goes on to talk about the importance of revisiting paintings, and how old work can reveal vital information that can lead to new dynamism in her work. Morris also talks about the need to photograph a lot in the studio as her paintings are happening, for it allows her to see how colour continues to change.

Carl Ostendarp talks about his artistic practice rooted in painting. Through a series of slides, Ostentarp talks about painting for him as a way of representing a third space, which is not rooted in representation but rather a vocabulary of symbols. Ostendarp also talks about the pictorial language for him being rooted in pop, minimal and colourfield vocabularies, and how he employs it to produce an immediacy of responses. Throughout his lecture, Ostendarp also references Black Sabbath and Edgar Allan Poe as being poetic sources for his work. Ostendarp also talks about his wife, the painter Gail Fitzgerald, and their collaborative work together which allowed them both to think about presence, scale and materiality as painters, and how this has allowed them to see how colloquial symbols can turn intimate. Ostendarp also reflects on the importance for him to think about the same thing a lot, so it can give him the freedom to have a clearer idea of how things need to be as an artist. 

Artist Paul Pfeiffer begins his lecture talking about his relationship to printmaking, photography, sound and video, and how it has always led him to be drawn to the idea of mechanical reproduction. Pfeiffer talks about the mediation of a machine or a technology that comes between the hand and the image, and how he associates this with larger modes of image making: advertising, mass media, and popular culture. Pfeiffer also thinks about the traditions of appropriation and manipulation in contemporary art, specifically in the American context of the picture generation of the 1980s. Pfeiffer also talks about psychoanalysis, and how there is an attempt to create philosophy from an embodied position that accounts for not just logic and the analytical mind but experience on all levels and the sensory. For Pfeiffer, this is extremely pertinent of what we do as artists. Pfeiffer also talks about a project that has been ongoing involving experiments with language in the Philippines; a collaboration with the students of American University where he grew up, to introduce new or other forms of text and videos to them.