The unpredictable, next to the unknown

Ruth Estévez: Let’s start at the end, Daniel, but the end of a circle. Though do circles even have an end? Maybe that’s how I imagine this school: a circle that transforms as you move through it, yet never stops being a circle. Beginning and end blur; they merge. Can a circle be walked backward, or only forward? Every year, for many decades, a group of artists gathers here during the summer. Summer is always a time to stop, to get lost, to wander. We come together intensely, with something I like to call a “purposeless intentionality.” We leave behind strict models and protocols of learning and teaching, and just for a moment we forget certain economic obligations and responsibilities. Suddenly, we have time to think about the process of art-making, surrounded by others.

Daniel Bozhkov: Hi Ruth! I love starting at the end, which assumes some kind of quantum understanding of entropy. For me, to reach a state of “purposeless intentionality” is crucial, and also means to get out of the vicious circle of targeted attention—to acquire another sense of speed, to expand the ways with which one pays attention. Maybe this is what you call “to leave behind the strict protocols of learning.”

If we are to think of Skowhegan, a lot of the initial reset starts at arrival, with the gray green surroundings—more subtle shades of green than you can imagine—the morning fog, and the large skies of Maine with clouds that seem to belong to different weather systems. Can one weave an inner pedagogy out of these materials? How can one share this experience with others?

Ruth: I’ll follow with another question: can we organize or give form to the unpredictable?

Now, I want to look ahead. Next summer, we will have Eduardo Navarro as a faculty artist (also a participant in 2006), known for his “conversations” with clouds, the sun, and the wind. He often says that these encounters allow us to enter a kind of collective perception, one that invites us to “contemplate until we become.”

Through its proximity, physicality, and the time it offers to be with others, Skowhegan creates the conditions not just to represent, but to be. For many, it becomes a deeply transformative experience.

Over the past two years, I’ve also been interested in fostering more radical situations through workshops, listening sessions, and experimental formats. These approaches encourage participants to move beyond individual practices and become more aware of others and the surrounding landscape—both discursively and sensorially. So perhaps the question becomes: how can we create conditions that help us listen more closely to what is already there?

Daniel: This question reminds me of the series of workshops Georgia Sagri did as a visiting faculty artist at Skowhegan in the summer of 2024. She described them as “recovering from your studio practice,” and they consisted of a series of collective movements in space. The circle of bodies was opening and closing, mapping the uneven terrain, breathing in and out of the crisp morning air. 

I often think of another person invested in deeply listening to what is around us—the experimental composer Pauline Oliveros in her practice of, what she called “quantum listening” —listening-to, listening in order to attune to our bodies, the earth and one another in an increasingly loud and noisy world. 

I wonder if the conditions you are talking about, Ruth, always need to be created fresh from the beginning, and woven out of the local physical, cultural and emotional landscape—what Bruno Latour called “landing.” The landscape of Skowhegan makes you very much aware of what is around you—there lives moose in the woods nearby. It wakes up your need to connect with the surroundings, starting with a sense of poise and the clean air, and catching the reflections of how your peers experience this spaciousness, together in close proximity.

The non-conformist Russian artist Vadim Zakharov—an active participant in a movement, and a period, called Moscow Conceptualism—has an early piece that I like very much. It is called An Exchange of Information with the Sun, 1978—a simple black and white photograph of an action where the artist made a print with his thumb on a pocket mirror and angled the reflection towards the sun. This act makes a connection in a very direct way, cutting through scales and boundaries, traveling light, and using what you have available at hand.

And, of course there is the canonical piece of Eastern European avant-garde—Artist at work, 1978, by the Croatian artist Mladen Stilinović—eight images of the artist taking a nap, making us recognize that the artist never stops working, and that maybe the most important part of the work happens when you have time to rest or dream. 

The combination of poise and alertness at Skowhegan might help us “give a form to what is unpredictable,” but maybe the next question is: How are the others involved in this process of self-discovery? You have your own experiences with your own mind and body, but then you need somebody else to know about it, to witness, to take part.

Ruth: Well, in everyday life we are almost always in a state of alertness—or rather, heightened awareness—when connecting with others. In this sense, the process of self-discovery you describe can only unfold when many bodies are attuned together, awakening almost unconsciously.

I imagine it as a group of actors reading a script for the first time. The initial reading is neutral, yet full of surprise—a “theater of the mind,” as theater director Jerzy Grotowski might say—where each person gradually tunes into their inner, spiritual, and physical reality, becoming, in a sense, a “naked” body. You read a story you must inhabit alongside others. How does each person encounter it? It becomes a form of collective self-discovery, even as each participant carries it back into their own space. At Skowhegan, where we are not actors—or perhaps should not be—I wonder if the “script” we read together is the landscape itself: the movement of clouds, the radiance of the sun, but also the subtle rhythms of our colleagues: their gestures, their sweat, their voices, the constant presence of their bodies.

As a small example, in 2025 we created a reading group focused on radical listening and generosity. Each of us brought a text connected to new forms of communality, but every text had to be read in a collective, experimental format. At times, we formed a chorus, with one half of the group speaking certain words and the other half responding. At others, we read while walking backward, or whispered directly into the ear of the person beside us. Some texts were complex, yet through these experiments we discovered new modes of listening and awareness—tuning into one another, sensing the rhythm of our hearts, or slowing our pace to match someone else’s. It was not always easy.

In some way, Daniel, we tried—as artists—to step outside our comfort zone and engage in situations that could be uncomfortable. Might Skowhegan be a place where discomfort itself becomes an experiment in self-discovery?

Daniel: I love the idea of a group that reads together a text while walking backwards! Please tell me more about it! It reminds me of the conversation I had with Daniel Hauser and Marie-Antoinette Chiarenza, who form the group RELAX. They are very interested in the concept of artists’ solidarity, especially in hard times. 

The discussion with them made me think about different forms of solidarity from political ones, like the one in Poland in the 1980s—with its roots in trade unionism, it succeeded to delegitimize the Communist regime and its false narratives about “workers’ state”—to ones inspired by the Zapatista call for un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos (a world where many worlds fit). 

But there are also forms of solidarity that are not activist or social. They are based on idiosyncratic experiences and deep encounters one can have in close proximity with others. I think Skowhegan is a great place to invent these new forms that are site- and time-specific, yet have long-term consequences. We often talk about how Skowhegan starts after the summer ends.

Ruth: Daniel, reading backwards is nuts. You have to prepare both your mind and your body while moving in almost contradictory ways. These kinds of experiences open your senses, your capacity to listen, and your ability to understand the presence of others…but maybe that’s a conversation for another time!

To sum up what we’ve been discussing so far, it really comes down to awareness and presence, something that’s often missing in our lives, especially when you’re no longer in “school.” Perhaps at Skowhegan, we’ve tried to build not just a path to learn and practice art, but an emotionally sustainable way of doing it, away from the constant pressure of competition.

Even though museums and art centers often talk about solidarity, it feels like just words on paper, slogans, or websites. At Skowhegan, you get dedicated time for your practice and space to experiment without judgment, though always in conversation. It’s a place where faculty, staff, and participants feel more free to try unpredictable things—things I wish were part of art university curricula.

I don’t know if Skowhegan really begins when it ends. I think the Skowhegan spirit is potentially always there—it flourishes while you’re on campus, and you need to carry it forward afterward, like juggling through the obstacles that will always be present. Is there anything more beautiful than striving to live always in a constant state of vulnerability?

Daniel: What begins when Skowhegan ends is your own personal project of nurturing what you encountered there. This seems important—how to sustain the spirit of openness and deep experimentation that blossoms at Skowhegan in the summer, when you seem to have all the time in the world—but in the fragmented and schizophrenic existence of your daily precarity. 

After catching a glimpse of how this is possible, you need to slowly create the conditions which make it happen in the reality of your life. The saturation of diverse creative practices around you, staying in touch with your peers who are now scattered around the world, and the state of vulnerability that you, Ruth, are talking about are all vital. I also think of this as a long-term time sculpture. Or maybe a shift of how one thinks of time—from something we measure by using spatial metaphors, to a continuous, multi-directional duration that can be embraced and navigated as a current. 

How to continue learning with others the parallel experiences of time—the individual, the collective, the biological, the human, and the non-human time? Skowhegan gives us the poise and time to consider this—and to continue looking for the unpredictable, in close proximity to the unknown.