Aditi Mahesh ’21 on Wesleyan’s 44th annual Navaratri Festival

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The Hindu goddess Durga.
The Hindu goddess Durga.

Dear Friends of the Center for the Arts,

This week, Navaratri Festival Intern Aditi Mahesh ’21 writes about the annual festival that celebrates traditional Indian music and dance.

Navaratri has long been a vital part of Wesleyan’s history, bringing in established Indian artists to celebrate the auspiciousness and showcase the depth of Indian classical art forms. Navaratri, held in the honor of Hindu goddess Durga, is a prominent festival celebrated in India for nine (nava-) nights (ratri). Each day signifies a different avatar of Durga, nine avatars in total (navadurga). On the tenth day, Durga defeats the demon Mahishasura, celebrating the triumph of good over evil, light over darkness. This last day is Vijayadasami or Dussehra, the most auspicious day of the year for beginning a new endeavor, especially in the arts.

Click here to listen to a playlist I created on Spotify of a range of traditional and contemporary, instrumental and vocal devotional songs centered around the three goddesses (Durga, Lakshmi, and Saraswati), ending with Aigirnandini.

Wesleyan’s commitment to Indian music, dance, and culture was one of the main reasons I chose to apply to the University. Coming from a family of Carnatic vocal musicians and being an Indian classical Bharatanatyam dancer myself, I couldn’t see myself thrive anywhere else. I’ve taken Bharatanatyam classes from Chair of the Dance Department and Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Hari Krishnan, and Carnatic vocals from Adjunct Associate Professor of Music B. Balasubrahmaniyan, giving me both a well-rounded Wesleyan education and a robust insight into the inner workings of the Navaratri festival held at the Center for the Arts each year.

Back in 2017, when I was a freshman, the University brought the distinguished Mallika Sarabhai and her company to perform for the Wesleyan audience. Her work really challenged the traditional notions of Bharatanatyam. It was more than just a dance form; it was a powerful mode of political communication. This very sentiment was reflected in my Bharatanatyam classes with Professor Krishnan, who challenged the ‘Brahminical’ perspective of the artform, teaching us the courtesan style of Bharatanatyam and instilling in us the powerful responsibility to use our platform for social good (very characteristic of a Wesleyan education!). This deepened my own narrow preconception about the dance form, allowing me to apply my art beyond the walls of the classroom, communicating powerful stories.

On the musical side, Wesleyan has always brought diverse artists, celebrating both North and South Indian musical styles. Last year, we heard from Ustad Amjad Ali Khan on the sarod, who powerfully captivated the audience with his music. We also have our very own talent, Professor Balasubrahmaniyan, who performed on the Friday evening of the festival [with Adjunct Associate Professor of Music David Nelson]. In past years, his South Indian voice class has been an opener to his concert, allowing for Wesleyan students to showcase their learning and play a crucial role in the festival.

The Navaratri Festival not only draws in a Wesleyan audience but also a local Connecticut audience, allowing for greater community interaction and education about Indian art forms.

As a result of the global situation, Navaratri at Wesleyan has adapted to a virtual platform. Despite these challenges, the Center for the Arts is bringing in rich talent while still maintaining its core integrity of social responsibility through the arts. We hope you join us for this year’s virtual festival!

Aditi Mahesh ’21
Navaratri Festival Intern

Thursday, October 1, 2020 at 4:40pm  Music Department Colloquium with Anna Morcom (Professor of Ethnomusicology and Mohindar Brar Sambhi Chair of Indian Music at U.C.L.A.’s Herb Alpert School of Music): “Music, Exchange, and the Production of Value: A Case Study of Hindustani Music.”

Thursday, October 1, 2020 at 8pm “Sakthi Vibrations” Film Conversation with Director Zoe Sherinian. Moderated by ethnomusicology doctoral student Bianca Iannitti. The film will be available for viewing online before the event with a link included with the reservation confirmation.

Friday, October 2, 2020 at 7pm Rethinking “Navaratri.” A conversation with Artistic Director of the contemporary Indian dance company Ananya Dance Theatre Ananya Chatterjea and Chair of the Dance Department and Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Hari Krishnan.

 

The Era Footwork Crew at Wesleyan

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The Era Footwork Crew
Photo by Wills Glasspiegel courtesy of The Era Footwork Crew.

 

Dear Friends of the Center for the Arts,

This week we focus on a virtual residency at Wesleyan featuring The Era Footwork Crew from Chicago.

I first saw The Era Footwork Crew perform in November 2019 at Links Hall in Chicago. The show, In the Wurkz, was an extraordinary combination of Chicago footwork, live DJs, spoken word, documentary film, and community spirit. I was struck by how The Era had been able to integrate every aspect of its ambitious artistic mission into one inspiring and beautifully crafted performance. The energy emanating from the audience, comprised of family, friends, neighbors, and children from The Era’s youth footwork summer camps, was palpable. The show was a love letter to the local neighborhoods which have supported The Era and a message of hope to the youth. This was a remarkable model of how the arts can truly strengthen and uplift a local community, and it felt urgent that Wesleyan students and the Center for the Arts audience be able to learn from this group of dedicated artists and community activists.

Footwork is an improvisational, competition-style form that encompasses music, dance, and a distinct Chicago culture. It is an inter-generational, community-based artform that is taught and passed down through dance battles, clubs, house parties, dance downs, and recently formalized through youth summer camps on the south side of Chicago. The Era is known not only for their incredible mastery and elevation of Chicago footwork but also for their social justice initiatives. The Era proclaims to anyone who will listen that “footwork saves lives.” They mean this in the most literal and non-hyperbolic sense possible. This saying is what drives an extraordinary partnership between The Era Footwork Crew and their non-profit, Open the Circle (OTC). OTC takes its name from crowded Chicago dance floors. When the floor gets overly packed, two people will lock hands and spin through the crowd–“opening the circle”–to make space for dancing. In this spirit, OTC is committed to opening tightly-knit circles of power and resources in society, re-centering them to benefit artists and youth in divested communities. The Era and OTC work hand-in-hand to promote dance education, document the development of footwork, recover and highlight women’s contributions to the artform, and elevate the visibility of footwork through performance. At Wesleyan, The Era and OTC will talk to students and our audience about how footwork has the ability to truly transform and, indeed, save lives.

The Era will join us this fall for a series of virtual engagements. On Thursday, September 17, 2020 at 7pm, there will be a documentary film screening, “Footwork on Film.” Dance filmmakers Brandon Calhoun and Wills Glasspiegel have been documenting the art and history of Chicago footwork for the last decade. They will share a series of short film clips from their archive, introducing the audience to The Era Footwork Crew, the cultural history of footwork in Chicago, and the rise of the dance form.

This event will be followed by a footwork technique workshop on Thursday, September 24, 2020 at 7pm. The Era Footwork Crew will give an introductory dance workshop, open and accessible to everyone regardless of dance background or experience, followed by a community conversation with the Hartford-based street dance collective 860MVMNT. The Era and 860MVMNT will explore differences in regional dance styles and how community culture can give rise to dance forms. They will also talk about their respective youth education initiatives and the impact they have had in the Chicago and Hartford communities.

Finally, on Thursday, October 15, 2020 at 7pm, Open the Circle will join members of the Wesleyan Dance Department for a panel discussion on OTC’s community engagement work and racial justice initiatives in the south side of Chicago.

Please join us for a dynamic series of virtual engagements that immerses our audiences in Chicago footwork and The Era’s racial justice work. We hope this introduction to The Era inspires you to join us again in fall 2021, when The Era will be in residence on the Wesleyan campus to perform In the Wurkz and engage with Wesleyan students and our regional community.

Fiona Coffey
Associate Director for Programming and Performing Arts
Center for the Arts

The Era Footwork Crew Residency Events at Wesleyan

Kristina Wong at Wesleyan

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Kristina Wong
Kristina Wong performs “Kristina Wong for Public Office.” Photo by Annie Lesser.

We are excited to open the 2020-2021 Performing Arts Series this fall with the extraordinary theater-maker, performance artist, writer, cultural commentator, and satirist Kristina Wong. 

Wong is an activist artist dedicated to forging meaningful social change, interrogating heteronormative standards, subverting racial and gender stereotypes, challenging complacency, and empowering audiences—a model for the values that we hold here at the Center for the Arts. 

Wong began her career as an activist and performance artist in 2000 as a senior at U.C.L.A. with her fake mail-order bride site www.bigbadchinesemama.com. This internet performance installation was Wong’s first experiment to see if “the act of protest [can] actually be funny and enjoyable.” This philosophy, and her approach of using humor, parody, and satire to expose painful truths about race, class, gender, and the fallacy of the American dream is central to Wong’s work. She followed this inaugural work with projects such as Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (2011–2013), which explored the stigma surrounding depression and rates of suicide in Asian-American women, and The Wong Street Journal (2015–2017), which broke down the complexities of global poverty, privilege, and America’s influence in the world while charting Wong’s own brief role as a hip hop star in Northern Uganda. Her YouTube channel, Radical Cram School, encourages Asian American children to explore revolution, social justice, the power of their identities through puppets, community storytelling, and comedy. 

During a time when civil liberties are being eroded on a daily basis, our nation is convulsing with protests over police brutality and systemic racism, and our healthcare system and federal response to the pandemic is in tatters, Wong’s voice is needed more than ever. She is a remarkable example of an artist who is responding in real time to the current moment and who is also translating her community activism into art and performance. What an extraordinary model for Wesleyan students and our audiences to have.

At Wesleyan, she will present two shows for us this fall. On Thursday, September 10, 2020 at 7pm, Wong will perform Kristina Wong for Public Office which details her real-life experience running for office in Koreatown, Los Angeles. Blurring the lines between performance and politics in a way that has become all too familiar, Wong re-enacts her campaign for elected representative of Wilshire Center Koreatown Sub-district 5 Neighborhood Council. A mash-up between a campaign rally, church revivals, and a solo theater show, the piece explores the anxiety leading up to the 2020 presidential election, questions the differences between performance art and politics, and challenges audiences to get civically engaged. Public Office will be co-presented with the University of Massachusetts Amherst Fine Arts Center.

Wong joins us again on Monday, October 5, 2020 at 7pm for a performance borne from the COVID-19 pandemic: Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord. Wong charts the experience of creating a “homemade face mask empire in just ten days,” gathering together a sewing squad of volunteer “Aunties” making free masks for people “the government didn’t care about.” The Auntie Sewing Squad has been featured on NBC News, Good Morning America, and USA Today, and has made and distributed over 50,000 masks. This performance looks at the significance of Asian American women and women of color performing this historically gendered and racialized, invisible labor.

Wong will also join Wesleyan students for a virtual residency that includes class visits, career talks, open rehearsal/directing sessions, and one-on-one conversations with students doing senior theater capstone projects. Finally, on Tuesday, October 27, 2020 at 6pm, Wong will give a speech about the intersections between her political activism and her art for Wesleyan’s Engage 2020 initiative with the Allbritton Center for Community Partnership. 

Our Performing Arts Series this fall will be virtual, and all events will be free. We hope you join us for an inspiring series of events and performances with this extraordinary activist and artist Kristina Wong. 

Fiona Coffey
Associate Director for Programming and Performing Arts
Center for the Arts

Kristina Wong Residency Events at Wesleyan

 

Prison Voices: Reimagining Dante’s “Divine Comedy” Behind Bars

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Students in Chair and Professor of Theater Ron Jenkins’ course "America in Prison: Theater Behind Bars."
Students in Chair and Professor of Theater Ron Jenkins’ course “America in Prison: Theater Behind Bars.” First row (from left): Kayla Cabán ’22, Veronica Cañas ’23, Milton Espinoza, Jr ’22; second row (from left): Monique Gautreaux ’23, Mosab Hamid ’23, Avanti Sheth ’23.

This past Spring, six students in Chair and Professor of Theater Ron Jenkins’ course THEA 115 “America in Prison: Theater Behind Bars,” collaborated with incarcerated men at the Cheshire Correctional Institution on monologues created in response to Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. These six short monologues are written by those men, and are introduced and performed on video by Jenkins’ students (pictured above). For the first half of the semester, students met weekly with their incarcerated partners to discuss Dante’s journey from hell to heaven and its relevance to the prison experience. When the pandemic made personal visits to the prison impossible, the students kept in touch with their partners remotely. Through support from the CFA’s Creative Campus Initiative, the students were also able to consult remotely with two formerly incarcerated men, Dario Peña and Dennis Woodbine, who had previously taken Dante workshops with Jenkins in Sing Sing Correctional Facility. Professor Jenkins writes:

“Ten years after reading Dante in prison, these two men spoke with the students about the poem’s continuing relevance to their lives. Woodbine and his lawyer had included a line from Dante in the opening paragraph of his application for clemency, which resulted his early release. Peña spoke about reading the poem as a turning point in his life behind bars. Dante wrote the Divine Comedy after having been exiled from his home and family in Florence, knowing that his conviction would lead to his being burned at the stake if he ever returned. Having facilitated Dante workshops in prisons in Italy, Indonesia and the U.S., I am always impressed by the degree to which men and women behind bars identify with Dante’s journey. Yale Divinity School Professor Peter S. Hawkins attended a Dante performance we staged in a Connecticut prison several years ago. His analysis of the theme of transformation in the Divine Comedy helps explain the poem’s appeal to incarcerated individuals: ‘… it is not the penitents’ suffering that the poem dwells on,’ Hawkins writes, ‘it is the degree to which art, music, language—beauty of all kinds—assist in personal transformation.’”

A Reflection on Alumni Visits to “Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship”

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Vashti DuBois ’83
Vashti DuBois ’83 (Image courtesy of Chestnut Hill Local)

This spring, Makaela Kingsley ’98, Director of the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship and Adjunct Instructor in Public Policy, invited five fellow Wesleyan alumni to her course CSPL 262 “Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship” to discuss how they used artistic practice as a vehicle for social change.

In this course, Wesleyan students studied a social or environmental problem of their choosing and designed a hypothetical project to address that problem, thinking critically about how change happens, honing their activism, and building practical skills.

The guests speakers were Laura Stein ’03 of Dancing Grounds, a multigenerational arts space that brings inclusive and accessible dance programs to New Orleans residents; Chris Kaminstein ’04 of Goat in the Road Productions, a New Orleans-based performance ensemble; Vashti DuBois ’83 of The Colored Girls Museum in Philadelphia; Michael Lawrence-Riddell ’98 of The Self-Evident Platform, a digital humanities resource for educators of American history; and Melinda Weekes-Laidlow ’89 of Beautiful Ventures, which centers and supports creative and non-fiction writers who bring the nuanced complexities of Black life into popular culture and discourse.

From Makaela Kingsley:

“I had 24 students in the class this spring. Their feedback about the course showed that our alumni guests were very popular:

The visitors have been fantastic! I love seeing how broad social entrepreneurship is.

Despite the unfortunate circumstance [distance learning due to Covid-19], I enjoy watching the recorded lectures that were clear and structured into business theories and real experiences. The combination of the two optimizes the strategies from the speakers and allow us to apply them in our potential project.

The flow of the class has been smooth and engaging. The mix of conversations and ‘lecture’ makes participating asynchronously feel like I’m part of the class.

I really enjoy listening to stories from the guest presenters. It’s really inspiring to see what they’ve done but also great to have a group of ‘case-studies’ to draw from!

We’re lucky that it’s so easy to bring in guests, and I’m also super grateful to gain some sense of how to make something happen for myself now that I’m entering the real world.

Thanks again to the Creative Campus Initiative for making this possible!”

An Update from Davison Art Center Curator Miya Tokumitsu

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Albrecht Dürer, “Madonna by the Tree,” 1513.
Albrecht Dürer, “Madonna by the Tree,” 1513. Engraving on laid paper. Gift of George W. Davison (B.A. Wesleyan 1892), 1938. DAC accession no. 1938.D1.14. Open Access Image from the Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University (photo: R. Lee).

 

Dear Friends of the Center for the Arts,

This has been a springtime unlike any other at the Davison Art Center, as indeed it surely is for all of you. The coronavirus pandemic with all its social and economic fallouts, as well as the uprisings for racial justice across the globe, are fixing the world’s attention on injustices so entrenched and so pervasive that, for (too) many, they seemed insurmountable problems, or worse, just the natural way of the world. These global events are also deeply personal struggles, and so much is changing so quickly, it can be hard to find one’s mooring in the day-to-day.

Amid so many world-historical developments, it seems almost hopelessly trivial to be issuing this letter imparting the Davison Art Center’s operational and programming updates. Still, I am glad for this opportunity to extend my regards directly to you, to say that I hope all of you are safe and well, and to share some of our news.

In preparation for moving the entire collection of over 25,000 artworks from our current location at 301 High Street to our wonderful new facilities in Olin Library, the Davison Art Center gallery closed its doors for good on November 24, 2019 upon the conclusion of the exhibition Into the Image: Art in Miniature Across the Centuries. Our study room closed soon thereafter. In our final exhibition at 301 High Street, we were proud to show some of the collection’s great treasures, including Albrecht Dürer’s Madonna by the Tree, a little engraving both serious and tender, rendered in unrivaled technical virtuosity. We exhibited tiny, gemlike prints by the engraver and goldsmith Étienne Delaune, as well as a whimsical change-of-address card by Hannah Höch, and a sheet of game pieces by José Guadalupe Posada.

Although our physical doors remain closed, I would like to remind you that the collection remains accessible online at the Davison Art Center Collection Search, and that digital images of over 6,000 out-of-copyright artworks are available for free direct download as high-quality JPEG or TIFF files. Please feel free to use these images for Zoom backgrounds, smartphone wallpaper, signs, posters, wrapping paper, decoupage…the possibilities are, as they say, endless.

Along these lines, we have produced a Davison Art Center coloring book, available here for free download, from our image store. We hope it will come in handy should you need a moment of relaxation, a light diversion, or perhaps a meditative activity.

We are already looking forward to the future, which includes opening our new study room in Olin Library once we complete the collection move, and farther down the line, an expanded public gallery.

Thank you so much for your support and engagement with the Davison Art Center. We cannot wait to greet visitors and view art together again, in person. We look forward to staying in touch, and to greeting many of you again or for the first time.

Here’s to a new—and better—normal,

Miya Tokumitsu
Curator, Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University

“Calling Out for Our Mothers”

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Eiko Otake with John Killacky (photo by Jean Cross)
Eiko Otake with John Killacky (photo by Jean Cross)

 

Minneapolis-based artist Patrick Scully had invited Center for the Arts Virtual Artist in Residence Eiko Otake and her collaborator John Killacky to screen and have a conversation about their work Elegies, centered around the death of their mothers, on May 29 at a virtual cabaret. Four days before that event, George Floyd was killed by police, followed by protests and riots. It was under this tension that the event took place.

“The murders upset the victims, their families, their communities, and all of us. When our mothers died, we were sad but we were not angry. Now we are angry. We will attend to this anger and we will remember this anger,” said Otake.

Read an edited transcript and view sections of the presentation in Eiko Otake’s Wesleyan CFA Virtual Studio.

Kahlil Robert Irving and Richard Munaba: Safetyfirst&Fantasies_BLOCKCHAIN

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This week we are proud to share Safetyfirst&Fantasies_BLOCKCHAIN, a new collaborative work by Kahlil Robert Irving and Richard Munaba commissioned by Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts (CFA). Right now with cultural institutions closed and physical-distancing in effect most of us can only access culture through our screens. As institutions and artists alike share documentation of works, presentations, performances, talks, and exhibitions all originally intended to be experienced in-person, we at the CFA wondered what it might look like for artists to make new (art)work of the material of the Internet at this time. Kahlil Robert Irving’s artwork Internet Data Collage (Focused eye) (2018) came to mind for its use of the aesthetics of image search engine results. This small and powerful work was included in Irving’s 2018 solo exhibition at Wesleyan in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Kahlil Robert Irving: Street Matter – Decay & Forever / Golden Age. More information on the exhibition can be found here.

Roots of Irving’s practice can be found in assemblage and collage which are early Modern artistic techniques for using or referencing existing materials. Irving expands and adapts these historic methodologies by developing a syntax of contemporary visual symbols that represent the values we perpetuate and enhance through our media consumption. In Safetyfirst&Fantasies_BLOCKCHAIN Irving pairs with artist Richard Munaba who brings expertise with digital artwork and design, as well as a practice that focuses a queer lens on how technology changes and recontextualizes our relationships with each other and our surroundings. Internet Data Collage (Focused eye) (2018) and several other of Irving’s collages highlight and structure images that communicate acts of police violence and civil injustice. Sourced digitally and printed on paper these works served as reference points for Irving and Munaba as they began work on the conceptual and material constructions of Safetyfirst&Fantasies_BLOCKCHAIN. Expanding on the historic models mentioned above, this commission resonates with the dimensional possibilities of sampling—the musical technique of reorganizing or modifying previously recorded material to create something new.

Constructed from found digital materials and presented online, this interactive work is filled with details in constant motion. Even while the Coronavirus pandemic limits our physical connections with others, it opens an opportunity to reconsider how ideas are exchanged and communicated. The artists encapsulate some of the pressures of our experience in this piece by mimicking multiple browser windows—watching videos, video calling friends, scrolling through Twitter, listening to music, etc. The work plays with a heightened sense of fantasy, blending together the trauma, violence, and resistance that are already ubiquitously embedded within media and technology. ‘Safely’ viewed from a distance, Safetyfirst&Fantasies_BLOCKCHAIN brings awareness to our moments of media consumption by reminding us simultaneously of the politics of our attention and its immediate commodification.

In recent weeks we have had to confront the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery and countless other Black Americans. Mourning their deaths we are angered by the systemic racial injustice. Black Lives Matter. We recognize that action takes many forms and though we may not all be able to join in body we can show solidarity in other ways. Please consider supporting the protestors and the political resistance happening now across the United States of America. Below are some resources for action, for additional educational information, and some organizations you can support with a financial contribution (if you are able).

Audre Lorde Project – https://alp.org/

Women for Political Change – https://www.womenforpoliticalchange.org/

Reclaim the Block – https://www.reclaimtheblock.org/home

Arch City Defenders – https://www.archcitydefenders.org/

Close the Workhouse – https://www.closetheworkhouse.org/

Next Door  – https://nextdoor.com/?next=/help_map/?is=helpmap&utm_campaign=caregivers

Black Protesters Relief fund – https://www.gofundme.com/f/mo-black-protester-relief-fund

The Bail Project – https://bailproject.org/our-work/

National Bail Out – https://nationalbailout.org/black-mamas-bail-out/

Brooklyn Bail Fund – https://brooklynbailfund.org/

Black Visions MN – https://www.blackvisionsmn.org/

Reclaim the Block – https://secure.everyaction.com/zae4prEeKESHBy0MKXTIcQ2

Southern Poverty Law Center – https://www.splcenter.org/

How to Support the Struggle Against Police Brutality – https://www.thecut.com/2020/05/george-floyd-protests-how-to-help-where-to-donate.html

10 Ways Youth Can Engage in Activism – https://www.adl.org/education/resources/tools-and-strategies/10-ways-youth-can-engage-in-activism

Compiled list of bail support initiatives, protest support, petitions, and trans support – https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1A3f-20SipegLlS2D-D8JRpJd2IBGmN7eKdfRB6cJHwY/htmlview

 

Kahlil Robert Irving (b. 1992, San Diego, CA) is an artist currently living and working in the USA. Irving was selected to participate in the 2020 Great Rivers Biennial hosted by the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, where he will present a solo exhibition following the COVID-19 pandemic. Recently, Irving was awarded the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant. In 2018, Irving’s first institutional solo exhibition took place at Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts, and was accompanied by a full-color catalogue with essays and an interview. Currently, he is presenting a large-scale digital collage commission at the Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, Ohio. Irving’s work is also featured in Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His work has been exhibited at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas; the ASU Art Museum, Phoenix; and the RISD Museum, Rhode Island, among others. Irving attended the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Art, Washington University in St. Louis (MFA Fellow, 2017); and the Kansas City Art Institute (BFA, Art History and Ceramics/Sculpture, 2015). His work is in the collections of J.P Morgan Chase Art Collection, New York; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Richard Munaba (b. 1992, Jakarta, Indonesia) is a New York based interdisciplinary artist and designer. Munaba currently works as editorial manager at Holler. In the past, he worked at GIPHY and has exhibited works in New York, Baltimore, Seattle, Canada, and South Korea. He received a BFA in Interactive Arts from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2016. More information about his work can be found at richardmunaba.info

 

Image above: Kahlil Robert Irving and Richard Munaba, Safetyfirst&Fantasies_BLOCKCHAIN

Environmental Studies Artist Books

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Artist book by Emma Singleton ’23
New Haven-based artist Joseph Smolinski joined a Zoom session to critique student work (including an artist book, shown above, by Emma Singleton ’23) in “E&ES197: Introduction to Environmental Studies.”

Since 2014, students in Earth and Environmental Sciences 197: Introduction to Environmental Studies have had the option to create an artist book for their final project. This spring, with support from the Center for the Arts’ Creative Campus Initiative, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Helen Poulos offered those students some expert, socially-distanced mentoring from local artists. Wesleyan’s Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Ali Osborn recorded bookmaking video tutorials from his home studio; and New Haven-based artist Joseph Smolinski joined a Zoom session to critique student work (including an artist book, shown above, by Emma Singleton ’23). Each semester, the class votes on the most creative and interesting books; over the years, more than 30 of these have been selected for inclusion in the Wesleyan Library’s Special Collections & Archives and are available for viewing.

Rani Arbo
Campus and Community Engagement Manager
Center for the Arts, Wesleyan University

News from Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance at Wesleyan University

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Detroit-based movement artist Jennifer Harge
Detroit-based movement artist Jennifer Harge in “Fly | Drown” (2019). For the ICPP online summer intensive, Harge will be reimagining a live-streamed version of this work in her home—the very site that inspired the original installation for the performance.

Dear Friends of the Center for the Arts,

This week, we write from the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP), a low-residency Master’s degree in Performance Curation housed in the Center for the Arts.

ICPP students and alumni offer extraordinary examples of how their curatorial work designs ways of sustaining individual and collective practices in this time of uncertainty.


ICPP Leadership Fellowship 

Deborah Goffe (MA ’19) has been working for over a year on The Nest, a retreat for movement artists and cultural workers of color in the southern New England and New York areas to gather and share processes around performance making and commoning as survival strategies. The gathering was scheduled to take place this month. In the face of the global health crisis, Goffe redistributed the funds to the participants to offset their personal financial losses and is considering how to re-imagine the gathering at a later date. Deborah’s leadership and care for others illustrates the intentions of the ICPP Leadership Fellowship, which is awarded to graduating students to foster professional and networking opportunities while nurturing underrepresented perspectives in the field of art and performance curation.


ICPP Students Community Spotlights

MA candidate Candace Thompson-Zachery, Manager of Justice, Equity and Inclusion Initiatives at Dance/NYC, co-organized their 2020 Symposium on March 21. As New York City implemented social distancing guidelines, the all-day event was moved online and content shifted accordingly. The panels touched on indigeneity in performance, development of a disability politics toward dismantling racism, the current state of the dance field, and direct emergency response for the dance community during COVID-19. Since the symposium, Dance/NYC launched the COVID-19 Dance Relief Fund, awarding 180 grants to dance makers in the New York metropolitan area, and continues to aggregate NYC area classes and workshops on their community calendar, as well as host digital town halls. 

Graduate student Jamie Gahlon continues her exemplary work through HowlRound Theatre Commons. As co-founder and director Jamie and her team have been turning out pandemic-related content consistently and frequently over the past weeks, including livestreamed talks and panel discussions around artist resources, the state of affairs in the arts today, sustaining creative practices, and much more. The organization, already functioning as a digital commons, has taken the opportunity to host conversations around pragmatic strategies for freelance artists during the crisis, offering information on livestream technology, financial planning, and sustaining creative practices, in addition to regular content. Take a look at their ongoing online programming.


Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Performing Artist Case Studies

As part of our Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Performing Artist Case Studies, an examination into art practices, economical resources, and modes of sustainability amidst changing cultural economies, ICPP is excited to be working with Detroit-based movement artist Jennifer Harge. For the ICPP online summer intensive, Harge will be reimagining a live-streamed version of Fly | Drown (2019) in her home—the very site that inspired the original installation for the performance. 


Class of 2020

We are so proud of our four anticipated MA graduates from ICPP this month:

Beatrice Basso, independent curator and theater maker (Thesis: Curating in Translation: Oblique Gestures of Repair); Victoria Carrasco-Dominguez, Gallery Management and Adjunct Curator, Public Programs at Phi Foundation (Thesis: Public Art as Performance: Curating the Utopian Sculpture in and out of the Museum); Raechel Hofsteadter, Associate Director of Development Operations, Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University (Thesis: Mobilizing Dance Legacies: Curating Embodied Archives Through the Praxes of Jennifer Harge and Anna Martine Whitehead); and Candace Thompson-Zachery, Manager of Justice, Equity and Inclusion Initiatives at Dance/NYC (Thesis: Encounters in Caribbean Dance: Curating Beyond Display).

Thank you for your inspiring work, which opens rich and urgent avenues for performance curation across contemporary cultures.

Though making and convening performance in times of social distancing brings great challenges, we will take our cue from ICPP co-founder Sam Miller ’75 and continue to imagine infrastructures of care to accompany artists in these shifting conditions and economies. 

To receive ICPP’s newsletter, please email icpp@wesleyan.edu.

Yours,

Noémie Solomon, ICPP Acting Director; Rosemary Lennox, ICPP Program Manager; and Constanza Armes Cruz (MA ’21)