Dear friends,
Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.
But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.
So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.
--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody
Clarinda Mac Low
Clarinda Mac Low was brought up in the avant-garde arts scene that flourished in NYC during the 1960s and ‘70s. She began performing with her father Jackson Mac Low and with Meredith Monk when she was 4 years old. Mac Low started out working in dance and molecular biology in the late 1980s and now works in performance and installation, creating participatory events that investigate social constructs and corporeal experience, while keeping up a practice of medical journalism, specializing in HIV/AIDS. She is co-founder and Executive Director of Culture Push, an experimental organization that links artistic practice and civic engagement and co-founder and co-director of Works on Water, an organization that supports art that works on, in, and with waterways, in response to a changing climate. Her work has appeared at Panoply Performance Laboratory, the EFA Project Space, P.S. 122, the Kitchen, X-Initiative, and many other places and spaces around New York City and elsewhere in the world, including the Manifesta Biennial in Spain. Recent work and ongoing projects include: Sunk Shore, participatory tours of the future rooted in climate change data; Incredible Witness, a series of game-based participatory events looking at the sensory origins of empathy; Free the Orphans, a project that seeks to “free” copyright orphans (creative work with unknown copyright holders), investigating the spiritual and intellectual implications of intellectual property in a digital age; The Year of Dance, an anthropology of the NYC dance world that that examines how bonds form in art-making to create unconventional family and kinship structures; TRYST, performance interventions in urban space; Cyborg Nation, public conversation on the technological body and intimacy; and Salvage/Salvation, a collaborative installation and performance project that explores the philosophical, emotional and material implications of re-use, discard, decay and abundance. She has also “performed” dramaturgy for Katy Pyle’s Ballez, David Thomson’s he his own mythical beast and Gender/Power (Maya Ciarrocchi and Kris Grey). Residencies include as a Back Apartment Resident in St. Petersburg through CEC (2019), as a MacDowell Fellow (2000, 2016), through the Society for Cultural Exchange in Pittsburgh (2007) and as a guest at Yaddo and Mount Tremper Arts (2012). She received a BAX Award in 2004, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant, 2007 and a 2010 Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art grant. Mac Low holds a BA, double major in Dance and Molecular Biology, from Wesleyan University and an MFA in Digital and Interdisciplinary Arts Practice from CCNY-CUNY.
Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?
I have several projects that are affected and, because much of my work consists of nurturing other artists, I live in the echoes of others’ work that is also affected. It’s hard to know where to start, so I’ll just go with the first one chronologically, which is Walking the Edge, a big project that is a collaboration between Culture Push and Works on Water (two small artist-run organizations that I co-founded and also co-direct) and the Department of City Planning. Works on Water supports work by artists who are working with water as site and material in response to the climate crisis and the changes in urban landscapes. Culture Push supports artists that work at the nexus of social justice, civic engagement, and artistic practice. Together, the two orgs are working with the Waterfront and Open Spaces Division of the NYC Department of City Planning to create a durational artwork that invites everybody to walk all 520 miles of New York City’s coastline (yes there are 520 miles of NYC coastline!). That walk was supposed to start on May 1 (520 in 5/20, get it?) and continue for 24 hours a day until the whole coast was covered. So, yeah. We are adjusting. It’s interesting, actually, and not entirely bad, to slow down and reconsider. Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice. I have been involved in the arts since birth--my father was a poet and multi-media artist, my mother is a visual artist, and I grew up in the “avant-garde” arts ferment of the 1970s. I always made all kinds of art from the time I was a tiny child, and I never stopped. But me as someone who was going to be an artist, that started in college. I loved making visual art and playing music and dancing and performing, but my ambition, from middle school on, was to be a biochemist and save the world. [I’m not sure that biochemistry can “save the world,” but it’s pretty important right now, and it did help me get a job working on one of our other pandemics, HIV.] But then, while I was at Wesleyan University for undergrad, I started composing dances and improvising, and then I was hooked. I was fascinated by composition in time, and by the small society we make every time we make a dance together. That fascination has mutated, and now I make small societies that become legal entities, or ongoing conceptual works that invite people to consider their place in the world, and collaborate on how to change it. In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning?
This is a funny question for me--hard to answer! I often feel just like I’m practicing--life. Which means to me--trying to fully embody the principles I believe in. It’s a constant struggle, and it’s hard to feel like I’m doing it right, but I think that’s what I’ve been groping towards for most of my adult professional life. That manifests now in these experimental organizations, where a concept can become its own “person.” I call it the performance of institution, and I am sure it’s rooted in my time as a dance artist, where survival depended on marketing your self and your vision as a kind of product or entity. By performing as an institution, me and my collaborators have been able to leverage the power of the legal entity to support people and ideas that haven’t been supported by mainstream arts institutions (or anyone else) because of structural racism or sexism or xeno-, trans- and homophobia or capitalist values or or or…. . How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about? I’m going to answer this question with a story about the past. In my early 30s, I felt an urgent need to be explicit about my political and moral obsessions and values, so I made a fairly radical shift in my practice. First, I started a program facilitating performance made by New York City youth from public high schools and alternative education programs, to counter the prevailing media narratives around urban youth of color in the 1990s. Then I made a big piece about war that took place on a docked ferryboat. Then I collaborated on a piece about the collision between biology, history, and race in the development of the US. Gradually, however, it became clear to me that if I really wanted to shift the structures of inequity that dominated my society, I would have to build new models, so I initiated Culture Push, in collaboration with Arturo Vidich and Aki Sasamoto, two other multidisciplinary artists, as an experiment in building an institution. This process taught me about using the principles of openness, improvisation, resourcefulness, and fierce conviction that I had learned from performance and activism to create new structures. I continue to refine this methodology in several different venues. How does your practice function within the world we have now? I want to be an agent of change and transformation through supporting and nurturing others. There are so many beautiful ideas in the world that have been suppressed or dismissed, and seeing those ideas come alive, and seeing the people behind those ideas thrive, is a real source of joy for me. I also want to use art and imagination to shine a light on important issues, whether in work I initiate or in the work that others initiate. Right now (RIGHT now, in the midst of this pandemic) there are pressing issues of access--to health care, to work with dignity, to housing--that have suddenly become even more glaringly obvious than they already were, and the intensity of the needs exposed is daunting. I’m not sure how I will respond personally (I am slow--I feel shame for my slowness, but I’m old enough to know that’s who I am), but in the meantime I will try to support all the people who have been able to respond immediately and with amazing innovation and imagination. Briefly share one self-care tip that has special meaning to you now. Cooking. The sensual satisfaction and immediate gratification of cooking a good meal is key right now. I feel so incredibly lucky that I have access to good food, and that I can prepare meals for my family. It’s a lot like making a performance--you spend an hour or so preparing something, and then it’s gone, eaten up in a flash, transformed from object to energy.
******Clarinda Mac Low
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| Clarinda Mac Low (photo: Robin Michal) |
Clarinda Mac Low was brought up in the avant-garde arts scene that flourished in NYC during the 1960s and ‘70s. She began performing with her father Jackson Mac Low and with Meredith Monk when she was 4 years old. Mac Low started out working in dance and molecular biology in the late 1980s and now works in performance and installation, creating participatory events that investigate social constructs and corporeal experience, while keeping up a practice of medical journalism, specializing in HIV/AIDS. She is co-founder and Executive Director of Culture Push, an experimental organization that links artistic practice and civic engagement and co-founder and co-director of Works on Water, an organization that supports art that works on, in, and with waterways, in response to a changing climate. Her work has appeared at Panoply Performance Laboratory, the EFA Project Space, P.S. 122, the Kitchen, X-Initiative, and many other places and spaces around New York City and elsewhere in the world, including the Manifesta Biennial in Spain. Recent work and ongoing projects include: Sunk Shore, participatory tours of the future rooted in climate change data; Incredible Witness, a series of game-based participatory events looking at the sensory origins of empathy; Free the Orphans, a project that seeks to “free” copyright orphans (creative work with unknown copyright holders), investigating the spiritual and intellectual implications of intellectual property in a digital age; The Year of Dance, an anthropology of the NYC dance world that that examines how bonds form in art-making to create unconventional family and kinship structures; TRYST, performance interventions in urban space; Cyborg Nation, public conversation on the technological body and intimacy; and Salvage/Salvation, a collaborative installation and performance project that explores the philosophical, emotional and material implications of re-use, discard, decay and abundance. She has also “performed” dramaturgy for Katy Pyle’s Ballez, David Thomson’s he his own mythical beast and Gender/Power (Maya Ciarrocchi and Kris Grey). Residencies include as a Back Apartment Resident in St. Petersburg through CEC (2019), as a MacDowell Fellow (2000, 2016), through the Society for Cultural Exchange in Pittsburgh (2007) and as a guest at Yaddo and Mount Tremper Arts (2012). She received a BAX Award in 2004, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant, 2007 and a 2010 Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art grant. Mac Low holds a BA, double major in Dance and Molecular Biology, from Wesleyan University and an MFA in Digital and Interdisciplinary Arts Practice from CCNY-CUNY.
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| Dancing with godson Masumi (photo: Ian Douglas) |
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| Clarinda Mac Low's Cyborg Nation (photo: Walter Polkosnik) |
Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?
I have several projects that are affected and, because much of my work consists of nurturing other artists, I live in the echoes of others’ work that is also affected. It’s hard to know where to start, so I’ll just go with the first one chronologically, which is Walking the Edge, a big project that is a collaboration between Culture Push and Works on Water (two small artist-run organizations that I co-founded and also co-direct) and the Department of City Planning. Works on Water supports work by artists who are working with water as site and material in response to the climate crisis and the changes in urban landscapes. Culture Push supports artists that work at the nexus of social justice, civic engagement, and artistic practice. Together, the two orgs are working with the Waterfront and Open Spaces Division of the NYC Department of City Planning to create a durational artwork that invites everybody to walk all 520 miles of New York City’s coastline (yes there are 520 miles of NYC coastline!). That walk was supposed to start on May 1 (520 in 5/20, get it?) and continue for 24 hours a day until the whole coast was covered. So, yeah. We are adjusting. It’s interesting, actually, and not entirely bad, to slow down and reconsider. Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice. I have been involved in the arts since birth--my father was a poet and multi-media artist, my mother is a visual artist, and I grew up in the “avant-garde” arts ferment of the 1970s. I always made all kinds of art from the time I was a tiny child, and I never stopped. But me as someone who was going to be an artist, that started in college. I loved making visual art and playing music and dancing and performing, but my ambition, from middle school on, was to be a biochemist and save the world. [I’m not sure that biochemistry can “save the world,” but it’s pretty important right now, and it did help me get a job working on one of our other pandemics, HIV.] But then, while I was at Wesleyan University for undergrad, I started composing dances and improvising, and then I was hooked. I was fascinated by composition in time, and by the small society we make every time we make a dance together. That fascination has mutated, and now I make small societies that become legal entities, or ongoing conceptual works that invite people to consider their place in the world, and collaborate on how to change it. In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning?
This is a funny question for me--hard to answer! I often feel just like I’m practicing--life. Which means to me--trying to fully embody the principles I believe in. It’s a constant struggle, and it’s hard to feel like I’m doing it right, but I think that’s what I’ve been groping towards for most of my adult professional life. That manifests now in these experimental organizations, where a concept can become its own “person.” I call it the performance of institution, and I am sure it’s rooted in my time as a dance artist, where survival depended on marketing your self and your vision as a kind of product or entity. By performing as an institution, me and my collaborators have been able to leverage the power of the legal entity to support people and ideas that haven’t been supported by mainstream arts institutions (or anyone else) because of structural racism or sexism or xeno-, trans- and homophobia or capitalist values or or or…. . How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about? I’m going to answer this question with a story about the past. In my early 30s, I felt an urgent need to be explicit about my political and moral obsessions and values, so I made a fairly radical shift in my practice. First, I started a program facilitating performance made by New York City youth from public high schools and alternative education programs, to counter the prevailing media narratives around urban youth of color in the 1990s. Then I made a big piece about war that took place on a docked ferryboat. Then I collaborated on a piece about the collision between biology, history, and race in the development of the US. Gradually, however, it became clear to me that if I really wanted to shift the structures of inequity that dominated my society, I would have to build new models, so I initiated Culture Push, in collaboration with Arturo Vidich and Aki Sasamoto, two other multidisciplinary artists, as an experiment in building an institution. This process taught me about using the principles of openness, improvisation, resourcefulness, and fierce conviction that I had learned from performance and activism to create new structures. I continue to refine this methodology in several different venues. How does your practice function within the world we have now? I want to be an agent of change and transformation through supporting and nurturing others. There are so many beautiful ideas in the world that have been suppressed or dismissed, and seeing those ideas come alive, and seeing the people behind those ideas thrive, is a real source of joy for me. I also want to use art and imagination to shine a light on important issues, whether in work I initiate or in the work that others initiate. Right now (RIGHT now, in the midst of this pandemic) there are pressing issues of access--to health care, to work with dignity, to housing--that have suddenly become even more glaringly obvious than they already were, and the intensity of the needs exposed is daunting. I’m not sure how I will respond personally (I am slow--I feel shame for my slowness, but I’m old enough to know that’s who I am), but in the meantime I will try to support all the people who have been able to respond immediately and with amazing innovation and imagination. Briefly share one self-care tip that has special meaning to you now. Cooking. The sensual satisfaction and immediate gratification of cooking a good meal is key right now. I feel so incredibly lucky that I have access to good food, and that I can prepare meals for my family. It’s a lot like making a performance--you spend an hour or so preparing something, and then it’s gone, eaten up in a flash, transformed from object to energy.
DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.
******
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