<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default"><font face="times new roman, serif">Thank you Paige, David, Kathleen for your vital contributions and insights. It was a rich and memorable conversation, honoring Tony Conrad and your multiple practices. I hope we can continue this dialogue in this next week of Poetry and Play. <br><br>I’m honored to introduce the following poets to this week who play across poetry and other artforms; such as the visual art of Truong Tran, textiles work of Maria Damon, graphic design interventions of Kenji Liu and experimental films by Lynne Sachs and her new collection <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0)">YEAR BY YEAR POEMS</span> just released by Tender Bottons Poetry. </font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="times new roman, serif"><br>The artists this week express a range of practices in conversation with poetry. Building upon this notion of play, and other issues that emerged such as logics and academic capitalism for example, we’re honored to hear further from this week’s participants to share about their work and practices of play in multiple genres and poetics. I placed their bios below, and the description of the forum. Thank you Truong, Lynne, Kenji, and Maria for joining us. <br><br><b>Bios</b><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="times new roman, serif"><span style="color:rgb(68,73,80);white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:rgb(241,240,240)">Truong Tran is a poet and visual artist. He received his MFA from San Francisco State University in 1995 in the field of writing. He is the author numerous volumes of poetry. He is a self taught visual artist whose work has been exhibited in venues including the California Historical Society, California Institute of Integral Studies, SOMArts Gallery, Telegraph Hill Gallery and The San Francisco International Art Market Art Fair, Avenue 12 Gallery and The Peninsula Museum of Art. Truong lives in San Francisco and teaches at Mills College.</span><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="color:rgb(68,73,80);white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:rgb(241,240,240)"><font face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></span></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="times new roman, serif"><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)">Lynne</span><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)"> </span><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)">Sachs</span><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)"> makes films and writes poems that explore the intricate relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences. Her work embraces hybrid form and combines memoir with experimental, documentary, and fictional modes. In recent years, she has expanded her practice to include live performance with moving image. </span><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)">Lynne</span><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)"> was first exposed to poetry by her great aunt as a child in Memphis, Tennessee. Soon she was frequenting workshops at the local library and getting a chance to learn from poets like Gwendolyn Brooks and Ethridge Knight. As an active member of Brown University’s undergraduate poetry community, she shared her early poems with fellow poet Stacy Doris. </span><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)">Lynne</span><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)"> later discovered her love of filmmaking while living in San Francisco where she worked with artists Craig Baldwin, Bruce Conner, Barbara Hammer, Carolee Schneeman, and Trinh T. Minh-ha. </span><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)">Lynne</span><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)"> has made thirty-five films which have screened at the New York Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Wexner Center for the Arts. Festivals in Buenos Aires, Beijing and Havana have presented retrospectives of her work. </span><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)">Lynne</span><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)"> received a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in Brooklyn. In October, Tender Buttons Press, which publishes experimental women's and gender-expansive poetry, is releasing </span><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)">Lynne</span><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)">'s book YEAR BY YEAR POEMS (2019) which is now available through Small Press Distribution.</span><br style="color:rgb(33,33,33)"></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)"><font face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></span></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="times new roman, serif"><font style="color:rgb(0,0,0)">Kenji C. Liu is a visual artist and author of </font><font style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><i>Monsters I Have Been</i></font><font style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"> (Alice James Books, 2019) and </font><font style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><i>Map of an Onion</i></font><font style="color:rgb(0,0,0)">, national winner of the 2015 Hillary Gravendyk Poetry Prize (Inlandia Institute). His poetry is in numerous journals, anthologies, magazines, and two chapbooks, </font><font style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><i>Craters: A Field Guide</i></font><font style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"> (2017) and </font><font style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><i>You Left Without Your Shoes</i></font><font style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"> (2009). An alumnus of Kundiman, VONA/Voices, Djerassi Resident Artist Program, and the Community of Writers, he lives in occupied Tongva land, where he lectures in Asian American Studies </font><font style="color:rgb(0,0,0)">at UCLA,</font><font style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"> Art at Occidental College, and manages </font><font style="color:rgb(0,0,0)">creative place-keeping initiatives in Little Tokyo.</font><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)"><br></span></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><font face="times new roman, serif"><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)">Maria Damon teaches in the Department of Humanities and Media Studies and in the Department of Writing at the Pratt Institute of Art. She holds a Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University and a B.A. from Hampshire College, and taught for many years in the Department of English at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of <i>The Dark End of the Street: Margins in American Vanguard Poetry</i>(University of Minnesota Press, 1994) and <i>Postliterary America: From Bagel Shop Jazz to Micropoetries</i>(University of Iowa Press, 2011), both of which explored the edges of “poetry” from alternative canons to subcultural imaginative verbal practices. She co-edited (with Ira Livingston) <i>Poetry and Cultural Studies: A Reader</i>(University of Illinois Press, 2009). She has published a number of online multi-media/poetry projects with mIEKAL aND, which have also been published as print books: <i>Literature Nation</i>(Potes & Poets), which was the first full-length hypertext poem online; <i>pleasureTEXTpossession</i>(Xexoxial Editions); and <i>eros/ion</i>(Ntamo) –all of which (and a few more) can be found at </span><a href="http://joglars.org/multidex.html" style="color:rgb(149,79,114)" target="_blank">http://joglars.org/multidex.html</a><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)">. She has also collaborated with Adeena Karasick, Alan Sondheim, Michelle Goldblatt, and Jukka-Pekka Kervinen. Her scholarship has been published in <i>American Literary History</i>, <i>SAQ</i>, <i>Cultural Studies</i>, <i>Cultural Critique</i>, <i>Postmodern Culture</i>, <i>Modern Fiction Studies</i>, <i>jacket2</i>, <i>Xcp: Cross-cultural Poetics</i>, <i>Cybertext Yearbook</i>, <i>Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies</i>, <i>Electronic Book Review</i>, etc., as well as in a number of books of essays on subjects such as performed poetry, cultural Jewishness, modernist American poetry, queer beat poetry, diasporic avant-gardes, and individual writers such as Bob Kaufman, Jack Spicer, Gertrude Stein and (forthcoming) Nathaniel Mackey. She edited a special section (focused on the work of Bob Kaufman) for a special issue on jazz poetics of <i>Callaloo</i>.<span></span></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)"><span><font face="times new roman, serif"> </font></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><font face="times new roman, serif"><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)">She also has a practice as a textile worker in weaving and counted cross-stitch, and has produced two chapbooks of “x-stitch vispo” (cross-stitch visual poetry): <i>meshwards</i>(Dusie Kollektiv, 2011 and </span><a href="http://www.dusie.org/Damon%20Meshwards.pdf" style="color:rgb(149,79,114)" target="_blank">http://www.dusie.org/Damon%20Meshwards.pdf</a><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)">) and <i>XXX</i>(nous-zot, 2015). Her work has been exhibited in various visual poetry and/or text/textile shows.</span><span></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33)"><font face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></span></p><div style="color:rgb(33,33,33)"><div><font color="black" face="times new roman, serif">On Practice and Play: Gestures Across Genres </font></div><div><font color="black" face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></div><div><font color="black" face="times new roman, serif">In this month's -empyre- forum, we take up the question of productivity and and the politics of play, and how playing across genres, mediums, forms, disciplines, and departments, etc. makes for new kinds of innovative art, thinking, and community; and in doing so, better intervenes and gestures toward transformative futures. The current conspiracy-us versus them- culture perhaps exemplifies the problem of singular thinking and the need for creative, eclectic, and innovative practices more than ever. We’re interested in artists, thinkers, and activists with practices that cross over boundaries and intervene in dichotomous logics. With attention to justice, we explore how multiple forms of art practices prompt us to reimagine different kind of worlds, as strategy and survival. Initially inspired by Tony Conrad's work, his practice spans across film, music, writing, and sculptures, we playfully ask how play lends itself to more libratory ways of creation and practice. </font></div><div><font color="black" face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></div><div><font color="black" face="times new roman, serif">We begin with the first week on media and new media art in conversation. with Tony Conrad's playful work across mediums, we then move into a second week asking questions on poetry and playing across the visual, cinematic, and theoretical, the third week is dedicated to the theme of ethnography across forms such as photography, film, and poetry, the forth week focuses on the ways artists advocate for decolonial and racial resistance through playing across genres and forms. While seemingly diverse, we hope the loosely organized topics will lend itself to connections between the weeks, and across the genres and themes presented. With attention to questions such as capital, creativity, institutional critique, and justice, we’re honored to have the following artists and thinkers join us for this conversation and reflect on the possibilities of practice, gestures, and play.</font></div></div><div style="color:rgb(33,33,33)"><font color="black" face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></div><div style="color:rgb(33,33,33)"><font color="black" face="times new roman, serif">We also invite our -empyre- subscribers, whose own work broadly resonates with the themes of practice and play, to join the conversation. What are the ways your practice has played or plays across genres? Have you faced institutional challenges in crossing disciplinary divides, and if so, how did you overcome them? Is play and practice productive? We explore this topic of play through four loose themes. We welcome our guests and all -empyre- subscribers to actively participate and post this month and share your practices and experiences of playing across genres and any questions that arise. We look forward to the conversation. </font></div></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="times new roman, serif">On Mon, Oct 7, 2019 at 5:11 AM David Grubbs <<a href="mailto:bluesea@dragcity.com" target="_blank">bluesea@dragcity.com</a>> wrote:<br></font></div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><font face="times new roman, serif">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
Kathy, your story about your experiences of Tony and hypnosis . . . as<br>
ever with Tony, I'm at one and the same time genuinely surprised (I<br>
guess I never discussed the subject of hypnosis with Tony) and also<br>
having another "of course!" moment -- of course Tony was experienced<br>
in hypnosis . . .<br>
<br>
One thread that I'd like to pull out of these conversations has to do<br>
with a kind of on/off toggle into and out of performing. I was<br>
interested in hearing Paige talk about what changed once someone --<br>
and it turned out that it was always Tony, hmm -- pressed the record<br>
button, how that inflected a certain kind of play that was already in<br>
progress. Spending time with Tony sometimes I felt that the play was<br>
continuous -- always "on" even if in something that we'd now recognize<br>
as sleep mode -- with different modes of performance occurring, often<br>
in hilariously discontinuous fashion. That also makes me think of the<br>
different ways of being in a multitude of situations, many of which as<br>
referenced in these conversations responding to mores within academia.<br>
I will say that the first time I ever saw Tony seem like his head was<br>
going to explode was one afternoon in 1998 when we were driving around<br>
Buffalo in an April snowstorm looking for materials for an impromptu<br>
recording session, Tony perfectly sanguine driving in to-me harrowing<br>
conditions but nearly losing it when given the slightest bit of<br>
runaround by someone in charge of checking out equipment at the<br>
university. (I remember thinking that his blood pressure had gone up<br>
when we set foot on campus.)<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
D<br>
<br>
On Sun, Oct 6, 2019 at 11:59 PM Margaret Rhee <<a href="mailto:mrheeloy@gmail.com" target="_blank">mrheeloy@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
><br>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
> Hello Kathleen and everyone for your posts, and thoughtful responses and this conversation.<br>
><br>
> While this week's play seemingly ends tomorrow, I hope we can continue the rich and heartening discussion on Tony's influence on practices, logics of capital, and living. So much of what was said is resonating, and I'm so appreciative to everyone for their perspectives, insights and convergences made. Thinking now of Kathleen’s work with wearable electronics of her "Urban Armor" series and the exciting playful ways the work plays around with the notion of fashion and machines. It reminds me of artist Maria de Los Angeles's work on wearable dresses of the undocumented, which we'll hear from in Week Four. It's exciting to rethink objects and the materiality of work that holds concepts.<br>
><br>
> As someone who also plays across art, poetry, and scholarly practices, in response to Kathleen's question, much of the work on play really stems from a generative conversation with Renate on the forum and how what is really moving and resonant for me was Tony's movement and playfulness across form.<br>
><br>
> I'm also thinking about what Kathy's insights onTony's desire to build artist community in Buffalo and the greatness of rust belt cities in WNY like Troy, and how being in spaces that are livable and offers a time for sustainable practices. How it also makes sense that the practice of being an artist isn't only about making, but the kind of living that we do. Perhaps this notion of home. I feel this connects so well to Paige's comments on the "virtues of being tinkers" yet, "I don't want to cede anything, nor did tony, to the logic of hierarchy when it comes to the power of what we do."<br>
><br>
> I think this is a conundrum faced given now the fast sexiness of 'digital humanities' for example. While ten years ago, as a graduate students, I was actively discouraged by many advisors to pursue community based digital work (specifically my collaborative project in the San Francisco Jail on digital storytelling with incarcerated women of color). Now, I have colleagues talk about wanting to make digital projects simply because its "new," and I can't help but also understand the logics of academic capitalism being in place.<br>
><br>
> I'm not sure how to distinguish except, I and others didn't necessarily create things because of academic capital, but we were interested in new things, and dismantling logics of hierarchy.<br>
><br>
> We know how technology and new media work is never benign nor innocent. We can think of funding practices, patriarchy, and hierarchies and the importance of refusing institutional logics of commodification.<br>
> How to? While we maintain the power of play and her interventions? More questions than answers perhaps, but I'm glad the forum has brought up questions around logics, hierarchies, and yes, hypnosis too.<br>
><br>
> On Fri, Oct 4, 2019 at 8:13 PM Kathleen McDermott <<a href="mailto:katmariemcdermott@gmail.com" target="_blank">katmariemcdermott@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
>><br>
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
>> Hello all,<br>
>><br>
>> So great to read all of your thoughts! Thank you Nina for sharing your work I enjoyed looking at it. And thank you Paige, David, and Kathy for sharing insights into yours and Tony’s practices.<br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> I’ll continue on this question of play in creative practice because I find it super interesting. I do not think an element of playfulness in creative practice excludes rigor or structure. However I do think in frameworks centered on productivity, it is often perceived as less-than or as a poor use of time. Play is an enormous privilege, many of us never feel we should play or can play. (The issue of motherhood and time definitely comes up here). I attended a panel yesterday at the NY public library regarding comics as a medium for inclusion, (titled “welcome to the nerd palace!”) and one of the questions asked from the audience centered around how to convince parents that it was ok to let kids read comics, (was it like letting them eat candy?) A panelist who was also a librarian responded that she thought there were echoes of capitalism in how we view student reading lists— that even regarding children we fret that they should always be consuming media that is productive and has been sanctioned. And yet comics provide a space for so many children who feel othered... A digression but I guess I take heart in the idea that even if play isn’t explicitly productive (though I believe it very often is), it can be ok to engage in it.<br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> But mostly I do see it as productive, as requiring rigor and as approaching the area of experimentation, in a way that is valid but not in a scientific method sense. Because different structures work for different people.<br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> But I do very easily slide into doubt on this. I see the possible danger, in the Arts, where we are often having to convince the broader institution of our expertise and our rigor. And it can certainly be dangerous territory to question “expertise,” in a general climate that has become so anti-academic, anti-expert. So arguing for play can be a very tricky boundary to walk.<br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> Would love to hear others’ thoughts on how and whether they attempt to balance rigor with play in practice. Margaret, does this come up in your work?<br>
>><br>
>><br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> On Fri, Oct 4, 2019 at 12:17 PM High, Kathy <<a href="mailto:highk@rpi.edu" target="_blank">highk@rpi.edu</a>> wrote:<br>
>>><br>
>>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
>>> Hello Paige and all,<br>
>>><br>
>>> I thank you Paige for this entry - and all the entries which I have followed with great interest.<br>
>>><br>
>>> But I must speak up here - as I feel like maybe I am a representative of the last generation of actual "posers" in academia akin to Tony Conrad. This ilk will not be able to continue after my generation. And - like my immigrant father who also posed and taught graduate business school students at Penn State while he only had a 6th grade education, and so many others I admire! - we have figured out a way to move through these systems that are now dominated by institutional risk aversion regulations and more!<br>
>>><br>
>>> Of course, I have to admit that Tony was my advisor in graduate school at UB and we stayed in touch since my graduation in 1981. Tony wonderfully taught me how to teach, how to play and how to make art.<br>
>>><br>
>>> I received a MA in Humanities (what is that?) from UBuffalo in 1981 - and we were told by the University of Buffalo that once they got their MFA program approval our degrees would be "turned into MFAs". Years later then the MFA came on board I wrote to the administration to request this change in my degree - but alas. I was told I would have to reregister, and take all kinds of courses to actually qualify for the MFA. So be it. No MFA for me. So, I have basically faked it through my career with a non-terminal degree all this time. And now - ironically, I advise PhD students!<br>
>>><br>
>>> But that is not why I am writing.<br>
>>><br>
>>> I wanted to post because of something Paige said about Tony and how SoS and other things "made Buffalo his home." I had a great conversation with Tony about 12+ years ago while he visited Troy after a talk he gave at RPI. He lamented the fact that so many of his fellow faculty members in his department were living in NYC and commuting to Buffalo to teach - leaving a hole in the actual Buffalo community which could have been thriving had they been in situ. He had tried to start community studios to encourage living communities, but to no avail. Tony really loved what these outskirts, somewhat ruined and fringe communities had to offer to us all - like Buffalo. An opportunity for freedom from financial burden (inexpensive rents, affordable food and schooling, etc.). Which also translated into time! And a place where communities can really come together to change opportunities - like with the aspirations of SoS. I have taken this to heart living and working now in another rust belt upstate city, Troy NY!<br>
>>><br>
>>> In the 1980s, I worked with Tony and Tony Billoni, and Chris Hill, and others in a hypnotist club - which was amazing. Tony C. and I were both good hypnotists. And thus we started this "club" - a kind of thing that rarely exists today. As a group we met and held experiments where we tried to hypnotize each other, and see what results we could produce - which is weird and scary because when you hypnotize someone you exert control over them. But I never felt threatened by Tony - like I did so by many other men in those times (and most of the men at UB!) - to Paige's point of Tony's feminist awareness. To his credit, I started working with Tony at UB in the graduate program, after pioneering video artist Steina Vasulka left and moved to Sante Fe. She had been the only woman teaching in the program. I was devastated when she left. But Tony became - somehow and very organically - my mentor and super shaped who I am today. That was a gift@!<br>
>>><br>
>>> In fact, Tony was the only person who ever was able to hypnotize me! He only got my arm to suspend upward - but that was a big deal! He was truly a magician! Ha!<br>
>>> In those moments we learned how to literally lean on each other and trust one another. And this was "community".<br>
>>><br>
>>><br>
>>> On 10/3/19, 8:02 PM, "<a href="mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" target="_blank">empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a> on behalf of Paige Sarlin" <<a href="mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" target="_blank">empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a> on behalf of <a href="mailto:p.sarlin@gmail.com" target="_blank">p.sarlin@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
>>><br>
>>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
>>> "Grateful for structures that make conversations possible." MR<br>
>>><br>
>>> Thanks K, M, and D.<br>
>>><br>
>>> Building on the thread about conversation and its association<br>
>>> with/collapse into play, Studio of the Streets (SOS) seems like a<br>
>>> great project to think with. What became an early example of<br>
>>> relational and discursive "social practice" actually began as the<br>
>>> documentation of a protest to demand resources and space for public<br>
>>> access television. As it was conceived by the members of The First<br>
>>> Amendment Network for Public Access (with Chris Hill, Barbara<br>
>>> Lattanzi, Julie Zando, Jody Lafond, Meg Knowles, and many others --<br>
>>> including TC and Brian Springer), SOS weekly shoots were an attempt to<br>
>>> encourage the people they encountered on the steps of City Hall to<br>
>>> make their own TV. Eventually that goal fell by the wayside and TC,<br>
>>> Cathy Steffan, and Ann Szyjika developed a careful choreography in<br>
>>> order to produce and amplify conversations with the people of Buffalo.<br>
>>> SOS's conversational/play was shaped by boundaries, struggles with<br>
>>> authority, and institutions: from time constraints (they filmed on<br>
>>> fridays and aired tuesdays) to the organizing efforts of hundreds of<br>
>>> people to demand public access .... but it was also enabled by tony's<br>
>>> employment as a professor at University at Buffalo. He’d been teaching<br>
>>> at UB for many years, but he used to say that SOS made Buffalo his<br>
>>> home.<br>
>>><br>
>>> I raise this because the notion of home that Margaret invoked is, for<br>
>>> me, synonymous with conversation, a space or site for dialogue and<br>
>>> discussion. That's what I need: interlocutors and structures for<br>
>>> engaging with them. Call it a network, connections, friendships,<br>
>>> relationships, "community" -- forms of association for conversation have to be<br>
>>> produced, reproduced, and maintained. Like many privileged folks, i've<br>
>>> been lucky to meet brilliant individuals and to carve networks out<br>
>>> within academic institutions, but it's when I've tried to build them<br>
>>> "outside of institutions" that's when those conversations-connections<br>
>>> require work and resources to feel like play.<br>
>>><br>
>>> From this perspective, i don't think tony would have recognized himself as a<br>
>>> "professional amateur". Rejecting the notion of professionalization at<br>
>>> every turn, he was a student of boundaries and disciplines -- if only<br>
>>> just to upend the conventions. He didn't have an MFA when he was hired<br>
>>> at UB, most artists didn't. But he set about to learn "the culture" --<br>
>>> having reading groups on post-structuralism and other academically<br>
>>> fashionable material. (He was also hired to teach video having worked<br>
>>> almost exclusively in 16mm). All power structures intrigued him. He<br>
>>> took institution building quite seriously but in the context of the<br>
>>> university, he was most committed to finding ways for his students to<br>
>>> cohere as a group. He'd do anything to facilitate that and to keep the<br>
>>> department limber and forward thinking in its offerings and hires. But<br>
>>> the job was, first and foremost, an income. A "home base" from which<br>
>>> to be a filmmaker, video artist, musician, writer, artist, and a<br>
>>> teacher (or "polymath" -- a term he never used to describe himself).<br>
>>><br>
>>> The current conditions of academia mean that artists are hired or<br>
>>> expected to satisfy the never-ending imperatives of<br>
>>> "interdisciplinarity." Artists must write, theorize, perform,<br>
>>> produce, instruct, tutor, and criticize across media to be legible to our<br>
>>> administrations and hiring committees. This multi-modal status (with<br>
>>> all of its apparently boundary challenging playful potential) has<br>
>>> become a professional requirement.<br>
>>><br>
>>> I'm neck deep in this -- I have the degrees, check the boxes, and now<br>
>>> I teach in a department with a PhD in practice where we're in the<br>
>>> business of producing professionals in the mold of<br>
>>> trickster, multi-modal, institution-challenging mavericks. From where<br>
>>> I sit -- it's worrisome how well and easily "the celebration/power of<br>
>>> play" fits into the very logic or authority it has the capacity to<br>
>>> flout. I'm all for celebrating the virtues of being tinkerers and<br>
>>> undisciplined but never an amateur. I don't want to cede anything, nor<br>
>>> did tony, to the logic of<br>
>>> hierarchy when it comes to the power of what we do.<br>
>>><br>
>>> Paige Sarlin, Ph.D. (she/her)<br>
>>> Assistant Professor / Department of Media Study / University at Buffalo/SUNY<br>
>>> <a href="mailto:p.sarlin@buffalo.edu" target="_blank">p.sarlin@buffalo.edu</a> / <a href="http://paigesarlin.info" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">paigesarlin.info</a><br>
>>> _______________________________________________<br>
>>> empyre forum<br>
>>> <a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" target="_blank">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br>
>>> <a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a><br>
>>><br>
>>> _______________________________________________<br>
>>> empyre forum<br>
>>> <a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" target="_blank">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br>
>>> <a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a><br>
>><br>
>> _______________________________________________<br>
>> empyre forum<br>
>> <a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" target="_blank">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br>
>> <a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a><br>
><br>
> _______________________________________________<br>
> empyre forum<br>
> <a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" target="_blank">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br>
> <a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
-- <br>
David Grubbs<br>
Professor of Music<br>
Performance and Interactive Media Arts (PIMA)<br>
Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, CUNY<br>
<a href="http://pima-brooklyncollege.info" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://pima-brooklyncollege.info</a><br>
<br>
Coming soon:<br>
Anthony McCall & David Grubbs, Simultaneous Soloists (Pioneer Works Press)<br>
<a href="https://pioneerworks.org/publishing/simultaneous-soloists/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://pioneerworks.org/publishing/simultaneous-soloists/</a><br>
The Underflow, The Underflow (Corbett vs. Dempsey)<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
empyre forum<br>
<a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" target="_blank">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br>
<a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a></font></blockquote></div><font face="times new roman, serif"><br clear="all"></font><div><font face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></div><font face="times new roman, serif">-- <br></font><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><font face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></div><div dir="ltr"><font face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></div><div dir="ltr"><font face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></div><div dir="ltr"><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="times new roman, serif">Margaret Rhee, Ph.D. </font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="times new roman, serif">College Fellow in Digital Practice (2018 - 2019) </font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="times new roman, serif">Department of English </font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="times new roman, serif">Harvard University </font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="times new roman, serif">Assistant Professor in Media Theory (2019) </font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="times new roman, serif">Department of Media Study </font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="times new roman, serif">SUNY Buffalo </font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>