This special edition of Inside The Dancer’s Studio podcast features content from the Creative Administration Research (CAR) Summit Convening and was recorded at the Akron Art Museum. CAR is made possible through a multi-year grant from the Mellon Foundation. We join Christy Bolingbroke, our Executive / Artistic Director, in dialogue with Chicago, IL-based multidisciplinary, Kenyan-Indian, Canadian-American artist Brendan Fernandes and Akron Art Museum Curator Dr. Jeff Katzin. The trio foreground their conversation titled, “Against All Odds: Moving In Museums,” with visual artist, Keith Haring's work, which was on exhibit at the time. Using this common ground, they explore how visual artists and choreographers are dancing in and around museum spaces today.
This special edition of Inside The Dancer’s Studio podcast features content from the Creative Administration Research (CAR) Summit Convening and was recorded at the Akron Art Museum. CAR is made possible through a multi-year grant from the Mellon Foundation. We join Christy Bolingbroke, our Executive / Artistic Director, in dialogue with Chicago, IL-based multidisciplinary, Kenyan-Indian, Canadian-American artist Brendan Fernandes and Akron Art Museum Curator Dr. Jeff Katzin. The trio foreground their conversation titled, “Against All Odds: Moving In Museums,” with visual artist, Keith Haring's work, which was on exhibit at the time. Using this common ground, they explore how visual artists and choreographers are dancing in and around museum spaces today.
http://www.brendanfernandes.ca/
https://akronartmuseum.org/media/exhibition/keith-haring-against-all-odds/
https://www.nccakron.org/creativeadminresearch
INTRODUCTION: Thanks for joining us Inside The Dancer's Studio, where we bring listeners like you, closer to the creative process. Inside The Dancer’s Studio is a program of the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron. This program was recorded at the Akron Art Museum during the second annual Creative Admin Research convening in June 2023. Here is Christy Bolingbroke, our Executive / Artistic Director, in dialogue with Chicago IL-based multidisciplinary, Kenyan-Indian, Canadian-American artist Brendan Fernandes and Akron Art Museum Curator Dr. Jeff Katzin. The trio foreground their conversation titled, “Against All Odds: Moving In Museums,” with visual artist Keith Haring's work, which was on exhibit at the time. Using this common ground, they explore how visual artists and choreographers are dancing in and around museum spaces today.
Christy Bolingbroke: Please join me in welcoming Jeff Katzin into the stage, Curator here at the Akron Art Museum [Audience cheers and claps]. You want to sit there? And everyone else's line would be you're on mute. If this was a Zoom meeting.
Jeff Katzin: I'd like to think that I said you're unmute more often than I heard it said to me. So that's a good batting average [Bolingbroke and audience laugh].
Christy Bolingbroke: It's true. So, Jeff, to start us off. How did “Against All Odds,” and this particular exhibition around Keith Haring’s work come to fruition?
Jeff Katzin: Sure. In an unusual fashion for a museum. First of all, the Akron Art Museum was founded as the Akron Art Institute just over 100 years ago, back in 1922. Back then, we had more of a teaching focus, and we shifted over time toward museum exhibition display. Since that's just about 100 years ago, we were celebrating our centennial, and actually still are, have been doing it over 2022 and 23. And so I felt once our previous senior curator Jared Ledesma left for a new position in North Carolina, a very cool museum, and it suddenly fell to me to figure out what we were going to do during this celebratory centennial period with a fairly large exhibition slot from April to September that really hadn't had any planning done yet. I admit, I had about 8months to figure out a show and was kind of scrambling because museums tend to have 3, 2-3 or more years to do something like that. So what I found actually through a member of our design team, who knows the Miami area pretty well. He said the Rubell Museum in Miami, Florida [Audience cheers]. There you go. So Miami…
Christy Bolingbroke: Miami is in the house.
Jeff Katzin: [Audience laughs] Yeah Miami. That they are an interestingly organized private museum. They have some segments of their collection that they send out to travel, and can do it a little more quickly than a regular nonprofit museum that normally would take again that sort of multi-year timespan, so get in touch with them. And I looked at their list of exhibitions, and there were a number of very interesting things. But as I went down and down and down into what they traveled in the 2000 aughts, I saw that they had a Keith Haring show. And that I thought wouldn't be a wonderful draw an exciting show, at this time when we're really trying to be at our best, celebrating our 100th birthday, emerging from the pandemic, and to really do something wonderful and exciting. And in the process, I won't say the specific number, but our budget for this exhibition slot was x. And I convinced everyone that we should do x times 3.5 [Audience laughs] [Bolingbroke: Excellent] to bring the Haring show. My favorite part, I don't know if she likes me quoting this or not, but I do it often and have done it in front of her. Our Director of Advancement said, Don't let money be the reason why this show doesn't happen. And that as a curator was amazing empowerment. And so that from Rubell collection was about 80 of the 120 or so objects in the show. And from the point where we signed that contract, it was just a constant push to add more loans, more works, because when you have Haring’s stuff, it's so full of energy. It's so dense. And we wanted a show that would match those qualities, and really fill our space in a full body kind of a way [Audience claps].
Christy Bolingbroke:Yes. And you mentioned the energy and the denseness. When, when we talked it was this, this liveness. And as someone who grew up in the 80s, and I don't even know I could have named Haring, but it does feel like the Dancing Man and the Barking Dog have, have been in my life forever. And I recognize that as much as I do dance steps. What I was surprised to find out in our conversations together is how much Haring would draw live without a sketch. What you know, and that felt very similar to dance, when you are literally, you're moving and yet, but we rehearse at least for like, can you talk a little bit about the liveness in how Haring approaches his work? [Katzin: Yeah] Or did.
Jeff Katzin: Yeah, I mean, I think that for him, and I'm sure I'll talk more about it, the situation of doing his work was at times more important than the content of the work or where he was going to end up, like putting himself in the right place in the right mindset. So there's a lot of different things that feed into that liveness as a quality. One is that he only started doing the really recognizable work that is represented in our show, and that you know, you would have grown up with. And then I grew up with, with a poster at my family's kitchen table for a while until it like faded because we had it there long enough. He got there via a time in art school where he was doing performance art, abstraction, and video art. And all of that really had a lot to do with action, in real time. Even the abstract art sometimes became a performance. One of his early pieces was one where he, he called it Painting Myself Into a Corner, and he stood on a canvas and painted until he couldn't walk anymore without stepping on his painting. Or he liked to keep his studio door open and have people from the street in New York City wander in, and end up in conversations with him and watch him work and do it all in real time. That was a whole constellation of things that he enjoyed and really wanted to make sure to keep going throughout his work. As far as working without a plan or a sketch, never, he never had a plan for what he was going to do before he did it. And yet he had this amazing, I mean, I think uncanny ability to start at the corner of a wall or a sheet of paper or whatever he was working on and get to the opposite corner and have everything come out even in weight and distribution and look as if it had to have been planned. But it wasn't. That was amazing. And then the last thing I'll mention is that he really he wanted to work so quickly that his experience of the world around him would flow right through him, and that he would not really mediate it. That he wouldn't have time to think about it and conceptualize it. He would just be a vessel or a conduit for the world around him to be expressed. And this way of working quickly without a plan was the only way for that to be possible.
Christy Bolingbroke: Hmm. And one of the highlights of the show upstairs are the subway drawings, which when you talk about, you know, throwing open the door to the studio and inviting the public in, and also being a part of the world around him. Can you talk a little bit about how the subway drawings like, because I would imagine that's a permitting nightmare in today's age when you're like, I'm gonna go down and draw on public transit. Is that something that he was only able to do in the 80s? How did it come about?
Jeff Katzin: Yeah, this, again, is something that's a whole constellation of things. One is, he was in a circle or in New York City at the time of a number of other artists, like he would name Jenny Holzer, John Ahearn, artists who in different ways were taking their practice directly to the public at street level. And that's something that he really realized that he wanted to do. Ultimately his biggest goal and greatest motivation was to reach the largest possible audience [Bolingbroke: Hmm]. So he has this idea of wanting to do art in public places. He's also following graffiti. He's really impressed with graffiti as a element of Black culture in New York, Hip Hop culture. And he's really a fan. He's knows that he's not a native New Yorker, he's a White kid from Pennsylvania. He's something of an outsider in that culture. And so he wants to do something like it, but respectfully adjacent to it [Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm]. And all of this sort of swirls together into a moment when he's on the subway platform in New York City, and sees not the subway car, which is a graffiti spot, but an advertisement board on the wall of a subway platform, which when the advertisements were out of date, and you're waiting for a new advertisement to come in, but you don't want to give the previous person free time visible, you want people to pay for their advertising space, the companies would just put a blank sheet of paper temporarily over, and then layer a new add on top of it and then layer another blank sheet of paper and just keep building it up. But when there was that blank, black sheet, he realized that's an empty space that I can fill with some drawing. And so in a moment of inspiration, he ran up to street level, grabbed a piece of chalk, ran back down and just did the drawing, no permitting involved. He, between 1980, when he started that, in 1985, did over 5000 drawings in the New York subway. And that's how he became someone who was known to people, like you said, without knowing his name, because he never signed any of these drawings. But the dancing figures, the crawling babies, barking dogs, and just the general style were so recognizable, that people knew that one person was behind all of this [Bolingbroke: Hmm]. He got over 100 tickets, and got arrested at least once. He would talk about how he knew like he was trying to avoid being harassed by the police. And I mean, there were, there was a graffiti artist, I can't remember his name off the top of my head, who was killed by the police, a Black artist around the time and Haring was really moved by that incident and concerned about it. It wasn't like just trivial. And just a matter of like people giving you a hard time. And he, so he appreciated that he had to work quickly. He appreciated the feel of the paper. And using the chalk. He liked to have people around watching him, that entire like I said that circumstance [Bolingbroke: Hmm] was really perfect for what it was that he was trying to do, which was work quickly, learn by doing interact with people, produce art with somewhat universal messages that would reach a really, really large audience. The strategy of it turned out to be maybe the most brilliant thing.
Christy Bolingbroke: Well, and I remember you also saying that his idea of documentation was not the finished work itself, but a picture of him doing the work. That idea of documentation that also feels like the liveness of the body of the participation. That it's not about the product, but it's about the process, and the context and being of the world. But why did he stop doing subway drawings?
Jeff Katzin: Oh, that really makes it even harder on me. Because I was going to have to explain why it is that the proper thing in Haring’s mind was not to preserve the drawings themselves. And yet we have a whole bunch of examples upstairs [Audience laughs]. So he thought of the drawings very much as performances. Not more as a performance probably than as a drawing. It's both. But it's especially a performance because it's about doing the work in a particular place in real time. And having people see the work in a specific context, in a specific location. It's not that it was wrong of someone to come upon the work after he had made it. But he also knew that it was gonna get plastered over with a new poster within hours or days. So it was never meant to be preserved. Nevertheless, originally just fans and people who wanted to participate in the art scene of New York started cutting down the drawings and preserving them. And then as his gallery, fine art world career took off, and his stuff was selling for 10s of 1000s of dollars or more, people realized there's value in this. And eventually, by 1985, he would make a drawing and it would almost immediately get cut down off the wall. And that is what stopped the practice.
Christy Bolingbroke: Hmm. But he did still want to be brought straight to the people, so he, he did pop-up shops, right? And you've recreated what a pop-up shop could be upstairs as well.
Jeff Katzin: Or the “Pop Shop” was the name [Bolingbroke: Okay]. Yeah. And it actually was less of a pop-up, and it lasted for quite a while even past his death, which is interesting thing unto itself. But he created the Pop Shop in Chelsea in Manhattan, in 1986. Stopped the subway drawings in 1985. And like he said, he was really concerned about how is it that everyday people who can’t afford the gallery prices for something that I'm doing on canvas or even a drawing, how can I continue to connect to as many people as possible? And merchandising was really for him a way to do that. And where many artists would see that as some kind of a compromise. Because I think his work was so rooted and reaching large audiences, for him, it was very natural, even to the point where he in all likelihood was more comfortable selling someone a T-shir or a button or a poster for two figures. You know, probably I mean, I think some of the posters were really cheap, it was like, under $10 for a poster, something like that. it might have been even less [Bolingbroke: Don't tell the gift shop]. I mean, these are 1980s prices, I guess [Audience laughs]. I think it was, I think it was like a couple of dollars, I think it was really low. I found a price just recently, and I can remember it specifically. But I was surprised, even accounting for inflation. But, but he was more comfortable with that than selling something to someone who had the budget to buy a painting for $30,000 in the 1980s. And so it was a shop with all of these really pretty simple items. And as we've sort of recreated upstairs, the space was a work of art unto itself, where he painted a floor, wall, ceiling. He pinned all of the different products to the walls, and then you go to a window to ask for it. So that became a visual display. And he did the whole thing really masterfully.
Christy Bolingbroke: And in our CAR work, we're always looking for like, what's passive income, what are alternative revenue streams? So we don't default to you know, just ticket sales and grants and classes. And we'll talk a little bit about the politics of Haring’s work with our next guests as well, but from a business standpoint, can you talk about the sort of foresight and vision for him to develop an eponymous foundation that still handles licensing today?
Jeff Katzin: Yeah. So Haring was working at the height of the AIDS epidemic. He essentially knew, he, he always figured that he was going to die young in some fashion or other. Eventually, he realized it was likely to be from that disease. And that that was not what he had bargained for. But he was diagnosed with HIV in, I think, 1987 and AIDS in 1988. And he died in early 1990, at the age of 31. And so he made the incredible impact that he did in really just a 10-year span, of the height of his career, which is amazing. And knowing that his life was going to be cut short, did give him an opportunity to plan. And so in the late 1980s, he created the Keith Haring Foundation. And artists typically create a foundation with the money that they've earned over the course of their career, if they are lucky enough to you know, bring in enough with artwork that they have not yet sold, if they're lucky enough for that to be worth a sufficient amount. And those are the things that sort of sustain a foundation. But with Haring, the additional element of merchandising and licensing is possibly the most valuable thing that he bestowed upon the foundation. So the Pop Shop stayed in operation after his death and all the way till 2005. And then now there's I think he really over the last 10 or so years, there's been a resurgence of brands collaborating with the foundation to create Keith Haring merchandise. And the reason why I find it so like fun to, I've got my pen and my shirt and my shoes here, I'm geared up with Keith Haring, is not just because it fits his art so well, but because the foundation exists to take a portion of those sales and put it toward the charitable enterprises that really mattered to Haring, which are education, prevention and research related to AIDS, and charities that support children. And so I don't necessarily mean to be a cynical museum person telling you to exit through the gift shop. But you know, there is good done by, by the merchandise which is a major part of his legacy, and in an unusual way.
Christy Bolingbroke: I mean, you have options, the Akron Art Museum and I think some of the brands today. This season GAP and Old Navy have Haring T-shirts and things. So you have your choice, which gift shop you want to exit through. We're going to talk some more but to introduce our next artist, I actually will invite Erin and the Akron Art Museum team to bring down the film screen, and we have a brief video before we all come back.
Christy Bolingbroke: NCCAkron and Akron Art Museum friends, please join me in welcoming Brendan Fernandes to the stage [Audience cheers and claps].
Brendan Fernandes: Thank you. Thank you. Really appreciate everyone being here, and super excited to jump into this conversation. You guys started such a robust dialogue. So I'm going to help hopefully contribute. I just have to say, I haven't seen that before. And I don't like seeing myself on camera [Audience laughs]. So I'm feeling a little anxious right now. But it's fine.
Christy Bolingbroke: Well, maybe we start there with how you would define documentation of your work. There's such aliveness because you are bringing bodies and performance. You said that yourself, you don't perform on stages. But does your work exist in museum spaces without the dancer bodies?
Brendan Fernandes: Interesting, okay. No, I think the work has to have some sense of activation, engagement with a living body. It doesn't have to be a dancer, per se, it could be the audience as, as much as I make, you know, sculptural installations, you might have seen some of them in that, in that video. It's asking for bodies to, to be present in it. So whether it's something that I've choreographed with trained dancers, or if it's something for my audience, I'm kind of, kind of creating like, dance scores with my sculptural interventions. I always say when I make my installations that I'm making playgrounds [Bolingbroke: Hmm] that they are spaces that you can explore as dancers, but also as an audience, you're also asked to participate, and kind of follow a specific kind of trajectory, or, or, or artery within the space. But the body has to be there, you know, the body is always going to be a major part of you know, what activates the work,
Christy Bolingbroke: Yeah, whether they're dancers, or I, I loved in our prep talk, when you said like, sometimes the audience are the dancers and performers, how they interact with the space [Fernandes: Yeah] as well.
Brendan Fernandes: I recently, I'm doing a show that's opening in Philadelphia, in, at the Barnes Foundation, and one of the curators was like, because we have set performances happening in the space. And I was saying, you know, that part of my work for that exhibition is the museum design, like I've designed the space with the museum design team. And then there'll be a performance that the dancers will explore within that space. But one of the curators was like, Well, when the dance ends, what does what happens to the space, and I'm like, well, the dance doesn't end. Dance will continue with the way that an audience member will move in the space. Like I'm making pathways [Bolingbroke: Hmm]. And for me, that's something that I've been thinking a lot about as ways of dismantling like systems and institutions. Like I’m metaphorically thinking that to make new doorways, windows, and pathways is a way to dismantle the institution but to create new ways of moving in a space. And so I try to create trajectories, you know [Bolingbroke: Hmm], to kind of ask you to move in this way. And even that, for me is like political language, to move forward to move in this way to move in a new way. So that's kind of part of, of, you know, the kind of audience participation as well.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm. Thinking about Keith Haring as a political statement, with his work, and then how do you relate also to politics more, in your own work today?
Brendan Fernandes: Well, through lived experiences. Through you know, I come you know, I look a lot at the colonial body, looking at my history with ballet. As a ballet dancer, my parents, you know, I'm an immigrant from Kenya. My parents brought me to Canada when I was nine years old, and that's when I found dance. But I found ballet as community, which was interesting for me, that then became a moment of, you know, kind of like stoppage when the ballet world didn't like my body. And specifically my feet, they didn't like my feet. And so, I, you know, I kind of look at the ways of dismantling those structures [Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm], those power dynamics. You know, right now, I think, you know, pandemic-wise, you know, thinking about how do I move together? How do we move, how do we make community, how do we do this? As you know, in my work, when I say my dance work is protest. It's about a protest of bringing collectivity, bringing people together to form a solidarity. So a lot of my work sometimes becomes a dance party where we end up all just communicating and dancing with each other through that kind of bodily language. And, you know, for me a celebration in my family, I, when we were together, when we are celebrating, we dance [Bolingbroke: Hmm]. And so for me, that kind of joyous space is also a way of being a political protest [Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm]. Another way that I think about is through the residue of hardship, and the labor that comes from things like Black Lives Matter. You know like, during the pandemic, like putting on a mask and being scared that I might, you know, contract a virus and get sick, but I'm gonna go out there and, and, and be seen and be heard [Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm]. So a lot of my work comes from that and I think that's something that Keith Haring was also trying to do in his work [Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm]. And I identify as a queer POC, and I think, within that work, being in like marginalized or counter cultured from, you know, an everyday culture, I think that that is where there's a similarity [Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm]. He was, he was making space for, for his community within a pandemic, when you know, you know, we couldn't, you know, we had there was a president that wouldn't say the word AIDS [Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm], you know, so, you know, silence equals death. And those are still things that we're still fighting for, those civil rights are still things that we're trying to engage within other, you know, within many queer communities still.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm. And it's not enough, I think sometimes people will say to artists, like, Oh, you should, you should do it because you're passionate, you should do it. And it's like, Oh, no, I also like to pay the bills. And so I also am curious for everyone to hear more about, so what is the company, The Ecosystem? Because you, you were trained in a very 20th century, single choreographer company as a lot of your lived experience as well. And you have built out a different sense of company and ecosystem that also isn't limited to just one city.
Brendan Fernandes: Yeah, I, I think that for me, it's kind of like, again, a community spirit of like working with, you know, people will say to me, like, How do you find your dancers? And I'm, like, Well, so and so danced in this company, or did this piece, and then someone's told me to move this, there's like. Even like, today, I was talking to my friend Allison, who used to dance with Ballet Next and Joffrey, and I was like, I'm doing this thing in Philadelphia, who do you suggest? So I feel like as dance makers and dance people and, and you know, we kind of just have that kind of ethos of, of having community engagement. Like we are a core [Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm]. We are a body that kind of moves together. And so we also support that, and, and I think that's something that's really important to me. So obviously, you know, I have dancers that I keep working with, because the method to my madness is sometimes, you know, it's complicated. And so they get my madness. And they, they agreed to participate again. I work with certain dancers that know what I asked them to do. But I definitely have like a group in Chicago, New York, and Toronto and LA. But when I'm working with others, in other cities, it's always like an engagement, asking my community like, Oh, I did an intensive with so and so they're great [Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm]. And I just love that, that that's the way we kind of find each other. Like it's a really, instead of doing auditions and putting calls out, it's just kind of going to within the community.
Christy Bolingbroke: Well, it's very human-to-human. But I'm also curious, you know, I want the receipts. I'm, I’m curious to the specifics, you had made a comment, like for 6 months out of the year, I'm trying to keep a company. What does that mean, when so much of today's dance landscape is working on a project-to-project basis?
Brendan Fernandes: I think it's like trying to, the sustainability is something that I tried to, you know, I think working with museums is different too. There’s a different way of like gaining funding or how we pay our dancers. I always try to pay way above what we can, always applying for grants, and so things like that. But I think that when there is you know, finances from like, specific kinds of donors, or, you know, sales as well [Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm], you know, because when I make things, it also becomes commodifiable [Bolingbroke: The sculptures]. The sculptures or the films that I make. And so there's those things that I make, which are definitely part of the practice and are conceptual, but also then help support the practice as well when it comes to the [Bolingbroke: Hmm] liveness of it. So I always say my work is intersectional, that it's between visual arts and dance. And sometimes that hybridity is confusing for people. Because, I kind of like to play with that, and sometimes it doesn't work in my favor, because sometimes I'll apply for a grant and they'll say, Oh, you're not a dance artist [Bolingbroke: Hmm], you're a visual artist. And then, and I hate those binaries. I think that's something as well that I'm trying to, you know, to dismantle. But the work is that. It's not, it's kind of, it kind of flips. It's, it's in between [Bolingbroke: Hmm], and I'm in between, you know, in, in the sense of my work is also in between.
Christy Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm, Mm-hmm. Then, if you want to hand that to Jeff, a couple of months ago, the Akron Art Museum brought in a consultant [name of consultant unclear] who talked about, yes, we're at a moment, particularly with museums and predominantly white-led institutions that are needing to change, can't change fast enough. But he also had pointed out that 100 years ago, museums also needed to change. And it was because they heard from artists that then left an impact on what became the museums that we know today, like the Guggenheim, the more round spaces instead of the squares and the salons. I'm really curious, Jeff, has there been an impact of Keith Haring’s work that has changed the museum institutions?
Jeff Katzin: Yeah, I think that I mentioned earlier, the generation that he was part of where artists were interested in taking work directly to the public and showing it in non-traditional spaces. It was an interesting transition for Haring, to go from being the guy who would do drawings in the New York subway to being someone who would also have works of art in museum exhibitions. And he was in a few group shows early in his career, but it was really a 1982 solo gallery exhibition at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery, that like sold out and really proved his place in the fine art world, and started to give him momentum probably later than he deserved it. And I mean, he had to really fight for the place of an art that would be doing all of these things at once. Because the expectation was, if you're a museum, fine art artist, then that makes sense. But if you're doing these other things, does your work really belong in a museum? It again, just like Brendan was talking about, it's a matter of these categories, which are meant to help us to understand the world, but ultimately prevent us from interfacing with the world directly. And museums are often places of categories, of art made from this time period, or art made in this location. And Haring was, I think one of many artists who have worked to try to say, just because I don't fit into this specific box doesn't mean that I don't belong in many places. And that skepticism of categories, and the diminishing of their rigidity is important in so many ways, many of which are deeply political [Bolingbroke: Hmm]. So he really is an artist who I think helped to push that along.
Christy Bolingbroke: So it also isn't a new binary challenge, Brendan, it sounds like. But when you talk about making work that dismantles institutions and systems of inequity, the continuation of that reminds me of where you had a speaker last year, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, who told us, you know, we are trying for change now. But we also are becoming better arts ancestors, so that those that come up after us hopefully don't have to face as many of these binaries and setting that up. So I, I am curious, in addition to the space Brendan, if you want to grab the mic, because you've also explored, it's not just about where you want to locate your work, but finding creative ways to tackle very practical challenges. And I'm thinking particularly Art By Snapchat. We didn't get to see a peek at that. But would you explain what is Art By Snapchat for our audience?
Brendan Fernandes: Sure. Art By Snapchat was a piece where I was sort of like, I was looking at the kind of ideas of fluxism and the ways again of language and not having a dance language. And it was a piece of that choreographed, based on a on a show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in the 60s called Art By Telephone, where Bruce Nauman would pick up a telephone and gain an instructive director from somebody and then he would perform it. And so I decided to do a version called Art By Snapchat, where I was choreographing a core of dancers in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, through my telephone, giving them instructions, but also some of them being like political gestures, like turn around and become a monument or and they were kind of doing these things, but then did the kind of the choreography of like, you know, your phone, like swiping left to right, became part of the gestures of the, of the piece. But also the idea that, you know, they were being like, kind of very affected movements at certain times, and then their phone would buzz because I would be sending them enough, another prompt, and then they would stop kind of look at their phone. And that became part of the choreography. So I guess for me, that's about just like reinventing [Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm], you know, using technologies to find ways to kind of…
Christy Bolingbroke: But you also like you weren't even in the same city.
Brendan Fernandes: Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you that [Fernandes and Bolingbroke laugh] [Bolingbroke: Yeah]. Yes, I was in Vancouver [Fernandes and Bolingbroke laugh]. So I was in Vancouver, sending them the messages on Snapchat. And then my phone was projected in, in one of the main spaces, and the dancers were just kind of moving around the space. And the one thing that was really interesting was people were trying to find me [Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm], they could see the dancers [Bolingbroke: Hmm], but people were like, where's this person that's sending this, these directives and like I was in Vancouver [Fernandes and Bolingbroke laugh].
Christy Bolingbroke: I love that you were like, I'm not gonna say no to the gig, I will find a way to make it happen [Laughs].
Brendan Fernandes: Oh yeah. It was my first time being invited by the moment, I was like, I had to be in Vancouver for something, which was super important. And I was like, How do I do this? So I think resilience, resistance, you know, is part of what I do. I think, you know, during the pandemic, I wrote an article for Frieze Magazine called “Dancing in the Pandemic,” because I didn't know, I didn't have purpose, I didn't have anything, you know [Bolingbroke: Hmm]. I was feeling very, like all of us, I was feeling that I would never be able to, to make dance again, or dance again. And so I started to think that, you know, how do I take on this challenge and become resilient [Bolingbroke: Hmm], resistant. And I started making this piece called The Left Space, which was a zoom performance, where I was thinking, if we're all in the same filters, I started designing these filters, and this sort of like, kind of like textile pattern, if we're all in the same space, in the Zoomland with the same filter, are we together? And then I choreograph something, and I never thought I would make anything on Zoom [Bolingbroke: Hmm]. I didn't know what Zoom was, and you know, at the time, and just exploring. And so I think, for me, that's something that's really important is to kind of challenge and push oneself. And when you talk about, you know, creating space, you know, now so that others can have more space. Like, I know that the work is never done, the work is not done, I will still labor to make the space. But I may not see the change that I want to see in my lifetime. But I'm hoping that it'll be big enough that someone else, you know, in the future can see that change [Bolingbroke: Hmm]. I've been thinking a lot about being invisible in my choreography. What does it mean to be invisible? And the space of being invisible for me is that I don't need to be seen and heard [Bolingbroke: Hmm]. So maybe getting into that utopic moment where I can't even imagine what that would be. But I've gained my civil rights, and, and my community has gained their civil rights. I don't have to protest to say I'm here or listen to me [ Bolingbroke: Hmm, mm-hmm]. And so I just want to I kind of think about being invisible, so I've kind of been using that motif a lot in my newer choreographies.
Christy Bolingbroke: Hmmm. I have one last question. We'd love to hear from both of you. So dealer's choice. Curious, because you are administrators, makers, curators, culture workers, and warriors in today's ecology. When do you choose to work with the system? And when do you choose to push against it? [Audience exclaims, some laugh]
Jeff Katzin: I think that my way of answering that is kind of my way of describing my motivations as a curator period, which are about my audience [Bolingbroke: Hmm]. Which starts with the Akron community and radiates from there. And it's really a matter of what I get the sense that they need. And if I feel like I can't serve people by staying within a certain guideline, or within a certain category, or a certain practice, what's convenient is that I have a clear, guiding light to say, what a different direction is going to be. And I think that's basically the basis for it. I have basically felt out of step with the art history museum community in one way or another pretty much since I was in graduate school, and didn't necessarily like the professor-student power dynamics, or the way that the language of theory and art history was often very styled toward an ivory tower. And I feel like all of that experience has brought me to a curatorial career with a particular sense of purpose. And it's not always that particular sense of purpose. And the things that motivate me are not always the things that motivate people in my field. And I think it's a matter of holding fast to that, that sense of conviction and purpose [Bolingbroke: Hmm]. And yeah letting it be a guide.
Christy Bolingbroke: And what a gift that you're also in a space like the Akron Art Museum where you can play with that a little bit too.
Jeff Katzin: Yeah, I mean, I appreciate the moments where as a curator or there's, there's confidence placed in me as not just a logistical organizer of exhibitions, but as a creative person and as a storyteller. And as someone who's going to put information forward in a way that is understandable and, and relatable, and even helpful for people, and to focus on what I'm afforded in that position, and to see it as a responsibility to take advantage of it.
Christy Bolingbroke:Mm-hmm.Brendan, I'll remind you of the question, when do you work with a system? And when do you choose to push against it?
Brendan Fernandes: So I think I define myself as a punk rock, queer ballerina. And I think within that I've always been pushing systems [Bolingbroke: Mm-hmm]. Through the challenges of being an immigrant, all this stuff, So I'm always wanting to find change. I'm not happy in the system that we live in. But I will use the system against itself to make the change [Bolingbroke: Hmm]. So when I work in museums, I'm going to be heard and seen, I'm going to make those doorways, and windows, and pathways that define my way of moving. And so for me, it's very much about that, like, I will take the system like I will give, for example, my show at the Guggenheim, it, I made the Guggenheim into a BDSM sex club [Bolingbroke laughs]. And that was, you know, a challenge for the system there. But like, that was a minor threat, you know, but I will use the system in different ways to use it against itself. And then from that, to build and to create newness. And so for me, it's always a pushback, you know. It's always me pushing the system, but finding change within that system that will allow me to feel empowered.
Christy Bolingbroke: Yes. Excellent. Please give our speakers a round of applause.
OUTRODUCTION: This special edition of Inside The Dancer’s Studio podcast features content from the Creative Administration Research (CAR) Summit Convening. CAR is made possible through a multi-year grant from the Mellon Foundation. Our podcast program is produced by Jennifer Edwards. James Sleeman is our editor. Theme music by Floco Torres, cover art by Micah Kraus, transcription by Arushi Singh. Special thanks to the team on the ground in Akron, Ohio. To learn more about NCCAkron, please visit us online at NCCakron.org. And follow us on Instagram or Facebook at NCCAkron. We hope you enjoyed this episode, and we encourage you to subscribe on your favorite podcast streaming platform by searching for Inside The Dancer’s Studio. Thanks for listening and stay curious.