I create projects that inspire, inform and connect; catalyzing relationships across creative and cultural boundaries and providing new platforms for public engagement. I do much of this at Works Progress, a public art and design studio that I run with my partner, Shanai Matteson. We have a son and a cat.
I’m so excited to announce “Everyday Ways” - a film that Shanai and I made with artist/organizer Mankwe Ndosi.
“For the first time, the full scope of Mankwe Ndosi’s artistic life is captured in a single video—her activism, her art, her unique and beautiful outlook on life.” - Andrea Swensson
Four months in the making so that you can spend eight minutes with her today. Please share!
Join us for our Give & Take event this Thursday February 21st @ 7:00 PM at the University Enterprise Laboratories in Saint Paul! Free and open to the public!
Here is the link to the event on Facebook
Link to Give & Take event
(via shardlow)
A short video about The Gymnasium’s test Tink Tank that we made for the McKnight Foundation’s State of the Artist project.
Video Newsletters! This is either incredibly ahead of it’s time or horribly antiquated, I can’t really tell. But mostly, we just had a lot of fun doing it. What a crazy year it’s been!Happy New Year from Works Progress Studio!
As 2013 kicks off, we find ourselves reflecting on all of the creative connections, artistic projects, hard work and big ideas that made 2012 such a great year. Rather than try to write it all down, we thought we’d share a few highlights in this short video newsletter.
Thanks to all of you for sharing your creative energy with us over the past 12 months. We’re looking forward to another great year!
A short video about playwright, director & actor Aditi Brennan Kapil that we made for the McKnight Foundation’s State of the Artist project.
I love making movies. This one is the 5th of 8 that Shanai and I are making through a commission from The McKnight Foundation. The others are Old Rhythms Making New Sense, Perpetual Inspiration Machine, Poetry in Motion, and Bog Walk. Then final 3 will be released over the course of the next 2 months. Stay tuned!
Alec Soth. Tucson, Arizona. 2011.I’m going country tomorrow night at Salon Saloon. Details herewish i could be there!
So excited!
Join Us for a New Series of Art-Science Adventures on the Mississippi River this July & August!
Join our motley crew of Artists, Scientists, Park Rangers and River Rats for a cruise aboard the freewheeling Padelford Riverboat as it makes its way down the Mississippi River.
We’ve got three unique River City Revue excursions planned for July and August, all departing from the Padelford Riverboat dock on Harriet Island in Saint Paul at 7PM.
Tickets are $10 and can be purchased in advance through the Mississippi River Fund.
Expect a 2-hour boat adventure featuring live music, short science talks, art presentations, hands-on art making, and plenty of river stories! Each River City Revue will animate a different theme and present eclectic perspectives in an effort to focus attention on the magnificent Mississippi River and the National Park in our own backyard.
DRINKING THE RIVER | July 18th
On this inaugural excursion of the River City Revue, we will survey the inseparable relationship between people and the river: Sustenance. Inebriation. Consumption. Waste. Cleansing. Come and drink the river with us! Musical guests: The Southside Aces. Click here to see the full program and order tickets for DRINKING THE RIVER.WICKED RIVER | August 1st
A historic naval disaster, catastrophic floods, crushing ice-floes and shantyboat shenanigans—the Mighty Mississippi has a reputation for danger. Revel in the river’s dark side through storytelling, science and song. Musical guests: Prairie Fire Lady Choir. Click here to see the full program and order tickets for DRINKING THE RIVER.THE RIVER IMAGINED | August 15th
The Mississippi has long inspired artists, from the writings of Mark Twain to the sounds of the Delta blues. Imagine the river with a cadre of makers and researchers who might lead you to see something new in these everyday waters. Musical guest: Sneaky Pete Bauer. Click here to see the full program and order tickets for DRINKING THE RIVER.River City Revue is presented by the Mississippi River Fund, Works Progress, The National Park Service, and Padelford Riverboats. Poster by the artists at LandLand. Get your copy on the boat!
If Mitt Romney were running a “post-truth” campaign, would the political press even report it?
Link: Boston Globe, Mitt Romney stayed at Bain 3 years longer than he stated. ”Firm’s 2002 filings identify him as CEO, though he said he left in 1999.” (Fallout.)
Suppose a major party candidate for president believed we were in a “post-truth” era and actually campaigned that way: Would political reporters in the mainstream press figure it out and tell us?
I say no. They would not tell us. Instead, they would do what the Globe did here: try to nail the candidate on specific misstatements that can be documented. Which is good and necessary and difficult and contentious and honorable. So go, Boston Globe! And don’t forget to credit others who have done similar work.
But what of a strategy that incorporates…
1.) The lessons of the climate change debate, which is that you can run a political campaign against verifiable facts, and thereby weaken those facts in the public’s mind?
2.) The Palin method, which is that you can invent stuff and stick to it when it is shown to be false because culture war politics feeds off the noise and friction when fictional claims are fact-checked by the mainstream media?
3.) David Frum’s observation: “Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics.”
4. Plain old-fashioned secrecy, as in: don’t release information, don’t explain.
I think there’s ample evidence that the Romney forces have figured much of this out. And so even though we have a political press that believes itself to be a savvy judge of campaign strategy, here is one strategy that will go unnamed and un-described because (and this may be the cleverest part of the strategy!…) a post-truth campaign for president falls into the category of too big to tell.
Meaning: It feels too partisan. It exposes the press to too much criticism. It messes with the “both sides do it” narrative that political journalists have mastered: and deeply believe in. And so Romney will be fact checked, his campaign will push back from time to time, the fact checkers will argue among themselves, and the post-truth premise will sneak into common practice without penalty or recognition, even though there is nothing covert about it.
(Image by fimoculous. Creative commons license.)
Our latest State of the Artist documentary is about poet Dobby Gibson.
“Maybe poetry isn’t relevant. People can live perfectly good lives only ever trotting out poetry for weddings and funerals. But there’s also something sad about that. It’s like spending your whole life just eating TV Dinners, never really experiencing the full possibilities of language.”
Dobby asks: How can poets collaborate with other artists and communities to bring poetry into the world in new ways? Read more about this film here.
Really proud of the sequence where Dobby reads his poem “Beauty Supply” on the 21 bus as it travels East Lake Street. It’s about halfway through this 9 minute film. Enjoy!
We’ve had it backward for the last 30 years. Rich businesspeople like me don’t create jobs. Rather they are a consequence of an eco-systemic feedback loop animated by middle-class consumers, and when they thrive, businesses grow and hire, and owners profit. That’s why taxing the rich to pay for investments that benefit all is a great deal for both the middle class and the rich. So here’s an idea worth spreading. In a capitalist economy, the true job creators are consumers, the middle class. And taxing the rich to make investments that grow the middle class, is the single smartest thing we can do for the middle class, the poor and the rich.
—
Nick Hanauer
I will say, from my own belief and experience, that imagination thrives on contact, on tangible connection. For humans to have a responsible relationship to the world, they must imagine their places in it. To have a place, to live and belong in a place, to live from a place without destroying it, we must imagine it. By imagination we see it illuminated by its own unique character and by our love for it. By imagination we recognize with sympathy the fellow members, human and nonhuman, with whom we share our place. By that local experience we see the need to grant a sort of preemptive sympathy to all the fellow members, the neighbors, with whom we share the world. As imagination enables sympathy, sympathy enables affection. And it is in affection that we find the possibility of a neighborly, kind, and conserving economy.
—
Wendell Berry in his 2012 Jefferson Lecture, “It All Turns On Affection” (via shanai-matteson)
This pretty much sums it all up.
This sounds great!
