ABOUT THE COVER The inaugural print run of In Practice features a series of covers highlighting works in progress by visual artist Tomashi Jackson. For her fall exhibition Love Rollercoaster, Jackson has created five new paintings centered around themes of voter disenfranchisement and suppression in Ohio’s Black communities. These works incorporate archival photos and campaign ephemera saved by Ohio citizens—read more about how they were collected inside. Image captions for all of the covers can be found on pages 2–3. ABOVE: Tomashi Jackson, photo: Joshi Radin Flores.
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Fall 2020 Issue | Connections VOLUME 1, NUMBER 1
TABLE OF CONTENTS 2
Tomashi Jackson: Works in Progress KRISTIN HELMICK-BRUNET, CURATORIAL ASSOCIATE
4 American Chameleon: In Conversation with Jaamil Olawale Kosoko MELISSA STARKER, CREATIVE CONTENT AND PUBLIC RELATIONS MANAGER
8 Care Curriculum DIONNE CUSTER EDWARDS, DIRECTOR OF LEARNING AND PUBLIC PRACTICE
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Cinema in a Time of Crisis: Commissioning Cinetracts ’20
MARY ABOWD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
14 A Word of Welcome: On Returning to the Wex
JOHANNA BURTON, DIRECTOR
For more than 30 years now, the Wexner Center for the Arts has regularly published a comprehensive calendar of events. Covering our programs across exhibitions, film/video, performing arts, and education, its format has remained remarkably consistent for that duration—with a signature square trim size and centerfold index of events. And whether printed monthly or bimonthly, it was a true labor of love for our marketing and design teams, earning a few awards along the way. Times change of course, and sometimes quite dramatically. While the calendar was long the primary vehicle to communicate event information to patrons and members, those audiences now rely primarily on our website, email newsletters, or social media channels. When COVID-19 forced a shift to virtual events (and on the timetable of digital rather than print production), it signaled a shift of approach was due. So you now hold the first issue of In Practice, a magazine we intend to publish three times a year. Where the calendar focused on promoting the end result of our efforts—our many events— In Practice will explore how contemporary art comes together behind the scenes through a variety of personal perspectives and in practical terms. Like the Wexner Center itself—a laboratory designed to facilitate the creation of new work, and a place where artists’ practices often change and pivot—the magazine will itself be a work in progress, one that uses all the tools of print to explore how artists, staff, and members of our community create in our present cultural climate. And in this first issue, we’ll explore how the arts connect us in that challenging climate, sometimes in the most unexpected ways. Ryan Shafer PUBLICATIONS EDITOR
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Tomashi Jackson: Works in Progress KRISTIN HELMICK-BRUNET, CURATORIAL ASSOCIATE
The things that bind us are actually the shared histories that we sometimes don’t know; that we can see and can’t see, but that implicate us mutually and affect our experiences of life. —TOMASHI JACKSON
Multidisciplinary artist Tomashi Jackson uses exuberant color, bold geometries, in-depth research, and intricate layering of materials to investigate the relationship between the aesthetic and the political. For her Wexner Center exhibition Tomashi Jackson: Love Rollercoaster, she’s created five new paintings designed to explore the fraught history and current manifestations of voter suppression and disenfranchisement in Ohio’s Black communities. Jackson’s show is part of a suite of fall exhibitions set against the backdrop of this presidential election year, with each featured artist contributing to this season’s conversations around the principles of American representative democracy and systems of political discourse. As a curatorial associate, I have been extremely fortunate to work closely with Jackson to help bring her exhibition to fruition, a wholly
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unique experience that I have treasured. Jackson is an artist driven by storytelling: she methodically examines systemic structures affecting Black communities, mining their histories and studying their reverberations in the present day. An insatiably curious person, Jackson typically embeds herself in the communities her projects investigate to find the origins of the stories she seeks to tell. Unfortunately, her plans to experience Columbus and Ohio State were derailed this past March by COVID-19. So, because Jackson could not be in Ohio, I brought Ohio to her. I began with a search for historical items—essential components of Jackson’s paintings—at Ohio State’s Thompson Library, where I was introduced to the Joanne Grant Papers, an archive of rare items accessible by appointment only. This collection contains notes, clippings, articles, and photos from the life of filmmaker and human rights activist Joanne Grant, perhaps best known for her documentary Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker (1981). Today considered the mother of the civil rights movement, Baker worked as an activist alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, among others, and was critical to the foundation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Knowledge gained from research often requires a pivot from your initial hypothesis, and Jackson made the decision not to include this material in her paintings, instead choosing to focus on Ohio-specific content. (This November, however, our film/video department will screen Fundi on wexarts.org, where we’ll also feature an article exploring the Grant Papers on the website’s Read, Watch, Listen section.) For the paintings featured in our exhibition, Jackson wanted to incorporate ephemera from local, state, and national political campaigns. Generous members of our Columbus community graciously parted with items from their own collections, and I not only had the privilege of seeing this material firsthand, but also heard amazing tales of campaigns, conventions, and candidates from these enthusiastic collectors. As Jackson narrowed her focus to voter disenfranchisement and suppression in Ohio, I next researched and provided historic and
contemporary photos documenting these themes. I was also fortunate to witness intimate conversations between Jackson and Black voters from the region as they described their very personal experiences with these issues. One of the most unique materials in Jackson’s works is Pentelic marble dust—imported from Athens, Greece, considered the birthplace of democracy—which shimmers on the surface of her paintings. For these Ohio-centric pieces, Jackson requested local soil to include as well. So early one bright Saturday morning, shovel in hand, I found myself at Lucy Depp Park, the site of an African American–owned settlement and Underground Railroad stop north of Columbus, to dig what turned out to be 7½ gallons of Ohio clay. (It’s well worth a visit to lucydepppark.com to learn more about this fascinating area.) Facilitating each exhibition offers its own distinct experience, but working with Jackson has changed me. I have learned from my participatory work and now find myself inspired to act. Like you, perhaps, I was puzzled at first by the exhibition title, Love Rollercoaster (a reference to a song by Dayton-born funk band Ohio Players), but Jackson clarified her choice in a recent conversation with members of our staff and security team: “What I’m hearing from everyone,” she observed, is that there may be “varied experiences of stability and normalcy, and then dramatic changes…on a different part of the rollercoaster.” These starts and stops, dips and turns, highs and lows of the rollercoaster mirror the constant movement of our own histories: at moments twisting and turning, emerging one on top of the other and receding back again—not unlike the layers of Jackson’s paintings. I feel extremely privileged to have played just a small role in Jackson’s artistic illumination of our shared ride. Opening September 26, 2020, Tomashi Jackson: Love Rollercoaster will be on view at the Wex this fall along with exhibitions featuring the work of Gretchen Bender, Steve McQueen, Taryn Simon, and a work by Antoni Muntadas and Marshall Reese. Visit wexarts.org for details.
THIS SPREAD FROM LEFT, WORK IN PROGRESS DETAIL VIEWS Contradiction (1948 Head of Voter Registration Line) (1965 Clarence Mitchell, Patricia Roberts Harris, and Others Watch the Signing of the Act), 2020. 89 1/2 x 80 x 8 in. Time and Space (1948 End of Voter Registration Line) (1965 LBJ Signs the Voting Rights Act), 2020. 89 3/8 x 83 3/4 x 8 in. Is Anybody Gonna Be Saved? (1948 Middle of Voter Registration Line) (1965 Abernathy and King Watch the Signing of the Act), 2020. 92 x 80 x 8 in.
Alternate covers for this issue of In Practice feature details of these works. All works by Tomashi Jackson. Acrylic, Pentelic marble, Ohio Underground Railroad site soil, American electoral ephemera, and paper bags on canvas and fabric. Dimensions for completed works listed. Images courtesy of the artist and Tilton Gallery, New York. Photos: Joshi Radin Flores.
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American Chameleon: In Conversation with Jaamil Olawale Kosoko MELISSA STARKER, CREATIVE CONTENT AND PUBLIC RELATIONS MANAGER
“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew,” wrote Indian author Arundhati Roy in an April column for the Financial Times. “This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.” The quote is included in Chameleon: A Syllabus for Survival, an online resource to help guide us through the shedding of the world that existed before coronavirus toward a new vision of society that’s kinder, more compassionate, and more equitable. The syllabus was produced by New York’s Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) with multidisciplinary artist Jaamil Olawale Kosoko in conjunction with Chameleon (The Living Installments), a program of livestreamed public engagement. That was held in April 2020 in lieu of the premiere of Kosoko’s performance work Chameleon: A Biomythography, which was scheduled to debut at EMPAC earlier that month, before the original run became a pandemic casualty. The Chameleon project considers a future of reimagined performative conventions and greater inclusivity, offering myriad ways to experience Blackness and queerness in environments where white, cisgender voices have historically dominated. Chameleon has also taken the form of a podcast, American Chameleon, which debuted in November 2019. And in the coming months, Wex audiences will be able to experience the project through a wide range of programming that reflects the center’s multidisciplinary focus: curatorial projects, new video works, and conversations between Kosoko and the community. Kosoko’s efforts are being supported by a Wexner Center Artist Residency Award, one of several chosen annually by the center’s director and curators to facilitate the creation of new work (pre-COVID, almost always on-site). From his home in Brooklyn, Kosoko spoke with us recently about Chameleon, the emotional process of working through the pandemic, and his hopes for connecting with audiences through the Wex.
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The breadth of work you’ll be doing with the Wex includes film, performance, education, and curatorial. How have these different paths come together for you in the project?
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embed my life inside a world of art and art making; that has always been clear for me. I didn’t always know what the inroads would be. There’s this constant pivoting that has had to occur for me to understand the best way I can fit into any creative circumstance.
I don’t think it’s all that unique—maybe it’s more unique than I give it credit for—but I began my entrée into performance and art making Your most recent visit to Columbus was to work with curator Jennifer Lange and editor Alexis McCrimmon in the Film/Video through language and education. I went from studying and writing Studio. Tell us about the experience. poetry as a teen to teaching it to other young people as a first-year college student. And quite naturally when I [was in] high school, poetry, I came in November for the first of a series of film/video residency film, photography—these things were in conversation. With university visits to Columbus. It’s been amazing to return. When you find an editor came more work in art history and film that you really jive with, it’s a very specific, and video, and making performance unique relationship. I mean, they are for film and video, and then from there It’s the kind of project that I’ve been very much performing as chameleons working in arts administration, eventually because they’re being asked to adapt wanting to share and propose for a while; getting a degree in curatorial practice to so many different styles and concerns I just hadn’t had all the resources aligned. from Wesleyan, and very much working and thematics. With Chameleon, I was so —JAAMIL OLAWALE KOSOKO as an artist but kind of an undercover thrilled that Alexis was on the project artist. I was a producer and arts manager because we talk about themes of for several years. So creatively, there Blackness, feminism, and queerness, and additional elements—ritual, have been these parallels, but at any given moment my creative work spirituality—come into the conversation through the process of editing and process were always incubating. I was taking in a lot of different alongside each other. There’s something really special that arose out of ways of thinking about being inside of performance. I knew I wanted to that partnership just because we had so much in common and were thinking about a lot of things subtextually. Working on this project became an opportunity for some of that thinking to be made visible. I’m proud of what we were able to create and it feels really honest. It’s the kind of project that I’ve been wanting to share and propose for a while; I just hadn’t had all the resources aligned. [The production support] created the perfect equation to create this work, and the perfect timing. It’s all about “The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” this essay by Audre Lorde. But she talks about the erotic as a way of connecting to one’s own excellence and this connection to the environment and the earth that we all need to understand—intimacy with each other but also with the planet. There’s so much of the project that’s thinking about memory, what it means to be existing in this current COVID reality. A lot of things about aloneness, becoming enchanted with one’s own magic as a way to [make a] portal through time and space. There’s this whole motif of a gas mask—and this was filmed before COVID. The current context in which the work asks to be witnessed is particularly urgent (and that’s a relief). How is listening—on your part but also on the part of the audience—informing the shape of your work? I think so much of the project is an invitation to listen, an invitation into a way in which I think and put ideas and questions together. But there’s also a deep need to listen and to hear, but to do it in a way that feels holistic, that is asking for us to slow down and attempt to comprehend what’s happening inside of us, what’s happening externally, and what
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our role is as bodies in the in-between, collaboratively, to build the kind of world we want to exist in. I think with Chameleon, there’s a request for one to sort of sink in and to engage in that sort of intimacy. I’ve been thinking about the term primary partnership often, but when I say this I’m referring to what it means to be in conversation with one’s own being as a primary partner. You are your primary partner. Check in often [laughs]. Listen. What’s coming up for you? What’s not coming up for you? And allow that to be the beginning of that road map that I think we’re all having to figure out for ourselves, particularly in this moment. It’s super complex. There is no clear exit, no clear ending, and so this project is really asking us to radically consider the present, so that we can do that work of freeing the foreclosed futures that we can’t even imagine for ourselves until we take a moment to stop and listen, and do that deep spiritual work that’s needed. I’m hoping the project is proposing that listening, but then I’m also hoping it can serve as a kind of blueprint as well. To be completely honest, COVID happened and I went through what some might call a nervous breakdown, but I call it a nervous breakthrough. It’s going to get a little esoteric here: an immense download occurred for me at that time and it forced me to recalibrate the frequency at which I was operating, and to just reconnect with the universe, with spirit, with myself. I was forced rapidly into this, all the while trying to create a new pathway for working and collaborating, a practice that [normally] may have taken a couple years to perfect. It’s far from perfect now, but the amount of work that occurred in that two- to three-week period, for me, would take easily a year. Time was condensed and had to be reimagined, and then came a whole new approach to collaborating and working with people across digital platforms and proximity. And needless to remind you, everyone was feeling a deep shock and grief. It was a very strange place to be making work from, but nonetheless it felt like it needed to happen.
I hope that somewhere in this way of working [are] other pathways and possibilities for artists and institutions to just step up and get to work. This portal—this pandemic portal, if you will—is asking us to really observe our power. And to not only observe it, but to activate it globally and personally, that sort of macro/micro proposal. You’ve talked elsewhere about the word “chameleon” and having to do the work of blending in in a variety of ways, such as code switching. This project isn’t necessarily about blending; it claims space for underrepresented perspectives across disciplines and in institutional settings. Has that been a challenge to navigate? There’s the strange way in which the chameleon hides in plain sight—a way in which the species is very advanced, I guess. And not for any other reason than it has to be. It didn’t have an option other than to be itself, and I feel like that as a metaphor can move in so many different directions. I’ll speak personally: I’ve had to exist inside a fugitive reality of this sort of escape without exit, and [living] inside of that escape has meant being quite public in order to be able to hide. For a long time pre-COVID, I existed with this air of, OK, Jaamil is in the world somewhere. Look at his calendar, you might have a sense of what country, maybe. And inside of that was also a strange freedom, a flow that made some sense because it allowed me opportunities to get out of the American project, which is also a kind of psychosis. It’s a very specific way of having to code and decode, and to constantly be in that embodied problem of thought. I think what you’re picking up on makes perfect sense in that there’s this constant opposition, the coding-decoding, the publicprivate. I like that that dialogue creates a territory of instability. It offers more possibility, honestly. The conversation has been edited for length; the full Q&A is available at wexarts.org/blog. Kosoko will participate in outreach activities on and off the Ohio State campus during the fall of 2020, including a virtual screening and conversation on October 21, before debuting the next performance iteration of Chameleon in March 2021. Visit wexarts.org for details; due to COVID-19 dates are subject to change. PREVIOUS SPREAD
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Jaamil Olawale Kosoko at work on Chameleon. Photo: Sara Griffith, image courtesy JOKP/EMPAC.
Jaamil Olawale Kosoko at work on Chameleon and performing in Chameleon: A Biomythography. Images courtesy of JOKP/EMPAC. Photos: Sara Griffith and Michael Valiquette (center inset).
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This fall, college will look different as with everything else in our lives; however, the center’s work with students, faculty, and artists carries forward. — ALANA RYDER
Care Curriculum DIONNE CUSTER EDWARDS, DIRECTOR OF LEARNING AND PUBLIC PRACTICE Along with our community, we at the Wex have been thinking a lot about the convergence of global causes, social change, and their consequences as a ripe space for reimagining. We’ve been listening, pacing action (sometimes standing still), and pursuing a body of work that centers care. This is to say that any society, community, institution, or public space requires considerable acts of care, curiosity, and creativity to find a sustainable way forward. Each week, we focus our work in the context before us: the aching health, environmental, social, and political spheres. In this moment, this accumulation of injury—and now an urgent call for revision, restoration, and reset—must be fundamental to the work we do as artists, curators, educators, practitioners, and administrators. Our way forward is to hear these notes of crisis and heed their warnings and sounds. Our way forward is to persist with radical care, engaging with and answering crisis with a tenacity that translates into critical, relevant, and, we think, necessary acts. We care about teaching and learning, thinking and experiences, practices and actions, access and equity, life and safety. We offer these commitments (and our education department) a new name: Learning and Public Practice. And in the spirit of care, we are developing and pursuing new work.
This changing landscape offers new opportunities, and university partnerships remain a focus for the Wex. In addition to artist talks, conversations, screenings, panels, and courses taught by Wex curators and educators, this coming year we will continue work with our Ohio State colleagues from areas across campus including the Departments of Art; English; History; Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures; and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; as well as the Center for Cognitive and Brain Sciences. Building on the momentum from last year’s partnership with Professor Karen Eliot in the Department of Dance, we’ll once again work with Eliot and 13 new students across disciplines to chronicle the Wexner Center’s performing arts season. Look for their insights, interviews, and writing on the Read, Watch, Listen section of wexarts.org. The Wex will also welcome 10 interns this fall. Mentored by staff members across the center, interns develop a wide range of skills and contribute new perspectives and energy while working in advancement, marketing, and programming, among other areas. We are also reshaping how we think about and facilitate learning experiences and teaching partnerships at the Wex. Our gallery educators develop their practices through continual training, research,
and discussion, and they use these skills to offer a learning experience rooted in generosity and care. Our visitors learn to ask the difficult, vital questions that drive contemporary art: Why does this matter? What does this mean? What do I do with what I’ve learned here? We are also excited about working with our partners in K–12 education to reimagine programs like Pages, WorldView, and Expanded Classroom, stretching and experimenting to serve and supplement the evolving needs of our schools. We are collaborating with artists to support instruction with creative tactics, innovative thinking, and revision. Our K–12 programs offer expanded connections, bringing together students from different communities to learn, discuss, and engage the topics and issues of our time. As we explore new possibilities during these remarkable times, we are developing new work that reminds us of each other’s (and our own) humanity. Our community programming will bring people together through an array of new youth and family offerings. We will also continue to partner with local and national artists on creative projects, and work with other local nonprofits to support critical need in our communities.
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We will laugh, make, see, share, and learn. — JEAN PITMAN
We will weave into and through the painful disruption and loss and seek light and joy. We are reimagining everything because we must. We look forward to building and change, and working with you, our community. We hope you will join us in the journey.
We have been deepening, strengthening, and renewing our gallery learning/teaching practices so that they foster inclusive, accessible spaces. We believe that the relationship between the teacher and the learner must be built on mutual respect and reciprocal benefit. —JO SNYDER
Learning and Public Practice Staff Dionne Custer Edwards, Director of Learning and Public Practice Jean Pitman, Community, Youth, and Family Programs Manager Alana Ryder, Manager, Public and University Programs Jo Snyder, Education Programs Coordinator Lauren Caskey, Education Graduate Administrative Assistant LEARNING AND PUBLIC PRACTICE PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY
ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY
INGR AM-WHITE CASTLE FOUNDATION THIS SPREAD FROM LEFT Pages students, artists, and educators celebrate at the 2019 open mic event. Filmmaker Julia Reichert, visual artist LaToya Ruby Frazier, and US Senator Sherrod Brown (left to right) on stage at the 2020 Lambert Family Lecture. A local high school class tours the HERE exhibition as part of Pages.
Young patrons meet a Columbus Zoo ambassador before enjoying the contemporary dance work Penguins by Cahoots NI. All images Kathryn D Studios
FEATURING PROJECTS BY
NATALIA ALMADA (Mexico/San Francisco, CA)
TONY BUBA (Braddock, PA)
CHARLES BURNETT (Los Angeles, CA)
TAMER EL SAID (Egypt/Germany)
AKWAEKE EMEZI (Nigeria/US)
SU FRIEDRICH (Brooklyn, NY)
KELLY GALLAGHER (Syracuse, NY)
CAMERON GRANGER (Columbus, OH)
CHRISTOPHER HARRIS (Iowa City, IA)
SKY HOPINKA
(Ho-Chunk Nation, WI)
KARRABING FILM COLLECTIVE (Australia)
BOUCHRA KHALILI (Morocco/Germany)
GABRIEL MASCARO (Brazil)
ROSINE MBAKAM (Cameroon/Belgium)
NATASHA MENDONCA (India)
SHEILAH AND DANI RESTACK (Columbus, OH)
BEATRIZ SANTIAGO MUÑOZ (Puerto Rico)
CAULEEN SMITH (Los Angeles, CA)
APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL (Thailand)
ŽELIMIR ŽILNIK (Serbia)
Cinema in a Time of Crisis: Commissioning Cinetracts ’20 MARY ABOWD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR 11 In May of 1968, students in Paris spilled out of their universities and onto the streets demanding sweeping social and political change and launching a revolutionary movement that spread throughout France. A group of filmmakers—some of them the brightest stars of French cinema like Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, and Alain Resnais—captured the action as it unfolded. Cameras in hand, they hit the streets, creating more than 100 short films they called “ciné-tracts.” The works were raw and urgent, picturing students at barricades facing off with heavily armed police as the country careened toward civil war. Guided by the Cinétracts manifesto, which called for projects produced on 16mm black-and-white silent film running no more than two minutes and 44 seconds, their purpose was to spur the movement on and circumvent a state-run media intent on downplaying the unrest. On October 8, the Wexner Center will honor the spirit of these films— and the pivotal historical moment in which they were born—with a virtual premiere of “Cinetracts ’20,” an evening of 20 new works commissioned from contemporary filmmakers from around the globe. “We asked participants to capture the zeitgeist in their own backyard,” explains David Filipi, director of the center’s film/video department, who hatched the idea with colleagues Jennifer Lange and Chris Stults after showing a collection of the 1968 Cinétracts—newly restored on their 50th anniversary—in 2018. “Back then, we knew 2020 would be an interesting year, with the presidential election in November,” he adds. “But we had no idea just how interesting it would end up being.” The artists (in some cases working in pairs or groups) were commissioned to make works of no more than two minutes that were, like most of the originals, shot on a single day in a single place. That challenging task became all the more difficult in March when the coronavirus pandemic hit and participants found themselves in lockdown. By late May, George Floyd’s brutal murder by Minneapolis police added trauma and outrage to the global health emergency and gave rise to mass protests in support of Black Lives Matter. On June 6 alone, half a million Americans were on the streets in what some consider the largest movement in the country’s history. It looked like May 1968 all over again, but this time it was not so easy for a filmmaker to venture out in public or, frankly, find the energy for new work. OPPOSITE PAGE Image courtesy of Su Friedrich THIS PAGE FROM TOP Images courtesy of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Charles Burnett, Karrabing Film Collective, and Želimir Žilnik
“The challenges of being an artist right now are the same challenges of just being a human being trying to survive these difficult times,” says Kelly Gallagher, an animator based in Syracuse, New York, who has shown her work at the center’s annual Unorthodocs festival and at Cartoon Crossroads Columbus. “My work is motivated by love and rage,” she adds, “and this is a moment when I’m feeling a lot of both.” 12
Gallagher took those emotions out into her own neighborhood, where she found history hidden in plain sight. A block from her home, in a nondescript Walgreens parking lot, she noticed a small historical marker commemorating the Reverend Jermain Loguen, an escaped slave who became a nationally known abolitionist. More than a century ago, Loguen harbored hundreds fleeing slavery, and his home—located where the chain drugstore now stands— became an important stop on the Underground Railroad. “I’d been there a million times, but never noticed this sign,” Gallagher recounts. “Part of my film is about shining a light on the erasure of radical histories and the ways they are hidden and obscured in our everyday life.” Gallagher’s film Pine and Genesee, named for the street coordinates of that vanished history, brings Loguen’s story back to light. In making it, she took cues from the original Cinétracts, with their ample use of text on screen and still photography, shooting the work entirely with a Polaroid camera in a playful nod to the experimentalism of May 1968. “The beauty of experimental filmmaking is the immediacy of it; it can just explode from you,” she says. “The message is what’s most important.” Across the ocean in Brussels, Belgium, Cameroonian filmmaker Rosine Mbakam had a similar impulse. Mbakam had been planning a Wex-commissioned film about Cameroon’s colonial legacy and was set to travel there in March when the pandemic hit. Suddenly
confined to her small apartment with her husband and two young sons, she wondered what to do next. The answer came in the form of a video from a friend, a nurse and African immigrant who was caring for patients on the front lines of the COVID pandemic in Brussels. The video was a public service announcement put out by her hospital to urge citizens to #stayathome. Every medical worker featured in it was white, and her friend was livid. African health-care workers— who make up a significant portion of the frontline workforce—were completely absent. It was a trend Mbakam noticed on Belgian television as well, a striking erasure. “These are the forgotten workers on the front lines of this battle,” she says. “I knew I needed to do something about this.” Unable to go inside hospitals to film, Mbakam had to improvise, asking the nurses to send her photographs of themselves in their protective gear and interviewing each of them by Skype. Her work, The Invisible Majority, completed on her desktop computer, acknowledges their plight and links them to another time in history when Africans similarly sacrificed on Europe’s behalf. The 20th-century colonial infantrymen known as “tirailleurs” fought and died for France in both world wars. “Nobody talks about them today,” Mbakam says. “This is history repeating itself.” In New York City, a COVID hotspot during late March and April, filmmaker Cameron Granger didn’t feel like making art. The sobering reality around him, along with the wave of police violence against Black people and subsequent protests, felt exhausting. “Any time I sat down to make work, I felt like what’s the point? How is this helping? People are literally dying,” he says. Granger wanted to get off-line and dropped off Instagram to temporarily shake the many followers he’d attracted with the rise of Black Lives Matter. “I wanted to crawl into a hole,” he says.
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In his film How to Disappear, Granger plays with the concept of “redaction”—both how Black people have been removed from narratives and how, as a protective maneuver, they’ve sometimes tried to remove themselves. Made completely on his desktop computer, the film provides four steps to completely erasing oneself. In step one—“never look directly into a camera”—Granger shaves his head, his back to viewers, as Aretha Franklin’s “One Step Ahead” lilts in the background. Text messages ping on Granger’s computer. A friend is checking in—“hey, bro, you good?” Granger doesn’t respond. The constraints of art making in these troubled times pushed Christopher Harris to take his work in a new direction. Based in Iowa City, Harris was unable to travel to Chicago, where he’d planned a site-specific piece about the police killing of a Black man. Instead, the past Wexner Center Film/Video Studio residency artist (whose Reckless Eyeballing has screened in The Box) has fashioned Dreams Under Confinement. The work pairs audio captured from Chicago Police
Department scanners as officers rushed to quell Black Lives Matter protests with stock imagery of city streets and the 96-acre Cook County Jail complex. “This is the first time I’ve consciously edited sound then put images over it,” Harris says. “There’s tension between what you see and what you hear.” The short work hints at another, larger tension, as well. “Right now, we’re getting a glimpse at a new world that’s possible,” Harris says. “That’s a scary thing, the unknown is a scary thing. There’s no map but that’s also where there’s possibility…Who knows? Maybe they said that in 1968.” Cinetracts ’20 premieres October 8 on wexarts.org where you’ll find interviews with and other films by participating artists. Several of the filmmakers’ works also screen in our galleries through October 11 as part of Free Space, an evolving microcinema and community resource lounge open to the public. Visit wexarts.org for a schedule and details. OPPOSITE PAGE FROM TOP
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Images courtesy of Kelly Gallagher and Rosine Mbakam
Image courtesy of Cameron Granger
A Word of Welcome: On Returning to the Wex JOHANNA BURTON, DIRECTOR 14
Holding space and time for diverse voices and viewpoints is in the Wexner Center’s DNA. Which is why, as you read through this debut issue of In Practice— a beautiful reimagining of our calendar of events—I hope you are reminded anew of the transformative power of our commitment to artists, to our communities, to the creation of new work, and to the people who make it all possible. Our fall lineup is a crucial reflection of that. In our galleries, the current exhibitions each distinctly address democracy, systems of power, and civic discourse in challenging and forthright ways, giving new dimension to the fraught climate in which we find ourselves. Cinetracts ’20 and our annual documentary film series Unorthodocs open the door to views from around the world, testaments to the myriad ways people wrestle with the challenges of our times—local, global, and everything between. Across the center’s performing arts offerings, which are primarily virtual this fall, you’ll have the opportunity to see and hear from Wex Artist Residency Award recipient Jaamil Olawale Kosoko. Kosoko will host American Chameleon LIVE!, a community conversation and screening that engages the notion of the artist as shape-shifter, constantly adapting in order to survive. And our newly named Department of Learning and Public Practice introduces a timely evolution in its approach to arts education, with even deeper engagements with our audiences and a breadth of conversations and programs that emphasize and uplift voices from all corners. These areas and approaches all aim, together, to offer a space, whether online or in the building itself, that fosters connection and conversation. They foreground the urgency of building anti-racist institutions, and the role that art and culture play in insisting on more equitable models throughout society. As we continue to navigate these uncharted waters, please know that we remain, above all, steadfastly committed to our artists, our audiences, and our staff. We know that the ever-changing situation with COVID-19 may necessitate amending or reinventing our plans (please look to the opposite page for details on our safety measures and new info about visiting our galleries—including info on days with free admission, part of our commitment to access—and our store). However you experience us in the coming weeks and months, we hope that visiting the Wex online, in person, or through the publication you are holding in your hands will offer pleasure, provocation, and promise in these challenging times.
What to expect when you visit If you’re planning to visit our exhibitions and store, there are a few things to be aware of before we see you again. These protocols are ideally steps we can all take to not just keep one another healthy, but put into practice the mindful work of being compassionate and caring. It’s about being safe and welcoming while keeping space open for all.
Visiting • If you’re not feeling well or demonstrating any symptoms of COVID-19, we ask that you stay home, take good care, and visit us another time. • When planning to visit our exhibitions, be sure to purchase or reserve your ticket online ahead of time as there are a limited number of tickets per hour. This will also minimize your contact with others. Tickets are available at wexarts.org or by calling (614) 292-3535. • When you do come, we ask that you bring a limited amount of personal items with you. You can use our self-service coat check or lockers to store anything while you visit. • Per Ohio State, masks are required for our staff and guests both inside and in areas outside of the center. It helps protect you and those around you, and it’s easy to do. If you are unable to wear a mask due to a health condition, please let us know. Cleaning Procedures and Protocols • We’ve undergone a deep clean in all areas of the center and will continue with our extensive cleaning procedures. • We disinfect and sanitize throughout the day and overnight while closed to the public. Restrooms will be open and cleaned throughout the day. • We’ve increased the number of hand-sanitizing stations around our building. • Physical distancing of 6 feet between guests is in effect, which means we’ll have reduced capacity in our galleries, store, and other spaces. • Plexiglas shields have been installed at our Visitor Experience Desk and in the store to protect both our staff and you. • For the fall season, all in-person films, performances, and public programs remain suspended. However, our robust lineup of virtual events will continue; see the next page for more!
Wexner Center for the Arts Photo: Chris Jones
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FALL EVENTS In the galleries or online, there’s more to discover at the Wex. Head to wexarts.org for a complete lineup of virtual screenings, performances, workshops, talks, and more. Note that many online events remain on view after their debut.
Find more: wexarts.org Sign up: wexarts.org/newsletters Connect at: @wexarts #theWex Feedback on this publication? Email listweb@wexarts.org
Exhibitions On view at the Wex through Dec 27 Free Space Gretchen Bender: Aggressive Witness— Active Participant Tomashi Jackson: Love Rollercoaster Steve McQueen: Remember Me Taryn Simon: Assembled Audience Antoni Muntadas and Marshall Reese: Political Advertisement X 1952–2020 Opens Mon, Oct 26
Film/Video All events on wexarts.org THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT Steve McQueen, Remember Me (N. 78), 2016. Acrylic paint on neon borosilicate tubes. 35 7/16 in. wide. Image courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York. Photo: Rebecca Fanuele. Snarls, photo: Brian Kaiser. Claudia Owusu, photo: Lauren Todd. Unapologetic (Ashley O’Shay, 2020), photo: Bob Simpson. OPPOSITE PAGE Wexner Center for the Arts, photo: Chris Jones.
CARTOON CROSSROADS COLUMBUS
Ebony Flowers in Conversation Thu, Oct 1 ARTIST RESIDENCY AWARD PROJECT
Cinetracts ’20 Premiering Thu, Oct 8 Unorthodocs 2020 Fri–Fri, Oct 23–30
Performing Arts All events on wexarts.org WEX[EP]
Beverly Glenn-Copeland Wed, Oct 14 Snarls Thu, Nov 5 SCREENING AND TALK
Jaamil Olawale Kosoko American Chameleon LIVE! Wed, Oct 21 Big Dance Theater Cage Shuffle: A Digital Duet Sun, Nov 1
Learning and Public Practice All events on wexarts.org ARTIST TALK
Christine Sun Kim Title Zero Fri, Oct 2 Moderated by Marla C. Berkowitz and Johanna Burton WEXLAB FOR YOUTH AGES 13–17
Ebony Flowers Sat, Oct 3 Sharon Udoh Sat, Oct 17 Claudia Owusu Sat, Oct 31
SUPPORT THE WEX TODAY!
The Wexner Center for the Arts is part of The Ohio State University and receives major institutional support from the university. PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY
Just as your commitment helps our programming bloom in response to the current national emergency, it also means the Wex can support artists making new works via our residencies and commissions. Your gift or membership also deepens our ability to offer acclaimed programs for youth, family, and the entire community. Go to wexarts.org/give to donate today or wexarts.org/join to become a member.
SENIOR PROGRAMMING STAFF Johanna Burton Director Megan Cavanaugh Chief Operating Officer Lane Czaplinski Director of Performing Arts Dionne Custer Edwards Director of Learning and Public Practice David Filipi Director of Film/Video Bill Horrigan Curator at Large Jennifer Lange Curator of Film/Video Studio Program
OUR MISSION This magazine is published three times a year by the Wexner Center for the Arts, The Ohio State University’s multidisciplinary, international laboratory for the exploration and advancement of contemporary art.
ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY
Through exhibitions, screenings, performances, artist residencies, and education programs, the Wexner Center acts as a forum where established and emerging artists can test ideas and where diverse audiences can participate in cultural experiences that enhance the understanding of the art of our time. In its programs, the Wexner Center balances a commitment to experimentation with a commitment to traditions of innovation and affirms the university's mission of education, research, and community service.
WEXNER CENTER FOUNDATION Leslie H. Wexner, Chair Bill Lambert, President Trustees David M. Aronowitz Lisa M. Barton Jeni Britton Bauer Shelley Bird Johanna Burton Paige Crane Brenda J. Drake Michael V. Drake Adam R. Flatto Russell Gertmenian Michael Glimcher Brett Kaufman Elizabeth P. Kessler C. Robert Kidder Nancy Kramer Mark D. Kvamme Ronald A. Pizzuti Pete Scantland Joyce Shenk Alex Shumate Abigail S. Wexner Sue Zazon Ex Officio Ann Hamilton Bruce A. McPheron Gretchen Ritter Bruce A. Soll, Treasurer Mark E. Vannatta, Secretary
CARDINAL HEALTH FOUNDATION
PUBLICATION STAFF Mary Abowd Associate Editor Sylke Krell Assistant Director of Marketing/Communications Kendall Markley Senior Graphic Designer Erik Pepple Chief Communications Officer Ryan Shafer Publications Editor Melissa Starker Creative Content and Public Relations Manager
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in practice
WEXNER CENTER FOR THE ARTS | THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY | 1871 NORTH HIGH STREET | COLUMBUS, OHIO 43210-1393
Fall 2020 Issue | Connections volume 1, number 1
NON-PROFIT ORG U S POSTAGE P A I D COLUMBUS OHIO PERMIT NO 711