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The fourth staff lecture series, this year titled The Transitives, will be happening Thursdays in April! All events take place at 12pm in the Bark Orientation Room, 2 W. 13th Street, 1st floor.
April 6: Mike Fu
April 13: Barb Compagnoni
April 20: Alina Gregorian
April 27: Joy McKinney
These artists all use some form of translation as a tool for transformation. They examine an existing part of the world and determine ways to strengthen its voice, and amplify it for new ears. More than simply converting one thing into another, the content of their new work is its relationship to the original. They each create something that adds value to the source material, but also risk turning it into an echo of the new work. What occurs between the two works? A death? Is one work sacrificed for the other to exist?
Whether moving the voice of another to a new context, like Mike and Alina, or creating a space for vulnerability in order to generate strength, like Barb, or, like Joy, fearlessly shining a light onto her own bedroom to talk about race and gender, all of these artists wring their inquiries through their internal gears, coming out messier on the other side.
Mike Fu is a Brooklyn-based writer and translator. His work has appeared in No Tokens, Perigee, and The Margins. He is currently translating Stories of the Sahara by the late Taiwanese writer Sanmao, forthcoming from Bloomsbury. He was a resident at Ledig House at the Omi International Arts Center in 2015. He received his MA from Columbia University and MFA from Queens College, City University of New York.
Barbara Compagnoni is an east coast surfer, game designer and creative technologist. She has taken a unique space within the surfing community at the intersection of technology, biology and psychology; She investigates why we love the ocean and its waves, and believes that the ocean’s helpful benefits can be applied therapeutically.
Alina Gregorian is an Armenian-American poet, artist, and curator. She is the author of the chapbooks Flags for Adjectives (Diez) and Navigational Clouds (Monk Books). One of her recent projects includes making a GIF for each letter of the Armenian alphabet. She curates Triptych Readings, hosts a video poetry series on the Huffington Post, and once conducted a workshop for the Poetry Society of America at the New York Botanical Gardens. From 2011-2016, she taught writing at Rutgers University. Find her online here: alinagregorian.com.
Joy McKinney was born in Montgomery, Alabama. She received her undergraduate degree from the Atlanta College of Art and her MFA in photography from Parsons The New School for Design. Her work has been presented in various venues and publications in Europe, the United States, and Asia. Her work explores social and cultural attitude towards gender and race through photography and video.
