The program’s first microfestival featured an array of works-in-progress, including performances and installations created by our first cohort of MA students in the first half of Collaborations and Community-based Art (HRA 504), a core course offered by Dr. Tania El Khoury in the second semester of the program.
Capitalism Doesn’t Exist is a work-in-progress exhibition of three actions that questions objects as symbolic uplifters of surplus interchange in a highly financialized moral economy of contemporary art.
Unpopular opinions are defined as ideas and beliefs that go against or completely contradict the conventional and acceptable. These opinions may be kept hidden out of fear or shame. This work invites us to vocalize opinions that we believe we do not share with people around us. The artist solicited “unpopular opinions” anonymously on Bard Campus and then curated and designed a public display of these opinions as posters. This project questions the homogeneity of political and social opinions.
You’re invited to a cocktail party! Join us for a fiery evening of dangerous dabbling, tips and tricks, communal crafts, and do-it-yourself drinks. This participatory performance will be guided by Nour Annan. All guests must be 21 years of age or older.
Janzeer is a live interactive live art piece that draws its experiences and aesthetics from underground kink parties, BDSM dungeons, and queer dance clubs. It is a different performative take on and a re-creation of a queer, sexually liberated, and experimental space, one that offers both freedom and alienation.
Between the Railroad and the River is an interactive art project specifically conceived for the riverfront of Tivoli, New York. It is a collection of voices from people who, in different ways, engage with the river from that special place. Visitors to the site can access the collected audio online and are invited to contribute by recording their answer to the question: “If you could speak to the river and choose a word for it, what would you say?”
The food we cook reflects a search for belonging. In the context of displacement, mobility, and immigration, it can be difficult to replicate recipes in places far from home. In this performance meal, Baitsai Luo explores the taste of home in exile and distance, and how our cultures are represented through food. Inside Baitsai’s cozy living room, the audience is served three dishes and a drink, all originally from China, while listening to Luo’s humorous stories and recollections.
Howls in the Mountains is a video installation that features the experiences of women who are former members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — People’s Army, the guerilla group known as FARC. In the wake of the FARC’s peace agreement with the Colombian government in 2016 and its formal disarming in 2017, these women shifted their activism and currently work on a number of different community projects throughout Colombia, focusing on gender equality, environmental protection, and social justice. The video installation combines these women’s stories with images of their home communities, creating a visual-social experiment inspired by their personal experiences and psychogeography.
Little Lamb is a new kind of church service—one where the Songbird Supreme, global superstar, and gay icon Mariah Carey is our Lord and Savior. The performance takes inspiration from the artist’s experience: a Catholic upbringing in Boston, Massachusetts, that led to a secular search for faith in gay iconography. The artist — drag performer Melissabeth — assumes the role of the Priest, dahlings, leading the audience through selections from Mariah’s music catalog, an autobiographical sermon, and an offering of Mimi’s festive spirit through symbolic food and drink. Little Lamb asks: can the stale structures of a Catholic mass lay the foundation for something new and beautiful?
Sound Bounds is an interactive live art piece that invites the audience to collaborate with the artist on a dialogue through sound making. Across a wall in an open field overlooking the Catskills, this dialogue is shared between audience and artist using random objects and musical instruments to make sound, with the sounds of nature as a backdrop. This piece is inspired by the potential for resisting human-constructed political borders through sound and communication.
Naked Sword is a safe space built around negative perceptions of the body, sexuality, and sex, showcasing political, social, and personal narratives concerning people who are alive, sensual, and untouchable. Naked Sword wrests the body from the hands of political puppeteers, social stigma, and leaves the decision to the viewer: temptation, desire, shyness, or embarrassment?