Writing, Curating & Books

Writing

“Regarding the Pain of Others in the Age of Social Media,” Dhaka Tribune, July 21, 2016.

“Regarding the Pain of Others in the Age of Social Media” contemplates the spread of online hate and misinformation as not destiny and envisions empowering capacity of online relationships to build community, challenge indifference, and contest amplifications of caustic commentary. First jotted on Facebook as a personal reflection to online friends in the wake of the police shooting of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana it was published by the Dhaka Tribune following the hostage standoff and mass killing at Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

“Soup & Yogurt: A Guantánamo Archive (2005–2012),” Media-N, Fall 2012.

In “Soup & Yogurt: A Guantánamo Archive (2005-2012),” I discuss the first seven years of my long term, archive-based project After You’ve Been Burned by Hot Soup You Blow in Your Yogurt. In preserving, re-contextualizing and sharing what might have been a lost, deleted, corrupted, or unseen accidental visual history, I present Soup & Yogurt as an alternative account to be received alongside the history offered by “official” conventional media and government record makers; “unofficial” terrorist video makers; as well as other youtubers, bloggers, tweeters, leakers, et al who propagate, manipulate or refute official and unofficial messaging.

“Margot Herster in Conversation with Daniel Heyman and Chris Bartlett,” Exposure Magazine, Fall 2008.

For Exposure Magazine, I interview Daniel Heyman and Chris Bartlett about their process working with human rights attorney Susan Burke and former Abu Graib prisoners–who the world first saw in photographs meant to humiliate–to create portraits intended to instill dignity while documenting testimony of trauma and abuse.

Curating

Conditions of My Release, Hand-in-Glove Conference (now known as Common Field Convening), New Orleans, 2013.

Conditions of My Release presents four recent works by New Orleans artist Michael Alford. Alford is a multidisciplinary conceptual artist who works across documentary photography, small and large scale public sculpture, and Land Art. He is a military veteran who served in the U.S. Armed Forces Special Operations, and earned his B.F.A. from Baylor University while on active duty and an M.F.A. from Louisiana State University.

Social(dis)Order, Glassell Gallery, Louisiana State University, 2012.

Social(dis)order brings together recent and historical works that explore the power technology-enabled social networks have over traditional social constructs. Works by Natalie Bookchin, Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Joseph DeLappe, Ant Hampton & Britt Hatzius, Molleindustria, Virtual Peace, and Jason Zada engage the balances and imbalances, freedoms and controls, and comforts and discomforts that accompany social change.

Play, Flexspace, Austin, TX, 2008.

Play explores give and take between originality and appropriation, individuality and persona, and reality and aspiration. Works include video installation, photography projection, artist books, an internet-art kiosk, and participatory filmmaking by Sophia Peer; Rachel Rabhan; Yoko Ono; fonzy9, ryanferr3, matt92091; and Shlomit Lehavi and Kyvell Vezani.

Books

Cheat Sheet: the pre-post-summit notes for Creative Time Summit: The Curriculum NYC, 2015.

Cheat Sheet was created for a participatory project by BUREAU of CHANGE for Creative Time Summit: The Curriculum. This staple bound book compiles caricaturistic quotes sampled from journalistic coverage of 21st century education with screenshots of complaints posted by students as YouTube testimonials. BUREAU reps offered our Cheat Sheet booklets and pencils in exchange for audience members’ notes on the Summit presentations by prominent artists and activists.

Here/Home, New Orleans: Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, 2013.

Here/Home is the companion book for the BUREAU of CHANGE installation of the same name in Tank Drama: Deliberations from the Wet Grave at Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans. In collaboration with 25 heritage groups, BUREAU borrowed objects of significance to their community centers. The book documents our exchange in drawings and texts that relay the story of each object as explained by the people it belongs to.

nofound(bedroom), Paris: Kaugummi Books, 2009.

Nofound(bedroom) is a collective portfolio edited by Emeric Glayse about empty and full bedrooms that features work from my photographic project, I didn’t notice I wasn’t alone.

Other Georges, Austin: The University of Texas & Booklab II, 2008.

Other Georges is a monograph commissioned by the University of Texas in conjunction with my permanent photography installation on campus. The project was conceived as a way to honor a large donor and prominent alumnus of the Law School, also named George, in lui of a monumental statue in his image. Assembled and stitch bound by hand in a limited edition, it consists of inset digital chromogenic prints and letterpress texts that document my interactions with the people I met at establishments named “George’s” while photographing Texas in the tradition of classic American road trip.