“It’s such a wild thing to watch someone you love so much grow up and experience the world for the first time.”

Olivia DelGandio

In my first year of graduate school, I decided to just ask the questions I had, even if they embarrassed me or felt stupid. I realized it wasn’t helping me to stay quiet in the hopes that someone else would ask my questions first, or that a professor would happen to cover it. Now I find that I learn a lot by asking questions.

I work as a teacher at a preschool in Portland, and lately I’ve been attempting to conduct short interviews with my 3 to 5 year olds. In one recent interview, which happened during snack time, I talked to Ben, age 3, about his dreams.

Luz: Ben, can you tell me about a dream you had?

Ben: I had a really crazy dream.

Luz: Okay, tell me about it.

Ben: If I tell it to you, my other friends might hear it and think it might be, like, spooky.

Luz: Oh, was it a scary dream?

Ben: It wasn’t scary, it was kind of fun ‘cause I got to watch it in my brain.

I apologize to the readers because you never do get to hear the details of this crazy, spooky dream. Ben got distracted and inevitably, so did I. 

I see my work as a preschool teacher as an extension of my art practice. As a socially engaged artist, I’m interested in the way conversation can be framed as a project or a piece of art. The conversations I have with 3 to 5 year olds at my work are sweet and weird, funny, but also often profound. 

Our task for this issue of SoFA Journal was to speak with someone associated with Portland State University, so I decided to conduct a similar interview with some of my colleagues. I wanted the questions to be direct, but leave room for stories, as I have tried to do with my preschoolers. I asked my colleagues about karaoke, what was on their mind that they thought worth sharing, for something they recommend, and, as a bonus, a little show and tell.

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Luz Blumenfeld: What is your current go-to karaoke song?

Olivia DelGandio: Karaoke makes me anxious and I will never do it.

Morgan Hornsby: My first and favorite karaoke performance was “Man, I Feel Like a Woman” by Shania Twain, with my friend Jordan at a bar in her hometown.

Ashley Yang-Thompson: Phantom of the Opera. I don’t think there could possibly be a better karaoke song, but I’m willing to be proved wrong.

Marissa Perez: ​​I don’t really do karaoke! Maybe I’ve done it twice? And the songs I chose were: Rockin’ Robin and I Can’t Make You Love Me. I think they were both bad options so if you have any good suggestions I’ll take them.

Caryn Aasness: I don’t really ever sing karaoke, I think I might be working my way up to it or maybe I’m just building up a list of songs I think would be fun but will never perform. On the current list of possible songs though, is, Tempted by Squeeze (I love any song that lists objects), I’m the Man by Joe Jackson (about a cartoonish conman, “I got the trash and you got the cash so baby we should get along fine”) and Too Busy Thinking About My Baby by Marvin Gaye which I listen to at least three times in a row every time I drive my car. 

Luz: What is something you want to tell me about right now?

Olivia: My little brother had his first girlfriend (he’s in 11th grade) and he really liked her for like a week and my mom just told me he broke up with her because she wanted attention all the time. Last time I was home he told me he was thinking about having sex and he also drove me around a bunch. It’s such a wild thing to watch someone you love so much grow up and experience the world for the first time. It fills me with love and nostalgia.

Morgan: I just discovered the album Preacher’s Daughter by Ethel Cain and can’t stop listening. I also love the photos taken of her by Silken Weinberg.

Ash: When I was in the 8th grade, I had a habit of polling my classmates on various topics (How do you fall asleep at night? What kind of mental illness do you have?) (the latter question got me sent to the principal’s office) which I compiled into my first book ever called, “I’m normal and everybody else is crazy.” I was very excited about this project, so my AIM username was imnotcrazy93 and so was my YouTube account.

Marissa: I want to tell you about how much I love talking to friends on the phone. I just talked to two friends today and it made me feel so good. And then I listened to that song by Labi Siffre called “Bless the Telephone” and you know, he’s right. 

Caryn: I want to tell you about this thing that happened when I was in elementary school that I think about a lot. I think I’d like to use it in a project somehow someday but mostly because I want an excuse to keep talking about it and figure out how to best get the peculiarity across. 

At the audition for the Helen Keller Elementary School talent show, about 2004, 2 girls showed up and sang I’m a Barbie girl in a Barbie world somewhat unenthusiastically but in relative unison and a cappella. The PTA mom running the show told them they needed a backing track, a CD to sing along with. The next rehearsal they brought a CD with the song but it had the words so the PTA mom tried to explain to the confused 2nd or 3rd graders that the CD needed to have the instruments but no one singing. That must have been the last conversation they had about it because on the night of the talent show the girls sang with the same intensity and lack of enthusiasm to what must have been the only CD they could find in somebody’s dad’s collection that seemed to fit the requirements: I’m a Barbie girl in a Barbie world backed up by completely unrelated instrumental smooth jazz. 

Luz: What do you recommend?

Olivia: Annie’s white cheddar mac and cheese. I shouldn’t eat it because it makes my stomach hurt but it’s so good and it is a major safe food at the moment. You don’t pick the safe food, the safe food chooses you, right?

Morgan: I recommend writing letters to people you love.

Ash: I recommend being wrong about your most deeply ingrained beliefs.

Marissa: Charli XCX. She’s great. I’ve been listening to a couple of her albums since the summer. 

Caryn: I recommend asking this exact question! People give great answers.

I also recommend asking people what their favorite question to ask other people is, and then asking their favorite question back to them.

I also recommend tying your shoes in a nontraditional way, eating Cheerios and goldfish mixed together as a snack, wearing a short sleeve t shirt over a long sleeve t shirt to please your inner child, getting audiobooks from the public library, and the documentary Dogtown and Z-boys.

Luz: And, lastly, the optional bonus: Show & Tell, which is something my preschoolers do every week. Their favorite question to ask each other about the shared object is, “What do you like about it?”

Olivia: 

It’s a groundhog made out of rice krispies that I saw at the Groundhog Day party Marissa brought me to last weekend. I love thinking about the time and energy someone put into making this. 

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Luz Blumenfeld (they/them) is a transdisciplinary socially engaged artist. Third generation from Oakland, California, they currently live and work in Portland, Oregon. Their practice involves teaching, listening, observing, and taking notes. Luz is in their second year of PSU’s Art & Social Practice MFA program. You can view their work on their website and their Instagram.

Olivia DelGandio (she/they) is a storyteller who asks intimate questions and normalizes answers in the form of ongoing conversations. They explore grief, memory, and human connection and look for ways of memorializing moments and relationships. Through their work, they hope to make the world a more tender place.

Morgan Hornsby (she/her) is a photographer and socially engaged artist. She was born in the Appalachian mountains of eastern Kentucky and currently lives in Tennessee. Her photographic work has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, NPR, Vox, The Guardian, New York Magazine, and The Marshall Project.

www.morganhornsby.com @morganhornsby

Ashley Yang-Thompson is a ninety-nine time Pulitzer Prize winning poet and a certified MacArthur genius.

ashleyyangthompson.com @leaky_rat

Marissa Perez (she/her) grew up in Portland, Oregon. She is a printmaker, party host, babysitter and youth worker. She’s interested in neighborhoods and the layers of relationships that can be hard to see. Her dad was a mail carrier for 30 years and her mom is a pharmacist. 

Caryn Aasness (they/them) is an artist living in Portland Oregon. They love asking and answering questions. You can find more of their work here.

“I look pretty white on the outside, but my intestines are indigenous.”

-Joaquin Golez

Joaquin and I met in October 2021, as first-year students in PSU’s Contemporary Art Practice program. Ever since then, we’ve been talking about sex and anuses and poop and our daily existential crises. Whenever I talk to Joaquin, I write things down; it’s as if I’m pulling a cassette tape of poetry out of his mouth. Who else describes their hair as a “persian cat in a rainstorm?” Or their visage as an “anthropomorphic catsuit?” Joaquin is a professional illustrator; he has a weekly comic about the previous week’s events called “GAYMO.” I also consider him to be an unprofessional expert in contemporary queerness. He is the only person who has ever sent me a picture of their poop, and I’ve asked a lot of people. When he isn’t fulfilling his ontological imperative to draw, Joaquin is having diarrhea. 

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Ashley Yang-Thompson: Why do you think you have so much diarrhea?

Joaquin Golez: Good question. I think there’s a few answers. I think it’s a combination of things. We contain multitudes. I’ve been violently lactose intolerant since I was a baby. I was allergic to my mother’s breast milk. When I would breastfeed I had explosive diarrhea. 

Ash: Really?

Joaquin: Yeah, I have mommy issues. She let me know right away– as early as I can remember being able to hear stories. My dad’s parents are indigenous people from other countries, so they did not encounter lactose in their countries. They’re both from fishing villages, so no cows. I look pretty white on the outside, but my intestines are very indigenous. And so they react to pretty much everything in this climate. Furthermore, as a Virgo rising, all of my stress manifests physically in the form of rashes or intestinal distress.

Another reason why I have diarrhea is because I’m a bottom. 

Ash: Do you get diarrhea from being violently pegged?

Joaquin: Yeah. I feel like I’m a power bottom.

Ash: How do you become a power bottom?

Joaquin: I think it’s confidence. It’s a combination of selfishness and selflessness, where I’m really meeting my own needs, but I’m also empathically aware of the needs of another person. The right kind of selfishness empowers me to be a very aggressive bottom.

Ash: Have you ever pooped during sex?

Joaquin: Almost, but not quite. I’ve definitely farted quite a few times and I’ve peed.

Ash: Intentionally?

Joaquin: Both intentionally and unintentionally.

(long pause)

My diarrhea is like a family heirloom. My dad is always pooping, too. I inherited his intestines.

Ash: When you were growing up, was your dad primarily in the bathroom?

Joaquin: I would say 30% of the time. We talk about our diarrhea a lot, and it really bothers my white mom. She can’t relate to it because she likes dairy. My dad and I try to take ownership over our poop issues by joking about it and talking about it a lot. And our bathroom habits are really loud compared to my mom, who swears to this day that she doesn’t poop. She says she deposits a single rose scented cube once a month. Which we all know isn’t true. But still I’ve never smelled it or heard it. So there’s a hierarchy there.

Ash: Do you feel ashamed about your diarrhea?

Joaquin: It’s a shame that I own.

Ash: We’ve always talked about diarrhea openly, and I never felt remotely grossed out. I mean, we’re talking about diarrhea and I’m eating my lunch and it doesn’t bother me at all.

Joaquin: I just know that every time I eat, I’ll have so much IBS stuff. It’s always present. It’s definitely normalized. 

Ash: So your diarrhea is tied to both your racial identity and to your queer identity.

Joaquin: Yeah, that’s a good point. I haven’t made that connection. Maybe that’s why I’m so proud of it.

Ash: Ok, now I have a big queer politics question to ask you: Does it bother you that companies like Target and Urban Outfitters have co-opted queerness and pride, and use identity as a promotional tool? 

Joaquin: I don’t think it bothers me in the way it bothers some people because I love the feeling of being a normal person with money. I like having cultural value. I like to imagine my child-self going to Target and being able to comfortably consume like everybody else in America. I want to be included in predominant culture. I want to be a market. It’s normalizing, and I don’t mind being normalized. I would love to comfortably go to the bathroom and date– why is that bad? I think it’s great! No matter how normal being queer might be in a predominant culture, it still has enough stigmas where it’s fun and racy. There’s still queer gay bars, there’s still legislation trying to destroy people’s lives, there’s still places where being queer is very taboo. It’s something I appreciate about sex, too. I want to be comfortable enough to express myself and explore, and because it’s sex, it’s always going to have an edge of tabooness that’s going to make it fun and hot. To me, it can’t be too safe. Everything that I am into has become so basic that it’s codified in some Target end-cap display, and I think that’s hilarious. 

Ash: In a milieu where almost everyone is queer (i.e. Portland, art school), does it bother you that anybody can claim queerness, without having the sort of experiences that you’ve gone through? 

Joaquin: You said something once that I thought was really true, you said that people need rituals and initiations to step into different cultural territories. And I think it would help people to have initiations. I don’t think those initiations have to be oppressive. They could be celebratory. 

I guess that’s when the queer marketability gets in the way, like during Pride, which is supposed to be an initiation, but instead it’s about getting everybody to buy Absolut Vodka. There’s so much alcoholism in queer communities and so much drug abuse, so companies like that taking over Pride is a problem. 

But back to anybody being able to say they’re queer… I feel like if I said it doesn’t bother me, I’d be lying. It bothers me because I have an ego. When it does bother me, I have to check myself because I’ve literally been there. I’ve been super super trans but still not validated as being trans because I wasn’t on hormones. Or because I didn’t grow up wanting to play with trucks. 

It’s not a great narrative for your pain or your oppression to be what makes you who you are. I understand people saying, Oh you’re not x enough because you haven’t suffered the way I have, but if that’s what defines your identity, then that’s an opposition to marginalized people having success.

Ash: Do you think success and suffering are diametrically opposed?

Joaquin: People don’t thrive when they’re suffering. Thriving can come out of suffering but it doesn’t happen when you’re in it. Unless you’re a masochist. 

Ash: I feel like suffering is a fundamental part of any growth. 

Joaquin: I think so too.

Ash: You have to go through a threshold and the threshold is uncomfortable, maybe even unbearable. You’re entering a new form like a plant that has to break the sheath of a seed in order to grow.

Joaquin: I think the friction and discomfort is important, but I don’t think we need to have specific, terrible experiences and all share them as a certain identity. There should be people having shared identity with different experiences.

Ash: Do you believe in universal experience?

Joaquin: Yeah, we all die and suffer and get hungry and have diarrhea. 

Ash: Some more than others. 

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Ashley Yang-Thompson (I respectfully opt out of the protocol to include pronouns) is a ninety-nine time Pulitzer Prize winning poet and a certified MacArthur genius. ashleyyangthompson.com @leaky_rat

Joaquin Golez (he/him) is an illustrator, writer, and tattoo artist. He is currently getting his MFA in Contemporary Art Practice at Portland State University. @bruisedfroot

“I definitely think I’d be a different educator if I wasn’t a socially engaged artist, and a different artist if I wasn’t an educator.”

Emily Fitzgerald

Last fall, my first term in the program, I had the opportunity to be a teaching assistant for Emily Fitzgerald’s digital photography class. Her own background in social practice was evident throughout the class, but especially during the final project, where students created images for seniors at the Washington County Disability, Aging, and Veteran Services (DAVS). This project culminated in an exhibition where seniors could engage with the students and their work in-person. It was a great example of how social practice could show up in a classroom setting.

This term, since I am in a pedagogy class, I have been thinking a lot about how I want to function as a socially engaged artist and educator. In doing so, I’ve been reflecting on my experience in Emily’s class, how she chose to teach, and the effect it had on the students and their own photography practices. For this conversation, I got to talk with Emily more about our shared experience last semester and hear about her personal relationship to art and teaching.

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Morgan Hornsby: How would you describe your practice?

Emily Fitzgerald: I would say that I’m a socially engaged artist and that I am interested in collective storytelling and collaborative image making. I have a background in photography and I use expanded documentary practices in a lot of my work.

Morgan: Do you consider teaching a part of your practice or something that’s separate?

Emily: I feel like it varies, and at different times I feel like it’s part of my practice. The exhibition that we did at the end of last term felt connected to my art practice. I definitely feel like it’s connected to my art practice, and there are times when I’m doing community workshops that are part of my practice. Teaching at the university level feels like it’s connected to my practice, but not necessarily a part of it, if that makes sense. It informs my practice, and my practice informs teaching, but it definitely is not always under the umbrella of my socially engaged art practice. I definitely think I’d be a different educator, if I wasn’t a socially engaged artist, and a different artist if I wasn’t an educator.

Morgan: How do they inform each other, your work as a socially engaged artist and your work as an educator?

Emily: One of the ways in which I teach that feels very important to me is that I teach in a very relational way, and in a collaborative way. And some courses, it’s easier. Like right now I’m teaching a design thinking class in university studies that isn’t set up to be collaborative— it’s not in the art department, and it’s a much bigger group of students. But then I’m working with a lot of the same students from our photography class last semester this term for an intermediate photography course.

I think often there’s some sort of educational component, not teaching, but a workshop type model, that is part of my social practice. And I feel like the way I teach is very relational, which is also how I work as an artist. It’s very collaborative. So for instance, last term with the students that you worked with, the installation of the exhibition was completely collaborative, which was kind of a mess, and took a long time, but all the decisions were made together. The title of the show, which images were curated, and how things were hung— all of these things were collaboratively decided with the students. So I wasn’t saying okay, this is the way we’re going to do it, and I’m going to teach you how to do it. They’re really learning by doing and so I think that feels connected. And then the Washington County project felt like a social practice project in some ways because it was bridging two groups of people that wouldn’t often be connected, and it had a storytelling component. The students were making work for the senior citizens and the seniors were sharing their stories about the students’ work. So it was twofold in that way. 

Morgan: Can you say more about the origin of the Washington County project?

Emily: So that project started right at the beginning of the pandemic, at the beginning of 2020. I had never taught class remotely, and so I was thinking about ways to make it feel engaging and connecting, and to have a community-based component when everyone was on lockdown and at home by themselves. I connected with this woman from Washington County DAVS, and she said that all the seniors were in isolation, that they weren’t getting to see many people and they weren’t getting much mail. So the first iteration of the project was the students making images with engagement prompts that Washington County DAVS would then turn into postcards, and those postcards were mailed out to senior citizens in isolation. And so the seniors would look at the images and read the engagement prompts, or their caregivers would, and then they would have conversations about what they saw in the images. The assignment was for the students to construct an image— instead of a documentary photograph or a landscape or portrait, they were supposed to construct something that was whimsical and fun, and engaging, and maybe had a twist or brought in a question. Each student would have one image selected, and they could choose to participate, to opt in or opt out. So if they wanted to make work that was more provocative than Washington County felt okay with, they could opt out. So they were still making work for themselves. When the postcards were mailed out at the end of the course, they also got a set of the postcards from all their other classmates. 

So that was the first iteration. And we did that many times, for several terms. And then last term when you were the TA, that was the first time I was back in person with the students, and we decided we wanted to do an exhibition at the end of the term. Instead of mailing the postcards, senior citizens could come to PSU and view students’ work and engage in those conversations in person. And we had an exhibition.

Morgan: How was the exhibition?

Emily:  It was mostly great. There were definitely some bumps and hurdles, I think working with bureaucracy can be that way. One thing that happened was that I was explicitly clear that I wanted all the students’ names on vinyl along with the title of the exhibition. And there was some misunderstanding, where the person that was the gallery coordinator, and the person working with the graphic designer at PSU, just had my name printed and cut, which felt really incorrect. So we did get to use that experience to have a conversation around authorship, and we did remedy it by printing the students’ names, even though it’s not the same as vinyl. So that felt difficult. And Washington County wanted the frames back after the exhibition, which they paid for, but thinking about reciprocity, I felt like the students should receive the frames since their work was being professionalized and utilized for this purpose. So there were challenges on a lot of levels. 

Also, the representative from Washington County DAVS said that the image selected for the flyer didn’t feel appropriate, which was really confusing, because it didn’t feel like a provocative image at all.

We had these conversations around who makes the image, who has the agency, and who makes the choices on what’s being shown. And we, as a class, talked about what to keep in the show, because some of the students did create work that could be seen as challenging or provocative for a bureaucratic organization like Washington County DAVS or for senior citizens. There was some nudity, there was some text. But we decided that we wanted to leave everything in the show, and that if the representative from Washington County didn’t feel comfortable with those images being in the show, then she could make that decision. And she didn’t make the decision to take them out.

It was interesting, because what felt hard or challenging from the senior citizens’ perspective weren’t the images that we thought would be. It was all senior citizens with Alzheimer’s and dementia, and they came, and there were some great conversations. The students stood by their work and some of them asked them the prompts they had written. But most of them just had conversations about the pieces and what they saw, what it reminded them of, what it made them feel. It was such a learning process to make work for a certain audience rather than for your peers and class critique. So I think in that way, it was really great.

Morgan: Yeah, even with complications and challenges, it’s really cool that the students got to go through that with you. I think those are learning experiences that translate to everything in life, not just photography. Working with people is complicated.

Emily: Totally.

Morgan: One thing I really enjoyed about being in your class was seeing how different the work of each student was. Everybody was making such different things. It felt like over the course of that ten weeks, each person’s style became more and more their own.

Emily: Yeah, I think so too. I think I was just so impressed by how much they all grew and are continuing to grow in their voice and their style and developing concepts that are important and meaningful to them. 

Morgan: Is there a way you try to cultivate that or does it just kind of naturally happen?

Emily: I don’t know. That’s a good question. I ask the students to give me feedback at the end of the term, which is one of the ways. One of the things that they said that I thought was really nice is that in so many art classes, they feel like the instructors are teaching them a certain way to learn their style, or a style that they need to emulate. But in this course, they said that they felt empowered to find their own style and voice.

I do like to give a lot of agency and choice throughout the term. There are definitely technical assignments and benchmarks that they need to meet, and a basis of technical skill that I want them to learn and build and then be able to speak to, and a critical lens that I want them to use in terms of evaluating work. And then also, on top of that, I think it’s so important for them to be able to think conceptually, and for them to be able to understand why they like work, and to support them in finding why something works for them, or why something feels meaningful. And that’s different for everyone. So I think maybe it’s like a value that I place around agency and choice.

And I find that when I have more agency, I’m more engaged and committed and dedicated to something. So I think I want to give students agency too— if they’re interested in what we’re doing, they’re going to be more involved.

I’m not sure, what did you see in class?

Morgan: Yeah, I think that you’re right, that part of it is the level of agency. I think it also helps that you showed so many examples of photography, so that everyone can find something that is exciting to them. Over the course of the term, I felt like I witnessed many students become incredibly dedicated, and take photography very seriously. I felt like you did a good job of offering agency and choice while maintaining a high standard, or a high expectation of effort. The combination really seemed to work with the students. 

I really liked seeing students find photography they were excited about, because I know how cool that feeling is, to find work that is really inspiring, or that is connected to your practice or the way you see the world in some way. One of my favorite parts of class was getting to show students work I thought they might connect with, to be part of that excitement.

Emily: Yeah, I really appreciated that you were coming in with often more contemporary photographers or people that you felt would resonate with that particular person’s style. And I thought that was so helpful. The more voices are always better, so it’s always better to have more people and more perspectives. And I think that’s also like having your eyes as well as my eyes giving feedback, that’s so helpful. I love having guests critiquers for that reason.

How do you feel like your pedagogy or being an educator is connected to your practice?

Morgan: I’m still thinking about that, but being in your class really made me excited about teaching photography in the future. I’m grateful for the education I had in photojournalism, but it was a lot more narrow. In your class, it really felt like students found their voices.

And with the exhibition, I saw a great example of how teaching through a social practice lens could look, how it could be really inspiring and offer new possibilities. But from the beginning, I saw how social practice was showing up in the classroom.

Emily: Do you feel like it was showing up outside of that project?

Morgan: In the level of agency, yeah. Definitely in that project, but I think the level of agency throughout and knowing that it was building to that project.

Emily: I could definitely see it in that way. It’s really collaborative. Like this week in the intermediate course, the assignment was for them to collaborate with one of their classmates, which was an idea that came from the students last term saying that they wish they had an opportunity to collaborate with each other. So some of them are assisting, some of them are helping fill the set, and some of them are models. All different things. And not all social practices are collaborative, but all of my work as a socially engaged artist is collaborative. And so that feels also really important. It’s been so nice to see how they built a community in this course, and really know each other’s work and style. They can give feedback with the understanding of someone’s goals as an artist and I feel like that’s such valuable feedback. I got so much of that in the program, through being able to work with the same people over those three years. And now I’m still collaborating with several folks from the program. So to really know someone as a person, but also as an artist, is such an incredibly special thing.

Morgan: I think you told me this before we started class, but you really do get to know people differently when you’re looking at images of each other’s lives together every week. It does build a kind of intimacy and community. To me, that feels like what social practice is about: enhancing interaction through art and enhancing art through interaction. 

In that way, I saw social practice coming up in critique, when we were all looking at and talking about images together and how it did build a sense of community.

Emily: It’s so different to see people through their images, to see how they see. For this course, they’re doing a term-long project where they’re creating a series or a body of work around a concept that they’ll then present in whatever form they choose, so it could be images on the wall, or it could be a book or it could be an interactive slideshow, it could be anything. So we’re going to talk about form, and then they’ll have some additional interdisciplinary components like audio or text or drawing or sculpture.

It feels like such a gift to see people grow and evolve as artists. It’s so cool to see people who had never picked up a camera become really dedicated to the practice, and to be making amazing work.

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Morgan Hornsby (she/her) is a photographer and socially engaged artist. She was born in the Appalachian mountains of eastern Kentucky and currently lives in Tennessee. Her photographic work has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, NPR, Vox, The Guardian, New York Magazine, and The Marshall Project. www.morganhornsby.com @morganhornsby

Emily Fitzgerald (she/her) is a socially-engaged artist, photographer, storyteller, and educator. Through her work, she investigates what it means to collectively tell a story, equally prioritize the relational and the aesthetic, collaboratively make conceptual and visual decisions, and co-author a body of work with the ‘subject.’ Her work is responsive, participatory, and site-specific. Emily brings large-scale art installations into non-traditional, public, and unexpected places in order to deepen our understanding and reframe our ways of relating to one another. She is the co-founder of MATTER gallery and Works Progress Agency. Emily teaches photography, art, and Design Thinking at Portland State University. https://www.efitzgerald.com

It’s not about, “What’s inclusive space?” It’s about, “What’s inclusive design?” Forget the outcome because that’s our problem. We think there’s a checklist waiting to be discovered that would just give us the formula for inclusive space. There’s no such thing.

Dr. Amara H. Pérez

I’m interested in exploring cultural practices for my second year in the program. Part and parcel of our everyday cultural practices is Critical Race Theory (CRT) which has formalized how race and ethnicity can overtly and covertly impact our personal, social, and political. For me, coming from a majority white conservative town in Indiana, learning about CRT through contemporary Asian American Feminisms was cathartic. But I only learned about CRT through academic settings or books. I only started to learn CRT in everyday contexts through working at a youth neighborhood design program, Your Street Your Voice, where we heavily relied on the groundbreaking work from Space Matters, a student participatory action research project by Dr. Amara H. Pérez and her students. 

Local organizer, researcher, and educator Dr. Pérez has been working in and with communities of color, especially youth, for over 25 years. She was contracted last year to work on the Portland State University Gateway Center project where the new Art + Design program will be housed. In this, she created a paid temporary cohort of art students of color to connect CRT and Spatial Theory and apply it to the plans of the new building. I immediately applied to be a part of the cohort to learn from Dr. Pérez and I had the capacity to be part of 3 meetings. As expected, Dr. Pérez held space and change for her students. The following interview dives deeper into how and why Dr. Pérez melds the everyday and theory to shift culture and therefore power. 

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Lillyanne Pham: During the summer as one of your BIPOC student cohort members to help design the new Art + Design Building at Portland State University, you asked us to find a “hidden curriculum” in our everyday routines that shows space serving the dominant cis white hetero ableist English-speaking culture. How do you show the definition of and power of “hidden curriculum” to your students?

Dr. Amara H. Pérez: I learned about the hidden curriculum as a student at Portland State University when I was getting my master’s in the PACE (Postsecondary Adult and Continuing Education) program. I took a curriculum course and one single article in there was about the hidden curriculum. This concept comes from the late 60s and this article applied it to space. It was research done by a scholar who was comparing the built environment of a law school to the built environment of a social work school on the same college campus. It blew my mind. It helped me to consider the idea of the hidden curriculum and built environments for the first time. I was able to think about how space is essentially communicating socializing messages. 

Flash forward to many years later, I am a doctoral student in a program and I took a course outside of my department about spatial theory – the idea that space was not neutral. It brought me back to the hidden curriculum of campus space. I was teaching at the time and I thought this is really fascinating. If the built environment is a hidden curriculum, that means that everything around us can essentially be imagined as text, or as a lesson plan, that is teaching us dominant value and belief systems.

I thought, I don’t know exactly how to teach this except to invite my students to actually help me explore this question. So, I started developing methods to engage students in the conversation. When I was teaching that term, I had six students in the class, they all identified as women, and they were majority women of color. We decided that would be one of the focuses of our term together. We had class in a different space every single week, and they got to pick where we would have class. We spent the first 15-20 minutes looking around together and asking this question, “how is this built environment communicating socializing messages?” We had class once at Bojangles, a fast-food restaurant. We had class at this outdoor bell tower and at the library. We just started doing it together as co-researchers. It helped all of us understand what this particular concept meant, as it applied to the built environment. 

I was also learning more about the hidden curriculum in the doctoral program, and began to understand it in the more traditional way, which is the basic idea that school is teaching you more than reading, writing, and math. And it’s teaching you these things that are often not discussed. My approach to teaching the hidden curriculum has actually best been facilitated through discussions about space.

What has been the most powerful for me is to invite students to pay attention to their everyday routines and built environments, take pictures of those, and bring them to a collective collaborative process where we analyze them together. I think what became the clearest were bathrooms because bathrooms were so intimately and in familiar ways, tied to gender. Bathrooms and fences were really good starting places, along with traditional classrooms. These were three spaces that anybody could sort of say, “Yeah, I can see how it’s doing this work of socializing us into dominant values.” What gets more interesting is when we can move beyond those spaces and start looking at other less obvious signs of that curriculum. 

My approach has been to create an opportunity where people are applying it right away to their own routines and lived experiences, but then we’re analyzing those in a group. It’s more of an engaged kind of applied theory. And the hidden curriculum has been less of a theoretical framework and more of a conceptual framework for understanding hiddenness – how power hides. Very little of the hidden curriculum literature goes outside of educational settings, nor does it look at built environments. I love taking that concept out of education and putting it in other places and spaces. So we can see it as a socializing mechanism, not just living in educational settings, but in all settings. 

 

Lillyanne: I love how your class got to choose their own spaces to learn. This helps to make things click even more because they have the power to choose where they can learn and what they want to learn. Is this a part of your process? To use their personal experiences as part of your curriculum rather than have students navigate their personal experiences on their own?

Dr. Pérez: The other part of that is to invite and acknowledge identity to that conversation. When I use the hidden curriculum, what I love about it is it invites the concept of “reading space”. When we talk about our identities and our lived experiences, that informs how we read space. For some people reading space as in service to the gender binary is really clear depending on their lived experience. Others may be totally oblivious, which is why I think analyzing space through the concept of the hidden curriculum ought to be done in collective, collaborative ways. So we can begin to understand how space is acting beyond our lived experience and find the commonalities in that. 

What I love about reading space is that we all have spatial sensibilities, but they can be dormant. To me, social justice curriculum activates those spatial sensibilities to increase critical awareness of space. This feeling of having lived experiences, feeling validated, learning a new language to name the things that we know are happening, but maybe don’t really know that there’s a word for like hegemony and systemic oppression means something. All this language can help validate our lived experiences. But more importantly, this helps us understand how power and privilege sustain themselves. The hidden curriculum is that entry point that’s really accessible because it’s grounded in your lived experience. And it is validated by a collective lived experience. And it lends itself to an increased awareness in ways that I think are often hard to design a curriculum around as an educator.

Lillyanne: You had our cohort go through a whole day of training on Critical Race Theory with Spatial Theory. While we had varying levels of racial equity consciousness within a U.S. context, you were still able to help us find solidarity with each other and increase folks’ consciousness within a day. What do you think it takes for educators of all levels and disciplines to have the tools to do this type of work? You mentioned educators should work with the everyday to make learning more accessible. I was wondering about educators who have no experience in social justice education, but there are students who are demanding it. How do you start this type of work?

Dr. Pérez: Great question. I’m so glad you asked that because I don’t often get to talk about it. I am a former Youth Community Organizer. I was trained through an organization in Oakland, California called the Center for Third World Organizing where I got an internship to start my career in grassroots organizing. After that internship, I worked at Sisters in Action for Power for 12-13 years. 

Part of my training as an organizer was in popular education, a methodology most associated with Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator. Organizers do an incredible amount of education. But it’s often very theoretical. As people who are trying to change and transform systems of power, we can’t do that work without theory. But it often gets named something else, and we often don’t recognize it as theory. 

Popular education is an approach that brings people together to talk about issues, to understand those issues as problems, to talk about lived experiences and perspectives, to think about the causes, to understand the consequences, and ultimately get to a place of action, and an action that can be facilitated and coordinated by the very people who are most affected by those issues. 

For me, that training was parallel to my training as an organizer. I spent a lot of time being trained at Highlander, which is very famous for its contributions to social justice work in the South. And my training happened from the work I did at Sisters in Action. My role there was to help create a comprehensive educational program that would teach middle school and high school girls of color about systems of domination and systems of inequity, all as a way to have a critical eye towards organizing campaigns, issue campaigns, where, members of Sisters in Action, were taking on the housing authority, Portland Public Schools, and other institutions to fight for local change. 

What’s important to that action work is an analysis of understanding power and privilege. If you don’t understand power and privilege, you’re likely to say we don’t feel safe, we need more cops. But nobody going through an understanding of power and privilege would be demanding that. So we realized early on that an ongoing comprehensive political education program was critical, and all of that curriculum was developed in-house and not just mostly through me. 

As girls grew up in the organization, I was able to work with a cohort of teenagers who had been involved at Sisters in Action since they were 11 years old and who worked with me and without me to continue to create that curriculum and facilitate those conversations across a range of issues that we addressed in those 13 years. 

So I think, again, part of that is really formal training in popular education. And then I think it came from 15 years of practice. It’s also why I don’t feel comfortable in an academic classroom. I’ve tried teaching in universities and colleges and it doesn’t click for me. It’s harder to practice popular education in a formal classroom. So I love trainings and leadership programs because it’s perfect for that. I think that those kinds of conversations, as you can imagine, always lead to action. So I would say popular education is not just about curriculum, it’s about understanding your role as a facilitator. I call myself an educator, but I probably think of myself more as a facilitator than a traditional educator. So I attribute that training and that experience, early in my career, as part of what I think makes for really transformative workshops and trainings that I’ve been a part of.

Lillyanne: My first exposure to your work was Space Matters. It was especially important to me in my work with Jackie Santa Lucia and ridhi d’cruz at Your Street Your Voice, and it also became your Cultural Foundations of Education, Ph.D. dissertation. I was wondering how that project transformed your present-day practice? And what was an underlying lesson from it that isn’t usually highlighted?

Dr. Pérez: That project changed everything for me. It was initially supposed to be a four-month project. The project came about when Portland Community College (PCC) wanted to introduce Critical Race Theory (CRT) to the Office of Planning and Capital Construction. 

What many people don’t know and is really important is that in this project, none of us knew what we were doing. To some extent, none of us knew what we would learn, and none of us knew the answers. I knew how to build a leadership team, to train students, to create curriculum, and research methodologies. So there are a lot of things I knew how to do that would get the ball rolling, but we didn’t know what we would discover. 

I have to tell you that I thought many times, What if we discover nothing? What if there’s no answer to this question that we have, which is, what’s the relationship between race and space? What I appreciate most is that there was nothing we were trying to replicate. It freed us up to do some fabulous work, and to really see it as an exploration of questions. And we had support from the college to do that. We also felt like anything we learned would at least be more than what we knew when we started. We learned to trust the process. 

There’s so much we learned that you can find and read about when you search Space Matters at PCC. I came to really appreciate and lean into the “we don’t know.” I think it’s helpful to say, We still are trying to understand how the built environment normalizes whiteness. We’re still trying to figure that out. What I know is that CRT says it does. I believe that and so I’m just trying to figure out how. I really push back against outcome-driven processes, and lean into more of the process-oriented approach to any given project. 

I think CRT not only helps us understand how space acts, but can help us understand how our institutional practices are getting in the way. That’s the real change that we need to be focusing on and I love that too. It’s not about, “What’s inclusive space?” It’s about, “What’s inclusive design?” Forget the outcome because that’s our problem. We think there’s a checklist waiting to be discovered that would just give us the formula for inclusive space. There’s no such thing. Never gonna happen. But every single project helped me to see how the design practices are the problem and the educational institution is getting in the way.

Lillyanne: Your work has been deeply connected to institutions. Over the span of years, how have you defined your role in and personal barriers against institutions?

Dr. Pérez: As a young organizer, I saw myself working outside of the system to make change. I would say 6-7 years into it, I started realizing that the organization we were building, as much as I loved it, non-profit was being modeled largely from a business/corporate structure. In that, there were many complexities, contradictions, and problems. Are you familiar with The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence?

Lillyanne: Yes!

Dr. Pérez: So, there was a group of us who contributed to that text. I realized it’s not just the institution. There’s something about building an institution and building an institution that is funded by philanthropy. You’re likely going to replicate the very same structures and culture and system you are working to change. So I got really disillusioned and decided I didn’t want to do my organizing work in a 501(c)(3), nonprofit structure.

That was not a popular position at the time. Many organizers believe that being paid as an organizer was a victory that people fought really long and hard for. And building our own organizations was going to help us build the power we needed to bring about the change that we wanted. My experience was I saw us replicating the very harmful cultures that won’t sustain a movement. So, when I left Sisters in Action, I decided I would not be part of a nonprofit to do grassroots community organizing. Then it’s like, how am I going to take care of myself? I thought I’m still going to work with students to make a change, but within an institution and within education. 

So, I started working at Portland Community College as the Director of the Multicultural Center, and loved the work then realized too much of my work is about trying to improve and build an institution again. Let’s be real. That’s never gonna happen. I’m like, there’s no escaping it! Every institution is a problem. So, you just have to decide what your niche and role are going to be. Then I went back to school and found myself doing consulting more and more. 

The advantage to consulting is my energy is not going towards building or sustaining an institution. I get to work on a project that I can stand behind and put my energies into supporting it without feeling like I am promoting an institution, or improving an institution that I know is never going to happen. I identify as an educator. My parents are educators. I love educational settings. I felt like this is where I want to be but as a consultant. There are disadvantages. I miss being part of a team. As a consultant, I don’t have that. My team is always changing. They’re often interdisciplinary teams of people learning about power and equity for the first time. 

What feels right to me is the distance between me and the institution. I respect people who are doing work in institutions. It’s just not where I want to put my energy. I definitely want to partner with institutions and organizations and firms. I like to help people think about how to change the culture of the firm, and the organization, and change practices and policies. I feel like I’m good at that. But I want to see the end date of my time on that project. I am now in my early 50s. I think that my role is different in that regard. You know, where I want to put my energy and focus is much more project-based than anything else now.

Lillyanne: I definitely resonate with everything you’re saying. I’ve been trying to run away from non-profits and universities and find myself back in them but with a new boundary between myself and them. I’ve also found myself experiencing the downsides of solo consulting.

Dr. Pérez: I’ll get emails that say, “I heard about your work. I was wondering if you will partner with us on a project, We’re going to be working on X.” I’m thinking to myself, I don’t know you. I don’t know if we have a shared lens and understanding of practicing racial equity. I don’t work like that. But the pressure to work like that… in this world of design and planning, you don’t have to know each other. It took me a while to be confident. For me, I had to stay true to myself and true to my practice, knowing all the contradictions exist. But seeing myself, I work for critical race theory, that’s my boss. You’ve got to be your own moral compass, your own political compass. You’ve got to be turning inward all the time to make sure that what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, and who you’re doing it with is congruent with your values and your commitments. So, you can do the work you want to do on your own terms, especially as a woman of color.

Lillyanne: That’s so true. At the end of the day, sometimes you just want to give up and quit being an organizer too. Then you’re back in these situations and you find a little bit of magic. It’s the cycle and you need to constantly be attuned to yourself. I was also wondering throughout this whole process what or who has been exciting in your present-day practice?

Dr. Pérez: I would say that what I find most exciting is working with students as co-researchers. I find that the students I get to work with are so fucking brilliant, so thoughtful, and so curious. And I am inspired by how being a part of a cohort changes their understanding of systemic inequity, the trajectory of their own research, their own studies, their own sort of career goals, which excites me and motivates me so much in ways that nothing else does. That’s my first answer. Others include Mabel O. Wilson, an architect, designer, and scholar who writes a lot about race and architecture and legal scholar and geographer, David Delaney. I love their work. I also love my favorite CRT scholars: Daniel Solorzano, Lindsay Perez Huber, and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. And I think people who are using art as their sort of tool for change inspire me in ways that other methods don’t. I felt really excited about working with all the art and design students this term. I’ve never worked with this community before. And being involved with these students for a whole term in analyzing studio space and gallery space has helped me to understand whiteness in ways that I wouldn’t have understood. This co-learning feeds me. 

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Lillyanne Phạm (b. 1997; LP/they/bạn/she/em/chị) is a cultural organizer and artist living and working in East Portland. Their personal work centers on ancestral wayfinding, nesting, and communicating. Her current collaborative projects are a queer teen artist residency program at Parkrose High School, a canopy design for Midland Library, and a youth program at Portland’5 Centers for the Arts. LP’s work has been supported by Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon, Mural Arts Institute, the Regional Arts and Culture Council, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, the City Arts Program – Portland, and the Dorothy Piacentini Endowed Art Scholarship. For more work visit: https://linktr.ee/lillyannepham

Amara H. Pérez, PhD Critical Race Spatial Educator, Researcher, and Strategist. Amara is a long-time social justice educator, community organizer, community-engaged researcher, and critical strategist. For over 25 years her work in and with communities of color in Portland has been informed by popular education, critical theories, and participatory action research. Drawing from critical pedagogy, critical race theory (CRT), and spatial theory, her research examines the role of planning, design, and built environments in maintaining structural oppression. She also studies how critical race spatial praxis can be used as a methodology for spatial justice within educational institutions and local communities. Her professional experience advancing equity strategies within educational settings combined with her community–based experience working for local social change, has enabled her to work with diverse interdisciplinary teams across sectors. In 2017, Amara partnered with Portland Community College to use CRT in facilities planning and design to further the college’s strategic vision for equity and inclusion. Working closely with students as co-researchers has resulted in institutional change at the college including the use of CRT as a central strategy for community engagement in a range of district-wide planning and construction projects. Since then, Amara has partnered with other educational institutions like Seattle Public Schools, Portland State University, and Portland Public Schools to introduce and use a critical race spatial lens in facilities planning and capital projects aimed to support racial equity and social justice. https://amarahperez.com/about 

I think when I look back on it, the one thing that was consistent is the fact that, even from a young age, I was always exposed to Black history and culture.

Kiara Hill

I had the pleasure of TAing for Dr. Kiara Hill during Fall term for the History of Art + Social Practice course. I took this class during my first year as a graduate student but thought it would be beneficial for my practice to “retake” the course through the canon of the Black Arts Movement. Throughout the term, I was able to pick Kiara’s brain and understand the ways in which she approaches her pedagogical frameworks and practice. We often spoke about academia and various paths within the institution. During one of our initial conversations, before the term began, we talked a bit about each other’s journey and how we arrived at where we are today. I’ve toyed with the idea of pursuing a similar path of Kiara’s, acquiring a PhD, but wasn’t entirely too sure about my decision. Kiara offered to share further with me her experience and journey which provided additional insight for a path forward.

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Kiara: I’m excited to get into our conversation. Can you describe your practice and talk about your journey getting to where you are today?

Kiara H: Hmm. It’s funny that you say practice because I don’t think of myself as an artist, but I do kind of have a practice in which I approach the work that I do. I would say that my practice is one that is centered in Black feminism that centers and prioritizes the lived experiences of Black fems, Black women and Black girls. From a historical perspective and a more contemporary perspective I would say that 99% of the things that I take on and do are along those lines. I think probably second to that, given my background is very much so Black-centered which is in part informed by my formal training, but also just by experiential knowledge, just lived experiences. I would describe my practice as one rooted in Black feminism, something that’s fluid and seeks to capture the most holistic interpretation of those experiences as possible.

Kiara: Yes, that’s beautiful. Do you feel you’ve always wanted to explore that within your practice or do you feel within your undergrad experience you felt more of a calling to lean more into this research? Or has it always been an interest of yours?

Kiara H.: The short answer is no. I think a lot of 18-year-olds went through a lot of different things before. I mean, not to say 18, but college age, whatever that looks like, went through a lot of different phases and ideas. When I look back on it, the one thing that was consistent is the fact that, even from a young age, I was always exposed to Black history and culture. And in fact it was often my default. I went to a Black Baptist, kind of pan-African style elementary school where, in addition to obviously learning the basics of math, science, that kind of curriculum; it was often interspersed with these, I don’t know, I call ’em pep talks, looking back at it, just the idea that to be a Black child in America means it comes with a certain kind of  baggage. But not one that you need to let hinder you as much as one that you just need to be aware of. Even outside of that, when I think about the history and stuff that I learned, it was predominantly African-American history. Black history month was a whole thing. We came in African regalia or what we understood to be that and I had pig feet for the first time at eight years old because of school. It was very foundational to my understanding of myself, but also how I understood African-American history. I think coupled with the fact that my godmother, who has always been very influential in my life, has always been very Afrocentric pro-Black, even down to how she styles her house. She’s always been a collector, at least for my entire life, of 20th century African-American memorabilia. My experience and exposure with various facets of African-American culture came very early on. 

So fast forward, although I didn’t know that’s what I was going to do right off the bat, when I look at it, I can see, oh, this has kind of been an ongoing theme in my life. To be honest, I was a pretty shitty undergraduate student. I tell people that all the time actually, and not in a way denigrate myself as much as to say that, you just really never know where life will take you. Not in a cliche way, but in a way where it’s … I think when people see people with PhDs, they think you must have always thought you were gonna be a PhD. And it’s actually like no. I think for a lot of us, we just come at this in very different ways, which I think is the beauty of getting a PhD in humanities. But all that to say, yeah, I didn’t really know. I think what changed for me was in undergrad I had (and this is why representation is important) a Black woman professor who basically told me you’re really smart, but you are a knucklehead, so we need to figure out a way for you to get this on track because you have potential to do some things that I don’t think you even see for yourself right now. I am forever indebted to her for that because she’s right. No one in my family had gotten a graduate degree. No one talked about that. The idea was, oh, you get a state job. There’s nothing wrong with state jobs, but I just didn’t have a lot of exposure to what was available as far as education goes, past getting a bachelor’s degree. When this professor said that to me, she also mentioned, we’re going to get you into the McNair Scholars program, which is a program designed to help marginalized people, folks from underrepresented backgrounds, economically and racially, into graduate programs. Because as we know, when we look at the numbers, people of color in marginalized communities are still very underrepresented. The idea of getting a graduate degree with the hopes of becoming a professor was big but I trusted her. It’s crazy because I remember while interviewing for the program my GPA was barely a 2.8 which was the bare minimum to get accepted. I remember telling them in my interview, listen, if you let me in the program, I can do it. I promise I can do it. I know my transcript doesn’t reflect that but I can do it.  

They accepted me into the program. Shortly thereafter, I believe having been exposed to research and to the fact that I could conduct research on what matters in terms of my personal interest and that of my community, I felt okay. Around that same time, the California budget crisis occurred which affected the CSU systems. I originally planned to acquire my bachelors degree in public relations but due to budget cuts I was unable to take the classes I needed to confer my degree. The only way for me to fulfill my requirements was to take up a minor. Looking back, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. Then I stumbled upon women’s studies and that totally transformed my life because for the first time I had been given the language to talk about my experiences and the experiences of women around me. I felt I always had an internal knowledge of this language, but being able to participate in discourse around the systemic and historical reasons for those things, I believe, shifted me into a completely different world. At that point I said to myself, okay, I’m going to do school. I can do this. This is interesting to me. 

After this realization, I began learning about Black feminism and I was mind blown. It completely shifted my views of myself, politics, and how I saw my Blackness in relation to my womanness. It was really just an eye-opening experience. From there, I was accepted into the University of Alabama’s race and gender studies program. Shortly thereafter, I told myself, okay, if I can get into graduate school, I’m going to take school seriously. I was accepted and that was what it was. While attending the program, I really started to lean heavily into learning about feminism more so specifically the development of Black feminism and learning about different frameworks in relation to feminist frameworks all while participating in different political causes. For a short time, I worked with a reproductive justice organization that escorted women to get abortions. In the midst of pro-lifers harassing them, I found this experience to be most interesting because I was witnessing this first hand. The organization was in Alabama, where not that long before, abortion clinics were being bombed. Unlike my experience in California, when I worked with these types of organizations, it was a completely different social landscape. It was interesting because while helping out one day, Saturday, I’d usually see mostly white people, i.e white men, women and sometimes with their kids but that day I saw a Black man. I was perplexed because I kept asking myself, what is he doing over there? He was Black and gay, and I was just wondering what do you have in common with these people? I remember at one point, my colleagues and I went back and forth with the crowd… saying things. The Black guy was the loudest. It was wild. I thought to myself, what the hell is going on? I got his attention and I talked to him one-on-one. I was trying to figure out what he was doing there, why he was there, where all this came from. When we arrived at the end of our conversation, I don’t actually believe he shared the same political views with these people, he really was seeking some kind of acceptance. 

There were moments, like these, that led me to decide to become more proficient in talking about race, gender and class and overall societal issues while also wanting to connect with people. Those are the moments that helped guide me into pursuing and acquiring my PhD and ultimately becoming a professor. The art stuff didn’t come until a little bit later on when I got to Massachusetts. It’s funny… I’m fascinated by the ways people narrate their lives, which is in part, why I do what I do. I’ve never heard myself out loud… out loud, do the same thing. So right now, I’m hoping I don’t sound like a Disney movie. 

Kiara: It’s very inspirational and really interesting. I’m engaged, I want to hear more. 

Kiara H.: When I was in my PhD program, I had my first real introduction to art. Before that, I had known people, like my mother and godmother, who collected a few prints here and there. I knew Black people created art, but it’s not like I had ever gone on a field trip to a museum and was explicitly told this work was created by a Black artist or this work speaks to me as an individual and person in particular ways. I thought I just didn’t really like art that much. In 2016 or 17, UMCA, which is the contemporary museum on campus, opened up their annual curatorial fellowship. This particular year they decided to open it up to people outside of art history and studio art because they were focusing on African art. This was actually the first time they were going to curate an exhibition focused on African art since the 1970s. There was a lot of pressure about the exhibition because as a predominantly white institution, the question becomes, are they going to do a good job in representation? So I believe that’s why they decided to open it up to more people. I applied and while interviewing they asked me if I was interested in working with them on this and a Kara Walker show that’s coming up next semester. They said we would really love it, especially with my background and ability to develop educational materials. That’s how I made my entrance into the museum, as both a curator and educator. The fact that it was a small institution meant I was heavily involved in the curation process, which was amazing. The show turned out really good and was well received. Although, there was some skepticism about the collector, but that was a whole nother thing. But overall, I believe the intent around the ways in which the work was displayed was well received by the community. So curating this show in addition to the Kara Walker show made me realize that I can have conversations about race, gender, and Black culture outside of the classroom. In fact, people are actually a bit more open to engage because they feel they’re doing so through art, as opposed to when you’re in the classroom.  

People can be apprehensive about wanting to offend people, which means that they won’t ask certain questions or won’t say certain things, even if it means that they would get clarity around it. There was something about that museum experience, where I thought to myself, this can’t just be a one-off experience. I need to continue on this path. I hit the ground running … learning as much as I can about African-American art. I looked through catalogs … lots of catalogs. I also remember coming to the realization that I want to talk about the Black arts movement, more specifically Black women artists. I worked for my advisor, who is one of the most profound thinkers of the Black arts movement with his focus being on literature. I had to do a lot of digging on my own with visual art research. With that said, I have an interesting trajectory and now that I’ve arrived at this place, I’ve read and learned so much more about Black art and I’ve fallen in love with it while simultaneously trying to get as much curatorial experience as possible. There was a time where I thought not having an art history degree behind me was going to hinder me. But looking back, that was definitely not the case. In fact, I think because I have a background outside of art history that I’m able to bring the perspective around both curating, writing and teaching.

Kiara: Do you see any overlaps between your fields of study with art history, African-American, and women’s studies?

Kiara H.: They’ve come together to inform one another through my formal background in African-American studies which also means the way in which I approach African-American art is different than how art historians approach it. As someone who sees themselves as a storyteller and as a steward of Black culture, I have an investment in presenting holistic experiences of not only the work but also the artist. I don’t think I knew it at the beginning or in the middle or, honestly, in the PhD program at the beginning, but I’m now seeing everything come together to help me become the scholar, curator, community arts activist person I am today.

Kiara: That’s amazing. I was really excited that you were interested in talking with me for the winter term SoFA interview because I’ve been interested in asking you questions about your journey because as a Black artist myself and who is also making their way through academia, a clear path isn’t always presented which makes it difficult to know which direction to go. There are different options that are presented, but you don’t always have the discernment to know which one to take at that moment. It sounds like experiences and interactions informed a great portion of your journey, for example, the professor you studied under in your undergraduate program really spoke into your future and saw your potential. Also, the experience you mentioned with the Black man at the protest that prompted you to pursue the language and/or history to further engage in these types of conversations. That’s very inspiring because it makes me think that the path doesn’t have to be clear to do what you want to do and it’s okay to look at inspirations from other experiences that you have in life to inform your direction that you want to go in. It’s also okay to not have it figured out already in the present day, it’s a journey and the explanation or the reasoning does eventually come to you over time. That’s the beauty of the journey because you’re not tied to a particular outcome or end. It sounds like you’re very open to the possibilities of the form that your practice can take.  It doesn’t have to be written in stone, if that makes sense. It seems more flexible in that way. Do you approach your curating in that way as well? What questions or themes do you explore when curating a show? How would you describe your process?

Kiara H.: Well, I will say one more thing regarding the journey. I’ve always led with H-E-A-R-T work and not hard work. By that, I mean I really care about the work I do. There will be times in life where we have to do things that we don’t really want to do or are not that are stimulating. But one of the things I’ve tried to do is to really create a practice of doing things that challenge me, but also things that matter to me … Things that  resonate with me. I’m a BIG legacy person, doing things I could do to help people coming behind me and sometimes that looks like teaching and giving advice, sometimes that looks like creating certain research projects so that the person 10 years from now who wants to research on the same thing doesn’t have to do the leg work that I had to do when there was nothing there. I’ve been dedicated to doing what’s important to me and being unapologetic about it. Like I’ve said, centering Black women, Black fems, Black girls, has really allowed me to give myself to this in all of its fullness. Something that informs this is the fact I was raised predominantly by a village of women. Black women of different shades, backgrounds and experiences.One of the things I’ve realized growing up and I think it became even more clear as I got older is that, even though I see these women as complex, phenomenal, and at times scarred and nuanced and just worthy of attention, that society does hold the same perception of Black woman as I do. That’s something that has also fueled me. 

These thoughts fuel the questions I’m exploring within my work. When I say holistic, I mean that I hope when people either experience exhibitions that I’ve curated or read my texts, they’re able to see the full humanity of the individuals I’m referencing. Yes, they were artists, activists, but also friends with families and who had obligations outside of their work. They were people who had good and bad days. When we talk about Black historical figures, there’s a tendency to immortalize them and in god-like ways. I’ve always been fascinated with the everyday, ordinary, because those are the moments that have shaped my life. Those are the moments that I remember most. The subtlety of my moms laugh or the grease that my auntie uses on Sundays… Those are the threads that I try to pull out.

Kiara: I think you’re making a lot of people proud for sure. The way in which you talk about your work and commitment to humanizing Black women, is an act within itself. I believe especially within the art world, it’s not very inclusive. You don’t see a large number of Black curators. I can probably count how many Black curators I know of on my hand and I wish that wasn’t the case. Although, I do believe there is a cultural shift happening within the art world, even though it’s a gradual shift.  It’s still a shift happening because there are a lot of resources being allocated to diversify from the inside out. The majority of society’s culture and history starts within museums because it’s a time capsule for history. If we’re able to enter into the institution and change the inner workings from the status quo, then we’ll begin to see a shift that is occurring not only within this space but also within society.  

Kiara H.: I agree with that completely and timing also is everything. If I graduated from my PhD program 10 years ago, I don’t know if I would’ve been afforded the same opportunities. But like you said, it seems to be a cultural shift. Especially within institutions, it’s not in good taste if you don’t have at least one Black person on staff to offer a different perspective. 

Kiara: That’s very important, especially when you’re talking about working with Black artists. Earlier you mentioned that you were worried that not having an art history degree would hinder you but in fact it benefited you because you were able to provide a fresh perspective. And within that perspective was your lived experiences as a Black woman. I really appreciate that because I can sense the openness of your lived experience within a community or within your own identity as a way to talk about something or be able to do something. The term “epistemology” comes to mind. The communal and/or oral histories within that realm. I feel there is more appreciation of this theology. I believe that’s how it should be because there are so many people within our community that are researchers and practitioners, maybe not in a formal way but they are considered such in their own right.

Kiara H.: That’s why for me, Black feminist epistemology has always been my starting point because it prioritizes lived experience. One of my goals is to try my best to present a multiplicity of subjectivities as opposed to one subjectivity as a stand in for all. Which I think is where my investment in making things complicated and complex really comes from because all of us are complex beings. I think that art is a good vehicle in which I explore those complexities and watch them take form. 

Kiara: Life and people are complicated. When you talk about a holistic representation, what comes to mind for me is teasing through the complicatedness of life and putting a light on people’s active living, in general, outside of their accomplishments or image that has been curated by community or societies.  

Kiara H.: Absolutely. For me, that is where the investment in representation comes in. I think representation is one of the tools we could use to help meet some of these ends, but it’s not the only one. I think it’s about how you approach that idea of representation. I’m not interested in putting forth a monolithic Black narrative of anything. I’m interested in presenting multiple subjectivities and to “tease out”, how you were saying, those human experiences. I’m also not invested in respectability politics. I think in the 21st century, it is crucial for Black folks to see their identities as all encompassing and not as one thing which in turn will allow us to see and understand each other. 

Kiara: I definitely agree that holistic representation within the Black community is something that’s very much necessary because we have not had that. I’d like to believe we are on the cusp of this, or at least that’s how I’m feeling right now. I really enjoyed talking with you and learning more about your journey. It’s very inspiring. I appreciate your time, energy and your experience. I’m sure people are going to enjoy reading more about your experience in SoFA Journal. Thank you Kiara.

Kiara H.: Thank you, Kiara. We’ll get together soon.

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Kiara Walls (she/her) is a multi-disciplinary arts educator and social practice artist, originally from LA but now stationed in Portland, Oregon. She received her B.A. in Graphic Design from California State University- Northridge. As a practicing artist, Kiara aims to forge connections between her practice and that of her surrounding communities. This work is manifested through a lens of reparation resulting in site-specific installations, visual storytelling, conflict resolution, and conversations. http://psusocialpractice.org/kiara-walls/

Kiara Hill (she/her) earned her B.A. at Sacramento State University, her M.A. at the University of Alabama, and recently completed her PhD. in Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts. Her research interests include the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s with an emphasis on Black women visual artists, Black Feminist Art, and Black Contemporary Art. Kiara is also a curator of Black visual art.

“Death used to be something done in community and we’ve taken it and made it into something that has to be hidden away.”

Dr. Tina Burdsall 

I spend a lot of time thinking about death. I read about it, I write about it, I focus so much of my practice around it. It’s something I spend so much of my daily life thinking about and yet it’s not usually a topic I get to discuss with other people. Other than a select few (my cohort, my mom), most people want to run in the other direction when I bring up death. So for this interview, I wanted to find someone who could sit in the discomfort of death and talk about it anyway. When I was thinking about who might be able to do this with me I remembered Shelbie Loomis, program alum, telling me about an elective she took in the sociology department that was focused around death and dying. I reached out to the professor who teaches the class and what follows is a conversation with someone whose work dives right into these different topics. 

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Olivia DelGandio: Can you tell me a bit about yourself and what you do at PSU?

Dr. Tina Burdsall: I have a split appointment between the Sociology Department and the Honors College. I teach a sociology of death and dying class, and I’ve also taught a few seminars for the Honors College in end of life care. Medical sociology is where my focus started and it’s progressed to focus more on end of life care.

Olivia: I’d love to focus on the sociology of death and dying for this conversation. What do you think one of the most pressing issues in this field is right now? 

Dr. Burdsall: I think we need to start talking about dying much, much earlier in life rather than waiting until you are actually faced with a terminal illness. We need to actually start thinking about what death means to us, about what a good death might mean.

Olivia: What would talking about it earlier look like?

Dr. Burdsall: Well, I think that that conversation needs to be more holistic. We, as a society, are both a death denying culture and one that is obsessed with these very unrealistic images of what death is. And as a whole, we are not very good at transitions or loss and I think we need to start there, at what transitions in life look like. Then, we can move into talking about death more openly and once you start to understand what a good death looks like, you’ll begin to think about what a good life means.

Olivia: Why do you think death is so often ignored until the last possible second?

Dr. Burdsall: I think it has a lot to do with the way our society is obsessed with productivity. We’re constantly trying to prove our value and once death comes, we lose it all. It’s also just straight up scary, no one knows what’s going to happen so it’s obviously easier just to ignore it. Death used to be something done in community and we’ve taken it and made it into something that has to be hidden away. So if you’re not involved, you don’t see it, you don’t need to think about it. It’s all of these structures that make death such an easy thing to ignore. 

Olivia: What’s the impact of ignoring it?

Dr. Burdsall: So much isolation. 

Olivia: I’m interested in exploring this in my practice and in conversation with my community. I’m wondering what your thoughts are on bringing up hard topics like this with other people?

Dr. Burdsall: One of the first things I bring up in my classes is that talking about death doesn’t make it happen sooner. I could say I’m going to die tomorrow and saying it will not bring death to my doorstep. I don’t think other people see it this way so I think it’s important to start there and ask why do we think this? Why is it so scary to talk about? 

Olivia: In my practice, I think a lot about making grieving a more communal practice because it’s so often deemed something that must be done in private. What do you think are some beneficial practices for after you lose someone?

Dr. Burdsall: Well I think that the community part of it is key. Just bringing the community together around grief can change everything. The solitude, the isolation, is what makes it so difficult and what keeps it taboo. 

Olivia: This is making me think about the work I might eventually want to do as a death doula.

Dr. Burdsall: I knew a doula a couple of years back who did these sort of legacy projects with the person who was dying. They would work together on some kind of creative project like writing letters to family or creating a memory box for the grandchildren, in order to foster that connection and sense of meaning.

Olivia: That sounds exactly like the kind of work I would want to do. Thank you for sharing.

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Olivia DelGandio (she/they) is a storyteller who asks intimate questions and normalizes answers in the form of ongoing conversations. They explore grief, memory, and human connection and look for ways of memorializing moments and relationships. Through their work, they hope to make the world a more tender place.

Dr. Tina Burdsall (she/her) is a Sociology professor at Portland State University interested in medical sociology, death and dying, health disparities, and teaching pedagogies. 

“For those students, it is a big decision to come to study abroad. After arriving here, a lot of things that you have never thought of could happen. Supporting them is very rewarding. I am happy to hear them say, ‘Thank you very much for your help back then,’ even if I have forgotten about it.”

Anri Zama

Have you ever studied abroad? Studying and living in foreign countries has been recognized as a significant life changing experience for many people. I would know— I’m one of them. Being an international student in Southern California in my early 20’s has impacted my life so much. It gave me a different way to see the world, people, and everything. I became more free than before, and now have friends almost everywhere in the world. I feel more connected to society and I live more proactively. It just opened up so many possibilities and completely changed my life. And all those experiences were only possible with support from my family, schools, friends, and community who believed and encouraged me during the journey. I was curious how Portland State University, one of the most radical and diverse universities in the country, supports international students. I found that PSU has a very unique sector called Portland Center. It provides opportunities for students in foreign countries to study at PSU. And somehow it is specifically working on a relationship with my home country of Japan. I wanted to find out more about it, so I spoke with Anri Zama, Program Manager of Portland Center at Office of Global Engagement and Innovation.

The interview was conducted in Japanese, which is both my and Anri’s  native language and it has been translated into English

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Midori: 最初にアメリカに来たきっかけは何だったんですか？
What brought you to the U.S. in the first place?

Anri Zama: 最初は2005年、日本の大学在学中にオレゴン大学で学びました。
I first studied at the University of Oregon in 2005 while still in college in Japan.

Midori: それは、交換留学で？
Was that through an exchange program?

Anri Zama:そうです。それで、2006年に日本でディグリー（学位）を取得したんですけど、ちょっと物足りないなっていうのがあって。
Yes, it was. Then I got a degree in Japan in 2006, but I felt it was a little unsatisfactory.

日本の大学では英語学科のコミュニケーションを選択していて、会話分析みたいなことを勉強していたんです。それももう少し勉強したいなっていうのもありました。

At the university in Japan, I majored in Communication in the English department, and I was studying conversation analysis. I also wanted to learn more about that.

それで、大学院を探したんです。もちろん馴染みがあったんで、最初はオレゴン大学で探しました。でも、今はどうかわからないですけど、当時、オレゴン大学大学院のコミュニケーションは、ジャーナリズムにフォーカスしたものだけだったんです。それだと私の興味の対象とはちょっと違うなと思って。そうしたら、ポートランド州立大学にあったので、それでここに願書を出しました。

So I looked for a graduate school in the United States. Of course, I first looked at the University of Oregon because I liked the school. I don’t know about now, but at that time, the only graduate school of communication at the University of Oregon was focused on journalism. It wasn’t quite what I was interested in. Then I saw that Portland State University had it, so I applied here.

Midori: 何年で卒業したんですか？

How long did it take for you to complete graduate school?

Anri Zama: ダラダラダラダラやって…

I was so slow…

Midori: 結構大変ですよね。友人も10年かかったって言っていました。

It’s pretty hard work, isn’t it? A friend of mine said it took them ten years.

Anri Zama: 私もそのくらいです。えっと、2015年だったかな？たぶん。

That’s about the same for me. Let’s see, was it 2015? Maybe.

Midori: じゃ、7年か8年くらいかけて卒業したんですね。

So it took you about seven or eight years to graduate?

Anri Zama: はい。本当にギリギリで。。。。7年で、取得した単位が無効になるんです。

I almost couldn’t make it through… After seven years, the credits I’ve earned will be invalid.

Midori: えー！消えちゃうんですか？単位が？？
What? Credits can become invalid?

Anri Zama: そうなんです。ギリギリでした。
Yes, I was on the edge.

Midori: そんなルール知りませんでした。。。

I had no idea about the seven year rule.

ポートランドセンターで働きはじめたきっかけは？
So, how did you start working here, at Portland Center?

Anri Zama: 私は、学生の頃からここの国際部で働かせてもらっています。国際部にはまず、Office of International Student and Scholar Services っていうところがあって、そこはPSUの留学生ほぼ全員のサポートをしています。そこにはイミグレーションサービスとライフサポートという部署があります。イミグレーションはやはり、ビザの問題等をサポートするところです。ステータスに関する質問とか、色々あるじゃないですか？そういうことの相談に乗ってアドバイスするところです。そこに5.6人の職員がいます。

I have been working here since I was a student. The International Office is for International Student and Scholar Services, which is responsible for supporting almost all international students at PSU. There are two departments: Immigration Services and Life Support. Immigration is the place that helps with visa and legal issues. There are a lot of questions about status and so on, aren’t there? We give advice on these issues. There are five to six employees there.

Midori: え！イミグレーションだけで5人もいるんですか？

Wow. There are five people in Immigration alone?

Anri Zama: そうです。色々分かれているんですね。Visiting Scholar担当、学生のJ1ビザ担当っていう感じで分かれています。

Yes. They are divided into two groups, one for Visiting Scholars and the other for students on J1 visas.

ライフサポートチームは、オリエンテーションやイベントをオーガナイズしています。やっぱり外国から来て、馴染むまでに時間がかかったり、ローカルの生徒は自宅に帰れるけれど、インターナショナルスチューデントは帰らない人もいるから、そういう時のためにイベントを行います。

The Life Support Team organizes orientations and events. Most students who come from abroad take some time to adjust to their new life in Portland. Local students can go home for holidays, but most international students cannot, so we organize events for those times.

例えば、サンクスギビングディナーを一緒に食べる家族を斡旋するとか、クリスマス時季にジンジャーブレッドクッキーを作ったり、そしてインターナショナルイベントを企画するなど、というライフサポートのイベントを行ないます。

For example, we arrange families with whom students can share Thanksgiving dinner, make gingerbread cookies around Christmas, and we organize international events.

それとはまた別に、エデュケーションアブロードと言って、現地の学生を留学に出すチームがあります。

Apart from that, there is also Education Abroad, a team that sends local students to study abroad.

そして、私が所属しているポートランドセンターというプログラム、それから、インターナショナルスペシャルプログラムと言って、短期で受け入れる。今日もなにかやってたと思うんですけど…

There is also the Portland Center, which is a program that I belong to, and then there is the International Special Program, which accepts students on a short term basis. I believe they are doing something today…

Midori: やってました！日本人の子たちがいた。

Yes, I saw them! A group of young Japanese students!

Anri Zama: えっと、彼女たちは、高校生って言ってたかな？そういう短期で英語を学びにくるっていうプログラムを運営しているところもあります。

I believe they are high school students from Japan… like that program, we run such short-term programs for students to come and learn English.

あとは、ILTって知ってますか？

Also, do you know what ILT is?

Midori: わからないです。

No, I don’t.

Anri Zama: 主に、ESLの英語のライティング、リーディング、ディスカッションを教えているところです。そこは、以前は別の所属だったのですけど、最近、国際部に移動してきました。

It is primarily teaching ESL, English writing, reading, and discussion. That used to be a different affiliation, but has recently moved to the International Department.

そして、私が担当しているポートランドセンターは、今のところ100%日本が対象なんです。

And the Portland Center, which I am in charge of, is working 100% with Japanese students at this moment.

Midori: 具体的にはどんなことをしているんですか？

What exactly do you do?

Anri Zama: コロナを経て、色々ごちゃ混ぜになっているんですけど、元々のメインの役割としては、ポートランドセンターのプログラムマネージャーです。

After COVID-19, it’s changing, but my title is Program Manager at the Portland Center.

前身になるプログラムは2、30年前からあって、早稲田大学の学生を受け入れるプログラムでした。「早稲田オレゴンプログラム」というプログラムで、経緯は色々あるようですが、私が知っているのはその名前です。

The predecessor program was a couple of decades old and was a program that accepted students from Waseda University in Japan. Back then, it was called the “Waseda Oregon Program,” and there are many stories behind it, but that is the name I know of.

資金も半分は早稲田大学が負担していて、早稲田大学からの駐在の人もいたそうです。年間30-40人、多い時で50人くらい、留学希望の生徒を早稲田大学から受け入れていたそうです。

Half of the funding was also covered by Waseda University, and an admin staff was stationed in PSU from Waseda University. PSU accepted 30-40 students a year, 50 at the most, from Waseda University who wanted to study abroad.

Midori: 50人！そんなに！

50! That many!

Anri Zama: 2000何年だったかな？2012かな？早稲田大学は撤退し、ベイエリアにシンクタンクのオフィスを立ち上げることになりました。それに伴い、私たちは100%PUSの組織になりました。

It was probably 2012…? Waseda University pulled out and decided to set up a think tank office in the Bay Area. With that, we became a 100% PSU organization.

その後も、早稲田大学の学生さんは引き続き受け入れていますが、それに伴い、日本の他大学からの学生も受け入れるようになりました。パートナーシップを結んでいる大学からの学生が多いですが、個人でも応募できるようになりました。

Since then, we have continued to accept students from Waseda University, and additionally, we have begun to accept students from other universities in Japan. Most of the students are from universities with which we have partnerships, but individuals can now apply as well.

Midori: それは最近ですか？

Is that new?

Anri Zama: そうですね。最近、2020年くらいからですね。

Yes, I would say it’s recent, since about 2020.

Midori: じゃ、早稲田大学から始まって、まとまった人数が大学単位で留学して来ていたんですね。

So, starting with Waseda University, a large number of people came to study abroad at PSU on a university basis?

Anri Zama: そうです。元々、早稲田大学が「留学生を送りたい」っていうことから始まったんです。

That’s right. It originally started with Waseda University’s desire to send international students.

授業料の設定が違うんです。正規で留学に来る学生さんは取得単位に応じて、州外の学生と同様の授業料を支払いますが、うちのプログラムの学生は、１６単位まで1学期６５００ドルで履修できます。

We have a different tuition structure. Students who come to study abroad on a regular degree program pay the same tuition as out-of-state students based on credits registering, but students in our program can take up to 16 credits for $6500 per semester.

Midori: それは、インターナショナルステューデントとして考えると、とてもお得ですね。

That is a great deal when you think about it as an International Student.

Anri Zama: そうなんですよ。それもあって、かつてはパートナーシップを結んでいるところからしか受け入れられなかったんです。今は、パートナースクール以外のどの大学からも、F1ビザで来れるようになりました。

That’s right. That’s one of the reasons why we used to only accept students from partnerships. Now, we can come from any university other than partner schools on an F1 visa.

Midori: それは、ディグリー取得のプログラムではないからということですね？

Is that because it is not a degree program?

Anri Zama: そうですね。最長で４タームのみ在学可能です。

Yes. Students with our program can only be enrolled for a maximum of 4 terms.

Midori: では、日本人の学生さんたちからすると、日本の在学中の短期留学プログラムということですね？

So, from those Japanese students’ point of view, it is a short-term study abroad program during their school years in Japan. 

Anri Zama: そうです、そうです。
Yes, that’s right.

Midori: ということは、その学生さんたちはPSUで取得した単位を日本の大学の単位に振り替えて、そこで卒業できるということですね。

So those students can transfer credits earned at PSU to Japanese university credits and graduate there?

Anri Zama: そうです。

Yes.

Midori: 在学期間の一部をPSUで過ごすということなんですね。

So students are spending part of their school year at PSU?

Anri Zama: その通りです。

That is correct.

Midori: それはいいですね。

That’s nice!!

Anri Zama: 理系の学生さんはどうかわからないですけれど。理系の学生さんはほとんど来ません。

I don’t know about science students, though. Very few science students come to our program.

Midori: なるほど。座間さんは学生時代から仕事をはじめて、かれこれ…

You have been working since you were a student, and it was…

Anri Zama: アルバイトのような感じで入ったのは、2010年からです。なので、もう10年以上ですね。

I started working here in 2010, as a kind of part-time job. So it has been more than 10 years now.

Midori: 今の仕事で一番楽しいことは何ですか？

What do you enjoy most about your current job?

Anri Zama: 学生相手に仕事をさせてもらっているので、若い学生さんとお話できるだけでも楽しいです。あとは、なんというか、夢というか、日本を出てくるっていうこと自体、勇気がいることというか。一大決心をして来ます。こっちに来てから、勝手がわからないという中で、いろんなことがあるじゃないですか。それをサポートするっていうのは、やっぱりやりがいがあります。そんな中で、私が忘れているようなことを「あの時、ありがとうございました」って言ってくれること、それだけで嬉しいです。

I enjoy just talking with young students. For those students, it is a big decision to study abroad. After arriving here, a lot of things that you have never thought of could happen. Supporting them is very rewarding. I am happy to hear them say, “Thank you very much for your help back then,” even if I have forgotten about it.

Midori: なるほど。これからやっていきたいことっていうのはありますか？

I see. Is there anything you would like to do in the future?

Anri Zama: コロナに入って、オンラインのツールが広い層に認知され、充実してきました。これまでは、現在在籍している学生さんと、興味を持っている日本の学生さんを繋げたことはなかったんです。でも、来る前に、私が話すより、現地で体験している学生さんに話をしてもらった方がいいのではないかと考えています。

After experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic, our online tools have been recognized and enhanced by a wide audience. Until now, I had never connected currently enrolled students with prospective students in Japan. But I think it would be better to have students who are actually experiencing the program talk about it instead of me talking.

Midori: 学生さんの目線ですね。

It’s actually a student’s perspective.

Anri Zama: はい。これまでやったことはないんですけど、その、オンラインの機会を持ってもいいかなというのが考えていることです。

Yes. I have never done this before, but, you know, I am thinking about having an online orientation.

Midori: 杏里さん自身の目標はどうですか？

What about your own goals, Anri?

Anri Zama: 今、どうしても目先のタスクに追われてしまっているので、もう少し自己投資をしたいです。例えば、NFSAっていうカンファレンスがあるんですけど、そういうのにも参加したいです。地元のものには参加したことがあるんですけど、メインカンファレンスは他の地域で開催されます。参加するには時間も費用もかかります。

Right now, I’m really caught up in immediate tasks, so I’d like to invest a little more in myself. For example, there is a conference called NAFSA, Association of International Educators that I would like to attend. I have attended the local one, but the main conference is held in another part of the country. It takes a lot of time and money to attend.

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Midori Yamanaka (she/her) is a social practice artist and educator born and raised in Japan, currently living and working in Portland, Oregon. Her practice explores ways to harness creativity based on common values in diverse societies and their respective cultures. She has been working on many international projects as a creative and cultural hub, including Virtual Playdate (2022), World Friendship Online (2020), Asia Winter Game in Sapporo (2017), Esin Creative Workshop in Sapporo (2015), and many others. She holds a BFA in Graphic Design from Art Center College of Design, and currently is studying and practicing Art and Social Practice at Portland State University. https://www.midoriyamanaka.com

Anri Zama (she/her) is a Program Manager at the Portland Center and ’’Yokohama National University-Hokkaido University Branch Office at Office of Global Engagement and Innovation, Portland State University. She holds a master’s degree of science in Communication Studies from Portland State University, and a bachelor’s degree in English from Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan. Anri was born and raised in Kanagawa, Japan, and moved to Portland, OR in 2008. She enjoys her family, reading, relaxing, traveling, baking, and eating delicious foods. Portland Center : https://www.pdx.edu/portland-center/our-program

“My father was a realtor and used to drive me around the city, speaking out loud about what was changing, growing, or being demolished. So, my body relates to this body— the city as a body.”

Linda K. Johnson

“Feltness” is a word that came to me in my conversation with dancer and educator Linda K. Johnson as we talked about her interactive movement-based piece Finding the Forest (October 5 and 6, 1991). Coined by artist and curator Stephanie Springgay, feltness deals in affective force. It uses feeling, touch, and interconnected bodies. It is necessarily intimate. It is maybe a method or a practice for education. 

Linda K.’s performances are provocations. Born from a dance practice, her performances are ultimately asking us to be more deliberate about creating the kinds of worlds in which we want to live. The artworks are made in response to the artist’s eagerness for more engagement with the urban landscapes. 

Linda K. has been making these artworks for over three decades. She has taught dance at Portland State University since 2008. She was born and raised in Portland, and most of her work has taken place in the Pacific Northwest, often at crucial moments in rapidly gentrifying locations in Portland like the South Waterfront, Alberta Street, the South Park Blocks Urban Renewal area, the downtown entrance to I-405, and more. These are places where she wants to draw the observer’s attention. She considers the feeling that she wants her audience and collaborators to walk away with, and composes/choreographs collaboratively and instinctively from that essential place. She often writes scores as invitations to participate in her work. 

Linda K. conceived and directed Finding the Forest as a four-hour walking loop through Portland’s Forest Park. Over the course of an October weekend, nine multidisciplinary artists, a 40-member movement choir, and 1,000 members of the public walked a set path through the forest. Feltness is how the people who participated in the walk radically re-saw the forest. It’s the recognition of entangled and touching relations between bodies, things, and the environment. The material of Linda’s movement installations permeates the human and the more-than-human. The work impacts the form of the environment, connecting, disrupting, and inverting the life there. Participants become attuned to the surroundings. 

When we chatted about Finding the Forest, we talked first in terms of the forest. What pathways are there? Where are the ravines? What are the colors of the trunk and leaves? On a certain level, the artwork doesn’t need a public to function. Linda K. makes assumptions about what might catch a person’s eye, but the process is speculative, raw, and in-flux. In receiving this work, we learn about how we perceive the environment.

In March 2023 I walked at Forest Park where the artwork took place. While I walked, I noticed snowflakes as big as half my forehead, a rainbow, reishi mushrooms, and an owl cooing in an upper branch of a tall tree reaching down to my ears at ground level. The sound came as a surprise. I wasn’t sure how the forest could participate in an artwork, but in that moment I could feel us all in the experience. 

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Gilian Rappaport: Why did you train as a dancer? Why do you make work like this? 

Linda K. Johnson: I’m from Portland, and I was born and raised in the West Hills. My father was a realtor and used to drive me around the city, speaking out loud about what was changing, growing, or being demolished. So, my body relates to this body— the city as a body. My gaze on this place is intimate and durational.

After dancing here for five years, I had a formative experience for my practice. I was hiking in the Columbia Gorge after a big storm. There, I watched a family having to negotiate up, over, and around a fallen log. As I was coming down the hill,  I got to just witness it. It was an unintended performance, all in one moment: responding to the reality of what is in front of them, meeting the natural environment on its own terms. I found it incredibly beautiful and provocative.

My politics run to the social and environmental. It’s always been my opinion that one can only beat people over the head conceptually so many times. Ultimately, people need to value a thing on their own terms to actually change behavior around it.  My work exists in that window of opportunity to create experiences that might shift an opinion or engrained thought.

David Eckert once said to me: “While the work is conceptual and about serious issues that concern our city and the larger world, it is always optimistic and non-threatening. People open to it with curiosity rather than close to it with partisanship.”

Gilian:  How do you describe your art practice? 

Linda K.: I make apertures for people to enter and reconsider the spaces around them: how they use it, exist in it, and the politics around it. I make movement installations. The experience of the body is always centered.  I’m interested in how we coexist with all/interspecies, the more-than-human and the human. The pervading hierarchy of humans feels oppressive.  

Gilian: Tell me about your project Finding the Forest.   

Linda K.: Forest Park is one of the largest urban parks in the United States – a complete gem in the middle of Portland. Yet, it felt exclusive and private, meant only for people who lived around it in the West Hills. Many people in other parts of the city had never been there and didn’t even know what it was. I was interested in inviting the whole city to meet the forest – our forest, on its own terms. 

I also had an intimate relationship with the park. I walked it every single day. It has a loop that’s accessible to walk, and one can get there by public transportation. I wanted people to have the experience of finding their way there: to adventure up into the West Hills, on a bus, or their bike, or in a car, walk through that neighborhood and feel that moment: entering the natural world. That robust transition from controlled to unpredictable.

In 1991, I received a RACC grant (Regional Arts & Culture Commission, then known as MAC – Metropolitan Arts Commission) for Finding the Forest. The project took place at Forest Park over a fall weekend.  Very important to me, it was free and open to the public. It was also collaborative across multiple disciplines. I asked nine artists in the community to collaboratively treat and respond to the park, asking “How can we give permission to rest and witness the environment?” We explored the edges of the constructed and the not constructed, and nature and the artist’s hand.  

In the 1990s, very few artists in my circles were talking about Relational Aesthetics. I had no idea that I was working inside a container that had a name. It was a purely instinctual desire. 

About 1,000 people ended up coming across over the weekend. The large turnout was partially thanks to a newspaper article in The Oregonian about the project, which granted free public transportation there and back via Trimet bus if one showed the article on the #15 when getting on.

Gilian: Who were your collaborators? 

Linda K.: Mary Oslund, a dance artist and choreographer, was my ongoing collaborator in this project and many others. We did several duets throughout the 4.5 mile park loop. 

Musicians and composers Courtney Von Drehle (3 Leg Torso), Brian Lavern Davis (Pink Martini), Mike Van Liew were all on headset about a mile apart from each other in the park. Mike would call out a note, and with different instruments, including trumpet and accordion, they would lay the sound into the ravines in the park. The sound came out of nowhere. The sound just found people. There was no idea how to place it. Sounds enveloped, dissipated, and went away. The musicians started in a triangle on the park perimeter, and walked towards each other. Over the four hours, they ended up in the same space.  

In addition to my duets with Mary, I performed several solos. For one of them, I installed myself inside a tree for about 45 minutes, wearing red so that people would notice how I was tucked in like a symbiotic member of the ecosystem.

Bill Boese, a lighting designer for PICA and many many others, created an installation at the entrance of the project with 100 street signs that he borrowed from the City of Portland. Natural environments give us agency to follow our instincts, while urban environments constantly direct us on what to do, how to be, which way to go, how fast to move, and where to look. He wanted to highlight that move from the urban to the semi-wild.

Mary and I did another performance, dropping into a ravine. At the bottom was musician, composer, and raga singer Michael Stirling. In the project, he was playing a glass singing bowl while moving from ravine to ravine. The sound enveloped and drew attention into the depth of the landscape and to the vegetation.  

Visual artist Linda Wysong, a frequent collaborator of mine, installed a series of chairs at 10 locations along a loop that invited the viewer/participant to sit either by oneself or in community. Some of the installations were in a circle, and some were made from ingredients from the park. They were all invitations to rest and to notice the surroundings in more detail. One of them at the top of a hill had a recording underneath it of someone breathing really hard. If someone came up the hill and sat down, suddenly your breath would actually meet with another’s even though no one else was present. 

The sculptor and ceramicist Tim Warner used existing materials from the forest to create a haunting series of hanging frames. He pulled ivy off trees as a public service and wove the vines into giant circular frames and suspended them from one of the ravines. Coming around the corner into the ravine, sometimes individuals walking would be perfectly framed in one of the frames. Truly beautiful. 

The visual and conceptual artist Jerry Mayer, a member of Nine Gallery within BlueSky, hung bells. He was interested in the wind and the possibility that if it was not a windy day, then his installation might not ever be experienced. He was a phenomenologist, it was subtle. 

Each audience member had a completely unique experience, depending on their timing with all of the various performances and treatments that were happening. Some people saw and heard everything; others received the beautiful forest.

Gilian: How hands-on were you with guiding the participants? Were there timed walks or was it more freeform? 

Linda K.: My brother greeted every single person that came through the entrance in groups. There was a small map to guide, but participants had agency to craft their experience, either going up the hill to begin or around the long way and coming down the hill to end. I am interested in how we give people as much agency as possible.

With this piece, I also formed one of the core elements in my work: a movement choir. Working with 40 members of the community, ages 8-72, I staged these people along the trail, supporting visitors in exploring their experience. Within an artwork, I wanted the audience to feel the permission to make choices about how they each wanted to interact with the environment.

Every place we go has rules or implied rules, so how do we connect ourselves and widen the gap of permission that people have? 

Gilian: Are there other core elements or themes in your work? 

Linda K.: Precarity— I can only rehearse some elements; I am co-creating the rest in real time with the other performers, collaborators, and audience members.

Blurring the line between participant and viewer. 

Collaboration with architects, filmmakers, or other people fairly deeply to manifest things that I don’t make. 

Free and open to the public. 

Movement choirs. 

Performance scores, with a few options so participants can feel as confident as possible. Some collections of people are capable of getting over nervousness and showing up, and other times, they’re more fragile.

Gilian: What clothing did you wear in Finding the Forest? 

Linda K.: Mary and I both decided that we wanted to dress as much like each other as possible. We started out in black and layered as we went. We were both wearing Shibori dyed garments created by another dance artist, Keith V. Goodman, who’s now deceased, and was also a couture designer. He gave us some embellishments. We both changed several times, and put on more pieces from Keith’s collection. At one point, Mary had a huge headdress. 

Gilian: How do you prefer to work in collaborations? Are you guiding versus receiving? Do you want them to do whatever they want, or are you directing them specifically?   

Linda K.: Most importantly, I try to get very clear about what I would like the audience to experience. It is impossible to direct any audience toward feeling.

I also try to communicate how I would like to begin and then something about my feeling for how it comes to an end.

This allows the collaborators’ sense of time and physical empathy to surface, and I just let them run with it. 

Specifically in Finding the Forest, we took a long trail walk together in the park and then we had dinner afterwards. We talked for a long time about what came up for each person, where each were resonating and interested.  It was very humbling because when I did this project, these collaborators were not my peers. I was 29 and they were all in their 40’s and 50’s. They were really practiced artists and I was just starting out. I was completely honored that they agreed to work with me, and I didn’t have any doubt that they would make something true to themselves conceptually, and also beautiful to experience. I’ve been lucky with all the projects to have that.  

Gilian: Do you see a message behind your practice? 

Linda K.: Free people, wake up! What’s happening around you? Have you noticed how beautiful this is? Or have you noticed it’s changing? 

I am interested in spaces that seem to be flying under the radar in terms of their political or social value: something’s happening and we could be paying more attention or participating more delicately. Ultimately, the work is about a kind of civic consciousness, being present in one’s body in the place where one lives. Caring and appreciating by showing up to influence its direction.

Gilian: What is the criticism that you receive for your work? 

Linda K.: Well, it can be brutish and feel unfinished. It is raw but also elegant. My co-creators are really composing it as it is being witnessed, often through detailed improvisational scores.

Gilian: Will you share about the dance class you offer at PSU? 

Linda K.: Judy Patton hired me in 2008, and I taught the Dance Appreciation class for two years. From 2013 to 2016, I taught Advanced Modern Dance Lab, Somatics, and Pedagogy. The dance program was on pause from 2016-18 but I was hired back in 2018, and have been teaching since then.

My class is a laboratory. Students watch weekly videos to expand their knowledge of what a dance can be and what dance makers think about. They are exposed to modern dance techniques in class, and also some anatomy. I also introduce improvisational and compositional forms. We construct together, and we’re constantly talking about what we’re looking at. They’re learning dance-based language and exchanging experiences. I try to give them the experience of what it’s like to be a dance artist: to make work, to be in work, to witness work, and to talk about it in a non-judgmental way. 

It is my experience that students crave to be in their bodies. They are almost desperate to find ways to express themselves in meaningful ways. They yearn for safe ways to be in community with their bodies and other bodies while being invited to show up fully in terms of their gender, disability, neurodivergence, or sexual orientations.

Gilian: What do you know about the history of dance at PSU?

Linda K.: The epicenter of everything that exists in contemporary dance now in Portland started at PSU 60 years ago. PSU had the most beautiful, robust program led by a group of really phenomenal artists practicing many dance expressions – Afro-Cuban, contemporary, ballet, and lyrical jazz. Dancers that graduated from this dance department include Minh Tran and Tere Mathern.

Very importantly for our city, throughout the 1980s–1990s there was the Portland State University Contemporary Dance Season. The dance department presented six professional dance companies a year, mostly from the United States and sometimes from France and Japan. When one came to one of those performances, virtually every artist in the city was there –  sculptors, filmmakers, writers and dancers. It was a mecca for anyone creating in a contemporary fashion. It was also a place where people just hung out. So, PSU holds a completely significant and primary place in what dance has become in the city.

The Portland Dance Archive exists in the Special Collections & University Archive in the PSU Library. There, one can find Eric Nordstrom’s documentary film Moving History: Portland Contemporary Dance Past and Present (2016). The film preserves the history of Portland dance and those who built Portland’s contemporary dance scene, with at least a quarter focused on PSU and the amazing people that were there. The archive also includes performance videos and artist interviews. The Company We Keep was PSU’s resident dance company for years, and they were amazing. Portland Dance Theater was a professional dance company also working at that time, originally formed 1971–1979 by and with former Portland State University students and professional dancers: Jann McCauley, Cathy Evleshin, Bonnie Jo Merrill, Pat Wong, Judy Patton, Penelope Boals, Adrian Kahtany, and Gregg Bielemeier. 

Gilian: Is there anything else that you would like to share before we close? 

Linda K.: Working the way I work is a complete study in hope. I am trying to bring together many things at the same time with virtually no performer rehearsal. Each performer has to be incredibly focused and connected to their fellow performers to make the work happen.  It is very risky business, which makes it profoundly exciting but also hard on the body. In the end, one must follow their instincts about the worlds that they want to construct for others to enter.

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Gilian Rappaport (they/them) is an artist, writer, and naturalist. They are co-organizer of Ralph’s Neon Oasis Beach Party (Riis Beach, Queens, NY),  and co-author of Field Guide To The Northeast (Catskills, NY). They founded their graphic design and research studio The Workspace of Gilian Rappaport in 2016. Their interdisciplinary practice touches on considerations around recognition, play, and intimacy – a practice of bringing species, binaries, and generations together on their own terms. Through invested collaborations with other artists, designers, botanists, and elders, they have realized projects in all kinds of places: beaches, forests, RV parks, bars, cemeteries, playgrounds, libraries, classrooms, backyards, billboards, human skin (tattoos), theaters, newspapers, books, homes, museums, and design studios. They exist and make socially engaged work in the school of contemporary artists today who are queering images of a romanticized nature. The question they keep returning to is: Where is the potential for miracles in the everyday? Sign up for their newsletter, and follow them @gilnotjill.

Linda K. Johnson (she/her) is an Oregon native. For over three decades, she has been deeply influential in the maturation of dance in the NW region, contributing as a maker, performer, academic, somatic educator, Contemporary Alexander Technique teacher, mentor, curator, and arts administrator. Her choreographic work has been presented by PICA/TBA, On the Boards, and ORLO, among many others. Nationally, she is honored to be one of five custodians of Yvonne Rainer’s seminal postmodern work, Trio A. Johnson has participated in residencies at Yaddo, Caldera and Rauschenberg/Captiva, and is one of 12 featured artists in the recently released book by Kristin Timkin – The New Explorers, which includes a forward by Lucy R. Lippard.  In 2014, she opened her private practice teaching Contemporary Alexander Technique, having studied for four years with master teacher Robyn Avalon and the Alexander Alliance.

“I’m almost willing to say that the whole world is a role playing game, and it’s live action role playing games all the way down.”

Albert Spencer

Albert Spencer is a philosopher working in the field of American pragmatism– a philosophical school which believes that the meaning of things can be found in their practical relation to people– and assistant professor at PSU, originally from eastern Kentucky. I found Albert while browsing a course catalog, where I saw a class he’s currently teaching titled, The Philosophy of Role Playing Games. Researching his work, and pragmatist philosophy in general, I started to think about the similarities between pragmatism and social practice, specifically the ways in which they challenge the structures and ideas of the fields they’re compared to (traditional philosophy and studio art, respectively.)

My socially engaged practice often uses tools of performance and fantasy, and I’ve always wanted to learn more about role playing games. When Albert agreed to meet me via zoom in early February, I couldn’t wait to talk to him.

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Nadine Hanson: How is your term going so far?

Albert Spencer: You know, it’s been really great. I’ve not felt overwhelmed. I’ve just had some kind of exhausting weeks. But it’s been good— exhausting because I’m doing this new course on the philosophy of role playing games, and it’s really exciting. This has kind of become my specialization now. Since setting up this interview, I’ve officially got a contract from a publisher to publish the first book on the philosophy of role playing games. So that’s what it’s actually going to be called. Philosophers are kind of late to the party, so that’s what I’m sort of hoping to do.

Nadine: Do you have any thoughts on why that might be, philosophers are sort of late to the game in investigating role playing as it relates to philosophy?

Albert: That’s a good question. You know, one interesting thing I’ve found in my work is, throughout the history of philosophy, philosophers are always using games as an analogy for their different ideas. So, like, Wittgenstein talks about language games, the political philosopher John Rawls talked about that when we’re creating a constitution or a system of justice, we should think of it as though we’re creating rules for a game; and we want that game to be fair, we don’t know what our starting position will be in the game. So we kind of agree on these rules for a system of justice, and then we play the game, so to speak. 

Nadine: When you say we don’t know what our roles will be in the game, does that mean, like we don’t know what our positionality will be in the systems we are born into? 

Albert: Yeah, and a lot of people have critiqued Rawls, because of some of those assumptions that may be baked in, but he still kind of remains the major player of political philosophy of the 20th century. So, you either agree with him or disagree with him, so to speak. But yeah, that is what he’s talking about. He’s got a good point that a just system doesn’t necessarily mean everyone will have a good outcome. In the sense that if we play a game, there’s going to be winners and losers, we have certain rules and people make decisions, and those decisions have consequences. At the same time, he does say a fair game isn’t unequally stacked against one group for the benefit of another group, so he is part of what we call “the liberal tradition.” He does have an equality principle that, if we ever, in the course of justice, realize that one group is benefiting at the expense of the others, we have the right to change the rules of the game. 

It shows the way that philosophers have always responded with and used games to explain ideas, but an actual philosophy of games didn’t really start until maybe the mid 20th century. There’s a scholar named Johan Huizinga, who wrote a book called Homo Ludens, and his thesis was that one of the things that makes us human is that we play games– reemphasizing the importance of play. I mean, we take things too seriously, we feel like philosophy should be work and should be about serious subjects but we’re all kind of working for the weekend. Even if we do have important social justice causes we’re working towards or serious work and people depend on us, we still should have some recreational time.

Nadine: I think that what you’re doing within the field of philosophy is really interesting. It seems like through this specialization of pragmatism you are giving people an entry point into this field that can maybe feel impenetrable or intimidating, making philosophy a little bit more accessible. Is that a goal of yours?

Albert: Oh, yeah, it’s definitely a goal. American pragmatism has kind of that American spirit— that philosophy should be accessible and usable to the person on the street.

Nadine: And based on lived experience, right?

Albert: Exactly right, lived experience and for dealing with concrete social problems. So that’s always been my point of departure about what philosophy should be. It’s worth saying that in terms of professional philosophers, most are not pragmatists. In fact, pragmatism sometimes gets looked down on as not doing philosophy because we’re not focused as much on definitions or sort of certain perennial problems. We’re wanting to come at it from the ground up rather than the top down.

Nadine: There’s a misconception about the field of social practice art, that it’s always “useful” or aims to “do good,” and these things aren’t true. But I see a connection between social practice art and pragmatist philosophy in their accessibility (or desire to be accessible) as well as the way they show up in ordinary environments. Social practice art often happens outside typical  “white cube” art spaces, which is potentially looked down upon by some in a similar way to pragmatism, as you’ve described.

Albert: Even while there’s this big social justice focus of solving concrete problems, the pragmatists have always been really fixated on aesthetics, and the aesthetics of existence. I mean, if you look at William James, one of his most famous books is the variety of religious experience. And that’s a pretty big classic of philosophy, because he really wants to talk about these peak experiences that human beings have, that they see as transformative in many ways. This carries on through John Dewey, who wrote a book Art As Experience  that talks about how the function of art is to change our consciousness, and to give us an experience that brings us out of the ordinary, and then we can go back into it. But the ordinary is transformed, it’s reconstructive. He didn’t really believe in art for art’s sake, even thought at that level, artists are sort of solving theoretical problems amongst themselves. So, even at the level of the highest art, so to speak, it’s still pragmatic in that sense. You’re experimenting with the different elements of art to see what can be done. Even if you don’t have any political motivation. So, there’s just all that richness of aesthetics. 

I actually have some other colleagues who are going to be on a panel with me at the 50th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy in Denver, CO. One is Susan Haarmon, she’s a doctoral student at Loyola University Chicago, and she’s got some really incredible work on the way we could look at role playing games from a Deweyan perspective, how it could help us to create community organization that we can then use to do philanthropic work when we’re not playing the game. My colleague, Terry McMullen, has talked a lot about the value of public games, in that people from all socioeconomic backgrounds can show up— it becomes a liminal space where you make these connections with people. He’s also working on how RPGs can be used to teach philosophy to children. Richard Bilsker from Southern Maryland College will be delivering a paper on character creation and how it relates to the theories of identity formation by George Mead, W.E.B. DuBois, and Gloria Anzaldua. Finally, I will be delivering an essay on how the transformative RPGs of the Nordic Larp scene foster mystical experiences as described by William James. 

Nadine: Can you share a little bit about how you ended up teaching this course on the philosophy of role playing games at PSU?  

Albert: Throughout my career at PSU, I’ve ended up doing a lot of applied ethics classes, and creating new ones. So, things like environmental ethics, philosophy of sex and love, military ethics, philosophy of sports. For about 10 years I’ve been finding these really important, popular subjects and showing how philosophy relates to them; this course just kind of became a natural extension. Role playing games have been my personal passion my whole life, and I feel like they, really, were a part of me becoming a philosopher, because of thinking about identity and quests and challenges and moral dilemmas and all these things, you know, it had that sort of synergistic effect. So it’s really nice to finally be bringing those two together. And I have to say, it’s the silver lining of the pandemic that really did it. I mean, I was starting to get back into playing Dungeons and Dragons in particular, which I’ve played off and on with friends back home for over 20 years. 

So then the pandemic happened, right, and what was typically an in person kind of performative art-type game suddenly went online. Suddenly, nobody had to go to work, and everybody wanted an escape, and manageable problems they could deal with, rather than this huge pandemic that we really couldn’t do anything about. So, the number of people who wanted to play and games I ran just kind of exploded. But I kind of knew that would happen, and this is the value of a liberal arts education; my history professor back in undergrad had us read Boccaccio’s Decameron, which is an anthology of stories set during the Black Plague. A bunch of nobles rent a manor out in the country to avoid the plague, and to pass time, they just start telling stories to one another. So, although it might sound a little grandiose, I was definitely, deliberately trying to be a part of that. And we need stories now more than ever, you know, we need imagination, we need to escape.The pandemic’s coming up on its three year anniversary and I’ve just been playing nonstop. That led to doing more and more academic work, then the class, now the book. It’s been a really fun time.

Nadine: You use the word escape. Thinking about American pragmatism being a philosophy based on lived experience, I was wondering if you could share some of your thoughts around if those experiences have to happen in “reality?” Can those experiences happen to us in a fictionalized context? And if they do, do you think that they still “count?” 

Albert: Regarding your questions of fantasy and reality, that’s the classic philosophical, metaphysical question: what is real? And is there really a difference between what we experience in our mind and what we experience in the real world? Neuroscience says there’s not that much of a difference. 

Nadine: It brings to mind something I learned about in my research for this interview— the term immersion, which is a word used to describe the deep level of engagement that can be experienced in a game. Media scholar Janet Murray says, “We seek the same feeling from a psychologically immersive experience that we do from a plunge in the ocean or swimming pool: the sensation of being surrounded by a completely other reality… that takes over all of our attention, our whole perceptual apparatus… In a participatory medium, immersion implies learning to swim, to do the things that the new environment makes possible.” Sarah Lynne Bowman, in her essay Immersion and Shared Imagination in Role-Playing Games (2018) writes, “Immersion is often conflated with the concept of flow, a term which also arose from this water metaphor; Mihályi Csíkszentmihályi’s participants often compared the experience of engagement in a task to a water current carrying them along a certain course. This aquatic imagery is far older, however; the Buddhist and Taoist concept of wei-wu-wei– a paradoxical state of action that does not involve struggle or excessive effort– is also compared to water, as liquid has a yielding nature and ability to change shape, yet overcome things that are hard and strong. In this regard, immersion is not simply the sense of being surrounded by an all-consuming environment, but also relates to active engagement and agency within that experience.”

Albert: Even though our conscious mind can distinguish between fantasy and reality, if we have a really immersive experience, to our brain, it is as though we have experienced it, and this power is present in all kinds of art forms. 

So, what’s really incredible about role playing games is, anytime you talk to someone who has played, they will usually refer to their past experiences in the first person. So they won’t say, One time my character did this. They’ll usually say, Well, one time we were in the Dragon’s Lair and this strange salamander appeared, and it almost killed my friend! It’s pretty incredible. When people have been playing for a long time, it’s as though we’ve experienced those games. This is an ancient philosophical notion going back to Hinduism: is life but a dream, and we’re just playing different roles (but we’re really all just the divine, perceiving itself)? 

Nadine: Do you think there’s ever a time we’re not playing a role in our lives? 

Albert: That is a fundamental question. And this would be an example of why most professional philosophers do not like pragmatists. I’m almost willing to say that the whole world is a role playing game, and it’s live action role playing games all the way down.

Nadine: Right, like the Shakspeare quote, “All the world’s a stage,” and we change roles depending on the stage, maybe the stage is home or work or the grocery store, whatever. I don’t necessarily see those environments as any less stage-like than a theater stage or a film set. 

There’s an Argentinian playwright, Lola Arias, whose work is a huge inspiration to me. She uses re-enactment a lot in her work, and I read an interview where she said, “I didn’t want to write dialogues for characters, but rather invent encounters between people for them to talk to one another in the context of art.” And I feel like you could just kind of just sub out “art” for “game” here. Role playing games seem like they just sort of set up this context for characters to have these encounters and work through things.

It’s interesting to think of the things that “bleed” through [the term bleed was coined by Emily Care Boss in 2007, and has since been generally accepted to describe when emotions “bleed over” from character to player and vice versa] when we do that work.

Albert: This bleed can go one of two directions: either you bring real life stuff into the game, or stuff in the game comes out into the real world. So the first one would be an example of like, you’ve had a bad day at work and in the game, you know, your character’s acting impatient or rude or something like that. And then the opposite would be like, you experience something in the game— it could be a loss, like maybe your character dies— and so you have a bit of a grief response in your actual life for a while. That’s not uncommon— you’ve created a fantastical avatar of yourself and then spent hours playing. That really is an actual loss, right? But when it starts to get interesting is the ways in which you can sometimes have these really peak experiences where you have moments of insight, and it can be transformative. 

Nadine: I’m fascinated by the different types of bleeds that can occur; the one I found most compelling was emancipatory bleed, which I read defined by Jonaya Kemper as “the idea that bleed can be steered and used for emancipatory purposes by players who live with complex marginalizations.” 

Albert: The particular piece you’re talking about, yes, is talking about “playing for bleed” in a certain way, and trying to sort of deconstruct internalized norms that you’ve brought in from the various prejudices of our world. Despite its origins, the game has always had a strong queer community and following— plenty of players throughout the years have used it as a way to rehearse their gender or sexual identity, before debuting that, because, you know, you’re amongst a group of supportive friends who have practice in affirming you performing a version of yourself that you aren’t actually in real life.

Nadine: That’s very moving. 

Albert: Oh, yeah, there’s all kinds of stories about this. One of the best on this is a scholar named Josephine Baird; she has some incredible work, and even a game designed for the exploration of sexual and gender identity, called Euphoria. She’s trying to use her experiences to create something more deliberate for people who are wanting to have those experiences. But the beauty of role playing games is it can be anything— it starts out in this Tolkienesque fantasy, but you can have games at any time or place, you know, the Wild West, outer space. One of my games tonight is Vampire: Dark Ages. So, after I’m done with this, I’m actually going to be running that game. It’s all about politics and intrigue and supernatural stuff in Transylvania actually, and what’s neat about that was we accidentally kind of stumbled into a lot of West versus East conflict. Transylvania is on the border of Ukraine, so there’s been a few times in playing that game, where strangely, real life and the game kind of have that bleed, and we get to explore and think about some of those historical conflicts that still relate to present day conflicts in a more thorough way. So I mean, these are all examples of different types of transformative bleed that can occur. But the term itself, role playing games, is a term from psychology. It was originally proposed that through, like, reenactment and whatnot, it would have therapeutic effects. There are a lot of psychologists who provide workshops on how to run therapeutic games for children and for others, to help us with social skills, self esteem, and even to process trauma.

Nadine: The benefits are so vast, I had no idea. I feel as though role playing games— or I guess more specifically role playing gamers— seem to be sometimes misunderstood or even stigmatized. The more I learn about how it functions, I feel like it fits very comfortably within performance art and socially engaged theater.

I suppose I’ll share why I’m interested in this and how it relates to my art practice. I’ve worked in the service industry for 15 years, and those sorts of jobs, to me, have always felt like roles. I have a costume, I’m on this set, my coworkers have always felt like collaborators or castmates, and customers have always felt like audience-participants. I’m currently working as a waitress, and starting to contextualize that work within my art practice has been exciting.  Anyways, I had a conversation with my professor Harrell in my first month of the program where we talked about what it might be like if I claimed all the serving jobs I’ve ever had as performance pieces. (There’s a term called claiming, which just means claiming something as an art piece that wasn’t viewed that way before. If that event has happened in the past it would be considered retroactive claiming.)  So, I’m like, okay, I’m down to claim these previous jobs as performances but I don’t have any documentation of that. So he goes, “Well, you could re-enact them and document the re-enactments.” I loved the suggestion and really hope to re-enact these job performances during my time in the program.

I wanted to get your thoughts— if you have any— on what you think about reenactments; reenactments of everyday life, not necessarily historical periods, or wars or anything like that, but like, reenactments of more everyday events, like a work shift, or a walk? Do you think that there’s space for reality, or I guess maybe more specifically the ordinary, in role playing games? 

Albert: I had never thought about that, but that’s absolutely brilliant. The Scandinavians take role playing games very seriously and have for a long time, best work comes out of there, through the Nordic LARP society. 

They have some ones that are pretty intense. For example, Hello In There by Kjell Hedgard Hugaas requires role playing your spouse dying from cancer, and saying goodbye. 

[Albert reacts to a change in my expression] 

Now, I can see the air go out of the room.

Nadine: No, no. Actually the total opposite. A couple weeks ago, I was sort of doing an acting exercise like this with myself alone in my apartment— have you ever seen the show Six Feet Under?

Albert: Oh, yes. It’s been like, over 10 years. But I want to watch it again. That’s a transformative experience right there.

Nadine: I just watched the series for the first time, I became totally obsessed. It had me thinking about death and grief more than I usually do– which is a lot—  and I felt like I had to like, purge all the emotions and fear it was bringing up. So, I took a video of myself on my computer with my webcam doing this acting exercise where I tried to put myself into this imaginary world in which my twin brother died. The story I created was that I got a call from his boxing coach that he’d gotten hit in the temple sparring, and was killed instantly. I narrated my thoughts out loud, sort of just like stream of consciousness, but my consciousness as I experienced it in this alternate reality— so I enacted that and I recorded it. I actually had to stop because it became too painful. I’m glad I have it on tape though. 

So, this Nordic LARPing stuff you’re telling me about, like acting out your lifelong partner dying, that kind of performance really excites me.

Albert: Yeah, well, I mean, you know, in fairness, it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but I teach and read a lot of existentialism so I ruminate on that a lot myself in, I think, a mostly healthy way. I mean, hey, you know, like Heidegger says, if we are always in denial of death, we’re actually estranged from our being, from our own life. So, you know, it’s important to kind of face the reality of our own mortality and the mortality of the ones we love, right? We never want to think about it, but any relationship we get into is going to come to some sort of end eventually, maybe, yet we never really want to think about or rehearse, or prep, or plan, because we have this fear that by doing that, it’ll somehow bring it closer or something. But why wouldn’t we take the time to, you know, engage in those activities that can be very therapeutic?

Nadine: I had no idea that there was live action role playing that dove into relationships and grief so intentionally and deeply.

I think that if fantasy can create a space for healing that reality can’t, there’s potentially a lot to gain from leaning into it, using it as a tool. 

Albert: I also want to provide one word of caution and navigate back to consent. As Sarah Lynn Bowman, who you’ve mentioned, said in a conference, when I asked her a question, she said, “You know, when we play role playing games, we’re playing with fire, and there’s always the chance that bleed can be negative.” So that’s an important thing to be conscientious of. 

Nadine: Right, like there’s good bleed and bad bleed; there might be healing bleed and painful bleed.

Albert: I’m a philosopher— I mean, I’m sure there’s parts of my shadow that I’m in denial about. I’m a human being, denial is a river we all swim in, as they say. So, I’m pretty introspective and aware of what lurks there, but for a person who might not be, they could really easily stumble on this one thing that they don’t even know that they’ve got going on, and that can be really tough. I’ve had moments where that’s happened, where I just stumbled onto something, and it can have some consequences, can strain friendships… So, this is where really understanding consent and studying safety tools and how to be aware of what your boundaries are and where other people’s boundaries are. If we want to go back to pragmatics, and creating community and social values, we just live in a culture that’s really terrible about talking about and understanding consent. So, even when you’re really well intentioned, you can still have negative experiences that need to be worked through. So it’s also an opportunity to really practice a lot of these good psychological safety tools. It teaches you how to be a better friend. But I don’t want to just gloss over the potentially messy stuff and share only the positive; if it’s powerful enough to heal people it can be powerful enough to harm people as well. So you gotta learn how to use it responsibly.

Nadine: Of all the roles you play in your life, which role are you having the most fun with right now?

Albert: Oh, wow. Well, you know, I mean, being a teacher, this is just a really exciting time. I’m just engaged in a lot of projects like this one. I have always loved being a teacher so much. I mean, I joke and say I get paid to talk about the things I love with really intelligent and interesting people. I can’t really imagine a much better or rewarding job than that. At least for me. But you know, I’m also a husband and a dad and those are important roles. My daughter is a teenager getting ready to go into high school, so there’s a shifting of roles and that sort of thing now, yeah— which is, you know, wonderful and terrifying at the same time.

Nadine: Does your daughter play any RPGs?

Albert: You know, it’s really interesting because we are both performers, but she’s a dancer, and she really likes being on the stage and the body movement. She had some fun experiences with D&D when we kind of got into it, but it’s just not her medium. And I’m a little sad, I’m hoping someday she’ll come back to it and give it another try. But, you know, this circles back to something I wanted to talk about before, which is that, you know, we’re just not really given a lot of license to play in our lives. And we’re certainly not given a lot of license to engage in pretend to play as adults. And this isn’t necessarily what’s going on with her, but you know, it really starts when we’re in those middle school and then teenage years and starting to become more conscious of our peers, that that part of ourselves goes into some kind of dormancy or retreat. So I think everybody should try it. And at the same time understand that it’s not for everybody.

Nadine: For sure. The most fun I ever had acting was in this very campy horror-comedy indie picture about a zombie deer, because it was just so far out. I remember a scene where I had to run for my life from this evil zombie deer that was trying to attack me. There was a specific feeling, a sort of nostalgic embodied feeling, of using every physical resource available in my body to its absolute limit, in the realm of fantasy, that was completely euphoric. And that state of pretend is something I hadn’t accessed since I was a kid. 

And so like, I think what you’re saying is really true, whether it’s D&D or something else, I do think it’s important for adults to find ways to have pretend play as a part of their life practice, because we lose it.

Albert: That ends up being kind of the beauty of this— you end up realizing how mutable and malleable these roles and social institutions and other constructions are. I mean, at the same time, people take them very seriously. They’re not totally arbitrary, there’s a certain power. I’m thinking of like, the Wizard of Oz, you know, seeing behind the curtain and sort of understanding how things are really set up. So many of us get attached to a specific identity and role and we’re just kind of rigid in that. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that. But, you know, we all need that little bit of flexibility of silliness, of liminal spaces, times when we can engage in a bit of misrule, where the roles aren’t the same anymore, these are big parts of our culture. The technical term in role playing game studies is alibi, when we’re given the alibi to not be who we’re expected to be. The best example of this in our culture is Halloween, that’s the one time in the year that an adult can dress up and act, for the most part, however they want. There’s still norms they have to obey, but nevertheless, it’s about the only time that we really experience it. I mean, like Mardi Gras, or Carnival, or other festivals; every culture has something like this. But it’s an important part of the human experience. Storytelling is an important part of our experience. 

Albert “Randy” Spencer (he/him) is an Assistant Professor at Portland State University where he regularly teaches courses on American Pragmatism, Indigenous Philosophy, The Philosophy of Sports, and The Philosophy of Sex & Love. His recent book is American Pragmatism: An Introduction (Polity Press 2020) which presents a new story of the origins and development of pragmatism through its ongoing engagement with the tragic legacies of colonialism and the consequences of U.S. hegemony. 

Nadine Hanson (she/her) is an artist from Wisconsin, now based in NYC. She prefers to work collaboratively and likes using performance, experimental documentary, and writing. nadinehanson.com 

Everything about my poop is significant. That’s why I have my spreadsheet. 

Ruby Bontrager

Ruby Bontrager is a full-time “circulation technician” at the PSU library. Last Christmas, I was stranded in California due to a violent ice storm and airport strikes across the Pacific Northwest. Through a concatenation of synchronicities, I found out that Ruby and her sibling were driving from San Jose to Portland and hitched a ride. Prior to our road trip, our relationship was friendly and mediated by the boundary of the circ desk. But suddenly I was in a car with Ruby and Case for ten hours witnessing complicated family dynamics unfold, not unlike a Noah Baumbach movie. When Ruby told me that for the past three years she has been recording her bowel movements (including the time, location, and miscellaneous notes) every day in an excel spreadsheet, I was bewildered. I’m still asking myself, have I ever encountered such a powerful representation of the human anus? Her spreadsheet is a mode of auto-ethnography that also traces gastric changes over more than one thousand days of poop. What was the passion that inspired this undertaking? I came to school seeking intellectual soulmates, but instead I found a soulmate in scat. 

I immediately asked Ruby to create an excel spreadsheet of my poop, and every day I leave her a voice note debriefing my intestines. This practice of peristaltic disclosure has infected me with a feeling of interconnectedness; it is nothing less than a positive exorcism of poop shame. 

P.S. If it matters to you, Ruby is half-filipino and half-white. But she doesn’t want to give anyone leverage for bullying her by saying she’s half-white.  

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Ash Yang-Thompson: Ruby, what time did I poop today?

Ruby Bontrager: 9:55 AM. That’s intimacy.

Ash: How did you decide to make an excel spreadsheet for your poop? 

Ruby: It was the end of 2020, and I like New Years because I’m really into symbolism. I always try to make a resolution, but this is the only one I’ve kept up with. I was most interested in collecting new poop locations.What if there was a cool bathroom and I wanted to poop there?

Ash: Where’s the coolest place you’ve ever pooped?

Ruby: Let me pull it up right now. [pulls up her excel spreadsheet]

I pooped at the Detroit Lake campsite. I think that’s the most exciting place. I’m a simple man. 

Ash: We were just arguing about this, but I think it’s an important question: would you rather be constipated or have diarrhea?

Ruby: I hate this question. Would you rather stick scissors in your eyes or in your crotch? Would you rather be upset or be upset? I’d rather be constipated.

Ash: Why?

Ruby: Because I don’t want shit falling out of my butt unless I’m enjoying it. There’s no clear, delineated relief for diarrhea the way there is with constipation. You know it’s over when you finally poop. There’s no gray area. 

Ash: As a chronically constipated person, I disagree. I poop, but it’s never enough, and it’s dirtier too, because the shit is stuck in your asshole. I feel like I need to scoop it out with a tiny spoon.

What’s the most times you’ve pooped in a day?

Ruby: In March 2021, I pooped three times on two separate days. On one of those days I just wrote, when does it stop?

Ash: Why do you think you pooped so much those days?

Ruby: I saw a TikTok recently of a college guy who was keeping track of his poops and he averaged 6 poops a month – that’s like 81 poops a year. That’s a concerning number. 

Maybe I was pooping for him. 

Ash: Why do you think you’ve been able to keep track of your poop so religiously, while your other New Year’s resolutions have fizzled out?

Ruby: There’s nothing else to do when you’re on the toilet but pull out your poop spreadsheet.

It comes naturally to me. Whereas with exercise, it doesn’t just happen on its own. 

Ash: So you always poop with your phone? 

Ruby: Not always, but pretty much. I don’t keep books in my bathroom anymore like I did in my youth. 

I just want to be clear that I think it’s gross that I take my phone into the bathroom, but I’m not going to stop now. I wouldn’t want to look at my phone under a black light.

Ash: Do you miss reading books on the toilet?

Ruby: No, I only did that because there was nothing better to do. It’s better than reading the back of a shampoo bottle. What do you do on the toilet? I know you don’t really use your phone.

Ash: I definitely have an easier time being constipated when I have my phone, but because I normally poop in the morning and I lock my phone in my P.O. box until lunchtime, I usually don’t have my phone with me. So I bring my vocabulary notecards. If I forget my flashcards, I pray for a one-wipe wonder. 

Ruby: Haha. You’re such a nerd. But that is so wild. I leave my phone at home occasionally, like when I go to the grocery store, but I think I’m too many people’s emergency contact to leave my phone at home. 

Ash: I think that the repetition of doing the same thing every day, in the same place (on the toilet) for three years makes your bowel movements take on a spiritual dimension. Because ritual, repetition, long-term devotion and record keeping are all elements of a spiritual practice. And you’re keeping close tabs on your anus, the way a Catholic might with their sins. Does any of this resonate with you? Do you see any greater significance in your poop? 

Ruby: I would say that I keep track of it religiously. I never really thought about it being a spiritual practice – I don’t think of myself as a spiritual person and I wasn’t raised in a religious home, but maybe that’s why I’m enjoying myself. 

Everything about my poop is significant. That’s why I have my spreadsheet. The spiritual significance is my happiness when I get to look back on it. Also, I’m going to be famous one day, and the cultural historians will say, “Everybody should keep track of their poop like Ruby did, because she was a beacon of her time. Thank you, Ruby, for being a pioneer of bowel movement record keeping.” 

Although I’m sure I’m not first and I won’t be the last. 

Maybe if I threw up I’d put it on my spreadsheet. 

Ash: Wow, that brings up a lot. What are you going to be famous for? And if you would put regurgitating on your spreadsheet, does that mean you think your mouth is equivalent to your anus? I personally think I’m incontinent with my words (I’m horribly indiscreet), so maybe that’s why I’m constipated on the other end. I’m just realizing this now. 

Ruby: Hmmm. I’ll probably be famous for my amazing looks. Maybe I’ll be funny for money and that’s how I’ll be famous. But I don’t have high hopes.

Ash: But you’ve already been famous on TikTok, right?

(Ruby posted a video of herself saying, I don’t know how you could post a group photo of 10 to 20 people where everybody is white, and it got over 500,000 views.)

Ruby: I don’t think having one viral video counts. I’m not getting stopped on the street by people saying, “are you that bitch who hates white people?”

Ash: Do you hate white people?

Ruby: Yes. I do. If you’re my friend and you’re white, you understand that if white people hadn’t colonized my ancestors in the Philippines, I wouldn’t have generational trauma. On a large scale white people are the ones to blame. I’m almost sure that white people came up with capitalism. I feel like it’s reasonable beef to have.

White people are the only reason why I’m othered in society. Everybody is othered because white people othered them. So rude. They didn’t have to do that. We could have all been friends.

Ash: But you love your partner, and your partner is white, so is your hatred of white people more of a conceptual thing? 

Ruby: Yeah. My partner didn’t specifically colonize the Philippines. It’s more that I hate the history of white people. I hate the idea of white people. [laughs]

But white people can redeem themselves. I’m not keeping notes of every white person that has wronged me. I just want white people not to forget why people don’t like white people. They just need to be humble. 

At one point in 2020, I decided I didn’t need to invite any more white people into my life. 

Ash: Has your decision not to invite any more white people into your life affected your poop? 

Ruby: No, I don’t get guilt poop about it or anything. I poop peacefully knowing that white people irritate me. 

Ash: What I meant was, if poop is a metaphor for the way you digest life, does being around less white people make your poop more normal? 

Ruby: Like am I more relaxed? Maybe. The last time I was surrounded by a more diverse population was high school, but I wasn’t keeping track of my poop back then.

Ash: What’s it like to keep track of my poop? Do you compare my bowel movements to yours? I know you say “I’m sorry” a lot when I text you about my poop. 

Ruby: I don’t mean to. I just always feel that way when you text me about it. I do subconsciously compare our poop, but not actively. I like it because I’m nosy. It makes me feel like a dog, like I’m gathering the same information a dog is by sniffing another dog’s poop. 

Ash: What is your favorite place to poop outside of your own apartment?

Ruby: My parent’s toilet. Because that’s my childhood toilet. It’s a nice toilet. It’s small and the bathroom is cute and well-lit (it has a south-facing window). There isn’t a safer place to be. It’s a toilet that I consistently sit sideways on. I don’t sit forwards on it, and I don’t know why. I don’t do that with any other toilet. 

Ash: Do you have any final thoughts on poop that you’d like to share?

Ruby: I love my ass and all the poop it makes. I know it doesn’t make poop, but that’s how I feel. 

I hope someday everyone is able to poop in a public restroom where there are other people around without being embarrassed. I’m still embarrassed. I know it’s a long time coming, but that’s the kind of world I want to live in. 

Ash: Where do you think poop shame comes from? And the idea that women don’t poop?

Ruby: OMG. That’s ridiculous. A little poop sound is objectively funny. Pooping is associated with immaturity and being childish – like poop jokes or fart jokes – but pooping is very serious. 

Society expects women to be quiet and clean and smell good, and pooping is none of those things. 

Pooping doesn’t advance the plot of a book or a movie, so maybe people think that poop doesn’t advance the plot of their own lives. But it advances mine.

Ash: How does it advance your life?

Ruby: All morning I wait until it’s time for me to poop. And all day I ingest things to poop out the next morning. And it’s a time of quiet reflection, except for the poop. The poop speaks. 

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Ashley Yang-Thompson (I respectfully opt out of the protocol to include pronouns) is a ninety-nine time Pulitzer Prize winning poet and a certified MacArthur genius. ashleyyangthompson.com @leaky_rat

Ruby Bontrager (she/they) is a circulation technician at the PSU library and a pioneer of bowel movement record keeping.