Announcing 2020/2021 FAR & Away Conversations

FAR & Away Conversations are hosted by the FSU Facility for Arts Research in the College of Fine Arts. Each of these virtual events feature a prominent artist, engaging in an illuminating conversation with a peer, collaborator, or mentor loosely based on common interests that intersect in their work. These events will be live-streamed and give the audience the ability to contribute in real time by asking questions via chat. Invited artists range in discipline from movement and performance to social engagement and from authors and poets to installation.

October 13 • Kelly Lloyd with Yalie Kamara

Kelly Lloyd is a multidisciplinary conceptual artist who focuses on issues of representation and knowledge production, and prioritizes public-facing collaborative research. Lloyd received a dual M.F.A. in Painting and M.A. in Visual & Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015, and earned a B.A. from Oberlin College in 2008. In 2019, she completed the Starr Fellowship at the Royal Academy Schools; had solo exhibitions at the Royal Academy Schools (London), Crybaby (Berlin), Bill’s Auto (Chicago) and Dirty House (London); lectured at the Edinburgh College of Art and The Ruskin School of Art; collaborated on public programming at rum 46 (Aarhus), Raven Row (London) and Block 336 (London); and was granted a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, the Art Licks Workweek Prize, and a Step Travel Grant. She began her DPhil in Fine Art at the University of Oxford this Fall. www.k-lloyd.com

Yalie Kamara is a Sierra Leonean-American writer, researcher, and a native of Oakland, California. She’s the author of A Brief Biography of My Name, which was included in New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Tano) (African Poetry Book Series/Akashic Books, 2018) and When The Living Sing (Ledge Mule Press, 2017). She has received fellowships from The Vermont Studio Center, Callaloo, and The National Book Critics Circle, and was a finalist for the Brunel African Poetry Prize. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University, Bloomington and is a doctoral student in Creative Writing and English Literature at the University of Cincinnati. www.yaylala.com

November 10, 2020 @7pm EST • Noel Anderson with Jayne Johnson

Noel W Anderson (b. Louisville, KY) received an MFA from Indiana University in Printmaking, and an MFA from Yale University in Sculpture. He is also Area Head of Printmaking in NYU’s Steinhardt Department of Art and Art Professions.

Anderson utilizes print-media and arts-based-research to explore philosophical inquiry methodologies. He primarily focuses on the mediation of socially constructed images on identity formation as it relates to black masculinity and celebrity.  In 2018, Noel was awarded the NYFA artist fellowship grant and the prestigious Jerome Prize. His solo exhibition Blak Origin Moment debuted at the Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati) in February 2017 and travelled to the Hunter Museum of American Art in October 2019.  His first monograph, Blak Origin Moment, was also recently published.

Gallery Image of Athena LaTocha Exhibition, JDJ, 3/26-4/19/2019

Jayne Johnson is an art dealer and owner of JDJ. JDJ is a contemporary art program created by Jayne Drost Johnson that highlights artists who embody a range of artistic practices and sociopolitical perspectives. The Ice House, a former industrial building in Garrison, NY, built in the 1920s, sits within a compound of structures once occupied by the staff and laborers who maintained an estate on the Hudson River. The Ice House is within minutes of several contemporary art museums, including Manitoga / The Russel Wright Design Center, Dia:Beacon, Magazzino Italian Art, & Storm King Art Center.

January 19, 2021 @ 7pm EST •

Related Tactics – Michele Carlson, Nate Watson, and Weston Teruya

Related Tactics is a collective of artists and cultural workers producing creative projects, opportunities, and interventions at the intersection of race and culture. Our projects explore the connections between art, broader social issues, and the public through trans-disciplinary exchanges, making, and dialog. Related Tactics is a conceptual space and platform where we confront systemic and institutional racism or inequities that influence our immediate socio-cultural lived experience that benefit from collective support and sharing knowledge or resources. We do this through collaboration and critical thought strategically implemented amongst and for communities of color and the diaspora.

Related Tactics is a collaboration between Michele Carlson, Weston Teruya, and Nathan Watson though there are many community members that make our work possible. We work between the San Francisco and Washington DC areas. Our projects have been exhibited and supported by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Berkeley Art Center, Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery at Parsons School of Design (New York), Southern Exposure Gallery and Alternative Exposure Grants (San Francisco), Chinese Cultural Center (San Francisco).

February 9, 2021 @7pm EST • Elliot Reed & Ron Athey

Elliot Reed is a performance artist and director based in New York. Working in realtime, Elliot creates solos, ensemble performances and video centering the live subject. His projects exist between people, leveraging candid interaction amongst performers and audience. Utilizing a choreographic lens, Elliot assembles bodies, movement prompts and narrative within exhibition space. As viewers move through his work, the narrative arc moves through them, unfurling itself in actual time.

Elliot is a 2019 danceWEB scholar, 2019-20 Artist In Residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem, and recipient of the 2019 Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant. Exhibitions include a commission with JACK Quartet (2020), MoMA PS1 (upcoming), The Getty Museum (2018),  The Hammer Museum (2016), The Dorthy Chandler Pavilion (2018) The Broad (2017), University of Southern California (2016), and performances at MoonStep Tokyo (2017),  MNSKTM Osaka (2017), VFD London (2017), and MOOI Collective Mexico City (2017).

Ron Athey was born on a submarine base December 16th, 1961. Having spent most of his life in Los Angeles, his first performance project was Premature Ejaculation, a collaboration with Rozz Williams, 1981-83, included abject body rituals, costume, noise and glossalalia. Athey’s work is closely associated with the AIDS pandemic: from 1990-1999, he performed and toured internationally a trilogy of works with a core group of 8 performers. In 1999, the first solo performance, The Solar Anus (after the same-named Georges Bataille essay), which was seen in over 20 venues including LACE, Gallerija Kapelica Slovenia, Hayward Gallery London, NGBK Berlin. After the 2018 Gifts of the Spirit opera in the Cathedral of St. Vibiana (developed and produced with funds from the Mike Kelley Foundation and Broad Museum, Athey and his collaborator composer/director Sean Griffin (Opera Povera), continue work in experimental opera forms. Solo/multi-media work: Acephalous Monster, commissioned by Performance Space New York in 2018, has went on to tour 11 euro and uk venues. January 2021 is the Participant Inc. opening of Ron Athey: Queer Communion, a retrospective show that travels on the June at the ICA-LA, then September Arnolfini Gallery Bristol.

For registration information for upcoming FAR & Away Conversations, follow CFA on social media.