Current Conversations

are juicy public exchanges between artists, academics, and activists

2016-2020

In order to link festival artists with university faculty across disciplines but along parallel lines of inquiry, I developed a format for non-boring panels among people who “don’t have anything in common” except that they really do.
Even the Yes Men said it was one of the best conversations they’ve ever been a part of!
Catch me curating, hosting, and moderating these moments for the CounterCurrent Festival each year.

2019

Sensing at the Edge of Detection

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Ellen Fullman The Watch, Reprise
Dr. Andrew Renshaw Dark Matter Particles and Experimental Neutrino Physics
Dr. Thamar Solorio Applied Machine Learning Language Analysis
Okwui Okpokwasili Sitting on a Man’s Head

 

 

Dual Growth for Speculative Futures

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Jennif(f)er Tamayo (JT) La Queeradora
Dr. Becky Zufall Dual Genomic Architecture and Increased Evolvability
Dr. Arturo E. Hernandez Neural Bases of Bilingualism
Ganzeer Pepetu-War

 

Water Mirrors and Expanded Lenses

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Tia-Simone Gardner Salt Water Sweet Water
Dr. John H. Lienhard Engines of Our Ingenuity
Yudith Nieto Another Gulf Is Possible
Dr. Wei-Chuan Shih Smartphone Microscope Lens for Citizen Science

 

Radical Kinships for Fierce Embodiment

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Roxy House of Kenzo Pressure Points
Awilda Rodríguez Lora SUSTENTO
Dr. Jess Waggoner Crip Activisms and Rebirth Garments
Leticia Contreras Yea girl... I'm on my way!,

2018

Attention Flip: Crossing over into the ignored

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Dr. Margaret Lehman Blake Therapies for Unilateral Neglect
Mike Bonanno  The Yes Men
Laura Gutierrez Center Aisle Blues
Dr. Hanadi S. Rifai Hurricane Resilience

 

Ground Shift: Calling the backdrop to task

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Dr. Aisen Caro Chacin Assistive Device Art
Harrison Guy Color
Dr. Gerald Horne The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism
Selina Thompson Race Cards



 

Role Switch: Slipping the given hierarchy

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Elia Arce Patronas y Conductas
Andy Bichlbaum The Yes Men
Tony Frankino Biological Morphology in Hyperadapations
Jake Margolin Excavating Queer Histories


 

Time Lapse: Uncarcerating the imagination

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Regina Agu Emancipation Park
Karina Aguilera Skvirsky Kinswoman
Dr. Shreerekha Subramanian Carceral Imaginaries
Mateo
Tannatt Horse Dream Horse

2017

Infrastructure for Impossible Movement: How to support a new possible

Kevin Beasley Movement V: Ballroom
Dr. Jose Luis “Pepe” Contreras-Vidal Neuroprosthetics
Alan Lucien Øyen of Winter Guests Simulacrum
Dr. Cunjiang Yu Cephalopod Camouflage

Representing the Unadmitted: How to platform the buried

Dictaphone Group Stories of Refuge
Ghana ThinkTank Mobile Mosque
Josephine Sorgwe Immigration Law Clinic
Chris Valdez Design for United We Dream

Designing for Extremes: How to find light in hostile environments

Dr. Olga Bannova Outer Space Architecture
Harry Gamboa Illusions of an Urbanscape
Susan Rogers Community Hacked Houston
Dictaphone Group Camp Pause

Retelling the Taken For Granted: How to turn a story inside out

Suzanne Bocanegra Farmhouse Whorehouse
The Catastrophic Theatre Donald Barthelme’s Snow White
Dr. Erica Fletcher Participatory Community-based Health
Dr. Assata Richards Sankofa Community Driven Development

2016

Disaster Relief: Work of Wounds and Resolution

Anthony Hawley Fault Diagnosis
Zoukak Theatre Company Innocent Violence
Taraneh Fazeli Sick Time, Sleepy Time, Crip Time
Dr. Richard Mizelle The 1927 Mississippi River Flood and the African American Imagination

Body Management: Human Motion and Constraint

Rimini Protokol Remote Houston
Dr. Samantha Kwan Embodied Resistance
Dr. Shishir Shah Quantitative Imaging of Crowd Movement

Tongue Splint: Scaffolding Speech and Space

Rachel Afi Quinn Ya Somos Americanizadas
Ghana Think Tank What is Your Houston Diversity Problem?
Zoukak Theatre Company Innocent Violence

Home Improvement: Recreational Resistance

Mary Magsamen Suburban Fluxus,
Jason Moran Meet Me at MacGregor
Susan Rogers Community Driven Design
Sehba Sarwar Living Room Art

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WHEN I WAS SUPPORTED TO RESEARCH

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WHEN I WANTED SCHOOL NOT DEBT