Current Conversations

Role Switch: Slipping the given hierarchy ABOUT THE PROJECT An artist convenes women who clean for other women and the women who hire them to negotiate their unspeakable questions. A biologist finds that animals develop in appearance and behavior to match their environment, but pay a large cost if they get things wrong. An imposter fills the suit and pushes the behavior of his target, rendering the expected frame unfit. An artist couple excavates the queer history of every US state that pretends there was not one. Speaker Bios: Elia Arce, Patronas y Conductas International artist working in performance art, flash-mobs, visual art, writing and social practice. A book about her work was published by NYUs Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. She is the founder and artistic director of USEKRA: Center for Creative Investigation, which she is creating in the Costa Rican Caribbean. Tony Frankino, University of Houston Professor of Biology and Biochemistry Tony Frankino studies the expression of animal form, focusing on phenotypic plasticity, whereby individuals express different appearances and behaviors depending on the environment in which they develop. Phenotypic plasticity can enhance reproductive success, but only if organisms correctly assess the environment and express the appropriate form; mismatches can prove disastrous. Andy Bichlbaum, The Yes Men Bichlbaum is one half of the anti-corporate activist duo, The Yes Men. He got his start as an activist when, as a computer programmer, he inserted a swarm of kissing boys in a shoot-em-up video game (SimCopter) just before it shipped to store shelves; he found himself fired, momentarily famous and hugely amused. Since then he’s worked for Exxon, Dow, the WTO, Halliburton, Monsanto, and many other companies without their approval. Jake Margolin Jake Margolin and his husband Nick Vaughan are Houston-based interdisciplinary artists creating 50 States, an ongoing series of installations that connect little-known instances of queer life from each state’s pre-Stonewall history to contemporary regional queer experiences.