AC Discussion | We Free Us: Panel Discussion and Book Launch
On February 7th, members of Amplify’s 2023-24 Alternate Currents cohort sat down to celebrate the launch of We Free Us, their collaborative publication, and talk about working together over the past year to to build relationships and shore up regenerative modes of mutual exchange.
Read through an abridged transcript of their conversation below, and share your thoughts in the comments section.
Title of Discussion: We Free Us: Panel Discussion and Book Launch
Contributor 1: Valerie St. Pierre Smith
Contributor 2: Bilgesu Sisman
Contributor 2: Casey Albert Welsch
Contributor 3: Artur Melika
Contributor 4: Alex Jacobsen
Panelist 1: Joy Cotton
Panelist 2: Aspen Monet Laboy
Panelist 3: Amanda Huckins
Panelist 4: Mi’oux Stabler
Moderator 1: Lauren Simpson
Moderator 2: Nathaniel Ruleaux
Date of Discussion: February 7th, 2024
List of Acronyms: [VSPS] = Valerie St. Pierre Smith; [CAW] = Casey Albert Welsch; [AM] = Artur Melika; [AJ] = Alex Jacobsen; [JC] = Joy Cotton; [AML] = Aspen Monet Laboy; [AH = Amanda Huckins; [MS] = Mi’oux Stabler; [LS] = Lauren Simpson; [NR] = Nathaniel Ruleaux; [PF] = Peter Fankhauser
Transcript
[VSPS] Welcome everyone and thank you for being here. (Valerie introduces herself in her language). Welcome. Hello, all of my relatives, my English name is Valerie St. Pierre Smith. I am from White Earth Ojibwe and live here on this beautiful Umonhon land and I'm excited to welcome you this evening. I am in year two of Amplify’s Alternate Currents cohort and I just want to welcome everybody into this space.
It is tradition that we feel that we are all related. I feel that very strongly. I invite you all this evening, if you feel comfortable, to take a moment, roll your shoulders, and take a deep breath. Enjoy this time and this space of being present together, of chatting together, of hearing new ideas, learning and listening and sharing. We are in community tonight. We are in circle together. We get to create and generate some extraordinary power doing that, just by being so welcome. I invite you to listen, ask questions. and thank you very much for being here.
[PF] Thank you, Valerie for that wonderful welcome. My name is Peter and I work at Amplify. Amplify as an incubator for just and equitable futures in the arts. Alternate Currents is one of our cornerstone programs that's designed as an alternative to a conventional MFA.It's a two year program in which artists publish their work, lead site and studio visits, work on collaborative projects for exhibition, and they get funding to do it all.
Tonight, we're lucky enough to have members of our 2023-24 Alternate Currents cohort talking about the work that they've done together over this past year to better understand ways to interpret and document and enact different propositions for working toward a more just art world. One of our cohort members, Bilgesu Sisman, couldn't be with us tonight, but she sent a piece of writing that I'm going to read. This is from Bilgesu:
“We hear the word "community" a lot, ubiquitously. Its overuse in everything - from election speeches to insurance commercials - has emptied out its meaning, at least for me as a non-native English speaker. I hear it now as a placeholder for any kind of association, regardless of its motivating drive or end purpose, its rootedness in the sharing-of-the-common relegated to the mere sharing of attributes.
“I had the luck of joining the Alternate Currents cohort at the end of 2022, less than a year after I moved to Omaha not knowing anybody. The critical and creative comradery that instantaneously flourished with this group of genuine, generous, and ingenious individuals started filling in the word "community" for me once again. The structure of our engagement gave shape to my research and bolstered my craft, as we conjointly thought about what we see and what we'd like to see in a more just art world.
“I moved from Omaha to Baltimore in June of 2023. I quickly realized that our working group provided me with a valuable frame to observe and understand the daily engagements, ambitions, and driving structures of art landscapes in other parts of the country as well. I felt like I had a secure anchor in Omaha even though I wasn't physically there.
“Our work made me more curious and thankful for what I received from my peers, and I was constantly blown away with what they produced and shared. I conducted my research into how institutions, despite best interests, still fall short of providing the necessary conditions for economic sustainability for artists. The new vision for achieving this goal needs to be based in mutual sharing and solidarity. It is for this reason that the title "We Free Us" is not aspirational, but factual.
“We free us, meaning: We learn from each other, we care for each other, we amplify each others' voices, hear each others' concerns, we share desires, we borrow each others' words and create anew. Possibilities emerge into light. Yes, the daily grind of capitalist survival continues, but we keep each other company and find our power therein - in our commun-ity.”
With that, I'm going to pass it to Casey, who's going to offer a rundown of the site and studio visits that we participated in this year as a group.
[CAW] Hi, I'm Casey. I am a writer and a chef, that is my contribution to this particular group. We, everybody who was in the cohort this year, would gather as a group every month at a location that was important to us, for our work or personally important. If we didn't have a studio space, which a lot of people don't, then we gathered at Amplify’s space. We would come together and we would share our work. We would start our conversations with a prompt and then they would soon drift far beyond what we expected.
Valerie, who introduced this event, led our first visit to the Fashion Arts Collective. We all brought food to share and started, we were still getting to know each other then, so we started to talk about who we were as people, what our what our practices looked like, and what our values were. After that, we went to Amanda's garage. Amanda is a very gifted poet who also runs a print shop out of her garage. We got an hour-long lesson on the use of her letterpress printing equipment. One day we gathered in Mi’oux’s backyard with the intention of coming together and building a sculpture out of sweet grass, which we spent the entire day doing and having many, many meaningful conversations while we did it. And I believe that sculpture still stands and has weathered the test of time. We met here at Generator Space. Alex, who is a sound artist, encouraged us to bring in field recordings. We played them together in a way that sparked many conversations about capitalism, a constant subject of interest. Aspen welcomed us into their shared studio space, we got together at Amplify where Joy led a conversation about access to healthcare for artists while we all drew. We met at Amplify again for my site/studio visit and I tried to find an alternative to Thanksgiving. We shared food together and talked about what it is that brings people together.
Another visit I remember in particular was Art’s. We gathered in his basement and painted pottery together which was a very activity that led to this impassioned discussion about revolutionary violence the means of bringing about revolutionary change. All of that while painting some pots. Another one that has had a lasting influence on me was Lauren’s. She is a dancer and a choreographer and brought us together to do something she calls Horseplay, these softly structured movement workshops that bring seasoned dancers and complete novices like myself together to move and interact with space and other people and our own bodies. I’ve been able to experience space and my own body before differently and would not have had that experience if not for this cohort.
We discussed the nonprofit arts industry with Bilgesu and had a lot of very enriching conversations in a lot of spaces that we wouldn’t have been exposed to otherwise. A great number of relationships have grown and been built in this group of people. It's been very valuable and I appreciate it very much. And for anybody participating in this next year's cohort, I hope you find the same value in it that I did. For anybody else who's thinking about applying to join the cohort in the future, I can tell you it is a valuable and worthwhile endeavor.
[NR] Thank you, Casey. We’re going to move into the panel portion of our time together now and will start by going around and doing some quick introductions. Nice and chill.
[AH] My name is Amanda Huckins. As Casey mentioned, I have a print studio in my garage. I have a daycare in my basement. It's a tiny house and we're maxing it out. I mostly want to talk about cheap art. I enjoy that concept of cheap art and accessible art and reproducible art.
[MS] My name is Mi’oux Stabler and I'm from the Umonhon Nation. So everybody, welcome. My site visit was at my home where, during the pandemic, I was able to really pay a lot of attention to the outdoors and the prairiescape of the land, and turned my space into an outdoor classroom about indigenous plants. People would come by, especially little kids, and it became a fun stop on people's journeys. That has turned into a whole new love and passion and part of my career now. It is my version of landback. I'm not one who likes to get in front of people and speak, but I like to be an advocate in my own way and stick up for the plants, especially plants indigenous to this area. I'm also a realtor and I work to fuse the concepts of property and real estate and landback to give a Native perspective on how private ownership impacted Native people.
[JC] Hi, I'm Joy Cotton. This year, my site visit was at Amplify's space. My studio is technically anywhere that I can take a sketchbook. I focused my work on physical and mental health accessibility, which turned into broader conversations about accessibility. I feel like this year has been a stepping stone to discovery, and creating spaces for open discussion, creating judgment free spaces where we can look at ideas from multiple perspectives. This has been the most phenomenal year I've spent as an artist. It’s been a rediscovery of what art is in different forms and different formats.
[AML] Hi, I'm Aspen Monet Laboy. I'm an interdisciplinary artist. I work with specifically broken recycled glass. I'm a poet and I do some film photography, and installation work. My site visit was at a studio I share with Therman Statom. He's an installation artist working in glass, and he offers me a space that I can work out of and I help him out. During my site visit, we were gonna create a group piece but our discussion went off on a whole other tangent and we didn't get to it. It was a good conversation though.
[LS] Just to reiterate, this year, economic justice has been the thread through all of our conversations and all of our site visits and so that's what we're gonna talk about more this evening. I think I would like to say that this has been a really important lens for all of us to consider what we're doing. I think it's been mentioned before that Alternate Currents is sort of similar to an MFA program in that we are in dialogue all the time about the work we're doing and how the ways we’re working reflect social or economic justice, or maybe the ways that we want to be doing more. And with each of our site visits, these conversations sort of came out. So with that, we're going to begin with our first question to our four panelists. Can you share some specific experiences from the studio visits that come to mind that show examples of the way we were sharing resources, whether they were physical, emotional, or intellectual, and maybe ways that had built some solidarity among us or among other artists that you work with?
[AH] I’m going to talk about Aspen’s visit. It sounds kind of cliché, but people were very vulnerable during that session and upfront about sharing experiences, both positive and negative, that related to access to community or connection. It was interesting in that space to see Therman’s work and Aspen's work with it, and asking how they relate? I think talking about that connection was the beginning thread we pulled at to start discussing how people’s individual creative practices can kind of bleed into one another. And we got really far down that same road to start asking what happens when it's hard to connect. What happens when it’s hard to build a community because people are weighed down by all very real economic concerns? What happens when you're reaching out and people aren't grabbing your hand? What happens when you're trying to make connections, and the connections aren't coming? That stuck with me. I remember looking at the field outside the studio window and how it felt to be with a group of people willing to talk so candidly, and sometimes, painfully, about experiences of disconnection. The vulnerability was always just amazing to me, in those conversations. I think talking about creative practice was like the gateway to having those really personal conversations.
[AML] I remember a question that stood out to me because in these conversations, we'll talk about things that we don't even think about ourselves. Someone asked me why I use such a jagged and sharp material to depict softness. I think we were looking at a glass pillow I made. Every month or so still, I'll think about that question.
[JC] I would have to say that Lauren’s Horseplay sessions have been, not only a connection with a different form of art, but also a reconnection with the body. It’s something you have to experience because it’s hard to describe. My family would ask me what I was going out to do and I’d say “I'm gonna go breathe for a moment.” I never thought I would find a way to move my body in that way. I work two-dimensionally most of the time curled up as close as I can to the paper. Taking a moment to stretch and interact with other people in a safe space and having that mutual consent of giving permission to step inside my bubble and to create work that expresses not only your body, but also your mind, is a different connection that I've understood through movement.
[LS] Thanks Joy. It's a pleasure to have you every month. I started horseplay as a way of thinking about how to bring joy into movement. As a dancer with a specific kind of training, it kind of flows in and out of joy, and dreaming and, and displeasure. I thought about all bodies experiencing, and having sensations and the joy of being together with others. And I think through Alternate Currents, over the past year, as I've started to shape what Horseplay is, I've also been putting language around it in terms of economic justice. I've been thinking about how so often we use our bodies to perform some utilitarian function. Our bodies are working all the time. They're performing labor all the time. My hope for horseplay is that we have two hours of suspended time where we aren't doing anything with our body other than being in a moment with other people. I really love the idea of moving out of the sense of purpose, and production and product, and really just being in a space of experience, and process and sensation, and letting that be enough. And so there are no performances and no commodity that comes out of it. It's two hours together and then we go. And those of you who have been coming have really helped me think of it in those terms.
[MS] I enjoyed all the visits, but the two that stuck out for me the most were Art’s and Amanda's. I think that relates to the type of learner I am. They were both so tangible. We had discussions but we also made things. For Art's we sat around at a big table in this beautiful basement that was dark and cozy and ate this wonderful banana bread that had nothing but good ingredients. It was like this. With this group, I really started thinking about art and what art can do differently. You know, I'm one of those people who should know better that it's not just pen to paper or paint to canvas to make this flat thing. Casey’s a chef and he brings food to every session. That’s art. And being Native, that's a huge part of my culture. It's not frybread. It's stuff I can't pronounce, but I learned a lot through that. And I also love vintage stuff. Being in Amanda’s space and seeing her old letterpress was also pretty amazing.
[NR] What was it like using that big press or trying something new that you hadn’t tried before?
[AML] Horseplay was something I'd never experienced before. Noticing how we breathe within ourselves and how we move our bodies together, was so much information that I hadn’t thought of before. It turned into a collective, collaborative peace. I wrote poetry afterwards and I was like, “Wow, I learned a lot.” Another visit that helped me step out of my comfort zone was Joy’s. I hadn't sat and drawn in a really long time and it was such a chill experience. And I feel like we were able to get to so many deeper spots in our conversation, because it was just like, we're gonna talk about these things and how they relate to our practices and we're gonna make the time to do it.
[JC] For my work, it predominantly has been two dimensional. It's been exciting to experiment outside of that, especially throughout this year. But seeing how conversation can unfold while people are also doing something else simultaneously that engages your mind in a different way, has been super interesting. It was a lot of physical and visual and verbal engagement. In the end, you're making a mess, but it's a good mess that you're making. The opportunity that I feel like has been the most exciting piece of this year is creating a space to talk to one another. I love how our discussions tended to snowball. I think it helped us learn from each other and learn things that we can experiment with or ask more questions about. That was another way we engaged with each other. Like, “You spoke about this and I want to understand it more. How can we work with each other and engage with each other further?”
[LS] I'd like to mention something about the Alternate Currents program. As you can probably tell, a lot of what happens in this program is this sort of flattening of a hierarchy of teachers and students. We all get to be teachers. We all offer something that is related to our expertise. And many of us become students in those moments. And then we all get to share those roles. I think that builds confidence in a lot of ways. And it's also a very vulnerable position to be in. It's both of those things all year long, all the time. I think being in both of those positions with a group of people that you trust over time, builds this sense of solidarity. And so the resource sharing goes in multiple directions.
[NR] Exactly. That’s one of the things that makes this program an alternative to an MFA you’d find in a traditional educational system. How did sharing resources during our site and studio visits in 2023 help you envision or put into practice new ways of working that invite collaboration and working collectively to respond to some of the big systemic level changes that artists face?
[AH] Something came up when you were talking. My whole thing is having children able to participate in art practice. I gave birth a week before our first meeting. The whole year, for me, has very much been marked by new parenthood. And I brought my baby to several site visits. During Joy’s, my daughter was sitting with me drawing with a marker for the first time. I went to Lauren’s Horseplay session with my baby strapped to my chest. It felt amazing to be in spaces as a new parent, when so much of the world is not so friendly to babies, and what babies could potentially do to the soundscape of the place, or the smell of the place. It was nothing but affirming. Every time I brought her somewhere related to Alternate Currents, including to some of the panels, people were so accommodating. I think that it's helped me to not internalize this dominant idea that someone shouldn’t show up just because the circumstances of their life might cause an interruption. The experience of being a parent in this space has been really affirming.
[AML] I'd say too, as an artist, on a personal level, this past year has helped me think outside of myself, as far as why I make art. How do I want to communicate with people? Instead of just, well, this is what I want to say, I think about other people’s perspectives and how different perspectives inform the ways people respond to creative work. It's turned my thinking around to focus on the whole exchange. There's a secret language between the viewer and the maker, know what I mean?
[MS] I remember when I first heard the comparison to the MFA program. I was like, cool, because I actually didn't finish my MFA program in San Francisco, but I had the greatest time in my life, so it's okay. And I've learned so much. I’ve felt so well taken care of throughout this whole experience. This whole idea of sharing resources and coming together, helps get so much done. There was a giant pile of mulch that had been haunting me for weeks at one of my garden projects. The group, and some other people helped out one day, and it was done so quickly. Everybody was really kind and all of the weeds in the sunflower garden got taken care of, and it was just a really beautiful thing. Not being able to partake in the actual work, because my back was out that day, was kind of a cool experience because I could sit back and watch everybody come together and do the things they were doing. And it wasn't easy work. It was hard work.
And that's sharing resources. So is learning more about people's craft. If I ever have to make a sign or something, my mind goes to Amanda. I think about how I can send people her way. That type of networking comes into play. Sharing resources helps us integrate each other into this society, which needs artists.
[AH] That’s one of the cool things about resource sharing. It builds this catalog in your mind of who has a kiln, who has a press, who has other resources. It’sl the same with my press equipment. I don't use this all the time. I wish I used it more. But if anybody else can use it, I want them to. People in Omaha are doing interesting things and when you actually have conversations with the people and shared access to resources, it feels like a much stronger connection. It's like neural pathways, right? I'm more likely to go to a movement workshop now, because I've been to one. I'm more likely to try glazing some pottery, because I've done it. I think that, the more we can understand what we all bring to the table, the more the more connected we become.
[LS] Thanks for sharing that. One of my takeaways this year, thinking about what we've all experienced, is this spirit of generosity and wanting to share all the things that we have. We've probably all experienced ways in which artist communities can work in a barter economy or with other forms of non-monetary exchange. I think artists are adept at that because we're creative in the ways that we find resources and communicate with other artists about what we have and what we can offer. That’s important and it really feels like a defining feature of the last year.
To close out, Art and Alex are going to offer some of their thoughts and takeaways.
[AM] Hi, everyone. I'm Artur Malika. I am a visual artist and I also do some guerrilla performance stuff. If you see me somewhere serving some cake, come say ‘hi.’
I came into this group as a baby. I had just graduated school and I felt really lost. I felt like I had lost my community, in a way and I was just really confused. You know, the institution teaches you certain things, but they don't teach you what it is like out there. It's rough. What does it mean to maintain a creative practice in this capitalist hellscape? I was lucky enough this year to have so many great examples of so many in, and outside, of this group.
I wonder about the questions we asked one another constantly because some of them scare me. How do you juggle parenthood and being an artist? How do you work within an institution while trying to actively dismantle parts of it that don't work? There’s been no gatekeeping in this group and we’ve shared all the info and resources that we can. I think that's our power. The question that I wrestled with, and I'm sure all of us have, is how do you dismantle the system, while being in the system. For me, it's from the bottom up. It's something you have to choose every single day.
[AJ] That’s right. I'm Alex, I make beep-boops on my computer. Something I've been thinking about over the last year is a question Mi’oux put to the group. She asked how we colonize time as imperialist citizens? And that's been tickling my brain and extends to how we think about memory too and how memory works in the mind; how capitalism uses consumerism to hijack that apparatus of repetition and desire. Casey, would you talk about your project for the publication? I think it relates.
[CAW] Yeah. We talk a lot about revolutionary struggle, and we talk a lot about the problems that we're facing and the capitalist hellscape we’re living in to use Art’s term. How do we get through that? I decided for my contribution to skip all that and assume that we've done it already. We're living in the perfect world. We've achieved it. The revolution has been fought and won. Is it blood in the streets? I don't know. Is it peace and love? I don't know but we've done it. We finally achieved that perfect world. Go us. Where do you want to go? Where do you live? What restaurant still exists in this perfect world? I’m a chef. That’s important to me. What does our food system look like in this perfect world? How do we share a meal? How do we congregate? I wanted to think through those questions for my contribution to the publication. Are there still struggles in a perfect world? I think there might be.
[AJ] Thanks, Casey. As a very doomy, gloomy guy, who doesn't see much hope for humanity, and as the end continues to express itself, I think having spaces like this, where we can un-perform capitalism and challenge the structural integrity of this system, helps us imagine a more ideal world and burn what we have now to the fucking ground.
[Audience Member] I have a question. I see this as very revolutionary, the way you're setting apart the idea of art as a commodity, as a product, as part of an economic system. So, my question deals with language? How do you talk about your work outside of those terms? Outside of product or commodity?
[LS] Thank you for that question. I think language is really important and really difficult. I’m thinking about terms of process versus product, for instance. I think work that generates a profit, whether it's time based work, or something you sell, is of course important and has its place. We live in capitalism, and we're all participants, and it’s part of our reality. I think many of us live on this fringe of how far we can push experimental forms when their value isn’t fully known. That feels like a really important place and a very fun and risky place to live. I’m speaking for myself here in that I live in that place and I also make commodifiable work. I live in both of those places. I've certainly created performances, with ticket sales and so forth. But I'm also interested in creating experiences that I cannot scale, for an audience of two, and there is no profit motivation. Thinking in that way allows me to work in new ways with new ideas.
[CAW] I'm a chef. I work in a very commodified art form. I cook food for a wage every day. I came here from a 12 hour kitchen shift. And one of the ways I've tried to come at this is that anybody in this room can cook food worthy of being called art. The way I try to approach the art of it is not about the thing itself, it is not about the product, it is more about the coming together. It's about gathering, and bringing together people and resources and ideas and experiences and that sort of interconnectivity. It occurred to me, while we're sitting here in a gallery, that semantically a gallery is both a space where you experience artwork but the word ‘gallery’ can also be used to describe a group of people. I try to focus on that point of view. How does the work, any artwork, bring people together? What kind of value does it create out of interpersonal experience? I focus on that more than the raw meat of it, if that makes sense.
[AH] For me, it's not necessarily about a replacement of the terms we're using, but more about being intentional with what resources we put where. If I have something that's going to be a product, because I need money to survive, then what am I willing to put into it? And what am I going to withhold from it for myself? When I make work, understanding the density of value of that work, outside of what amount of money might be paid for it, is a framework for thinking through the questions of what I’m willing to spend and what I’m not willing to spend on a thing. It's fair to point out that we're able to have these conversations, because we're supported by Amplify. They give us financial resources and compensate us for our time within this group so we can meet and talk about these things.
[NR] For me,as much as I have the privilege now of being picky when it comes to sales, in the past there have been times in my life where an acting gig check is dinner. That’s the reality we live in and we all have to navigate that as individuals and together as participants in this economy. I think having spaces like this that are built just for thinking about alternatives and how we can do this differently, is super important.
[VSPS] I find this question fascinating, because language fascinates me. In a lot of our conversations as a cohort, the idea of a product and what it is and what we call it is a very colonial conversation, because we're being hamstrung by English–this inanimate language. The thing I’ve always cherished is that artmaking in my heritage and in my Anishinaabe family, is just something everybody does. It doesn't necessarily mean you're good at it. It wasn't like everybody's a fantastic beader, but the impetus to create is inherent in being human. I struggle with conversations that ask us to compartmentalize that because to commodify it and put it into this very Western, very colonial framework discounts the fact that there's also a spiritual exchange that goes into creating. For me, I've started switching the term ‘product’ with ‘creation’ for that reason. I try to open my awareness and go into making with the integrity of knowing I'm making this for these reasons and then I can find different ways of describing what it is that I'm making and step into that spirit that underlies every bit of that creation.
[LS] Thank you for that question and for this expansive discussion. Please stick around, grab a book, and thank you all again for coming.
*This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
2023-24 Alternate Currents Cohort Members:
Joy Cotton is a mixed media artist living in Omaha. Joy uses a combination of pencil, acrylic, oil to create paintings and murals. She creates pieces that hold a great significance to personal emotions, like happiness, sadness, anger, and depression. The characters she makes depict different forms of fantasy and realistic figure drawings. These works contain multiple layers of textures and different types of painting applications. A graduate of University of Nebraska at Omaha Joy often works with other artists and organizations within the Omaha arts community. For the past two years she has worked on projects with Omaha Summer Arts Festival (OSAF), Benson First Fridays (BFF), and Midtown Crossing Sunny Chair project. Interacting, building relationships and collaborating with innovative individuals has shown her the interconnectedness of the art community. Through these interactions, observations, and personal projects she has continued to define and develop her artistry.
Amanda Huckins is a Nebraskan poet whose work has been published in booklet form as "Trying to End the War" (merrily merrily merrily merrily, 2017) and featured in A Dozen Nothing (adozennothing.com), among other places on paper and online. In her weekday hours, Amanda is an Early Head Start educator and participates in building the brain architecture for social emotional and cognitive development in infants and toddlers. In addition to her paid work, Amanda is a grassroots organizer who works alongside fellow community members to build self-determination, forge non-transactional relationships, and create radical free spaces (such as past DIY spaces The Commons in Lincoln, NE and Media Corp. in Omaha). She is also a letterpress printer who produces posters and other ephemera in her garage print studio, where she teaches typesetting to anyone who wants to learn.
Alex Jacobsen explores the interconnectedness of space, memory, and body primarily through psychoacoustics and somatic vibrations. Visually, they often use found electronics, liquids, and naked loudspeakers to create ceaselessly changing environments. In live performances, Alex often incorporates feedback, processed recordings, and amplified objects, creating a collectively remembered soundscape. In recent years, Alex has contributed music for a number of film and dance projects, and their work has been featured across the United States, Mexico, and Europe, including Radiophrenia Art Festival, ESS’s Quarantine Concert Series, and Konvent Puntzero.
Aspen M. Laboy (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist from Omaha, Nebraska working in poetry, glass sculpting, installation, and film photography. Exploring concepts of environmentalism, internal identity, and cultural heritage, they are influenced by nature, science, and philosophy. Aspen has three published books; “Spirit” (2017), “The Quiet Lion” (2018), and “I MATTER” (2022). They co-hosted the poetry workshop “Corner’s Space” at KANEKO and have performed poetry in various galleries. In 2023, several of their selected poems were aired on “Friday Live'' with Nebraska Public Media through NPR. Their work has been exhibited at MoonRise Gallery, Fleabane Gallery, Goldsmith Silversmith, LUX Center for the Arts, Generator Space, Family of Things, and Union Street Gallery. Currently, Aspen is one of the selected artists for the Alternate Currents Cohort through Amplify Arts. In addition, they were awarded a scholarship for Penland School of Craft to attend in Summer of 2024.
Artur Melika is an Omaha-based, queer, Ukrainian-American artist. Melika received his BFA from University of Nebraska Omaha in December of 2022. Art’s current work explores the vastness of the queer experience and how it manifests for individuals coming from different backgrounds. His primary focus is in 2D mediums including printmaking, drawing and painting. Melika is also exploring guerrilla style performance-based work, in public and gallery settings.
Lauren Simpson is an Omaha-based choreographer and educator. She created Moving Truck, a mobile and socially-distanced show performed on front lawns at residences throughout Omaha in 2020. Recent projects include Smithereens, a site specific performance in Joslyn Art Museum with music by Omaha musician Miwi LaLupa, Celestial Real Estate, a collaborative performance at Generator Space gallery featuring local artists Nick Miller (painter), Celeste Butler (textile designer), and Dereck Higgins (musician), and Self-Leveling a performance at ODC Theater San Francisco in collaboration with dancer Galen Rogers and visual artist Emma Strebel. Collaboration across disciplines is at the heart of her art making.
Bilgesu Sisman is a writer, researcher, educator, and film programmer with a background in philosophy and a deep love for cinema. Bilgesu’s work as a creative writer and filmmaker focuses on female-driven narratives, often in the form of psychological and philosophical mysteries, thrillers and fantastical fiction that meditate on our encounters with the unknown - whether personal, existential, or socio-political. As a PhD candidate in Philosophy at DePaul University, Chicago, her thesis explores the political history of necroviolence (i.e. posthumous corporal violence) and argues for its formative role in state power. In addition to political philosophy, Bilgesu taught courses on subjectivity, psychoanalysis, affects, memory, trauma, and film theory. She currently works as the Interim Programming Director at Film Streams in Omaha, Nebraska.
Valerie St. Pierre Smith (White Earth Ojibwe enrolled descendant) nindizhinikaaz. A mischief maker, scholar, author, healer, and multidisciplinary artisan, Valerie has an eclectic creative background including fiber arts, sewing, painting, and costume/fashion design. Her design work has been seen across the country with highlights that include The Kennedy Center, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Mixed Blood Theatre, Sea World: San Diego, the National Museum of the American Indian, and Pilobolus Dance Theatre. A bit of a unicorn, Valerie’s creative research and scholarly work focuses on appropriation, inspiration, representation, and decolonization in western design practices. She is currently working on a book focused on decolonizing contemporary design processes for Routledge Press. As a mixed blood Anishnaabe-kwe, healer, and artisan, her work explores and is influenced by her experiences at the confluence of healing, social justice, traditional Anishinaabe teachings, and the power of identity. St. Pierre Smith holds a B.F.A from Stephens College, and an M.F.A from San Diego State University.
Mi'oux Stabler is a member of the Umoⁿhoⁿ Nation whose tribal lands are located in northeast Nebraska along the banks of the Missouri River. She is a proud mother, artist, land tender, and a dedicated cultural advocate. For the past decade, her endeavors have been geared towards the revitalization of traditional languages and land stewardship practices. She has traveled extensively, but currently focuses her work in the ancestral homelands of the Umoⁿhoⁿ people.
Casey Albert Welsch is a working class writer, cook, journalist, and organizer. Born and raised on a dryland Nebraska farm, he now lives and works in central Omaha. As a multimedia journalist in southeast Nebraska, Casey started a community news service at KZUM radio in Lincoln, was a founding member of the Dandelion Network mutual aid group, and was a regular contributor to Hear Nebraska and Perfect Pour magazine. These days he is focusing on his other life's work as a cook, working at Methodist Hospital, feeding the sick and those who care for them.
2023-24 Alternate Currents Cohorts Co-Facilitator:
Nathaniel Ruleaux (he/him) is an artist and culture worker currently located on unceded land of the Umónhon & Očhéthi Šakówiŋ in Nebraska. A partner, father, and member of the Oglala Lakota Nation, his work combines modern art with traditional Indigenous imagery. He is a founding member of Unceded Artist Collective. Recently, he created work for Opera Omaha’s 2023-2024 season and the national 2022 Indigenous Futures Survey. In addition to creating visual art, he is a classically-trained actor and educator. He received his MFA in Theatre from the University of Houston’s School of Theatre and Dance after receiving a BA in Theatre Performance at the Johnny Carson School of Theatre & Film at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.