Simple yet strange
As the roomful of voices rose and lowered, overlapped, and occasionally fell silent, it sounded like a séance was being performed in the dark Brehmer Theater on a Friday night in February. The crowd of students, faculty, staff, and community members read separate lines as they floated across the divided screen on the stage. “All has been said so far,” began part of the group. “So far,” echoed others.

Still image from the video abc by artist Ann Hamilton.

    Seated at a café table on the stage, artist Ann Hamilton and poet/literary critic Susan Stewart listened. “We’re going to animate time together,” Hamilton had told the audience members, who were given different colored dots that would indicate which part of the screen they read. “I have always wanted to do an experiment where people read together,” explained Hamilton. She had prepared the three-part reading by crossing John Keats’s poem “This Living Hand” with fragments from Stewart’s book Poetry and the Fate of the Senses.
    The event, which began with an informal conversation between Hamilton and Stewart, launched Hamilton’s exhibitions at both the Picker and Clifford Art Galleries, collectively titled Recto/Verso, which were on view until April 6.
    Hamilton is recognized internationally for her large-scale multimedia installations. The videos in Recto/Verso — a retrospective — combine repetitive motion with sound, often eliciting a visceral reaction from viewers. For example, Aleph is a close-up of stone marbles rolling around in a mouth, and the soundtrack is of the marbles scraping together.
    The exhibition in the Clifford Gallery featured two huge photographs by students who began working with Hamilton on a project called “i am camera” when she visited campus last September. Because she is also known as a master of low-tech image making, Hamilton suggested that students create pinhole cameras out of cardboard, aluminum foil, tape, and film. Students and staff then photographed various campus events and locations. The results were developed with the help of Professor Linn Underhill, who curated Hamilton’s exhibitions.
    Returning to campus in February, Hamilton first spoke about her work to approximately 150 students in Golden Auditorium, followed by dinner with a smaller group.
    “Ann’s work is strange — brilliant, but strange,” said Alex Coco ’12, an art and art history major. “She has an acute sensibility that is hard to understand unless you listen to her speak about her work. I learned how strange the simple is.”
    Hamilton was the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation Visiting Artist in Residence; these events were also supported by an NEA Grant and the Colgate University Arts Council.

Slaking readers’ thirst
Joe Donnelly ’86 believes that readers have a thirst for long-form journalism and substantive narratives — a need he thinks is unfulfilled by the majority of today’s publications. He aspires to quench that thirst with the quarterly journal Slake: Los Angeles. The hefty — approximately 200-page — journal is replete with in-depth reporting that is complemented by poetry, fiction, photography, and art that ranges from illustrations to oil paintings to knitted sculptures.
    Donnelly co-founded the publication with Laurie Ochoa, who was editor while he was deputy editor at the LA Weekly alternative newspaper for a number of years. With a small staff and several “lifesavers/volunteers,” Donnelly and Ochoa have produced four issues since 2010. He had been “cooking up” the concept for Slake since 1994 when he was interning at the LA Times, but it wasn’t set into motion until he left the LA Weekly in 2008.
    “There’s a latent desire for rich narrative … to go deeper,” Donnelly said. “[Magazines] are conforming to a perceived attention-deficit-disorder country. We tend not to believe that is true, and we think our readers can handle what we give them.”
    What they give readers is creative content that is each contributor’s interpretation of the chosen theme for the issue. For example, Issue 3, War and Peace, featured an article on the collective-bargaining blowup in Wisconsin last winter, a fiction piece titled “In Bloom,” and a photo essay depicting a gang-ridden LA neighborhood. “War and peace was something that we felt was very much in the air, with the Arab Spring and the conflicts in other places. There was an outbreak of peace, but still so much war going on,” Donnelly explained.

Slake co-founder Joe Donnelly ’86

    The journal has a far-reaching scope in terms of its subject matter and contributors but, Donnelly said, Los Angeles is the hub. “Los Angeles is this incredibly dynamic, interesting, smart city. We want to be involved in the national discourse in the way that a city like Los Angeles has to be, because this is where the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century are really coming to the fore.”
    Even the publication’s name, in addition to meaning “quench” or “satisfy,” is derived from the City of Angels. When Donnelly started the publication, he was living in LA’s Silver Lake neighborhood, which locals shorten to “S’Lake.”
    This labor of love for Donnelly has been a challenge, not only because of the time devoted to the publication, but also because of the cost. In addition to his own investment, he has garnered support from friends and family, and recently held a fundraiser on Kickstarter, a platform for seeking financial backing of creative endeavors. Donnelly has met resistance from investors who are hesitant to finance a printed piece, but he and Ochoa believe that the beauty of their product needs to be held — and held onto.
    On their website, http://slake.la, they explain that Slake is “the next generation of print publications — collectible, not disposable; destined for the bedside table, not the recycling bin.”
    To read an excerpt from a short story co-written by Donnelly that ran in Slake’s second issue, check out Open mic (at right).

Blending art and science
A scientist wearing lace wings paces about the stage, while a blue-and-white “bird spirit,” also costumed in lace and feathers, sings her a birdcall. All the while, animations of cellular processes unfold on the dome above their heads. Needless to say, this was not your average science lecture.
    Anna Lindemann’s production of Theory of Flight, a multimedia performance blending art and science, was performed February 17 and 18 at Colgate’s Ho Tung Visualization Lab. The show depicts a scientist’s experiments on her own body that go awry as she becomes half-bird, half-woman in an attempt to grow wings.

The multimedia production Theory of Flight takes off in the visualization lab. Photo by Janna Minehart ’13

    Lindemann, a visiting assistant professor in the art and art history department, said the show is “intended to be an emotionally gripping and intellectually challenging experience” that integrates music, performance, animation, and evolutionary developmental biology. She hopes her audience will be “encompassed by a world of fantasy” while still learning something scientifically concrete about the processes that go on in the bodies of birds and humans — for example, the biological processes of limb growth and the evolutionary origins of flight.
    Lindemann, whose background includes evolutionary biology and ornithology, as well as integrated electronic arts, created Theory of Flight as her MFA thesis at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Part of the inspiration for the show came from her studies of eminent biologist John Saunders’s evolutionary experiments, which were, as she put it, “fabulous fodder for artistic projects.”
    The bird songs that Lindemann spent a summer recording in Indonesia inspired some of the music she composed for the show, and she represented DNA and cells through the animation of yarn and buttons projected on the dome of the Viz Lab.
    The performance was sponsored by the Colgate Arts Council as part of its series of interdisciplinary events in the arts and sciences. The audience also represented a blending of the arts and sciences: students from biology, film and media studies, and studio art all attended the shows.
    Even students who were not required to come for a specific class connected the show with their studies. Senior Carolyn Fox said she saw a crossover with her environmental science class: “The connection came from exploring how complex and dynamic systems in the environment are similar to the complicated systems of limb growth and flight like those explained in Theory of Flight.”
— Katie Rice ’13

Finesse of Tress
Long, short, braided, curly, straight, blond, black, or brown. No matter what type, we all have hair. Finesse of Tress, an event put on by Sisters of the Round Table (SORT) during their Africana Women’s Week, explores the politics of hair and its significance to people of all backgrounds.

Whether it’s long, straight, curly, or fuzzy, hair can be a defining feature, as students expressed at Finesse of Tress. Photo by Ashlee Eve ’14

    The event was hosted Saturday, March 3, at the Edge Café. Student performers, flanked by hair products, gave monologues about what their hair means to them. No matter their gender or race, each performer had a bone to pick with hair. After only a few testimonials, it became obvious that hair is linked deeply to identity for the performers. Whether a sexual, gender, or ethnic identity, their hair was the physical representation of their differences.
    Xavia Publius ’13 began the evening with a monologue about being a “gender outlaw” whose hair “is mask, Zorro.” This idea of hair as a gender and sexuality identifier was echoed by others throughout the night. For Caden Polk ’12, hair (or the lack thereof) was his lament; he talked about wishing that he could “please grow a mountain-man beard.” Andrea Finley ’13 spoke of her decision to cut her hair in a powerfully delivered poem, saying “as the hair fell, my life began to fall in order.” Yet, the night was not just a string of somber moments, but rather a boisterous one full of laughter. Melissa Melendez ’14 had the crowd laughing as she counted out her 18 hair products, and it was nothing short of hilarious when Lara Donahue ’14 did an impression of her grandmother asking about her hair.
    The performances lasted about an hour, and afterward the crowd interacted in a raffle drawing–turned–impromptu auction to raise money for a SORT sister and for the scholarship fund established in memory of Victor Krivitski ’12, who died last summer. Phi Delta Theta president Ian Woodward’s monologue encompassed the unity that Finesse of Tress hoped to promote. He spoke of shaving his head, along with the rest of his fraternity, in support of their brother Vic’s struggle with cancer and of their hair as “asserting not our individuality, but our community.”
    After watching the performances, Sammi Leroy ’14 remarked, “you don’t always think about hair as a uniting force, but it is. It’s something that connects all of us.”
— Katie Rice ’13

In February, students continued the spring-semester tradition of directing and performing The Vagina Monologues by female activist, playwright, and performer Eve Ensler. A cast of 30 told personal anecdotes — some humorous, some heart-wrenching — celebrating women. The group donated 90 percent of the profits to Vera House, which helps Syracuse-area victims of domestic violence. Photo by Janna Minehart ’13

Threads of Tradition
Rows of textiles patterned with bright chevron stripes and horses hang in Colgate’s Longyear Museum of Anthropology as part of the exhibition Threads of Tradition: Aymara and Quechua Textiles of the Andes.
    The exhibition, which runs until June 3, opened in March with a reception and gallery talk given by Kate Kelly ’12. Kelly had spent the summer researching and collating the exhibition with her adviser for the project, senior curator of the Longyear, Carol Ann Lorenz.

An Awayo woman’s mantle from Bolivia (photo by Warren Wheeler)

    An array of more than 70 objects — from knit hats and belts to baby wraps and coca leaf bags — provides a dazzling view of Andean hand-weaving skills and aesthetics. For many centuries, the people of the Andes Mountains in Peru and Bolivia fashioned textiles from the fibers of llamas, alpacas, and vicuñas. The textiles in this exhibition — most dating from the 1920s and up through the 1990s — demonstrate the aesthetic and cultural value still ascribed to weaving in the Andes today. Contemporary weavers, most of them women, continue to weave symbols of the Andean worldview into textiles that have both everyday and ceremonial functions.
    Many of the textiles in the exhibition depict the relationships between the cosmos and the local environment: geometric forms representing the sun and stars, abstract and naturalistic images of the flora and fauna, including felines, condors, the viscacha (a rodent), and cattle.
    A number of the textiles came with complete information, including names of weavers, regions, and exact dates that they were woven. When looking for pieces, Lorenz “wanted things that were indigenous weavings and for indigenous use.” For example, one coca bag in the exhibition had previously belonged to someone who added tassels to the bag upon becoming a leader in his region.
    Incorporating many facets of the traditional Andean life, all of the pieces are now a part of Colgate’s permanent collection.
— Katie Rice ’13

2012 Colgate Writers’ Conference
Writers of fiction, poetry, and memoir once again will be workshopping their manuscripts and immersing themelves in craft talks, panel discussions, readings, and informal conversations about the craft of writing, at the 17th-annual Colgate Writers’ Conference (CWC), June 17 through 23.
    The workshop faculty include Peter Balakian (poetry), Jennifer Brice (creative nonfiction), Greg Ames (short story), and Brian Hall (the novel) of Colgate’s faculty, as well as John Robert Lennon (the novel). Among those giving readings will be Nichole Bernier ’89 (The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.); Jennifer Smith ’03 (The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight; see Q&A with her on pg. 75); Bruce Smith, whose book of poems Devotions was a 2011 National Book Award finalist; Jim Shepard, whose story collection Like You’d Understand, Anyway was a National Book Award finalist; and Karen Shepard, three-time winner of Honorable Mentions in Best American Short Stories.
    In recent buzz about conference alumni successes, Dennis McFadden’s story “Diamond Alley” from his collection Hart’s Grove (Colgate University Press, 2010) was included in The Best American Mystery Stories 2011. After Salon published an excerpt from Lorraine Berry’s essay, “Our First Date was the Last Day of His Life,” it went viral and was tweeted by Roger Ebert; she sold the rights to a Hollywood producer. And former staffer Dana Spiotta’s Stone Arabia was named a fiction finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
    To learn more, or to register, visit cwc.colgate.edu.