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taking pictures around a campfire., as a public program and resource, invites artists to read in the round of a room as well as to orchestrate their own forms of gathering around them, to come closer as they tell you a story.

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Following a night of live readings and programs, the artists' stories, props, and modes for reading will remain and be available to browse and reimagine during open hours of the reading room, alongside a selection of publications and writing prompts curated by the artists and organizer. Their stories, configurations, and selected titles are a response to the following prompt: what technology(ies) are you thinking about in your practice and how might you consider that technology a prop in your practice in order to investigate it?  

 

The reading room’s framework, “taking pictures around a campfire.,” initiates from Giritlian's primary interest in photography and its technological lexicon that reveals the history of “taking” within imperial + colonial desires. If "taking" marked a shift away from “receiving” and towards a thinking of the world as a picture that could be/was destined to be conquered, and if we’re still "taking" screenshots and screen grabs, then “taking pictures around a campfire.,” this frame, begins with that ingrained choreography but connects it to a mode for gathering a public and a figurative source of light that prioritizes a huddle gathered to collectively imagine over hi-res representations. 

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Nora Chellew is an artist and native New Yorker. Her work combines poetry and informational text with three-dimensional structures. She has shown work in Baltimore, MD; Philadelphia, PA; and Athens, Greece. Nora currently teaches art to NYC kids through Creative Art Works.

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beck haberstroh is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and facilitator. haberstroh is a member of Soft Surplus and a co-founder of the nomadic learning community Millennial Focus Group and a performance residency called rehearsal. haberstroh is a 2019 Media Arts Fellow at BRIC and an incoming MFA candidate at the University of California, San Diego. 

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Fei Liu 刘斐 is a New York-based Chinese designer, artist, writer, and DJ exploring digital empathy and the narrative potential of interfaces.

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Katie Giritlian is an artist and cultural organizer based in NYC. Interested in actions of memorialization and the voice(s) of the image caption, she makes work, networks and publications with images + text and organizes group listening exercises.