 and welcome to Discovery Night Foundation's program on the arts. Thank you for joining us. I'm Priya Sarkar. A new year has brought COVID-19 vaccinations along with those some hope for the end of the pandemic. Right now a lot of us are thinking back on the past year and reflecting on the trauma and growth that we've gone through. Today we'll explore the experience of creating art amid distress and amid a year of unprecedented challenges and the unexpected gifts and lessons that come with it and that we can take forward into the future. So we have two guests today who will be in conversation on this topic. Jennifer Harge is a choreographer and the founder and artistic director of Hard Dance Stories in Detroit. She's a past winner of the Night Arts Challenge and a Kresge fellow. She'll be sharing her experience developing the latest iteration of her performance piece Fly Drown over the past several months through a residency and artistic exchange called Trade School, established by our other guest, Sarah Bishop Stone. Sarah is founder of the Philadelphia thing. She connects and supports artists, producers and curators helping them to advance their artistic practice. Jennifer and Sarah, welcome to the show and thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having us. So as you both know, I recently had the opportunity to tune in to an episode or an edition of Trade School in which Jennifer, you shared your latest evolution of Fly Drown. And I was really struck by how both of you in your artistic practice, Jennifer, and also Sarah, in your evolution of the artist residency that is Trade School had to adapt to what was happening and how you kind of worked through evolving your artwork or evolving the residency itself. And I think, Sarah, we started talking about Trade School, I think, along with your collaborator, Sharina Zab, of Host of People, which is a Detroit theater organization before the pandemic, certainly, maybe in fall of 2019. And so, yeah, I know then we reconnected and just kept the conversation going. And, you know, I and our team at Knight Foundation were just really, you know, interested and impressed by how you kind of just started to think differently about what that exchange and residency could be for artists and what artists needed in this time. And then, of course, Jennifer, I was so struck by, you know, your sharing your artistic process as you iterated on Fly Drown, and as you talked with your collaborators on that piece about just what that experience was like coming through this process. And so I'm really excited for our viewers to also hear you two in conversation about what you've learned and maybe what you discovered about yourselves and your work that you might take forward into the future. I just quickly want to let viewers know that we will have a brief Q&A toward the end after Jennifer and Sarah have a conversation. I'll be back toward the end of the show to moderate that. So please put your questions for them into the chat function of whatever platform you're watching it on. And I think we'll also have, we have some ways that you can switch to another platform if you're not seeing a chat function. So if you're watching from our website, you can head to Facebook or YouTube to ask questions in the comments or to submit your questions with hashtag nightlife on Twitter. And then our team will be able to submit those questions for Jennifer and Sarah. So to start the two of you off in your conversation, first we'd like to give viewers a taste of Fly Drown by sharing the trailer. Let's go to that. Hi, Sarah. Hey, Jennifer. Every time I see that work, I'm struck again. It's so beautiful. So thank you for sharing that. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. And for those watching a little context from that, about that trailer, that is, sorry, first of all, my name is Jennifer Hodge. Hello. Thank you, Pia, and Knight for having us here today to talk through our current artistic practices and lives. I am a base and what we now know as Detroit on Anishinaabe land. And I am the artistic director of movement collective in Detroit called Harsh Dance Stories. And the latest piece that I created with a team of Detroit based collaborators is called Fly Drown. It began as a performance installation of social sculptures that took place at the Detroit artist market in 2019. And it was a piece thinking about Black women and domesticity in the ways in which Black women have used their homes as a site of refuge and a site of self-discovery. And so that took place in the fall of 2019. And since then, has been branching into other worlds, film being one of those iterations. And so the film trailer you just saw is the beginning of our next area of research, thinking about what could be excavated through telling the story through film. And that's something that we have been thinking about pre-pandemic, but when the opportunity to work with trade school came about, we were able to really amplify what it would mean to think about the piece cinematically and not just in the live or live performance. So I'll talk a little bit more about what we did through our trade school experience. For me, Sarah, you could talk a little bit about the trade school program and then I can talk about my own experience with trade school. Perfect. Yeah, thank you. And let me echo Jennifer's gratitude for the invitation from Priya and from Knight. I am here in Philadelphia on Lenny Lenape land. And the program trade school, which is this kind of signature program of my organization, the Philadelphia thing started as a way to connect artists between cities and to connect artists to other artists and to connect them with resources that might advance their practice beyond just having to go through the kind of few and kind of rarefied presenting institutions in other cities, but instead connect artists to other artists and knowing that they know best kind of the resources in each city and how to make work there. So when we were first chatting with Knight about trade school, it was obviously going to be a physical exchange that we were going to bring a Philly artist to Detroit. We were going to bring Detroit artists to Philly to share practice, to perform, and also to share meals and pot luck and all of those good things that happen in pre-pandemic times. When the pandemic hit, it became really clear that kind of the most urgent way that we could support artists was with direct unrestricted funding. And really, I mean, what has been like both surprising and also not surprising at all is sort of we felt like, you know, Shereen Azab and I, Shereen, as Priya mentioned, is my partner curatorial and producing partner in Detroit. And we really thought we were kind of lowering the stakes, saying like, just we'll give you a big bunch of money and like, you barely have to have any outcome. Just use it for whatever you need to use it for. We understand this time has completely decimated our industry and the opportunities for performing and for making money that artists normally use to survive. And so if you need to use this to pay your rent, if you need to use this to, you know, like we have all we want to do is check in with you at the end of the year and see what you did. And it turns out actually that, you know, a couple of things happened. One is that our timeline really extended. And that's something that we have been hearing from artists, too, that the pace of everything has kind of shifted. And by kind of extending that timeline, it really, yeah, it offered some opportunities to explore unexpected places. And yeah, so we were really like delighted by to see what folks had come up with at the end of this time. Yeah. Something, two things you just said that were really helpful for me as an artist in the trade school program. But unrestricted funds is like, needs to be the way. Yeah. Because in that, so for us, I walk into trade school with one idea. And I was able, though, because of the, because of something being unrestricted, to completely flip that idea halfway through the process without having to be like, is that going, we were on course, you know what I mean? And I'm thinking too, if it were to have been a live performance, and I decided two weeks prior to like flip the thing on its head beyond just like choreographically doing that. Because I do that as a, as a director, but just like the crew of folks in the, you know, in the piece. But that would really affect a lot of other people to have done that kind of flip halfway through, like a production flip, basically, in a thematic flip. And so I think there's something about it being unrestricted funds to, to use how we need it to use them. And then to also like be able to listen to what the piece is trying to do, and not have to fit into some particular kind of exhibition model. That could work, but like, I'm now I'm trying to make it work. And so yeah, I'm just thinking, I'm just being reminded of how important it was to, for the stakes to be low enough to like, make changes, play with that, come back to something. And then really, for us, it was like, well, whatever we have by that Thursday is what we'll show. Like trying to, you know what I mean? I mean, my team of collaborators are just really brilliant artists who, you know, like in serious about their crafts as we all are. And so they're like, we're not going to show anything. But it still was a way to be like, but if we have to start and stop during the showing, or if we have to do whatever could have been the case, like there, I always felt like there was space to do that. Yeah, it's almost, I mean, we we kind of lowered the stakes to make it informal presentation, but also, but also like just enough to give you a deadline, you know, something just just like just enough of a timeline. So that, you know, I think like timelines and deadlines can be so supportive for artists and trying to do that in a way, you know, I heard somebody describe 2020 as like the year of the rough draft, like the way that we're just not expecting anything to be finished or polished or or complete, you know, but in a way that's also, you know, that was also the idea of the exchange where the, you know, in instead of instead of being able to bring artists together, you know, in physical proximity and like actual shared practice or or those kind of informal, like alchemical conversations that happen, you know, I think sharing sharing these works between, you know, in these kind of almost arbitrary pairings, I have to say it ended up kind of being like, you know, who was who who felt ready at what point in the timeline and who was able to share on those nights, but it was all always like so so interesting to identify where artists from Philly from Detroit are grappling with similar questions or or, you know, asking, yeah, similar, similar modes, there was a lot of ritual, there was a lot, you know, there were just these really, really rich themes that kept coming out and and and being able to like dip into all of these works at a point in the process was I think really rich for that. And it really, for me, it helped to then like see where we were going where like in 2020 in that rough draft space, like I wasn't even thinking about what was happening after it was like true like operating like a 10%. And like that didn't necessarily feel bad to me, like I'd like to operate at a 10% for long periods of time. I need to operate on like a low frequency creatively like that for a long period of time just to know what needs to happen next. And so now but like having that deadline, as you said, then like it propelled something after having that kind of low like I've got more clarity on what we could do like what the possibilities were moving forward. Yeah, I feel that too. We really, I mean, we had we had a few meetings of the kind of the whole cohort over Zoom, obviously, and and definitely one of the common threads was really about about pace and how, you know, sometimes we're used to like using adrenaline to finish our work and to and to get it out there and the kind of removal of that. And instead, making it a little more introspective or has definitely been a been a common thread. Sure. I see there are questions in the chat. And I'm back. That's my view. Thank you guys. We do we have some great questions from folks and and your your conversation has sparked some questions from me as well. So we'll weave in as much as we can. You know, so one question is that's been shared by a viewer. And I might I might tie this a little bit to to Jennifer, to your comment that you made earlier about how Fly Drown has evolved from from this earlier iteration. The question is, have the force changes of COVID-19 to performing arts change the accessibility of the field for aspiring artists and for audiences? And I wonder this, I would love to hear, you know, from from each of you, if you have thoughts on this, Jennifer, I also was just curious as I thought back to something you shared about how you were thinking of using, you know, of telling the story filmically. And so curious about that because your background originates in performance. But I also remember during the trade school sharing, you were talking about starting to think of it almost like an installation piece. And then of course, weaving and film. And so yeah, how do you think about that as a performing artist? Yeah, something I've been able to learn just about Fly Drown, period. And I think the trade school experience just helped me to like get even clearer on this particular learning is like how to see my work prismically. And so I feel like the live performance was like one side, but there's like there, there are other sides to the prisms, right? And so I feel like the film is like helping me to understand another side. And so I'm thinking about how my own work can like have many lives under one umbrella so that I'm not tied to any rigidity around what I'm making. Or like any fixed notion of what I do. But like it felt like I was able to like, what is that? Like step into things I wouldn't like call myself like a director, like a film director. But as Devon and I are working, like I'm clear, I can clearly see like how we need to be moving, you know what I mean? I'm like, oh, that is direction though. And so I think as an aspiring artist, something I would say is that like, we actually know how to do lots of things in the field, even if we haven't ever called ourselves those things. I don't, I was never coming from a visual artist prior to Fly Drown. I think making the installation and making choices about the installation helped me understand that was tied into my practice too. It wasn't just movement. Great, thanks. And Sarah, I mean, you're as a curator too, and even through, whether within trade school or other work that you do, you're working with folks in a lot of different disciplines including certainly different performing arts disciplines. What are you seeing in what the work you're doing or the folks that you're working with? I mean, it definitely has been a time of reskilling for everyone. You know, when we first, we had selected just like the, in terms of the timeline for this iteration of trade school, we had already selected the Philly participating artists like right before the pandemic hit last year. And at the beginning of it, we had kind of these check-in meetings with everybody and heard from all of these artists like, I am a live artist. I don't make digital work. I don't, like this is not who I am. This is not what I do. And I think as the emergency-ness of it passed and the kind of like settling into a little bit of a new normal set in, I think, you know, obviously all of these folks still are primarily make work that is about being physically present. But I shouldn't say all, we are working with some really, like really cool intermediate artists as well. But there has really been an opening in terms of what the affordances of the digital space are and also filmmaking and music videos and, you know, all of the other ways that it's possible to like approximate liveness in the digital space and create sort of complementary pieces that, as I think as Jennifer said, kind of like add to this three-dimensional, multi-dimensional kind of body of work. Yeah. You know, I'm curious from both your perspectives, how much do you feel like this, you know, shift or just embracing of using different, you know, different skills, different, you know, sometimes digital, you know, means is driven, is being driven by having to create differently, like that creative impulse and how much of it is driven by the just necessity of that's kind of one of the, that's like the main way people are consuming right now or engaging with art. Obviously, I know those are not disconnected, but just as I think of like my sort of practicing artist hat, you know, like I'm curious for you personally or just what you're observing, where do you think that balance is? Like on what end of that spectrum or exchange is this, like this momentum coming to use digital means? Well, I would say the move wasn't always digital. You know, at one of the, one of the participating artists, Emily Bate from Philadelphia shifted, I mean, and she's a musician and composer who makes choral works and that is, you know, kind of like the last, the last thing that we're expecting to come back is people singing together in a room. And she created a community supported art practice where she made kind of songs and tiny sculptures and poems and zines and offered a subscription service. So that it was, it was kind of like the opposite of a digital experience where you got this really tactile participatory piece of art from her that also, I mean, it also included some links and some some audio tracks and things like that. But, but moving in the direction of kind of more more kind of bespoke boutique personal art making too. I think I am a person and artist who is like, what do we have? And then move from there. And so, and so I think for, for the Fly Drown team, it was like, okay, so we know we also one thing that's important to say is that Devin, the filmmaker has been documenting my process from Fly Drown and the piece before since like 2018. And so we also had two years, three years worth of footage of like an archive that we really hadn't had an opportunity to really be with. Even in the Fly Drown film, we haven't even touched on what is inside the archive. And so I think it was necessarily just like, we have to go digital. But it was like, well, we have 100 gigs of video documentation. We should look at it. Where we are right now, it wasn't, thankfully, it wasn't like this drastic accommodation we had to make with ourselves. But like, we had, we already have these things. And now we have people watching, interacting through the arts in this digital way. And so it's like, how can we, how can the two meet each other? So I'm gonna, I'm gonna weave in, I feel like we're hearing threads of this answer to this question from the audience. But what changes in your creative process or your curation process will stay with you even after this pandemic is over? Well, I feel like I was a slow settling processor my whole life. And I, but I used to like try to push against that because the world was always moving so quickly. But I feel like now that a lot of people have slowed down and joined a different pace, I feel like I can settle into like what my actual pacing is and not feel what is the word? Sorry, my brain is doing a thing, but not feel obligated to move it and outside of what I do. Excuse me, how I move. And I will echo the sort of complimentary side of that as a curator and organizer of arts events, which is that it's really been fruitful to move at the pace of the work, letting the pace of the idea of the container kind of drive those lines. And, and it's kind of opened up, I think, an opportunity to rethink the cycles of these, of these programs, what we assume are annual or we assume are like, you know, every year, but it doesn't actually need to live inside that, that Gregorian calendar in a, in as predictable a way as we're kind of clinging to most of the time. Yeah. Thank you. Those are great insights. I think I'll just ask each of you to share, you know, as sort of a closing question before we wrap up. What are you looking forward to this year? It can be artistic or not. Dinner parties. I mean, that's a little bit glib, but also I really, one of the pieces of this, the conceptual pieces of trade school that we're still kind of mourning is the idea of bringing everybody together to share a meal. And, and I hope that we'll be able to do that in the future. I love a dinner party. So let me know. Let me know. I feel like people, especially during the summer, there was like, really beautiful dreaming happening with artists in particular. And I am looking forward to like that continue to dream me and I'm curious to see how those dreams manifest. For myself, but as I was listening to other artists from across the world really have space and time to do that. I'm just excited to see how those take off. Yeah, there's an opportunity to rethink so many assumptions in our field and in the way that we work. And, and I'm excited to have artists lead that conversation. Absolutely. Well, thank both of you for being here and leading this conversation with with us and with any everyone watching for sharing of yourselves. And I think really inviting us all to think differently about what we are doing and how we might approach this year to do beautiful dreaming. I love that phrase. I'm totally gonna you start using it. And, and I want to also thank everyone at home or wherever you're tuning in from for joining us today. Thank you for sharing your questions. I want to let you know that you can find more information about our other episodes of Discovery on Knight's website, kf.org. And please join us again next Thursday for an episode of the Future of Democracy. And we're going to take you out with some great music. Our intro music was composed by Chris Barr. Our exit music is by Akron Jazz Artist Theron Brown. And until next time, we wish you good health, safety, and joy in art. Take care.