Spotlighting 2024 Sessions
Land Stewardship Skill-Share
What does land stewardship have to do with art? What does art have to do with land stewardship? What are the aesthetics of regeneration? These questions were at the heart of our monumental Land Stewardship session, which kicked off the summer 2024 season with a commitment to art, ecology, and interdisciplinariy cross-pollination. We spent most of the week outside, despite unseasonably cold June weather, with a diverse group of fellows and collaborators sharing curiosity and knowledge about regenerative practices. A new compost pile and vegetable garden were created that nourished us all summer, and we planted a batch of apple seedlings that will hopefully bear fruit in years to come. Workshops in regenerative farming, biodiversity stewardship, deep listening, cooking, fermenting, soap-making, and foraging filled the rest of this unforgettable week.
with Betsy Damon, Sandra Watanabe, Anie Stanley, Wendy Townsend, Mark Keoppen, Shelley Spector, Nicole Peyraffite & Pierre Joris, Donna Cleary, Alex A. Jones, Andy Clibanoff, Shamadhi Alarcon, Henry Earls, Claire Lima, Rosie Lenz, Kim Nguyen, Paula McEnroe, Lynda Colarossi, Hal Klavsen, Rachel Hahn, Wills Phillips | with support from Cooper Union and the Mildred’s Lane Fellowship Fund
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Bibliophantics IV:
Interspecies Dialogues
This June, The weeklong literary retreat Bibliophantics IV: Marx for Cats, and Other Interspecies Dialogues was held in partnership with the Deep Water Literary Festival, with visiting scholars Leigh Claire La Berge and Oscar Salguero, facilitated by Mildred’s Lane Minister of Strategic Possibilities Alex A. Jones. Conversations explored interspecies dialogues and class struggle, questioning the limits of communication, personhood and political subectivity. Over many beautiful meals, we discussed the intersection of emancipation-work and death-work in our eating habits. Working deeply through La Berge’s Marx For Cats: a Radical Bestiary, we took seriously the significance of satire and play in Marxist critique. We practiced fox-walking and echolocating as we looked and listened for the multispecies ecosystem of Mildred’s Lane, thinking through the “bestiary” as a pantheon of nonhuman teachers. Despite a tremendous heatwave, this session was a blast -- thanks to all our participants and collaborators:
with Leigh Claire La Berge, Oscar Salguero, Norberto Gomez Jr., Ollie Goss, Shay Salehi, Erin Montanez, Benedicte Thoraval, Alex A. Jones, Hermione Spriggs, Kyle Berlin, Wills Phillips, Nick Bennett, Caroline Preziosi | with support from Montgomery College, Tyler School of Art & Architecture, and the Mildred’s Lane Fellowship Fund
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In the Cloud of Unknowing:
Encounters With the UFO Phenomenon
How can we study the UFO Phenomenon through its traces in stories and images? How does what we see in the sky depend on our cultural context? These were just a few of the guiding questions that informed our fascinating July session on the folkloric and uncanny dimensions of the UFO Phenomenon, “In the Cloud of Unknowing.” Facilitated by visiting artist-scholars Robert Williams and Bryan McGovern Wilson, this ambitious three-week session culminated in a hybrid-online symposium featuring noted researchers on the UFO Phenomenon in the U.S. and the U.K. The session group experimented with transmitting information across time and space throughout the session via cinema studies, virtual artist visits, and optical devices.
with Dr. Robert Williams, Bryan McGovern Wilson, Heimir Snaer, Danielle Draik, Michelle Hinojosa, Marianne McCarthy, Amanda Nedham, Michael Staniz, Sean Salstrom, Darren Banks, Julia Simon | with support from Rice University, RISD Glass, University of the Arts, and the Mildred’s Lane Fellowship Fund | Symposium participants: Dr. Jeffrey Kripal, Andrew Robinson & Dr. David Clarke, Richard Klein, Robert George, Camden Roy, J. Tyler Odle, Cóilín O'Connell, olivier, AB Gorham, Dr. Jane Topping, Mark Pilkington, Rebecca Krinke, Amanda Nedham & John Allison, Robert Cozzolino, Riccardo Zagorodnev
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QuERC II:
CREATION/BECOMING/CHAOS
The Queer Ecologies Research Collective (QuERC) explores experimental and collaborative research methods within the emerging critical framework of queer ecology. 2024 was the QuERC’s second year hosting a retreat at Mildred’s Lane. For this gathering, entitled CREATION/BECOMING/CHAOS, the collective explored performance as a mode of critical engagement and “rigorous play.” Workshops investigated dada, drag, clowning, and cabaret as strategies for subversive and experimental ideas, leading up to a memorable Social Saturday cabaret featuring guest emcee John Jarboe and performances by the QuERC of work generated during the session-week. Week II of the session slowed down the pace of embodied research, featuring plant walks, seminars, screenings, and deep listening.
with Alex A. Jones, Nick Bennett, Darian Razdar, Cy X, Liza Pittard, Hermione Spriggs, Suzy Lykins, Jessica Chen, Wei Wu, Sara Hodaie, Tyna Ontko, John Jarboe | With support from Virginia Commonwealth University, NYU Gallatin, and the Mildred’s Lane Fellowship Fund
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Disentanglement / Re-Embodiment
The summer 2024 season came to a rapturous end with the beautiful performance of The Collective Nest by the Disentanglement/Re-Embodiment session group. Constructed on the edge of the Mildred’s Lane pond, the sculptural nest was both a proscenium and a gathering space for community during our last Social Saturday of the summer. Disentanglement/Re-Embodiment is the culmination of a multiyear project of extrication from gender-based oppression, undertaken by Jill Goldman and collaborators through film and performance works, many of which have been developed at Mildred’s Lane. Throughout the session-week, this remarkable group of collaborators explored intersectional feminism, matriarchy, embodied politics, and shapeshifting.
with Jill Goldman, J. Morgan Puett, Laetitia Barbier, Leticia Layson, Cristine Gillespie, Ame Simon, Susan Elliott, Lauren Strogoff, Annie Finch, Ame Simon, Annabelle Renshaw, Samiha Tasnim, Alex A. Jones
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