Artist Talk: Stephanie Misa: Filipinos, Cannibalism, and Mothers Dancing on Tongues
A Conversation about Artistic Research & Process
Thursday, July 16, 12:30-1:30pm
How are new, time-based works created? What resources, methods, and approaches does an artist use to generate, reflect upon, and develop work that draws from interdisciplinary sources and inspirations? How does the work emerge and take shape? Where does it go? Join us for a discussion about artistic research and artistic process with Stephanie Misa.
Misa is developing a new performative lecture, “Filipinos, Cannibalism, and Mothers Dancing on Tongues,” which explores first languages (the “mother tongue”), her own included, and the complication this notion implies in contexts where the mother tongue is a purely spoken language outside of institutional (read-write) frameworks. In this piece, Misa questions power hierarchies implicit in institutionalized languages by putting forward oralities from the margin and their alternative forms of expression whose agency live in embodied forms of articulation. She argues that the embodiment of an orality, its containment in a colonized, disenfranchised, diasporic body, is exactly what gives it power. Orality is a way to access an intersectionality, one that ruptures the idea of bound cultures, and instead proposes that culture—by extension, language—is in perpetual flux, one that’s marked by creative becomings, but to do this we have to break down and re-digest what constitutes a “mother tongue”— to imbibe, expel, replenish, take shape—and sing, sing in a tongue blessed by many mothers.
RSVP by July 14 for Zoom login information: gallery@exeter.edu
Participants are encouraged to watch the first iteration of Misa’s piece ahead of time, as well as review several resources related to her artistic research. Links, attachments, and Zoom meeting information will be sent to participants.
About Stephanie Misa:
Born in Cebu City, Philippines, Stephanie Misa is a doctoral researcher at the University of the Arts Helsinki. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in Performative Arts & Sculpture. She holds a masters from the Interactive Telecommunications Program, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Misa examines complex and diverse histories through her video, writing, sculpture, installation, prints and curation. Recent show, grants, projects, and residencies include: the 9th Bucharest Biennale, Art Space Sydney, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, the Finnish Cultural Foundation, The Salon Series (Cebu & Manila, PH), WeltMuseum Wien, and the Yuka Tsuruno Gallery, among others. Misa was a recipient of the Kültür Gemma Bursary for Immigrant Artists in 2014.
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amont Gallery, Frederick R. Mayer Art Center, Phillips Exeter Academy