Summer Happening
Created by the Artists and Scholars in Residence Committee, the Summer Happening is an opportunity to create and reflect during a week of collaborative artmaking and research. The event is open to faculty, students and community members.
Summer Happening May 7-9, 2025
Outside the Circle: A Creative Exploration of Grief and Community
The College of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts presented Outside the Circle: A Creative Exploration of Grief and Community on May 7-9.
The event featured William Linthicum-Blackhorse, D.M.A.: Musician and composer; Will Daddario, Ph.D.: Mental health counselor and performance philosopher; and Joanne Zerdy, Ph.D.: Grief worker and herbalist.
What does it mean to you and to us all to grieve?
The circle is essential to and emblematic of community and connection across many Native American communities. Taking the circle as an organizing principle, we invite you to join us in exploring what it means to grieve individually and collectively, and how individuals and communities are shaped and reshaped through grief.
Where does grief live or move within the physical and social body?
Through drumming, small-group conversations, herbal tea-drinking, and embodied workshops, our invited guests reflected upon, discussed and embodied the multifaceted dimensions of grief and grieving.
What does grief make, activate or manifest?
We asked participants to bring their unique lived experiences and distinct creative practices to “Outside the Circle,” and welcomed them to take part in the full event, or come and go as able.
The mission of the Artists and Scholars in Residence Committee is to inspire artists, the university and the community by incubating new works. By facilitating collaborations across disciplinary lines and integrating arts practice and research, the Summer Happening directly connects to this mission. The premise is simple: What can we make and think by taking away the usual expectations for making work and teaching in the university?
Summer Happening June 12-15, 2023
Metabolism, A Happening
“Living forms are not in being, they are happening; they are the expression of a perpetual stream of matter and energy that passes through the organism and at the same time constitutes it.” — Ludwig Von Bertalanffy
A happening. A collaboration. A workshop. A camp.
The College of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts presented “Metabolism, A Happening” from June 12-15, 2023. A week of collaborative art-making and research that was open to faculty, students and community members; artists, scientists, humanities scholars and all others. Four days of inspiration, play, work, discussion, feasting and reflection on the theme of metabolism.
The event featured visiting artists and scholars Meredith Tromble, Charissa Terranova and Laura Hyunjhee Kim.
In its first definition, metabolism is the process by which living things transform food into energy. As Bertalanffy reminds us, metabolism is a happening that constitutes us.
But what, too, is the metabolism of our art-making processes? What is metabolized when a painter paints or a dancer dances? Or when an AI generates?
What is the metabolism of our cities? Of social movements and political parties? What energy passes through a society to constitute it?
Where do our perpetual streams of matter make archives, leave traces, divine maps? What energy comes from a hierarchy broken or a collaboration forged?
Over the four days of “Metabolism, A Happening,” participants shared inspiration, collaborated together and collectively reflected on the processes by which we make art and scholarship. Each day was loosely structured, with time and space to make new work, culminating in a communal meal. On the fourth day we prepared and presented our work in “Metabolism, A Happening.”
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