Relevance of Place: Shannon Jackson, Walter Hood, Suzanne Lacy, & Laura Viklund

Relevance of Place: Shannon Jackson, Walter Hood, Suzanne Lacy, & Laura Viklund

Relevance of Place is an online series of site-specific dialogues that explore the meaning of place at Tippet Rise Art Center. Guided by Shannon Jackson, Chair of the History of Art Department at UC-Berkeley and a scholar of socially-engaged art, Relevance of Place invites artists, architects, designers, and creative thinkers to engage in conversation about the ethics, aesthetics, and relevance of place. These conversations explore “place” as a global, local, and personal concept as well as “place” as it refers specifically to Tippet Rise, a site that brings together “art, music, land, sky, and poetry” creating an “algorithm that is greater than the sum of its parts.” In individual interviews and group dialogues, each guest offers stories and insights from their own practice. Together, they reflect on the historic past and sustainable future of Tippet Rise—as an environmental site, as a wide-ranging art center, and as a creative gathering space.

Here, Jackson moderates a dialogue among artist, designer, and MacArthur fellow, Walter Hood; internationally renowned artist Suzanne Lacy; and lead architect of several projects at Tippet Rise, Laura Viklund, about how socially relevant art emerges from local communities and offers new perspectives on the places we live and the lives we lead. In this episode, each participant offers reflections upon how they enter communities before embarking on a public art project or a building design, allowing local stories and concerns to guide the creation of a work. Watch to hear them reflect on the relation between form and function, on what artists often need from designers, and on what designers have to learn from the poetic practice of the arts.

Filmed in May 2022.