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Relevance of Place: Suzanne Lacy

Shannon Jackson interviews internationally renowned artist Suzanne Lacy on how principles of community and relationality inform her public art and activism as well as her response to Tippet Rise. In this episode, Lacy recalls several of her public art projects, including those that address topics such as religious difference, gender, race, and human rights. Watch as she discusses the balance between artistic vision and community interaction, as well why she found Patrick Dougherty’s Daydreams to be a form that resonantly combines the practice of public sculpture with an invitation to gather and play.

Filmed in May 2022.

Suzanne Lacy

Visual artist Suzanne Lacy looks right with her head tilted.

Suzanne Lacy is renowned as a pioneer in socially engaged and public performance art. Her installations, videos, and performances deal with sexual violence, rural and urban poverty, incarceration, labor, and aging. Lacy’s large-scale projects span the globe, including England, Colombia, Ecuador, Spain, Ireland, and the U.S.

Most recently, in 2022, the Queens Museum in New York presented a major thematic survey of her work. Her work has been reviewed in major periodicals and books and she exhibits in museums across the world. Also known for her writing, Lacy edited Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art and authored Leaving Art: Writings on Performance, Politics, and Publics, 1974-2007. She is a professor at the Roski School of Art and Design at the University of Southern California and a resident artist at 18th Street Arts Center.

Shannon Jackson

Shannon Jackson holds the Hadidi Professorship at the University of California, Berkeley, where she currently serves as Chair of the History of Art Department. Jackson is a scholar and educator of cross-media art practice and of socially-engaged art. A Guggenheim fellow and award-winning author, she has published several books and online platforms, including Back Stages (2022), Public Servants (2016), The Builders Association (2015), Social Works (2011) as well as In Terms of Performance and Media Art 21. Jackson serves on the boards of several arts organizations, including Oakland Museum of the Arts, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, Headlands Center for the Arts, the Minnesota Street Project Foundation, and the Kramlich Art Foundation. As a guest program advisor to Tippet Rise, Jackson helped to create the Relevance of Place series of site-specific dialogues.

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