the body is the brain

We talk about: organizing artists, participatory performance, Dionysus in 69, audience co-creation of a work, how artists are both similar to and different from other workers, the conflicted class identity of artists, building artist power as a labor force, guaranteed basic income, Daniel reads a manifesto, and much more… ABOUT THE ARTIST Daniel Park is a theatre and performance artist, organizer...

We talk about…stuttering as a teacher, "bending the clock" as a disability justice and a racial justice practice, sitting with the ethics of living on stolen land, engaging with the fraught archive of slavery, "opening time" on the page, wrestling with questions of voice in the archive, the healing work of putting the archive of slavery in conversation with an archive of plants...

We talk about: attention as a material, the politics of audio description, queer abstraction, tuning ensemble in improvisation, avoiding saying "no" when directing, translating site-specific improvisation to a proscenium context, the difference between impulse and desire, refusal as a practice, making experimental dance with AI, and much more… ABOUT THE ARTISTS Rashaun Mitchell + Silas R...

We talk about: audience-determined structures, reparations as a culture-building project, Augusto Boal's "rehearsal for revolution," balancing audience choice with a desire to "get into the harder stuff," the "curb cut effect" (why reparations are for everyone), and much more…  ABOUT THE ARTIST Eric Avery is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural organizer with over eighteen years of professiona...

We talk about… the difference between social practice and socially engaged art, how Bass' installation Wayfinding relates to performance, the "singular family narrative" as a fiction, how lawmaking and artmaking differ, using language as a material, being a "writer for the encounter," and much more… ABOUT THE ARTIST Chloë Bass is a multiform conceptual artist working in per...

We talk about: supporting socially engaged artists, how design of arts funding pathways influences outcomes, co-leadership in the arts, the overlap between art practice and arts leadership, A Blade of Grass, and much more.... ABOUT THE ARTIST Lu Zhang is an artist and arts administrator. She’s been at A Blade of Grass (ABoG) for two years. Before joining ABoG Lu was the Initiatives Director of Uni...

"People don't acknowledge how much capital is in cultural capital. So people will hoard it. That is what creates the gatekeeping. We were there to care. Rather than being the gatekeepers, we became the caregivers." --Rhiannon MacFadyen We talk about artist-led mutual aid,  regranting in community, reparations partnerships, calls to action for arts funders, defining who an artist is f...

"Space is just a container. How do we work filling that container in different ways from the street to the nightclub to the proscenium? They're forms to be fucked with." --Anna Thompson, slowdanger We talk about: coming up in Pittsburg's queer club culture, staying connected to a DIY approach while making performance for the proscenium stage, what it means to queer dance, Sara Ah...

"When we gather together, the forces around us become louder. There's a danger in gathering, but there's a grounding in it as well." --Sholeh Asgary We talk about: the relationship between photography and sound practice, the politics of sound, transcribing the waterways of Iran into music, incorporating the politics of a venue into site-specific installation, how sound becomes ob...

"It comes back to not letting the Trump Administration frame the problem, but remembering the world and the environment and the circumstances under which we want to work."   – Yanira Castro We talk about: the arts funding landscape, inviting audiences to create systems of cooperation, "thinking in an emergency," performance as civic orientation, resilience practices, "scor...

We talk about: curatorial practice, radical hospitality in performance, ethical grantmaking in the arts, softening the architecture of engagement, operationalizing "art for change," the current state of arts funding, and much more… ABOUT THE ARTIST Since retiring as a dancer and choreographer, Michèle has managed performing arts projects and professional development programs for On the B...

We talk about: scores for performance, weaving politics and abstraction, dance and visual art in conversation, revolutionary time, Ranu's painting process, the importance of sari fabric in her work, hybridity, installation "versus" performance, the fires in LA and much more… ABOUT THE ARTIST Ranu Mukherjee makes hybrid work in painting, film installation and performance to expand ima...

"The way to strengthen our rights is to continually use them and demand that they be recognized." -- Annie Dorsen We talk about: the Artist Open Letter to the NEA, resistance strategies, algorithmic theater, speechmaking as an embodied practice, and much more... ABOUT THE ARTIST Annie Dorsen is a MacArthur Fellowship awarded director and writer whose works explore the intersection of algorithmic a...

"At the core of nonstopping is a very political stance of each individual, maintaining, cultivating, nurturing, sustaining the agency of their attention." -Jeanine Durning We talk about: the practice of "nonstopping," embracing not knowing as a generative state, going before we're ready, sustainability as an artist, Steve Paxton, Deborah Hay, Pema Chodron, and much more…. A...

"My weapon against destructive forces is creative forces." –Aejay Antonis Marquis We talk about preparing to direct as an embodied practice, facilitating ensemble process, the politics of casting local, creating liberatory spaces for Black and queer bodies, Lorraine Hansberry, The Magnolia Ballet, and much more… @thebodyisthebrain ABOUT THE ARTIST AeJay Antonis Marquis (They/Them) is a p...

Episode 1: Pina, queering as a transitive verb, wrecking, drag as political practice, visibility … A conversation with artists Eric Garcia and Chuck Wilt about their collaborative show, Beyond, “an evening-length production that reassembles Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring into an intergalactic, Queer extravaganza.” ARTIST BIOS Eric Garcia is a San Francisco-based devised dance-theater artist, drag que...

Hi friends. I'm Hope Mohr, artist and advocate. For decades I have woven artmaking and activism.    the body is the brain is a podcast about art and social change. Through conversations with artists and cultural workers, we explore the practice of contemporary artmaking. The podcast extends my decades-long work as a community-based curator of live performance. My guests include artists I know and...