Part of the Practice

This episode of Part of the Practice features a conversation between two contributors to our upcoming book Practicing in Public: Conversations on Socially Engaged Art (OR Books, February 2027). Sofya Aptekar (2024-25 SPCUNY Faculty Fellow) and Ángeles Donoso Macaya (2022-23 SPCUNY Faculty Fellow) join host Catherine LaSota to talk about the importance of practice over product, and the role that re...

2024-25 SPCUNY Student Actionist April Wen (2026 MFA in Film Directing, Brooklyn College) joins host Catherine LaSota for a conversation about community, what is possible in public space, and the importance of telling our stories and being witnessed. They also talk about privately owned public space, where disruption plays a role, and the process of learning and unlearning how to be in social spac...

We are kicking off our final season of Part of the Practice with a very special guest: Jacquelyn Marie Shannon , one of Social Practice CUNY's amazing doctoral fellows. Host Catherine LaSota chats with Jacquelyn, a Ph. D. candidate in Theatre and Performance at The Graduate Center CUNY, about her dissertation research and her ritual offerings on The Witch's Dance; her work in attention,...

Social Practice CUNY Teaching Scholar-in-Residence Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel Atrib joins host Catherine LaSota for a conversation about the South Bronx, cats, definitions of home, ecosexuality, and more. Tune in and be inspired by Nicolás's description of his writing office, The Shrine, plus his deep love for water and his connection to the Bronx River. This is our last...

This episode features a conversation with Chris Harding (2024-25 SPCUNY Student Actionist Fellow), who is a Ph. D. candidate in the History Department at the City University of New York Graduate Center. His work focuses on themes relating to capitalism, class, labor and agrarian life in Mandate Palestine, and his work was featured in the Biennale di Venezia in 2024. In this conversation with host...

Join strip tease scholar and burlesque performer Alyssa Kitt Hanley (2025-26 SPCUNY Faculty Fellow) for a conversation with host Catherine LaSota in this episode. They discuss Alyssa's experience as a performer, dramaturg, and mentor, as well as Alyssa's view of a burlesque audience as co-conspirators. Alyssa also shares her personal journey with cancer and facial paralysis, as well as h...

In this episode, Dr. Alexandra Juhasz (SPCUNY 2022-23 Faculty Fellow) joins host Catherine LaSota to share her thoughts as a scholar, maker and organizer around activist media. She discusses the queer and feminist methods in her work and talks about process and the importance of the distribution of an artwork -- how it is received, and how it is archived. This episode also includes reminders of ho...

Social Practice CUNY Student Fellow Jay Reinier , an MFA candidate in the Performance and Interactive Media Arts (PIMA) program at Brooklyn College, joins host Catherine LaSota in this episode to discuss the more-than-human grief of climate collapse, speculative posthuman subjectivities, game theory, and how we might use technology in productive ways. The pros and cons of Instagram are touched upo...

Monica Rocha , a 2025-26 SPCUNY Student Fellow and MFA candidate in the Integrated Media Arts program at Hunter College, joins host Catherine LaSota to discuss her interest in conversation as a method of engagement, and how manipulation in its most radical sense shows up in our conversations, and what we can learn from that. Monica discusses her love of combining text, image, and sound in her work...

We return from our season two break with conversation featuring 2025-26 SPCUNY Faculty Fellow Amirtha Kidambi . Host Catherine LaSota chats with Amirtha about her improvisational approach to music, teaching, and activism, and about the many influences in her work, from jazz to Rage Against the Machine. This is an episode to listen to if you want some inspiration about co-creating a better future a...

In this final episode before we take a brief holiday break during season two of Part of the Practice, host Catherine LaSota is in conversation with SPCUNY Teaching Scholar-in-Residence Tom Finkelpearl . Tom is a former Director of the Queens Museum and is also a former Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for New York City. In this conversation, he talks about the relationship between museums and soci...

Visual storyteller Ash Marinaccio (2024-25 SPCUNY Faculty Fellow) joins host Catherine LaSota to talk about her projects in theatre, photography, film, and activism. Ash is faculty in Media Studies at Queens College CUNY and is the Founding Artistic Director of Girl Be Heard and Founder of Docbloc, an organization dedicated to bringing artists across documentary genres together for live performanc...

Art Jones , a native New Yorker and a 2023-24 SPCUNY Faculty Fellow at the City College of New York, joins host Catherine LaSota for a conversation about Art’s work in film and video and music, and in live performance. Art talks about how his experience with COVID lockdown caused him to have a new relationship with time, and the resulting collapse of social reality and science fiction since then....

Artist and activist Alicia Grullón (SPCUNY Faculty Fellow 2022-23) joins host Catherine LaSota on this episode to discuss the foundations of her own practice as a socially-engaged artist, including her background in acting and her continued interest in the concept of "backstage." Alicia and Catherine also talk about the ways that our relationships to people and places affect our experien...

Our second episode of season two brings you a conversation with Floor Grootenhuis , a 2022-23 Social Practice CUNY Faculty Fellow. Floor chats with host Catherine LaSota about blood and breath and embodiment. They discuss her Ask a Parasite project with the Department of Biological Sciences at CUNY's Hunter College, where she partners with biologists to bring science and art closer to the pub...

It's our first episode of season two! 2021-22 SPCUNY Faculty Fellow Nora Almeida joins host Catherine LaSota to talk about environmental activism, urban swimming, and the subversion of different spaces in Nora’s practices. They also discuss the many forms of life in the city and ponder the question: "What do we do with all of the stuff that we collect?" FULL TRANSCRIPT of Episode 21...

On our final episode of season one of Part of the Practice, writer, theorist, and interdisciplinary artist Tao Leigh Goffe is in conversation with host Catherine LaSota about art, freedom, and her project Dark Laboratory, located at Hunter College CUNY. Tao talks about her book Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis , and about the importance of asking q...

This is a special episode about Social Practice CUNY connections and collaborations! Host Catherine LaSota chats with Ari Wolff (SPCUNY Student Fellow 2022-23) and Cristina Ferrigno (SPCUNY Student Fellow 2021-22) about their project Citation Needed , where Ari is Founder and Director, and Cristina is Studio Director. This conversation is about finding the partners and communities that lift you up...

Environmental writer, teacher, and parent Emily Raboteau is in conversation with host Catherine LaSota on this episode of Part of the Practice. Emily, who teaches creative writing as a professor in the Black Studies Department at the City College of New York (CUNY), talks about the genesis of her book Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against "The Apocalypse," and how her definition of &qu...

Author, scholar, and activist Ashley Dawson is in conversation with host Catherine LaSota on this episode of Part of the Practice. Ashley, who is a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York, talks about how his training in postcolonial studies and as a literary critic led to his work dealing with the struggle against climate injustice and ecological imperialism. Ashley discusses h...

Facilitator, educator, and scholar Nic Benacerraf is in conversation with host Catherine LaSota on this episode of Part of the Practice. Nic, who is pursuing a Ph. D. in the Theatre and Performance program at the Graduate Center, CUNY, talks about their work with multidisciplinary group Edge Effect, as well as their history of facilitation work and identification as a space maker -- and how this i...

Researcher, educator, and photographer Jess Bal is in conversation with host Catherine LaSota on this episode of Part of the Practice. Jess, who is pursuing her Ph. D. in Art History at the Graduate Center, CUNY, and working on a community memory project about labor organizing in U.S. newsrooms, discusses her work in photojournalism, her thoughts on documentary ethics, and her ongoing relationship...

Artist and educator  Chloe Smolarski  is in conversation with host Catherine LaSota on this episode of Part of the Practice. Chloe, who teaches at New York City College of Technology CUNY and is a Faculty Fellow at Social Practice CUNY, discusses her use of field notes as a format in her practice, her interests in big tech and climate change, and the conversations that she enjoys in her classrooms...

Artist and researcher Jaclyn Reyes is in conversation with host Catherine LaSota on this episode of Part of the Practice. Jaclyn discusses her relationship with drawing, the Filipino community, her work with the United Nations, and her current role as a Ph. D. student in the Social Welfare program at the CUNY Graduate Center. She talks about what it's like for her to be in artist in the Unite...

In this episode of Part of the Practice, host Catherine LaSota is in conversation with SPCUNY Fellow Esther Marveta Neff . Esther talks about their collective/thinktank/entity PPL, and their work in the Ph. D. program in Theatre and Performance Studies at the Graduate Center CUNY. Also covered in this episode: different definitions of models, the concept of logical space, agency and community, the...