Alternate Currents Discussion Series

Recently, Amplify worked with MdW Atlas as guest editors on a series of posts running throughout the month of April. Artists and organizers Lydia Cheshewalla , Patrick Costello , and Alajia McKizia , all of whom have connections to Omaha, and the Midwest more broadly, through land, lineage, and kinships, contributed to the series. As a point of departure, we asked them to consider composting as a...

Artists and organizers Amanada Huckins, Alex Jochim, Joseph Orzal, Bilgesu Sisman, Marcey Yates, and Rachel Ziegler sat down to discuss how artists are experimenting with alternative models of economic organization and building resilience in the face of precarity and the uncertain future of arts funding. Listen here or read an abridged transcript on the Alternate Currents blog (https://www.amplify...

We recently sat down curator, researcher, and cultural practitioner Rosela del Bosque to talk more about her collaborative project, The Family Archive of the Colorado River . She shares more about tracing the deep histories, political incongruities, and intensely personal memories circling the changing ecology of the Colorado River Basin in her creative research. Listen to the full conversation be...

We recently sat down with artists Lydia Cheshewalla and Sarah Rowe to talk about GROUNDING , their highly collaborative exhibition at Amplify’s Generator Space in Omaha, which explored reciprocal human and more-than-human kinship systems through acts of somatic co-regulation with place, land, and earth. Listen on here or visit Amplify's website for a full transcript and links to additional resourc...

We recently sat down with John Cohorst and Holly Kranker, Amplify's 2019 Public Impact Grant recipients, to talk more about their project CAR>GO (Community Activated Resource on the GO), a shipping container they modified to accommodate anything from group meetings to creative studio and/or project space. Originally conceived as a gathering space to exchange ideas, have conversations, and colla...

We recently sat down with Zedeka Poindexter , Amplify's 2022-23 Public Impact Grant recipient. Zedeka was awarded a Public Impact Grant by an external selection panel in the amount of $10,000 to develop new, public-facing work that interrogates the disparities Black women confront in the healthcare system. Over the course of her two-year grant term, Zedeka will conduct and transcribe interviews wi...

We recently sat down with Jared Ledesma, Senior Curator at the Akron Art Museum, to follow up on ‘ From the Margins to the Center: Inclusive Curatorial Practices and Cultural Institutions ,’ an Alternate Currents panel discussion hosted in August of 2021. We spoke more about methodological shifts in the curatorial field, institutional barriers to working inclusively, and what adopting more inclusi...

Recently, Associate Curator of Native American Art at the Joslyn Art Museum, Annika Johnson sat down with Sunshine Thomas-Bear, Director of the Angel DeCora Museum and Research Center and Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska , to talk about the history of the Ho-Chunk People and tribal museums’ essential role in reinvigorating cultural lifeways. Stream the full...

We recently sat down with artist, organizer, and member of the Osage Nation, Lydia Cheshewalla to talk about the ways in which relationships, rooted in reciprocity and care, shape her highly collaborative practice, their potential to influence the future of cultural institutions, and what it means to opt out. Listen below or, visit t he Alternate Currents blog on Amplify's website for a full trans...

We recently sat down with artist and organizer, Alajia McKizia to talk about charity, solidarity, and self-determination. The conversation trained its focus on white supremacist ideologies embedded within philanthropy and emergent networks of mutual support that posit community-centric fundraising as a viable response. Listen here and visit the Alternate Currents blog on Amplify Arts' website for...

Recently, writer and art historian, Jonathan Orozco sat down with artist, organizer, and member of the Oglala Lakota Nation, Nathaniel Ruleaux to unpack some of the complications raised by land acknowledgements within cultural institutions and their ability (or lack thereof) to affect change outside the sphere of performative activism. Listen here or on Amplify's website: https://www.amplifyarts.o...

Recently, we sat down with musician, artist, and city planner Rynn Kerkhove to talk about some of the connections between ecologically reproductive labor, environmental planning, and building reciprocal relationships with local ecosystems. Listen to the conversation below or on Amplify’s website , if you’re on the go, and share your thoughts in the comments section.

Recently, Associate Curator of Native American Art at the Joslyn Art Museum, Annika Johnson and CEO of the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center, Marisa Cummings sat down to talk about some of the complexities surrounding sovereignty, Federal Indian Law, and recent landmark court cases that underscore the undeniable connections between Indigenous peoples' rights, climate action, and social just...

We recently asked Amplify’s 2020 Indigenous American Artist Support Grant recipient, Steve Tamayo, if he would share some of his thoughts about what it means to cultivate creative practices in rural spaces and how those practices connect revitalizing and preserving indigenous cultural knowledge to ecological justice. Steve Tamayo draws upon his family history as a member of the Sicangu Lakota trib...

Indigenous communities, particularly those located in rural areas where ways of knowing and being are rooted in interdependencies with the environment, are on the frontlines of confronting the climate crisis and often the hardest hit. Associate Curator of Native American Art at the Joslyn Art Museum, Annika Johnson and Director of Native American Student Services at the University of South Dakota,...

We sat down recently with  Paige Reitz, Deputy Director at the Union for Contemporary Art and Joey Lynch, the Union’s Director of Facilities and Sustainability to talk about the organization’s move to zero waste, the intersections of social justice and ecological justice, and collectively moving the goalpost toward carbon neutrality. Listen to the conversation below or on Amplify’s Alternate...

We sat down recently with  Erin Foley, Finance Manager at Film Streams , to talk about the relationship between art and labor and working toward more financial stability in cultural fields. The wide-ranging conversation unpacks ideas around wage disparity, transparency, and collective organizing.

We sat down with 2019 Artist Support Grant recipients Sarah Hummel Jones and Corson Androski to find out more about the content that drives their work, their respective creative practices, and how they situate those practices within the greater economy.