Spotlight on Projecting All Voices (text)

Supporting equity and inclusion in design and the arts

By Sarah McCarty

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As a Projecting All Voices fellow in ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, artist Carolina Aranibar-Fernandez said she found a place where she could “have a voice” through her practice and a place where she could create conversations.

 Projecting All Voices, an initiative of the Herberger Institute in collaboration with ASU Gammage, aims to do exactly that for artists like Aranibar-Fernandez. The initiative supports equity and inclusion in design and the arts in an effort to ensure that the nation’s cultural life honors and represents the full creative diversity of our country’s population.

Funded in part by a grant from the Mellon Foundation, Projecting All Voices provides opportunities for designers and artists who have been historically underinvested to advance their work and careers. 

Carolina Aranibar-Fernandez and the other two 2018-19 Projecting All Voices fellows, Virginia Grise and Marguerite Hemmings, all explored these issues through their work this year thanks to the support not just of the initiative but also of each other. 

“That’s been one of the most fulfilling parts about being here so far – connecting laterally with the other folks that are my same position,” Hemmings said. 

“One of the things that’s really special about this group of women is that we made a commitment very early on to each other’s work and to each other’s processes,” Grise said, “and to be here in support of our art making.”

Carolina Aranibar-Fernandez

 

“I’m interested in histories that have been silenced, so historical and contemporary forms of invisible labor, exploitation of resources.”

Carolina Aranibar-Fernandez was born in La Paz, Bolivia, and is currently based in the U.S. Her recent work is largely concerned with global dynamics of power, invisible labor and the connection to legacies of colonialism. 

While at ASU, Aranibar-Fernandez gave artists talks at the School of Art’s Grant Street Studios and at Xico Arte y Cultura, a nonprofit that aims to “nourish a greater appreciation of the cultural and spiritual heritages of the Latinx and Indigenous peoples of the Americas throughout the arts.” She also facilitated an artist workshop with ReFrame Youth Arts Center. The workshop serve youth in South Phoenix and was part of a larger project around storytelling, media and cultural journalism.

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Virginia Grise

 

“I’m interested in what we have to learn about freedom from people that are in a place of unfreedom, and what are the many ways that art literally, not metaphorically – what’s the material ways in which art can break down borders and walls and serve as a project of abolition.”

Virginia Grise is a prominent theatre artist from New York. She is a recipient of the Whiting Writers’ Award, the Princess Grace Award in Theatre Directing and the Yale Drama Series Award and a member of Soho Rep’s Writer/Director Lab. 

During her time as a fellow, Grise continued working on a script for an adaptation of a novel called “Their Dogs Came With Them” by Helena Maria Viramontes. The project was a collaboration with Martha Gonzalez, who adapted music for a concert version of the novel. They staged a performance co-created by the women current in Perryville Women’s Prison.

She also hosted a workshop and a reading of her “Your Healing is Killing Me” performance manifesto as part of Performance in the Borderlands, an initiative in the School of Film, Dance and Theatre. 

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Marguerite Hemmings

 

“I’m much more interested in the stories that you can see on others and that you can also learn about yourself when you just allow the movement to come out.”

Marguerite Hemmings is Jamaican born, raised in New Jersey, and has been living in New York City for the last 10 years. As a dancer, Hemmings specializes in street styles, social dances, hip-hop and dancehall and has been training in modern and West African.

Hemmings partnered with Yvonne Montoya, a 2017-18 Projecting All Voices fellow, for a special presentation and conversation with dance students. In the program, they shared how their own work and practices related to dance history and histories of erasure.

In addition to supporting the post-graduate fellows, Projecting All Voices also supports events and visiting artists throughout the year. 

Last summer, Projecting All Voices brought the groundbreaking performance ensemble Urban Bush Women to ASU. Urban Bush Women held its Summer Leadership Institute at the School of Film, Dance and Theatre.

In the spring, more than 30 scholars from ASU and around the country gathered at ASU for the Black Performance Theory Colloquium, a collective of scholars working on the theory, history and practice of African Diasporic expressive cultures. The event was organized by School of Arts, Media and Engineering Associate Professor Grisha Coleman, School of Social Transformation Associate Professor Marlon M. Bailey and School of Film, Dance and Theatre Assistant Professor Marcus White, in collaboration with Thomas DeFrantz [Duke University], and hosted by the Herberger Institute with support from the Projecting All Voices initiative. The event is also supported by the Vice Provost for Inclusion and Community Engagement. This year’s Black Performance Theory convening explored “Borders of Blackness” and provided an unbounded look at performative commonalities and divergences of the African Diaspora in music, dance, feminist strategies, spirituality, oratory, performance art, architecture and public space theory, racial formation, theatre, historiography, spoken word, queer cultures and more. 

Projecting All Voices funds also helped support a fashion show as part of an immersive experience. ASU Gammage commissioned a play called “Native Nation,” by Larissa FastHorse, which was presented by partner Cornerstone Theater Company. They collaborated with local indigenous communities to create the play, which tells the stories of several indigenous people. The play was just one part of the full experience, which included a marketplace, cultural performance and community gathering at Steele Indian School Park in Phoenix. The immersive event also included a fashion show featuring the work of School of Art fashion students. 

Film Spark, in the School of Film, Dance and Theatre, often centers its programming around the idea of highlighting underrepresented voices in film. This year, Film Spark partnered with the ASU 365 Community Union on several of its free film screenings at Sun Devil Stadium, including a special screening of the Oscar-winning film “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” Film Spark, with the help of Marvel Studios, Sony Pictures Animation and ASU alumnus Michael Helfant, arranged for two Film, Dance and Theatre students to interview the movie’s directors, and a recording of the interview aired before the film at the stadium. Directors Peter Ramsey, Bob Persichetti and Rodney Rothman, who have been praised for their fresh vision of a different Spider-Man universe, discussed inclusivity and the importance it had on the film, which inspired the #AnyoneCanWearTheMask hashtag. Attendees at the ASU screening received Spider-Man masks to put on when prompted by the directors at the end of the video. 

Also this spring, Narcissister, a Brooklyn based artist and performer, visited ASU for an appearance that was supported by Projecting All Voices. Narcissister works at the intersection of dance, art and activism in a range of media including film, video art and experimental music and has presented work worldwide at festivals, nightclubs, museums and galleries. She often explores female sexuality in her work. Narcissister’s performance at Grant Street Studios in downtown Phoenix and the talk the following day on ASU’s Tempe campus addressed issues around sex, gender, race, representation and human connection. The visit was also supported by Representation Lab, a project School of Art Associate Professor Liz Cohen is piloting to empower students with storytelling and narrative generation skills that can apply to professions in areas such as art, public policy, business and more. 

The goal of Projecting All Voices is to support greater equity and inclusion in design and the arts — through events, visiting artists and fellows — not just at ASU but in higher education generally, as well as beyond campus. Conversations begun during Projecting All Voices fellowships echo beyond the one year period: Joel Thompson, one of the inaugural fellows, is returning to campus in October as part of the ASU Gammage Beyond series, and Yvonne Montoya, also a 2017-18 Projecting All Voices fellow, received a grant from the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures for the second iteration of Dance in the Desert, an annual convening for Arizona-based Latinx dance artists that she started while at ASU. 

“I think we have the population to support work that’s created by Latin American or Latinx dance makers,” said Montoya, “and I think this is a pivotal moment to come together, share social capital and move forward.”

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