For Jupiter's ingress into Pisces on May 13, Johanna Hedva will be in conversation with their dear friend, artist and follower of the fates Constantina Zavitsanos, to discuss how queer and crip people persist through deviant forms of knowledge that approach fate as material to be de-, un-, in-, and re-formed. Topics will include, but are not limited to: art, doom, abolishing the give/take binary in care, astrology, dependencies, fugitivity, and magic.
This keynote event is part of Johanna Hedva’s guest-curated CARE SYLLABUS module, “Care in End Times.” It is made possible with the support of MCLA’s Hardman Award.
Accessibility information: This virtual event will have closed captions and ASL interpretation.
The event will be live-streamed on MASS MoCA’s YouTube page on May 13, from 11:00 am - 12:00 pm EST. RSVP here for a reminder.
About the Participants
Johanna Hedva
Johanna Hedva is a Korean-American writer, artist, musician, and astrologer, who was raised in Los Angeles by a family of witches, and now lives between LA and Berlin. Hedva is the author of Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain (Sming Sming/Wolfman 2020), a collection of poems, performances, and essays, and the novel On Hell (Sator/Two Dollar Radio 2018). Their album Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in the 4th House, a doom-metal guitar and voice performance influenced by Korean shamanist ritual was released in January 2021, and their 2019 album, The Sun and the Moon, had two of its tracks played on the moon. Their work has been shown in Berlin at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Klosterruine, and Institute of Cultural Inquiry; The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London; Performance Space New York; the LA Architecture and Design Museum; and the Museum of Contemporary Art on the Moon. Their writing has appeared in Triple Canopy, frieze, The White Review, and is anthologized in Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art. Their essay “Sick Woman Theory,” published in 2016 in Mask, has been translated into eight languages.
Constantina Zavistanos
Constantina Zavitsanos works in sculpture, performance, text, and sound to elaborate what’s invaluable in the re/production of debt, dependency, and means beyond measure. Zavitsanos has exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, New Museum, Artists Space, The Kitchen, and Participant Inc. in New York; at Arika in Glasgow, Scotland; and at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Germany. With Park McArthur, they coauthored “Other Forms of Conviviality” in Women & Performance (Routledge, 2013) and “The Guild of the Brave Poor Things” in Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (MIT Press, 2017). They co-organized the cross-disability arts events “I Wanna Be With You Everywhere” at Performance Space New York and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Zavitsanos is a 2021 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Art’s Roy Lichtenstein Award. They live in New York and teach at the New School.