WEEK 1 | May 9-15
Zoe Tuck
Zoe Tuck was born in Texas, became a person in California, and now lives in Western Massachusetts. She is the author of Bedroom Vowel (BUNNY Presse, 2023) and Terror Matrix (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2014), in addition to the chapbooks The Book of Bella (Doublecross Press), bound in a dos-a-dos edition with Emily Hunerwadel's Peach Woman, and Vape Cloud of Unknowing (Belladonna* Collaborative). She co-edits Hot Pink Magazine with Emily Bark Brown. She teaches creative writing and literature classes through Threshold Academy and elsewhere.
Miles Lamberson
Miles Lamberson is a conceptual artist, zine scholar, and educator working in print, sculpture, and zines. His work considers the malleability of memory and how trauma shapeshifts daily experiences. He champions the transformative potential of zine culture, rooted in a passion for printmaking, memory-making, and equitable art.
As a queer Southerner, Miles fosters connection, equity, and validation, weaving these principles into an immersive and dynamic learning environment. Self-publications and small presses are a clear focus in Miles’ work, inspiring him to research and curate “Belonging and Non-Belonging" at the Buncombe County Special Collections in 2023. The exhibition explores the impacts (past, present, and future) of self-publishing and zinemaking in WNC. Since then, Miles has become the Executive Director of the Asheville Zine Festival, a non-profit exhibition and festival celebrating zinemaking in the Southeast, and is releasing monthly zines to subscribers through snail mail.
Micky
Micky is a multidisciplinary artist, facilitator, and garden gremlin focused on cultivating right relationships between human and non-human creatives of Earth. They deeply believe that creative expression is a necessary tool to shape connection, revolution, and identity. Currently, Micky is a teaching artist and program coordinator, working with school districts and non profits to increase access to music and art education in the public school system. They hold a MBA in Sustainable Leadership and a BA in Regenerative Ecological Design, both with a focus in sustainable community development and storytelling. Important concepts across their work include: radical self acceptance and empowerment, individual and collective identity exploration, and community as a tool of resilience.
Zach Cooper
Zach Cooper is a Grammy-award-winning composer, producer and songwriter based in Black Mountain, North Carolina. He has contributed to works by Leon Bridges, Jazmine Sullivan, Jon Batiste, Moses Sumney, Billy Porter, and Ellie Goulding, among others. Zach is also a founding member of experimental soul group, King Garbage. His work has been featured in Pitchfork, The Fader, Rolling Stone, and Guitar World Magazine, and he’s released records with RVNG Int’l, Styles Upon Styles and Mike Patton’s Ipecac Recordings.
Gerardo Delgadillo
Gerardo Esteban Delgadillo is a Colombian-American self-taught artist primarily experimenting with accessible mixed media such as colored pencil, regular stationery, fabric, pastels, and more. His experience between an eclectic formal design education and inherited working-class domestic practice informs his pursuits for more embodied creations that speak to our experiences.
Lauri Stallings
Lauri Stallings is a social practice choreographer whose process works invoke particular places, collective voices, and communities of movement. lauri has made work for FracMeca, Atlanta Contemporary, National Center for Civil and Human Rights, and Jule Museum. Lauri created a large-scale work for Creative Time New York. Lauri is the inaugural artist of Flux Projects. Lauri is the founder of glo, a non-profit platform located at the Goat Farm, Atlanta. Since 2013 they have led The Traveling Show, a long-term project to the rural South with support from the NEA and Rauschenberg Foundation. lauri is a United States Artist Fellow nominee (2018, 2022), a Bogliasco Fellow, Artadia awardee, and Hambidge Fellow. Lauri was the High Museum’s first choreographer as artist-in-residence, and graduated Summa Cum Laude in the inaugural cohort of the Social and Environmental Arts Practice MFA at Prescott College, led by artist and BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors.
WEEK 2 | May 16-22
KESSWA
Kesiena Wanogho, aka KESSWA, is an interdisciplinary artist from Detroit, Michigan. As a vocalist, producer, and filmmaker, her work integrates performance, sound, light, music and mantra. Her most recent work “the 12th House” screened globally at Monangambee and Culture Arts Society’s “Spectral Grounds” Black experimental film exhibition. Her collaboration with Shigeto, “Is My Mind A Machine Gun?” (2021) premiered on the MOCAD’s new media platform Daily Rush. She has performed in support of avant-garde black artists such as Sudan Archives, The Sun Ra Arkestra, River Spirit, Rashaad Newsome, and Sterling Toles at institutions such as The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Pinault Collection, The University of Michigan Museum of Art, and the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Tina Carlisi
Tina Carlisi is an artist from Montreal, Canada. Her practice combines printmaking, poetry, and performance, and is driven by creating intimate ways of bringing people together. In 2022, Tina completed a PhD in Fine Arts on squatting communities in Copenhagen, London, and Barcelona — investigating intimacies at the intersection between communal living, learning and creativity. She has previously taught two classes at the School of the Alternative: Making Mountains Move: Poetic Actions/Action Poetry (2018) and Radical Softness (2019). In 2024, with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Tina is developing her first interdisciplinary performance piece titled The Lovers · Les amoureux·ses, which was first conceived and workshopped at SotA.
Dharushana Muthulingam
The Hero’s Journey has dominated popular storytelling since first described over 70 years ago. This narrative structure is deeply rooted in (and reinforces) a specific 20th century American ideology, amplifying a heteropatriarchal, imperialist and individualistic Main Character. What is served and lost when storytelling is so narrowly conceived? We will explore the limitation of a narrative that can only cast Heroes, Victims and Villains. We examine the implications for art, power, and material resources. Specifically, we will focus on (1) the clinical encounter in contemporary healthcare, (2) the inability of this narrative structure to make legible care work, repair, maintenance, and (3) imperial propaganda.
Io
Io is a hacker, tech angel, volcano enthusiast, power-lifter, multi-media artist, world builder, and a friend of every dog. They started building computers from spare parts as a child and now host cybersecurity workshops geared toward sex workers. They co-created Cyborg Support Club, a virtual community teaching fundamental information security skills and somatic integration techniques. Io likes to create interactive art like bingo boards, divination tools, goofy websites, and draw little doodles on love notes for their friends and neighbours. They are currently working to grow the Tucson Mesh Network, a community-controlled wireless internet network. Organizing the next DeepMay, a 10-day experimental autonomous tech camp. Expanding Cyborg Support and brewing up infinite possibilities :)
Isabella "Isa" Marie Garcia
Isabella "Isa" Marie Garcia is an independent arts professional, writer, and photographer born and raised on the edge of the Everglades, and now living in her native swampland of Miami, Florida. For the past six years, Isa has worked with arts-based organizations such as Burnaway, Commissioner, Ten North Group, LnS Gallery, and UNTITLED, Art. Garcia is a 2023 Locust Projects Wavemaker Grant Recipient for her photo-based project titled "What Happens When the Dust Settles?," which will investigate holistic aftercare in relation to death and grief, and in proximity to Latinx, BIPOC, and Indigenous communities. She is a O, Miami Sunroom Teaching Artist and working now as an ICA Miami Narratives Teaching Artist for their 2023-2024 program. Garcia graduated summa cum laude with her Bachelor of Arts in English from Florida International University in 2019. More information on her work can be found at isamxrie.com and anywhere through @isamxrie.
Crystal Presley
Crystal has been a student of American Sign Language and the Deaf community since 1997. She currently works in the field of interpretation and had the privilege of attending the only university in the world with a majority Deaf population, essentially participating in total immersion in a world of sign language. While attending Gallaudet University, Crystal took a class for one semester where no language was permitted, only gesturing. She has been obsessed with this concept ever since.
Crystal has also had the good fortune to travel the world with Deaf people and interact with other types of sign language such as Mexican Sign Language and Egyptian Sign Language. This requires a person to be more creative with communication.
Crystal appreciates the ability to communicate in ways other than spoken or even signed language and she hopes to share this experience with the SotA community.
