Other Pedagogies and the Phylum Porifera
October 20-21, 2010
Sponge HQ, Richmond, VA

Larissa Harris is a curator at the Queens Museum of Art, where she is developing programs to take place during and after QMA’s upcoming expansion, which will add 50,000 square feet of gallery space to the museum by 2012. Currently she is organizing the first U.S. solo exhibition of Sung Hwan Kim; with artist Jonathan Berger, the first survey of Peter Schumann of the Bread and Puppet Theater; and directing a new art-production program in Corona, Queens, the largely new-immigrant neighborhood on which the museum borders. This program draws on her work at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT from 2004-2008 where she and staff produced new work by Michael Smith, Damon Rich/ the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), John Malpede, and John Bell; instituted a visiting artist series (Vito Acconci/ Acconci Studio, Miranda July, Judith Barry, Seth Price, Dexter Sinister, and Rachel Harrison, among others); a student residency program; and a residency for Boston-area artists.

Dr. April Hill is Associate Professor of Biology and the Clarence E. Denoon Professor of Science at the University of Richmond. She uses marine and freshwater sponges as model systems to ask questions about the genetics and development of animal evolution and symbioses. Sponges are ancient animals that retain characteristics of an early experiment in multicellularity while also sharing some highly conserved features with other metazoans; these unique features provide a system in which to explore hypotheses about the evolution of animals. Research in our lab focuses the role of conserved developmental control genes and gene networks that originated prior to advent of animal adaptations such as tissues and nervous systems. We also work on elucidating the genetic pathways involved in the evolution of animal symbioses and their role in sponge development. Finally, our lab is involved in an international collaboration working on The Porifera Tree of Life (PorToL) project, which will generate a well-supported molecular and morphological phylogeny of the sponges that will improve our understanding of early animal evolution.

Christopher Lee Kennedy is the research director of the Institute for Applied Aesthetics, a civil service technical guild for art and learning. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Education from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and is the Education Curator at the Elsewhere Artist Collaborative.

Tse-Lynn Loh is a PhD candidate at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Zoology from the National University of Singapore in 2000, where she worked as a research assistant in the Marine Biology Laboratory. There, she conducted research on artificial reef settlement and acoustic surveying of coral reefs. Tse-Lynn is active in marine conservation and outreach and addition to being a nature guide since 2000 in Singapore, she co-founded of a marine conservation group called the Blue Water Volunteers in 2004. Her doctoral research investigates the role of predation in influencing competitive interactions between sponges and hard corals.

J. Morgan Puett is a trans-disciplinary project artist/cultural producer who has been strategically rearranging intersections of architecture and the fashion system through history, biology, economics, and social practices. Morgan’s early work forged new territory by intervening into the fashion system with a series of conceptual store/installation/clothing projects in the 80’s and 90’s. Her work has been most innovative in the public realm of social practices. She was the 2004 recipient of Anonymous Was A Woman Award and other awards such as the PEW Charitable Trust in Philadelphia and most recently awarded the 2009 Smithsonian Institution Artist Research Fellowship and the Bridge Residency at Headlands Center for the Arts, Fall 2009. She exhibits, lectures and teaches extensively in venues which have included The Serpentine Gallery & Victoria and Albert Museum, London; WaveHill, Bronx , NYC; Spoleto, USA, Charleston, S.C., (2002); American Fine Arts Co., NYC (2004); The Fabric Workshop and Museum of Philadelphia (2003-4); Mass MoCA, Ma. (2004); The School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Her work is in the Tate Modern, Fabric Workshop and Museum of Philadelphia, and Philadelphia Museum of Art. Collaborations include Mark Dion, Suzanne Bocanegra, Iain Kerr, David Lang, Lucy Orta and others Puett is represented by Alexander Gray Associates in NYC and currently is living and working in NYC and Pennsylvania on the Mildred’s Lane Project (Co-founder/Director).

Christo Sims is a PhD candidate at UC Berkeley’s School of Information and a researcher for the Digital Media and Learning Hub at the University of California Humanities Research Institute. For his dissertation he’s conducting an ethnographic study that investigates the relationship between young people’s creative practices with media technologies and the (re)production of social differences. His case follows a diverse group of 11 and 12 year olds attending a New York City middle school that celebrates media technology, play, and creative production. Previously, Christo was a researcher for the The Digital Youth Project, one of the centerpieces of the MacArthur Foundation’s initiative on digital media and learning. Led by Mimi Ito, Christo and his co-researchers co-authored the project’s book, Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media, the largest qualitative study of youth new media use to date.

Caroline Woolard makes things that connect people. Barter experiments Trade School and OurGoods.org are supported by The Field, GO Public Projects, e-flux, The Walker Art Center, Cooper Union, the optimism of strangers, and unemployment benefits. Caroline’s subway swings, public seats, and other tools for action are supported by a collectively-run studio group called Splinters and Logs, a year of unemployment benefits, a MacDowell Colony fellowship, a Watermill Center residency, Esterni Milan, the curiosity of strangers, and grants from iLAND and The Field.

Catherine Brooks is a Yoga Alliance Registered Yoga Teacher, certified at the 200 hour level.  In 2008 she completed her Anusara teacher training and has since caught regular community classes for artists in San Francisco and Richmond.  Catherine is also an MFA candidate in the VCUarts Department of Painting & Printmaking.

Joshua Quarles is a musician, composer and sound engineer.  In addition to writing for local favorite, Jonathan Vassar & The Speckled Bird, he plays cello, clarinet and guitar in the band. For the opening of the Sponge HQ, Joshua composed Hexagonal, which plays alongside the top-bar beehive. Richmond’s legendary eatery Mamma Zu, counts Joshua as one of its lead cooks. His food expertise spans from east to west and he is particularly fond of making bread and cake.