Critical Bounds Podcast

Conversation with Seattle-based interdisciplinary artist, writer and performer Meghan Elizabeth Trainor (not THAT one) about Computational Witchcraft, Creating mythologies in order to truly own our places in spaces like tech that are historically unwelcoming to and erasing of womxn and other folxs who have been marginalized (because we have always been there, regardless of the dominant mythologies), using her project Witchcraft Memes to try to spark an interest in STEM for teens and tweens, using nurturance in community as a form of activism, her installation Elektron Oracle form the show Good Witch/Bad Witch at Museum of Museums in Seattle, curated by Bri Luna AKA The Hoodwitch, and much more.

A conversation with director Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman about his film work, the protests happening in both LA (where he is based) and Seattle (where I am based)this summer, police brutality, the houseless crisis, the perils of social media, AI as a symbiotic lifeform, and the rather banal-yet-dangerous role it currently plays in our lives, Star Trek, Covid, how smartphones have changed our brains, and his conversations with Paradise, CA residents that resulted in an upcoming film, "Tips on Surviving the End of the World".

Conversation with curator, writer, and cultural arts programmer Bethany Tabor about her work with Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, creating events that give space for people to talk and learn about Death and Dying. We discuss performance art, John Underwood, the founder of the Death Cafe Movement, artist Teresa Margolles, Dia de Los Muertos and the inextricably imperialistic relationship between US and Mexico, and how Covid has not actually changed our proximity to death.

Conversation with artist AJ Hawkins about how changing relationships to faith can change our relationships to grief and grieving processes, how the death of a beloved pet inspired a search to make sense of her own mortality, the necrobiome as a "microbiological afterlife", her project "The Reclamation", How Death Positivity includes issues like bodily autonomy and environmentalism, how art can be used to connect and communicate, and to cope with things that feel "too big", and a crash course on ecological disposition.

Conversation with curator, writer, and researcher J Simmz delves into our personal and larger societal relationships with death, Simmz work as an intuitive and conceptual curator, how she has found ways to move naturally with cycles of life and death in work and beyond, and how we might apply that philosophy to our current state—the possible deaths of our own harmful institutions—and what our might our roles at this moment in time be.

Conversation with Carrie Redway, a writer, mixed media artist and death doula in Seattle, WA. We discuss her chapbook "Vulpecula" (which she reads from), find out just What IS a Death Doula?, and Carrie's path to becoming one. We talk about her connection with her grandmother through her childhood zines about death, Tips for people caring for dying loved ones in person and via distance, Sacred Passing organization and training communities to do the work that our ancestors used to do, the invisibility of death in our (predominantly Western) culture, and movement as a tool for both grieving and creative processes.

Conversation with visual artist, writer, poet, performer and professor of studies of gender, race, and sexuality, Dr. Bettina Judd(MA PhD). We discuss her award-winning book patient, which examines the history of medical experimentation on, and display of the bodies of Black women through poetry, as well as why racism is a public health issue, the presumed danger of Black embodiment, how to have community in isolation, and the inherent problem of a surgeon founding the modern field of gynecology--and how many are going back to traditional, community, and Indigenous forms of medicine as a result, and much, much more.

Conversation with visual artist and physician Dr. Eric Avery about his intersecting practices in art and medicine. We discuss the AIDS crisis, living and making art in New York in the 1970s, his humanitarian work around the world, bringing medicine into the museum, the opioid crisis, printmaking, and how he believes art can change the world.

Conversation with visual artist, experimental printmaker and filmmaker Susan Aldworth about consciousness and the human brain. We talk about the influence of both philosophy and science in her work, and her latest projects, including "Out of the Blue", a kinectic sculpture installation project that looks at epilepsy through the stories of 100 people.

Conversation with emerging, independent scholar and curator Adela Goldsmith about queer elders, our love/hate relationship with museums (some we really love), the value of experiential knowledge, the importance and innate queerness of archives, the future of museums (is there one?), the roles of care networks, mutual aid, and queer methodologies during this historic moment, what the Critical Bounds drinking game would look like, and "What is a Career?".