Digital Dialogues

In this podcast, we speak with Jillian Bruschera, a Columbia Alum and creator of The Mobile Mill –a portable paper-making studio that has traveled across the US and overseas engaging with communities and promoting an untraditional perception of art: that anyone, anywhere can make it and engage with it.

'In' is a piece written and read here by Haley Cieslak inspired by Mort Castle’s Writing Horror course. Cieslak is a senior at Columbia College Chicago with a major in Creative Writing and has been published in Columbia’s Creative Writing Anthology Hair Trigger.

In the final installment of this two-part podcast, Digital Dialogues continues our conversation with Evan Bartlett and Tim Jacks. After finishing up a 4700 mile journey from Chicago to L.A. and back with cameraman Zach Cieslak, Bartlett and Jacks discuss the highs and lows of their trip staying with cancer patients, survivors and caregivers as well as the importance of their web series, "Ride The Battle". They explore the impacts, physical, mental and emotional, this journey had on them and those interviewed.

La Keisha Leek is a student of art history with a verocity for arts programming. She is a recent Columbia alumna and the administrative and project coordinator for Theaster Gates Studios, LLC. Additionally, La Keisha conducts her own charming and thought provoking podcast, Afros & Ceramic Fruit, via WSTS Radio. In this episode she discusses her growth and journey that brought her to her current goals and interests, with a special focus on her upcoming curatorial endeavor “How to Make a Hood.” She shares her dedication and drive for starting conversations and sparking connections through community engagement. “How to make a hood” is showing August 1st through October 10th at the Arts Incubator Gallery. You can hear more from La Keisha through Afros & Ceramic Fruit at WSTS Radio, ITunes or I Heart Radio.

Recent Columbia College Chicago film graduates Evan Bartlett, Tim Jacks and Zack Cieslak set out to bike cross-country, making a documentary webseries dedicated to dismantling the cultural stigmas around cancer. Fueled by personal experiences with cancer, the gang will travel to a different town a meet a cancer survivor or patient each week; sharing their stories, exploring how cancer has changed their lives, and going on a boundless activity (I.E. skydiving, cliff-jumping, rollercoaster riding). In the first part of this two part podcast, PUSH sits down with Bartlett and Jacks and gets the inside scoop on what has inspired them to pursue this project. They discuss the upcoming excitements and anxieties for their journey and explain why they’ve chosen to use film to spread positive messages.

The People’s Cook is the founder and orchestrator of Viva la Soul! a PopUp Performance Restaurant with the goal of inter-threading food, culture, theatre and art. The Peoples Cook creates cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, participatory arts activities-- incorporating local artists within the community of the city to foster interactive community engagement. In this episode he shares what lead to the creation of Viva La Soul, and why he’s passionate about putting culture at the forefront of the conversation on food.

"Hope for the Day", is a non-profit organized dedicated to suicide prevention through music and the arts. Jonny Boucher, Columbia College Chicago alumnus and founder/ executive director, shares his personal inspirations which have lead to the variety of powerful and inspiring projects developed through Hope for the Day. Hope for the day fosters education, prevention and hope through three major creative projects; Music Saved My Life, Beatkeepers and The HD Project. Boucher discusses the importance of connecting to positive role models and his aspirations to dismantle the negative stigmas on mental health through Hope for the Day’s multi-media endeavors.

DePaul Art Museum’s Assistant Curator and Columbia alum, Greg Harris, discusses the photography exhibit ‘We Shall: Photographs by Paul D’Amato.’ In stylistically formal portraits Paul D’Amato, faculty of Columbia’s Photography Department, has captured the people and places encompassing Chicago’s West side neighborhoods for nearly two decades. Greg Harris shares how the exhibit explores class, race, culture and the subjectivity of photography. Additionally, Harris speaks on curatorial practices and his unique perspective on the relations between art and activism.

“Within my book I wanted there to be funny pictures, and this range to sort of tragic and then realistic. Not categorized by subject - these are dead, and this is food and this is what we wear, this is on exhibits. I wanted it to be woven and by that experience of going through all the pictures, can someone’s guard be set down because of that ride through the pictures?”

“I think that making a mark is the most direct form of expression, as well as talking, moving space.”

Margaret Mahan and Drew Matott of the Peace Paper Project talk about the Panty Pulping program. “I feel like seeing those threads broken down you see that that’s all the underwear really is. At essence it’s just threads, and we’re all sort of bound together by them in a way.”

“And the way that I’ve heard a lot of folks who do spoken word talk about it is they talk about the way you can bring music into the delivery.”

Thinker, photographer, marketer, and teacher Cole Robertson talks artist manifestos. Are they useful for working artists, or are they outdated, limiting, and risky? What have outrageous declarations done for you lately? “So manifesto is where the rubber hits the road between thought and practice or action. It’s that first step in action or the last culmination of the thought process, sort of the bridge between them.”