“Trifles make the sum of life.” -Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
And so they do – those small moments that go unnoticed, day in and day out, make up the timeline on which we spend our entire lives. We are often blind to so much of our existence, whiling away time spent in between – in between adventures or important days – these throw away minutes that we often don’t realize are terribly precious. They are the pieces of life. A quiet dinner table, the ride to the grocery store, checking the mailbox, these so-called insignificant things are what occupies our time. They are what makes our days and nights, our memories, and in the end, our time on earth.
Lida Winfield spoke to us for a second time. In 2018, we discussed Winfield’s choreography and her role as an educator among other things. When the pandemic began, she was teaching at Middlebury College. She calls it an amazing moment of events. At the time, Winfield was in the process of creating a five person collaborative piece with other artists in residence where she was. As they were getting ready to open, Winfield got word that her father had been hospitalized with presumptive COVID. By the time she returned to campus she discovered that it had been shut down and her collaborators had to leave. Shortly after, her father died from COVID-19 after spending several weeks in ICU. This experience drove home that while this is a global event, affecting everyone on a different level, it is also an extremely personal one. To hear how Winfield carried on after this heartbreaking turn of events – and how it gave her perspective on the difficulties of online teaching and why this safety measure is so critical – and to hear about her work and how to access it online, listen to the complete interview.
Goran Denić lives near Belgrade where he spoke to us while the pandemic rolled on. He had just completed an interview for German media before speaking to us. Denić helps run movable artist residencies; the home from where he spoke to us had housed dozens of artists over the years. The residency is intended to allow artists to travel and work around the region. The initiative is jointly funded by a number of organizations with the aim of artistic collaboration. The program running where Denić is based is a mixed media residency with themes like Taboos in Transition, Hospitality vs. Hostility and Museum of Corruption, the most recent work begun. This last, Museum of Corruption, began as an initiative with the idea that once corruption is placed in the museum, it becomes a museum object and loses its power to corrupt. Departments in the Museum of Corruption, which is entirely online at the moment, include Corruption of Time, Corruption of Language, Corruption of Personality and more. To hear more about this project and other works, listen to the complete interview.
A Few Words to Keep in your Pocket:
Endeavor to see the little moments of your life from time to time.
Interviews are available on iTunes as podcasts, and for Android please click here. All weekly essay pieces in a shareable format are here. The full archive of interviews here.
Books to Read
What are you reading? Add your titles to our reading list here. Lida Winfield doesn’t connect with joy through reading naturally, being tremendously dyslexic but practices doing so – recently she began All About Love by Bell Hooks. The Illustrated Through Corruption for Beginners, a project of the Museum of Corruption can be found here.
Deadlines
The 5th Lih Pao International Sculpture Biennial Awards invite artists under age 50 to submit their work for consideration. This year’s theme is Infinity and all sculpture concepts must speak to this. There are significant cash awards for winners as well as subsidized travel to the event in Taiwan in 2021 – pandemic considering, of course. For more information, visit the website. Deadline for entry is October 30.