A gallery that’s different every time you “read” it. An immersive, illuminated audiobook, playing the “Technelegy” soundscape on loop. A spoken word album you can enter and inhabit. A poetry nook tracing the lines from oral tradition to literacy and inscription to code and AI. A mixed-media notebook of drafts, curiosities, completions, revisions, recitations, performances, encounters, experiments, and memories. A research library. A more-than-human writing studio. A STANZA is, after all, a group of lines within a poem, and a place in which we gather — room for what language was, and is, and will be.
Being able to create experiences like this on university campuses brings me immense joy, especially when the museum boasts an exceptional collection and installs a Nam June Paik robot at the exhibition entrance, and the curator is a brilliant and kind soul (
@jessconatser) who gave me some of my first-ever art opportunities nearly nine years ago. Being there in person last night for a walkthrough and Q&A felt really special.
Yesterday, a student told me this gallery is the space she visits when she wants to sit and rest and listen; sometimes she brings her work and settles in amongst the poems. Someone else said they sunk into a beanbag chair and listened to the audio for two hours. What more could I ask for?
STANZA is on view at
@CAM_of_NU through mid-2027. Thanks to Jess, Mike, Will, Brian and the rest of the team!