November 22, 2019 - Amanda Jernigan - Losing to Find: Collaboration and Love

In her graphic novel, Creation,the artist Sylvia Nickerson writes: 'We're born, then, we die. In the middle, it seems mostly to be about who has power over whom. In loving, we give our power away. It's the greatest thing. It's the scariest thing.' In collaborating, too, we give our power away. It's the greatest thing. It's the scariest thing. Amanda Jernigan worked for many years on her own, as a poet and essayist, with a fair bit of autonomy over the artworks she created. In the last few years, she's embarked upon a series of projects with composers, visual artists, and performers, and experienced both the pleasure and the terror of giving power away, in collaboration with other artists. In this talk, Jernigan meditates on what it looks like to assent to a loss of control, in collaboration — and also on what may be found, in this act of losing.