Recordar | to pass through the heart
Publication information:
Abstract
Performance: Vision Lab Collective [www.visionlabcollective.com] is an international socially-engaged art and research collective, based at Harvard Divinity School. We create artistic and literary works, performances, scholarly research projects, and other innovative spaces of engagement combining radically imaginative cross-disciplinary conversations and experiential practices spanning the areas of contemporary spirituality, social and environmental justice, science and technology, and literary and artistic practice. We have created and presented our work through public performances and workshops, residencies, conferences, and experiential retreats, in residence at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and MIT’s Experimental Collections.
In this 60 minute workshop and 60 minute performance, we take as our starting point "the human heart," creatively repurposing Harvard's archive of earliest waveform recordings of blood flowing from the heart (1874-1896) with contemporary interventions and interactive media. Our multimedia workshop and panel performance for “Spirituality and the Arts,” reawakens the intimacy, beauty, and emotional complexity of these first waveforms drawn from and by the heart through a curated selection of work and interactive conversations and experiential practices with our collective members.
Presenter Biography
Kythe Heller is a poet, essayist, scholar, and interdisciplinary artist. She is a ThD candidate at Harvard University under the Committee on the Study of Religion in Comparative Studies in Religion, Religious Thought (Philosophy and Theology), and Literary Studies and the Arts, with a PhD Secondary Field in Arts, Film, and Visual Studies / Critical Media Practice. Previously, she received an MDiv from Harvard Divinity School, an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, and a BA in English Literature from Reed College. She has received fellowships and grant awards from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to support a fellowship at The MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Mellon Foundation, Harvard University, and Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Film, music, performance, and installation work has been screened and exhibited at festivals across the United States and Canada.
She is the founder and creative director of Vision Lab, a socially-engaged art and research collective dedicated to the future of the human spirit, based at Harvard Divinity School and creating work at the nexus of contemporary spirituality, social and environmental justice, and technology, in order to augur collaborative, wise futures that inspire a global public. She edits the international art and culture journal Forecast and is on the faculty of Bard College’s Language and Thinking Program.