20 QUESTIONS
FOR 20 YEARS

Grisha Coleman is an artist working through choreography, performance, experiential technology and sound composition. Her research explores tensions across our physiological, technological, and ecological systems; human movement, our machines, and the places we inhabit. I engage this exploration in interdisciplinary ways, centering presence and experience to counter conventional dichotomies of quantitative/qualitative thought. Working with time-based performance and technology began at the California Institute for the Arts in Music Composition and Integrated Media. As a Fellow at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Carnegie Mellon University, her work forged bridges among workers in the arts, human-centered computing, robotics and natural sciences. Ms. Coleman continued to build hybrid systems across applications of health, education, and the arts with teams of engineers and computer scientists as faculty in the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering and School of Dance at Arizona State University. Previous to this, she worked full time as an artist, notably founding and composing the music performance company HOTMOUTH, as well as a dancer with the acclaimed company the Urban Bush Women. She currently holds the position of Professor of Movement, Computation, and Digital Media in the in the College of Arts, Media, and Design at Northeastern University, and an affiliation with the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering, the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, and the Center for Race and Democracy at Arizona State University.

Her work has been generously supported by The Doris Duke Foundation’s Performing Arts Technologies Lab, a Harvard-Radcliffe Fellowship, The National Endowment for the Arts in Media grants, the Rockefeller Multi-Arts Project [MAP] Fund, Creative Capital, the Jerome Foundation, the Surdna Foundation Thriving Cultures Grant, the MacDowell Arts Colony, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Carnegie Mellon University’s STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Pioneer Works, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, and Stanford University’s Mohr Visiting Artist Fellowship.

Ms. Coleman is a New York City native.

Nato Thompson is a curator, writer, and cultural strategist working at the intersection of art, politics, and community engagement. He is the co-founder of The Alternative Art School (TAAS), a global, artist-led platform for experimental art education. Through his consulting practice Dreaming in Public, he supports artists, institutions, and organizations in developing visionary projects, expanding visibility, and building sustainable careers.

Thompson previously served as Artistic Director of Philadelphia Contemporary and Chief Curator at Creative Time, where he organized landmark projects with artists such as Paul Ramírez Jonas, Trevor Paglen, Tania Bruguera, and Pedro Reyes. He began his career as Curator at MASS MoCA, curating exhibitions that blurred the lines between contemporary art and lived experience.

A widely respected voice in the art world, Thompson is the author of Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the 21st Century and Culture as Weapon: The Art of Influence in Everyday Life. His writing, curatorial projects, and lectures have helped shape a generation of socially engaged art.