Join us for an engaging conversation with landscape architect Sara Zewde and architect Frida Escobedo, two dynamic creatives transforming art institutions in New York and beyond. Studio Zewde has recently been selected to design the south garden at Dia Beacon, while Frida Escobedo has been appointed as the architect for the new Modern & Contemporary Wing at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Following an introduction by Dia’s Nathalie de Gunzburg Director Jessica Morgan, Zewde and Escobedo will engage in dialogue with Deputy Director of Program Humberto Moro.

A Conversation with Sara Zewde and Frida Escobedo

Wednesday, April 24, 2024
6:30 pm

Dia Chelsea 
537 West 22nd Street 
New York, New York 

Cheyney Thompson was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1975. He is a painter whose work concerns the principles of mathematical theories, complex algorithms, and economic formulas. Recent solo exhibitions include Several Bellonas, Lisson Gallery, New York (2022–23); Intervals and Displacements, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York (2022–23); and Intervals, Lisson Gallery, Beijing (2023–24). Recent group exhibitions include those at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2015); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2016); and Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (2016). Thompson lives in New York.

Cheyney Thompson on Robert Irwin

Julia Phillips was born in Hamburg in 1985. Her practice encompasses sculpture, drawing, and video art. Recent solo exhibitions include Failure Detection, MoMA PS1, Queens (2018); and Fake Truth, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2019). Recent group exhibitions include those at the New Museum, New York (2021); 59th Venice Biennale: The Milk of Dreams (2022); and the Drawing Center, New York (2023). Phillips lives in Berlin and Chicago.

Julia Phillips on Louise Bourgeois

Friday, May 17, 2024
6:30 pm

Dia Chelsea
537 West 22nd Street
New York, New York

Presence, Absence, and Hallucination is a performance, reading, and sound activation of space-time dimensions in order to pressurize modes and forms of reality (in its glitchy, elusive, shapeshifting capacity) as it is perceived, experienced, and documented—ecologically, historically, sociologically, philosophically, and ever more frequently using artificial intelligence. Three prose texts by Brenda Iijima act as reference points for a collaboration with sound artist Johann Diedrick that opens pathways and trace resonances into the prismatic densities of the past, present, and future.

Poetry &: Presence, Absence, and Hallucination with Brenda Iijima and Johann Diedrick

Wednesday, May 22, 2024

Dia Chelsea
537 West 22nd Street
New York, New York

Join us for a lecture by curator and writer Camila Marambio as she reflects on Morelos’s exhibition in relation to her own practice at the intersection of environmental humanities, decolonial nature conservation, contemporary art, and performance studies, with a particular focus on her research and conservation efforts of peatlands and coastal wetland ecosystems. For Dia’s forthcoming publication dedicated to Morelos’s soil-based works, Marambio and ecologist Renee Rossini contributed a text on peat, which is a revered material for the artist in this commission. The lecture is accompanied by a scent invocation and textual contribution by artist agustine zegers, inviting peatlands from various corners of the world into the space.

My Body is a Bog: an Olfactory Lecture by Camila Marambio

Event details
Saturday, November 11, 2023
2–3 pm

Dia Beacon
3 Beekman Street
Beacon, New York

Free with museum admission, registration is recommended.

Blind Dates Recursive 01

Question: How do you give your work a life?
Facilitated by artist Timmy Simonds

Timmy Simonds is an artist who moves between object-making, writing, routines of caretaking, and participatory exercises. Through the fictional character of a teacher he calls MISS OTHMAR, Simonds examines the cultural expectations and vulnerabilities inherent in the practice of teaching. His work has been shown at Cathouse Proper, Cleopatra’s, Greene Naftali, Kai Matsumiya, and Knockdown Center, all in New York; as well as at Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City and Rond-Point Projects in Marseille, among other project spaces, galleries, and institutions. Simonds teaches at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, and the New York University Steinhardt Studio Art program. Since 2018, he has broadcasted regularly with Montez Press Radio and Wave Farm’s radio station, WGXC.

About the program series

Blind Dates Recursive is a series of participatory public conversations held at Dia Beacon in conjunction with Rita McBride: Arena Momentum (on view through January 2025). These engagements take place on McBride’s Arena (1997), a modularly structured tribune that is activated by the presence of audiences and performers alike.

Inspired by the artist’s decision to make the digital design files of Arena freely available through a copyleft license, which allows for the public to access and reinterpret the work, Blind Dates Recursive provides an ongoing, open forum to consider and enact the shifting nature of authorship.

Each month, an invited facilitator poses a question and draws on their unique field of expertise to act as an instigator, listener, and moderator of the responses and conversation. Participants are encouraged to think out loud and in dialogue with each other during the hour-long session, at the end of which the facilitator will guide the group to collectively form a new question. The new question will be posed at the next session by a new facilitator. In this way, like a game of Telephone, Blind Dates Recursive generates iterative gatherings and an evolving public dialogue over the course of the exhibition.

The public is encouraged to participate on a recurring basis.

Blind Dates Recursive 01

Event details
Saturday, December 9, 2023
2–3 pm

Dia Beacon
3 Beekman Street
Beacon, New York

Included with museum admission, registration is recommended.

Blind Dates Recursive 02

Question: Where to facilitate energy to give life?
Facilitated by Darling Green

Darling Green is a collaborative curatorial practice. The studio combines art collection and exhibition development with an open dialogue on the potentials of the exhibition form, privileging process over predetermined frameworks. Darling Green also hosts Telephone Telephone, a regular meeting to discuss the meanings, uses, and methodologies of the exhibition form. Part seminar, part reading group, and part gathering of co-conspirators, it is a self-organizing experiment in dialogue and cooperative discovery.

About the program series

Blind Dates Recursive is a series of participatory public conversations held at Dia Beacon in conjunction with Rita McBride: Arena Momentum (on view through January 2025). These engagements take place on McBride’s Arena (1997), a modularly structured tribune that is activated by the presence of audiences and performers alike.

Inspired by the artist’s decision to make the digital design files of Arena freely available through a copyleft license, which allows for the public to access and reinterpret the work, Blind Dates Recursive provides an ongoing, open forum to consider and enact the shifting nature of authorship.

Each month, an invited facilitator poses a question and draws on their unique field of expertise to act as an instigator, listener, and moderator of the responses and conversation. Participants are encouraged to think out loud and in dialogue with each other during the hour-long session, at the end of which the facilitator will guide the group to collectively form a new question. The new question will be posed at the next session by a new facilitator. In this way, like a game of Telephone, Blind Dates Recursive generates iterative gatherings and an evolving public dialogue over the course of the exhibition.

The public is encouraged to participate on a recurring basis.

Blind Dates Recursive 02

Event details
Saturday, February 3, 2024
2–3 pm

Dia Beacon
3 Beekman Street
Beacon, New York

Included with museum admission, registration is recommended.

Blind Dates Recursive 03

Question: 

[ what { is ( inside 

                   known

                   centered ) what } is ] outside

                                                     unknown

                                                     peripheral?

Facilitated by Salome Asega

Salome Asega is an artist and Director of NEW INC at the New Museum, New York. Her work invites the playful and absurd to critique the speed at which technology develops and poses new consentful tech futures that leverage the power of collective imagination. She is a co-founder of POWRPLNT, a Brooklyn digital-arts lab for teens, which was incubated at NEW INC in 2016–17. Asega is  a 2021 inaugural-cohort member of the Dorchester Industries Experimental Design Lab developed by Theaster Gates, the Prada Group, and Rebuild Foundation, and a 2022 United States Artists Fellow. Asega has participated in residencies and fellowships at Eyebeam, the Laundromat Project, and Recess, all in Brooklyn. She has also exhibited at the August Wilson Center, Pittsburg; Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh; Knockdown Center, Queens; Munchmuseet, Oslo; Museum of Modern Art, New York; 11th Shanghai Biennale, and more. Asega is on the boards of Eyebeam the School for Poetic Computation in New York, as well as a member of the Advisory Board for Social Science Research Council's Just Tech initiative.

About the program series

Blind Dates Recursive is a series of participatory public conversations held at Dia Beacon in conjunction with Rita McBride: Arena Momentum (on view through January 2025). These engagements take place on McBride’s Arena (1997), a modularly structured tribune that is activated by the presence of audiences and performers alike.

Inspired by the artist’s decision to make the digital design files of Arena freely available through a copyleft license, which allows for the public to access and reinterpret the work, Blind Dates Recursive provides an ongoing, open forum to consider and enact the shifting nature of authorship.

Each month, an invited facilitator poses a question and draws on their unique field of expertise to act as an instigator, listener, and moderator of the responses and conversation. Participants are encouraged to think out loud and in dialogue with each other during the hour-long session, at the end of which the facilitator will guide the group to collectively form a new question. The new question will be posed at the next session by a new facilitator. In this way, like a game of Telephone, Blind Dates Recursive generates iterative gatherings and an evolving public dialogue over the course of the exhibition.

The public is encouraged to participate on a recurring basis.

Blind Dates Recursive 03

Event details
Saturday, March 9, 2024
2–3 pm

Dia Beacon
3 Beekman Street
Beacon, New York

Included with museum admission, registration is recommended.

Blind Dates Recursive 04

Question:
What are the ideal spatial qualities of a site made for gathering?  
xxPOSTSCRIPTxx Do we gather to invent or invent to gather?

Facilitated by Elliot Reed

Elliot Reed is an artist whose projects aim to capture by physical means the idiosyncrasies of live performance. Reed is the founder, director, and sole employee of Elliot Reed Laboratories, a production office located inside the artist’s body. Established in 2014, Elliot Reed Laboratories holds a copyright with the Library of Congress and a business license from Los Angeles County. Elliot holds an MA in choreography from Exerce at the Centre Chorégraphique National Montpellier, France, and is a 2023 participant of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program in New York. Recent performances and exhibitions include those at Anonymous Gallery, Metro Pictures, MoMA PS1, OCDChinatown, and The Poetry Project in New York; the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Getty Center, Hammer Museum, and the Broad in Los Angeles; as well as Lucerne Festival, with JACK Quartet, and Kunsthaus Glarus in Switzerland. International performances include those in Hamburg, London, Madrid, Mexico City, Osaka, Tokyo, Vienna, and Zürich. Reed’s text manifesto “Performance Art Is…” was published in MIT Press’s The Drama Review (winter 2020).

About the program series

Blind Dates Recursive is a series of participatory public conversations held at Dia Beacon in conjunction with Rita McBride: Arena Momentum (on view through January 2025). These engagements take place on McBride’s Arena (1997), a modularly structured tribune that is activated by the presence of audiences and performers alike.

Inspired by the artist’s decision to make the digital design files of Arena freely available through a copyleft license, which allows for the public to access and reinterpret the work, Blind Dates Recursive provides an ongoing, open forum to consider and enact the shifting nature of authorship.

Each month, an invited facilitator poses a question and draws on their unique field of expertise to act as an instigator, listener, and moderator of the responses and conversation. Participants are encouraged to think out loud and in dialogue with each other during the hour-long session, at the end of which the facilitator will guide the group to collectively form a new question. The new question will be posed at the next session by a new facilitator. In this way, like a game of Telephone, Blind Dates Recursive generates iterative gatherings and an evolving public dialogue over the course of the exhibition.

The public is encouraged to participate on a recurring basis.

Blind Dates Recursive 04

Event details
Saturday, April 13, 2024
2–3 pm

Dia Beacon
3 Beekman Street
Beacon, New York

Included with museum admission, registration is recommended.

Blind Dates Recursive 05

Question: Who decides memorials? [When?/Where?/How?/Why?]
Facilitated by Paul Legault 

Paul Legault is a writer and editor who is interested in translation as a generative practice for creating original works of writing and art. He has published several books, including The Madeleine Poems (2010); The Other Poems (2011), a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award; The Emily Dickinson Reader: An English-to-English Translation of the Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (2012); Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror 2 (2016); Lunch Poems 2 (2018); and The Tower (2020). He co-edited The Sonnets: Translating and Rewriting Shakespeare (2012) and previously, together with Sharmila Cohen and Lauren Hunter, the translation journal Telephone which featured a foreign poet in each issue translated into English by multiple writers. From 2013 to 2015 he served as Writer in Residence at Washington University in Saint Louis. He currently works at Penguin Random House and lives in Beacon, New York. 

About the program series

Blind Dates Recursive is a series of participatory public conversations held at Dia Beacon in conjunction with Rita McBride: Arena Momentum (on view through January 2025). These engagements take place on McBride’s Arena (1997), a modularly structured tribune that is activated by the presence of audiences and performers alike.

Inspired by the artist’s decision to make the digital design files of Arena freely available through a copyleft license, which allows for the public to access and reinterpret the work, Blind Dates Recursive provides an ongoing, open forum to consider and enact the shifting nature of authorship.

Each month, an invited facilitator poses a question and draws on their unique field of expertise to act as an instigator, listener, and moderator of the responses and conversation. Participants are encouraged to think out loud and in dialogue with each other during the hour-long session, at the end of which the facilitator will guide the group to collectively form a new question. The new question will be posed at the next session by a new facilitator. In this way, like a game of Telephone, Blind Dates Recursive generates iterative gatherings and an evolving public dialogue over the course of the exhibition.

The public is encouraged to participate on a recurring basis.

Blind Dates Recursive 05

Saturday, December 1, 2018, 2 pm

Calvin Klein, Inc. 
205 West 39th Street
New York City

DiaTalks -Donna De Salvo on Andy Warhol

diaartfoundation

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