The Lens and the Leash

Date: December 2, 2012
Time: 1 pm
Location: Flux Factory, 39-31 29th Street, Long Island City, Queens

Please join Dillon de Give and Ada Smailbegovic to discuss the results of Long Walks in the Park, a project that invited bird watchers and dog walkers to be paired for one-on-one strolls together in Prospect Park, without their dogs or their binoculars. The meeting will open a conversation on nature, park philosophy and diplomacy.

Dillon de Give works with other people to interject analog experience into an increasingly digitized world, and examine the relationship between the natural and built environment. Dillon is a co-founder of The Walk Exchange. He has shown work with Proteus Gowanus, Portland Art Museum, The Flux Factory, Catch!, and Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe. He recently attended the Guapamapataro Interdisciplinary Residency in Art and Ecology in Michoacán, Mexico. Dillon holds a BS in Radio/Television/Film from Northwestern University and will soon hold an MFA in Art and Social Practice from Portland State University.

Ada Smailbegovic is a poet and literary critic who is interested in in exploring the relationship between natural history, philosophy and poetics. Her research in animal studies addresses the relationship between affect and ethology and the way that animals are tethered to, and yet respond to changes in the sensitive environments in which they live. Ada is currently a PhD Candidate in English at New York University where she is completing a dissertation on poetics of matter at the intersection between science and twentieth-century poetry. She holds an M.A. in English and a B.Sc. (Honors) in Biology from the University of British Columbia and is the author of a poetry chapbook “Avowal of What Is Here” (JackPine Press 2009).

This project is part of Flux Factory’s upcoming Fall 2013 exhibition, Untitled (As of Yet), a group show about unexpected circumstances, the breakdown of routine, and displacement as a potentially fruitful phenomenon.