7x7x7 Series: Katie Baer Schetlick
Published on August 20, 2018. Interview by 2018 Summer Intern, Emma Brodeur. Katie Baer Schetlick is a dance artist living and working in Charlottesville. Earlier this year, she and Jordan Perry brought Future Projections, a performance and installation piece, to Welcome Gallery. Katie is our fourth featured 2018 artist in our third 7x7x7 Series, which asks 7 questions to 7 Charlottesville artists and published once a week for 7 weeks.
Image courtesy of the artist
If you had a free afternoon in Charlottesville what would you do or where would you go?
Honestly, I think I would take a nap—more dream space. If I woke up in time, I would listen to WTJU’s rock hour (2-4pm) while trying to save my house plants from dying.
Describe your artistic work in 7 words.
Never knows what it wants to be.
or
Spacetime Timespace Relational Disappearing Reappearing Unscientific Considering
Who or what inspires your current work?
The writings/thought movements of Karen Barad, Denise Desilva, and Donna Haraway.
Generous performance punks like Keith Hennessey.
Friends who resist THE art economy by finding their own way to be and make in the world (Domestic Performance Agency, Yonkers International Press, and so many others!).
Image courtesy of the artist
Consider one piece you’re working on right now. Give us a snippet of your routine—from start to finish, what goes into making it?
Decide to make the idea(s) a “reality”
Gather images, improv in the studio, read related content, talk to friends about it (this happens over and again and sometimes at the same time)
Develop a movement score, try it, write about what happened/what came up/what was felt
Examples: dance a duet with your astral body, move to convince yourself that gravity is a social construct
Devise a new score based on experience of the previous one
Repeat 2-4 in no particular order, start to film movement studies in the studio
Keep a notebook of movement scores, driving questions, and imagery
Think what is this even then realize like everytime that the “is” doesn’t matter
Consider relation to viewing audience (sometimes this is the first consideration)
Consider elements like time, sound, light, materials (sometimes one or all of these elements is the initial idea)
Ask how the space needs to be constructed, oriented in order for this relation to transpire
Sometimes go all the way back to #1
Begin to imagine how the gathered materials will be sculpted
EDIT EDIT EDIT (get sad about material that doesn’t make the cut and save it for later)
Perform a version of it
Perform another version of it
What have you learned about yourself as a person through the experience of making art?
That I need to make it and then think “why does this matter?” and then continue to make it knowing the answer will never be good enough to be the reason. That I can continue to make new and different choices. That my “self” is not singular. That I enjoy making do with what’s at hand. That I find kinship with shapeshifters.
Image courtesy of the artist
What would you like to see happen in Charlottesville to better support artists in our community?
We need more spaces that aren’t temporary/facing future development! I have seen so many art spaces disappear over the short time I have lived here (6 years). As much as I love work made in and for non-traditional spaces, we desperately need an adaptable performing arts center (or cultural center) with risky, genre-bending programming.
Here are some of my favs:
I also want to give a shout out to all the arts organizations that ARE so generously helping to make art happen in this town (I know it isn’t always easy): New City Arts (wink face), The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, Live Arts, and too many individuals to name who offer up their personal spaces and resources.
Image courtesy of the artist
What is currently on your studio/work desk?
A blue foam yoga block, The Stick™ (a massage apparatus), a scanned image of dust, a friend’s copy of Bloodchild by Octavia Butler that I need to return, painter’s tape, thumb tacks, 3 half full notebooks (or half empty?), a highlighted copy of Choreopolice and Choreopolitics: or, the task of the dancer by André Lepecki.
The opinions expressed in this interview are solely those of the artist and do not necessarily represent the policies or positions of NCAI.
Katie Baer Schetlick is a dance artist, maker, researcher and current Lecturer in Dance at the University of Virginia. Her work engages dance as a mode(s) of being, an historical object, a process of unproductivity, a subversive and controlling apparatus all at once.