Writer-in-Residence:
Johanna Hedva
Sept. 15 to Oct. 31, 2014
The inaugural Project X Desk at Outpost@Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena.
This week at the Project X Desk:
TAROT CARD READINGS with Johanna Hedva
Tuesday, September 30 and Wednesday, October 1
1pm to 5pm
Free, first come first serve.
Johanna Hedva on her project for the Desk:
In the wake of the Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden revelations last year, the image of Icarus appeared in my mind. It struck me that these two figures represented contemporary, political versions of the Ancient Greek myth: their ambition—in this case, to expose U.S. injustice to the public, in the hope for change—manifested in their downfall. I began working on a novel, entitled Non, to speak to the desires and motivations I saw at work with Manning, Snowden, and the hacktivists who were being persecuted and imprisoned for political activism. The first-person narrative is in the voice of “On_Hell,” an Icarus-like hacktivist, living in Los Angeles, who has just been released from prison, having been convicted of hacking into government databases. On_Hell, in an urgent and incendiary voice, interrogates the presence of political agency in the U.S., for those who engage in civil disobedience and are of a minority race (he is Guatemalan-American, born of illegal immigrants). My research will engage with the thinking of Hannah Arendt, Julian Assange, and Bonnie Honig, following a lineage of democratic thinkers who question the formation of political belonging.
Johanna will present a public program in conjunction with her residency at the Project X Desk about hacktivism. Details on the program and Johanna’s open hours coming soon.
About
Johanna Hedva (formerly Kozma) is a Los Angeles-based artist and writer, working in performance, theater, text, poetry, and Ancient Greek myth. Her work has been performed at the Hammer Museum, Southern Exposure, PERFORM! Now, Machine Project, PØST, New Wight Gallery, Anatomy Riot, PAM, and in The Getty’s Pacific Standard Time. She has published prose and poetry in PANK, Circle, InDigest, Rymden Magazine, and in the WHL Studio Reader series, of which she is a co-founder. She holds an MFA in Art and an MA in Aesthetics and Politics from California Institute of the Arts.
Her most recent performance, at PAM, was an adaptation of the Euripedes tragedy Alcestis, as a script written for two queer women: The Queen and Death. She is currently at work on a novel that proposes whistleblowers and hacktivists as contemporary Icarus-like figures. She is also adapting Medea to be performed with a man in the title role, to premiere in spring 2015.
The Project X Desk at Outpost@Armory is a new residency presented by Project X Foundation for Art & Criticism and Armory Center for the Arts.
For more information, email editors@x-traonline.org