Jeanette Joy Harris
I am an artist and artistic researcher skeptical of the traditional metaphysical divisions drawn between the liberal and fine arts. My practice asks social and political questions, and, in lieu of discursive silos, situates concepts within an interdisciplinary environment. In doing so I create small intellectual universes that I then puncture and unravel using various philosophical, literary, and artistic devices. Through this phenomenological approach, concepts are reimagined and unhindered by any particular method or language. The outcome of such a process is a rigorously researched creative performance along with an accompanying scholarly essay, article, presentation, or public panel. My goal is for a work to evoke some kind of public participation either within the performance itself or in a subsequent dialogue.
Because of its relationship with its audience, performance, as a craft, is especially adept at addressing political issues and so much of my work navigates political waters. Performance reshapes experiences, reveals common threads, and exposes points of departure. It creates junctures where the public and private inevitably and oftentimes uncomfortably collide. Through vivid embodied description or by employing requests, demands, complaints, and lamentations, performance cajoles audiences to stroll down little-known paths where empathy and the imagination can be challenged and redirected.
Jeanette Joy Harris 