Conversation included in Defiantly Optimistic by Jen Delos Reyes (2022).

Correspondence included in Sal Randolph’s The Uses of Art (2022).

Joined Bad at Sports as a Writer In Residence (2022).

Some diagrams of mine were included in a publication produced by the art space Compound Yellow (2020).

Essay included in the book Reading Room produced by dispersed holdings. It was selected as one of the 20 Best Art Books of 2020 by the Brooklyn Rail (2020).

Wrote a reflection published in numerous venues on the meaning of Vermont’s state motto “Freedom and Unity” during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020).

Appeared on WCVR radio’s The Heat of the House hosted by Rep. Jay Hooper to discuss Vermont politics (2020).

I was part of a profile of state legislators doing progressive agricultural advocacy in Civil Eats (2020).

Profiled in this Valley News article (2020).

Interviewed for this piece on paid family leave in Vermont (2020).

Op-ed I wrote on a paid leave bill in Vermont (2020).

Invited to speak alongside other guests (including the Vermont Lt. Governor) at the The Economy for All Town Hall Tour (2019).

Invited to have a conversation with students in Susanne Cockrell’s Social Practice Workshop at the California College of the Arts (2019).

Delivered the May 9th devotional for the VT House of Representatives which incorporated a poem by Donald Hall and Katy Perry lyrics. (2019).

Thoughts on the meaning of politics and the politics of meaning published in various papers (2019).

“6 Kinds of Public” for the Republican Speech issue of Dilettante Army (2019).

Commentary on paid family leave and the minimum wage (2019).

Interview with ArtPlace America in a series of profiles of people with an arts background about “how their creative lives relate to their public service, and what the arts can bring to good government.” (2019)

Video visit with Lane Hall’s ENG 876 Graduate Seminar in Media Culture (Radical Movements) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee - conversation about running for political office, socially engaged art, and political theory (2019).

Skype visit with Susanne Cockrell’s Community Practice Studio 1+2 course at the California College of the Arts - conversation about running for political office, socially engaged art, and political theory (2018).

Class (Dimensions of Self and Society) visit to Community College of Vermont - conversation about running for political office (2018).

A short piece for the Jefferson Center about the work of the Bethel Revitalization Initiative (2018).

Guest host interviewing Margaretha Haughwout, Sarah Nelson Wright, and Francesca Fiore and Hillary Wagner (2018).

Op-ed about school consolidation plan (2018).

Guest host interviewing Mel Chin (2018).

We Will Think This Through Together presents conversations with Edgar Arceneaux, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Shannon Jackson, and Claire Doherty.

I participated in the conversations with Shannon Jackson and Paul Ramirez Jonas The book was a collaboration of Bad at Sports and Open Engagement (2018). 

Walk organized in honor of Ted Purves for the Open Engagement conference (2018).

Guest host interviewing Chloë Bass (2018).

Guest host interviewing Lucy Lippard (2018).

All day interviews with Bad at Sports for Open Engagement: SUSTAINABILITY at Queens Museum (2018).

Accelerator Workshop at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study - Harvard University (2018).

Open Engagement invited 10 friends to reflect on the past 10 years of OE. This is my contribution (2018).

Op-ed with Pamela Fraser relating to educational philosophy and legislation in Vermont (2018).

Letter to the Editor (2017).

Guest host interviewing W.I.T.C.H. (2017).

Guest host interviewing Donna Neuwirth and Su Legatt (2017).

Guest host interviewing Public Matters (2017).

Guest host interviewing Michelle Illuminato, Brett Hunter, and Carol Padberg (2017).

I was invited to have a conversation about my work at Compound Yellow, an exhibition and event space in Illinois. A small booklet produced for the conversation is here (2017).

"In the face of the omnipresence of the cultural and consciousness industries, art has withdrawn from the world and has hidden before our very eyes--the only place it is safe from artworld recuperation, the only place left where the artworld is not looking for it." - Stephen Wright

"I would prefer not to." - Bartleby


Spy art, post-art, dropping out, breaking up, abandonment, art at a 1:1 scale, disappearance, unart, refusal, quitting, vacating, renunciation, withdrawal - such are some of the multitude of terms used to describe various strategies of what might also be called escape artistry. Laura Shaeffer and Randall Szott will converse about the ever shifting contours of this elusive domain. What do these tactics have to offer a cultural apparatus so committed to visibility? What generative potential is there in such gestures? And is that question itself a trap?

New England Philosophy of Education Society - Conference Theme: “Education in an Era of Difference, Disagreement, and Democracy” (2017)
 

Thread co-leader with Valentine Cadieux,  Lissette T. Olivares, and Antonio Roman-Alcala for the empyre discussion list - Radical Aesthetics, EcoAesthetic Systems and Entanglements organized by Margaretha Haughwout (2017).

Invited to write about my treasured friend Ted Purves for Bad at Sports (2017).

Participated in the three week National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on Space, Place, and the Humanities at Northeastern University (2017). 

Opinion piece about educational policy in Vermont (2017).

Say It While You Still Mean It: Conversations on Art and Practice presents conversations with Caroline Woolard, Stephen Wright, Julie Ault, Pablo Helguera, Nato Thompson, Michael Rakowitz, Suzanne Lacy, Dread Scott, and Rick Lowe.

I wrote the introduction for Stephen Wright and participated in the conversation with him as well as the one with Nato Thompson. The book was a collaboration of Bad at Sports and Open Engagement (2017). 

Six week seminar for 3rd-6th graders. The kids made: smoothies, hummus w/fried pita, guacamole w/fried tortillas, Thai coconut soup, lemon/maple soda, soba noodles with almond butter sauce, Thai spring rolls, mushroom/cashew potstickers, banana/peanut butter ice cream, chocolate coconut milk ice cream, and puff pastry with chocolate stuffed cherries (2017).

Joined Bad at Sports/Lumpen Radio for an Open Engagement special marathon broadcast (2017).

Interviews included:
1. Donna Neuwirth and Su Legatt
2. WITCHES
3. Public Matters
4. Michelle Illuminato, Brett Hunter,  and Carol Padberg
5. Valentine Cadieux and Colleen Sheehy
6. Amber Ginsburg and Katie Hargrave
7. Allison Agsten

Published in multiple forms in multiple papers throughout Vermont (2017). 

Giving testimony on the value of local control of educational decision making to the Vermont House Education Committee (2017).

My writing as placekraft cited in The Routledge Handbook of Literature and Space (2017).

Commentary on education policy for Vermont Digger (2017).

Book produced as a result of a panel I co-chaired with Pamela Fraser (2017).

My online research journal was included in The legacy of Allan Kaprow, a project for the School of Fine Arts of Frosinone.

Interviewed State Senator Dick McCormack about education in Vermont for community television (2017).

Op-ed with Pamela Fraser relating to educational philosophy and legislation in Vermont (2017).

A comment of mine was published in Public Servants
Art and the Crisis of the Common Good from MIT Press (2016).

Reader in Residence for the dispersed holdings Ambient Reading Spectacular (2016).

A three month long online symposium I organized with over 40 participants discussing the work of Gregory Bateson, systems aesthetics, design, ecology, and more. Participants engaged in reading discussions and live chats (2016).

Food Lab with Lexa Walsh for Summer School, an event series she organized at the Williams College Museum of Art (2016). 

Part of my collection of "nothing" purchased on ebay in the collection of the No Show Museum (2016).

"The NO SHOW MUSEUM is the world’s first museum dedicated to 'nothing' and its various manifestations throughout the history of art. Its collection includes works and documents from more than 100 internationally renowned artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, among them, Marina Abramovic, Joseph Beuys, Maurizio Cattelan, Marcel Duchamp, Ceal Floyer, Hans Haacke, Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, Gianni Motti, Robert Rauschenberg, Man Ray, Robert Ryman, Richard Serra, Santiago Sierra, Andy Warhol, and Rémy Zaugg."

Live the Life Book Launch - a conversation with Jen Delos Reyes at Gallery 400 in Chicago (2016).

The Dinner Party with Lexa Walsh for Summer School, an event series she organized at the Williams College Museum of Art (2016). 

Led the Prosper Valley School culinary team at Trek to Taste in Woodstock, VT. We made Hambsch Family Farm pork mini-tostadas topped with cumin slaw for their Farm to School Showcase (2016).

Co-organized two Sunday Soup events at AVA Gallery & Art Center with Adam Blue (2016).

"What is Sunday Soup? The Soup Grant is a grassroots model for funding small to medium sized creative projects through community meals. The basic formula is that a group of people come together to share a meal and that meal is sold for an affordable price. All the income from that meal is given as a grant to support a creative project. Grant applications are accepted up until the meal, everyone who purchases the meal gets one vote to determine who receives the grant. The grants are completely unrestricted and will be awarded at the discretion of the customers. Granting projects affiliated with Sunday Soup in different cities operate based on their own needs and context. The meals are more or less elaborate in different places and some people have presentations by potential grantees or past grantees as part of the event."

Thread co-leader for "Research, Methods, Design" with Brendan Albano, Bonnie Fortune, Maria Gaspar, Katie Hargrave, Brad Tober, Jeff Thompson, Adam Trowbridge, Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall, Meredith Warner, Jessica Parris Westbrook on ArrayList (2016).

"What is research? What is design? How do you move from one state to the other? Which methods are used? How do you teach research [inquiry-methods-implementation]?"

I wrote the Afterword for I'm Going to Live the Life I Sing About In My Song: How Artists Make and Live Lives of Meaning with Jen Delos Reyes (2016).

"The book traces a history of artists who have worked on the border of art and life and culminate in chapters looking at the work of Fritz Haeg, David Horvitz, J. Morgan Puett, Ben Kinmont, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles. These artists use daily acts of living to connect their artistic practice to their life values and philosophies. The book examines the social movements, cultural theory, and philosophies that were influencing artists from political activism, intentional living, pioneering figures, and Eastern philosophies."

"The conversation that has yet to be named: Parenting, education, art?" with Meredith Warner on Temporary Art Review (2016).
 

"Be Here Now: The conference that never was and maybe couldn’t have been" with Jen Delos Reyes on Temporary Art Review (2016).
 

THAT: A conversation on art that isn’t art (but maybe really is) and on non-art that is art (but maybe shouldn’t be) What the hell does it mean to consider something *as* art vs. as *art*? And should anyone even care? with Shannon Stratton on Temporary Art Review (2016).
 

Social Practice: What’s at Stake? with Sal Randolph on Temporary Art Review (2016).

"This conversation between Randall Szott and Sal Randolph began in the wake of Open Engagement, an annual conference on art and social practice held in Portland, Oregon in May of 2012 and is published as part of a series of conversations on social practice, criticism and the professionalization of art that took place between Randall Szott and a group of artists, organizers and collaborators over the course of several years."

"Do you need to distinguish art from life?" for The Questions We Ask Together (2015).

 

Do you need to distinguish art from life?

 
I keep finding myself thinking/feeling that all of the things that distinguish an art project from some other thing/experience in the world are all of the things that make it less interesting, not more, that make it less vital, less luminous, less magical.

To invoke Kaprow:

“I would like to imagine a time when Tail Wagging Dog could be experienced and discussed outside the arts and their myriad histories and expectations. It would be a relief to discard the pious legitimizing that automatically accompanies anything called art; and to bypass the silly obligation to live up to art’s claim on supreme values. (Art saves the world, or at least the artist.) The arts are not bad; it’s the overinflated way we think about them that has made them unreal. For activities like Tail Wagging Dog, the arts are mostly irrelevant and cause needless confusion…

But in the foreseeable future, complete detachment from art culture is unlikely…It can’t lose its parentage so quickly. The best that can be hoped is that a gradual weariness with the art connection will naturally occur as it appears, correctly, less and less important.”

Maybe it is like National Lampoon’s Vacation, in it, Chevy Chase is determined to get to Walley World, along the way a series of mishaps occurs. These mishaps are all of the things beyond Chase’s control, and they are the things that make the film comedic, the vain attempt to stay on course, to stick to the plan, while life gets in the way…If art’s failure to fully control experience, to meet its own demands in the face of a recalcitrant life, were more like Chevy Chase forgetting to untie the dog from the bumper of his car before leaving the campground, then maybe I would find it more engaging. Instead, I’m left feeling sorry for the (tail wagging) dog.

AS ARTISTS PROFESSIONALIZE, WHAT’S LOST — AND WHAT’S GAINED? on Temporary Art Review (2015).

My writing on neogeography is cited in the books Visualizing the Data City (2014) and The Digital Arts and Humanities (2016), as well as in many articles and journals including the International Journal of Geo-Information (2016) and the Journal of Location Based Services (2009).

Panel co-chair with Pamela Fraser for the College Art Association (2013).

Guest host interviewing Paul Ramirez Jonas (2013).

Invited speaker for the Summer Forum for Inquiry + Exchange: "Community, Utopia, and the Individual" (2012).

Transcript of conversation (pdf) with Matthew Joynt for the Summer Forum for Inquiry and Exchange. The forum theme was "Community, Utopia, and the Individual" (2012).

Guest host interviewing Stephen Wright (2012).

Guest host interviewing Sal Randolph (2012).

Guest host interviewing Shannon Jackson, author of Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics (2012).

A conversation with Shannon Stratton, Nancy Zastudil and Duncan MacKenzie. Audio recording was exhibited as a listening station for the exhibition "Utopia, OH" at CS13 in  Cincinnati, OH (2011).

Founding editor of 127 Prince, the first journal devoted to social practice, with Jen Delos Reyes, Tracy Candido, and Nancy Zastudil (2010-2011).

Contributors included:  Nato Thompson, Chelsea Haines, Jon Rubin,  Kristina Lee Podesva, Bureau for Open Culture, and Sean Dockray.

Co-hosted an off the schedule round table with Ted Purves (2010).

Guest host interviewing Jen Delos Reyes and Harrell Fletcher (2010).

Guest host interviewing Nils Norman (2010).

Guest host interviewing Nato Thompson (2010).

Guest host on Bad at Sports interviewing Ted Purves (2010).

Contribution to open ed. Lisa Radon - "Draft of a manifesto written in defense of a group of people that did not ask for my defense, using words they would not use and engaging people they ignore" (2010).

Collaboration with Pamela Fraser. Published in COMPOSITE Arts Magazine Issue#1: Tourism (2010).

Essay on Bad at Sports -  "More Tailgating, Less Curating" (2010).