Let's Have a Renaissance: The DateKeepers Podcast with Itto and Mekiya Outini

In this episode, our first ever Halloween special, we read and discuss three of our stories, selected just for the occasion: “From the Rat’s Throat,” originally published in The Argyle; “House Divided,” recently published by Jersey Devil Press, and “Why I Don’t Deserve to Be in Jail This Halloween,” first published by Midwest Weird last Halloween. Links: “From the Rat’s Throat”: https://www.theargylelitmag.com/fiction-7/from-the-rats-throat“Why I Don’t Deserve to Be in Jail This Halloween”: https://www.midwestweird.com/post/why-i-don-t-deserve-to-be-in-jail-this-halloween-by-itto-and-mekiya-outini

In this episode, we speak with composer Huck Hodge about whether music fundamentally is “made of” time, the creative faculties that one hones by reading and communicating in a second language, and his dream encounters with the demonic and divine. Huck received the Charles Ives Living, the largest music award conferred by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, in 2018. His other standout honors include support from the MacDowell, Guggenheim, Bogliasco, and Fromm Foundations, the American Academy in Rome, Copland House, New Music USA, and others. He was educated at Columbia University and the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart, Germany, and he now teaches and chairs the composition program at the University of Washington in Seattle. 

In this special episode, visual and performing artist Craig Drennen showcases his notorious Timon of Athens project, which we discussed in Episode 143. Craig holds two MFAs, one in art history, the other in painting, both from Ohio University, and currently teaches at Georgia State University, where he’s received the Distinguished University Professorship, among other honors. He’s also a MacDowell fellow, an Art Matters grant recipient, an Idea Capital grant recipient, a Guggenheim fellow, and much more.  

In this episode, we speak with artists Masha Ryskin and Serge Marchetta about their distinctive approach to collaboration, the lived experiences that inform their work, and the dark secrets about the Canadian orphanage system that Serge uncovered while trying to reconnect with his birth family.  Masha studied painting in Moscow, holds an MFA from the University of Michigan, and has been honored with a Rhode Island Artist Fellowship and two Fulbrights. Serge has curated and participated in solo and group exhibitions in Canada, Europe, and the US, directed the non-profit organization C2S Arts et Événements, and garnered grants from the Fondation Ténot in France, the Ragdale Foundation in the US, and Conseil des Arts et Lettres du Québec in Canada.  To learn more, check out Episode 140, in which they showcase several pieces from their solo and collaborative practices. 

In this special episode, photographer, filmmaker, works-on-paper, and installation artist Donna Conlon showcases three of her video projects: Coexistence, in which a troop of ants march across the forest floor, carrying peace signs; From the Ashes, which explores from the perspective of a hummingbird the moment of paralysis that it experiences upon release from captivity; and The Last Owl, inspired by an ominous passage from the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which describes the extinction first of owls, and then of all other avian and animal species. Donna holds an MS in biology from the University of Kansas and an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Anonymous Was a Woman Grant, and a Harpo Foundation Grant for her collaborative work with video and multimedia artist Jonathan Harker, among others. She lives and works in Panama City, Panama.