Recently, Amplify worked with MdW Atlas as guest editors on a series of posts running throughout the month of April. Artists and organizers Lydia Cheshewalla, Patrick Costello, and Alajia McKizia, all of whom have connections to Omaha, and the Midwest more broadly, through land, lineage, and kinships, contributed to the series. As a point of departure, we asked them to consider composting as a framework for transformation, renewal, and exchange and referenced Carolyn Goldsmith's Compost, A Cosmic View with Practical Suggestions, a now out of print volume published in 1973 that includes tips for composters, gestural drawings, and prompts that lend the text a lyrical quality, which follow:

"Breaking down / is / Building up"

"Digesting is transforming"

"Plants emerge as a natural consequence of / all that is happening / inside the soil body.”

"You / Can Stir the Great Mix"

“Small energies / Acting on each other / Reacting to each other”

Goldsmith's book anchors composting, in an expanded context, as a practical and theoretical tool for breaking down certain histories, or things we’ve inherited, to situate and carry forward ways of knowing rooted in relationship, understanding, and empathy. The three artists who made work in response share affinities across geography and discipline in their approaches to multi-species care and embracing ecological entanglements in their work, practices that hold particularly resonance in this moment when changes in the political sphere stand to affect how we move toward realizing a more ecologically just and balanced future. We sat down with them not too long ago to talk more about their contributions, and the small energies that continue to move us forward.

Artists and organizers Amanada Huckins, Alex Jochim, Joseph Orzal, Bilgesu Sisman, Marcey Yates, and Rachel Ziegler sat down to discuss how artists are experimenting with alternative models of economic organization and building resilience in the face of precarity and the uncertain future of arts funding.

Listen here or read an abridged transcript on the Alternate Currents blog (https://www.amplifyarts.org/ac-blog).

We recently sat down curator, researcher, and cultural practitioner Rosela del Bosque to talk more about her collaborative project, The Family Archive of the Colorado River. She shares more about tracing the deep histories, political incongruities, and intensely personal memories circling the changing ecology of the Colorado River Basin in her creative research. Listen to the full conversation below or visit Amplify's website to read through the transcript for links to additional resources. 

We recently sat down with artists Lydia Cheshewalla and Sarah Rowe to talk about GROUNDING, their highly collaborative exhibition at Amplify’s Generator Space in Omaha, which explored reciprocal human and more-than-human kinship systems through acts of somatic co-regulation with place, land, and earth.

Listen on here or visit Amplify's website for a full transcript and links to additional resources.

We recently sat down with John Cohorst and Holly Kranker, Amplify's 2019 Public Impact Grant recipients, to talk more about their project CAR>GO (Community Activated Resource on the GO), a shipping container they modified to accommodate anything from group meetings to creative studio and/or project space.

Originally conceived as a gathering space to exchange ideas, have conversations, and collaborate on neighborhood based initiatives, John and Holly talk about the pandemic's impact on the project, adapting to the unexpected, and welcoming people into the space in 2022 with an open call for collaborators.

Listen on here or visit Amplify's website for a full transcript and links to additional resources.

We recently sat down with Zedeka Poindexter, Amplify's 2022-23 Public Impact Grant recipient. Zedeka was awarded a Public Impact Grant by an external selection panel in the amount of $10,000 to develop new, public-facing work that interrogates the disparities Black women confront in the healthcare system. Over the course of her two-year grant term, Zedeka will conduct and transcribe interviews with Black women to gather stories that shine a light on how their lived experiences, bodies, and voices are often minimized, manipulated, and ignored when seeking medical care.

Zedeka will transmute these stories into a layered choreopoem that uses sight, sound, touch, and feeling as tools to center empathy and understanding. The finished piece will have a local run and dedicated performances for audiences of Omaha-area medical practitioners specifically. As an integrated piece of her staged work, Zedeka will also make her process simple to replicate for other communities by developing an interview guide, transcript analysis toolkit, and production roadmap.

Zedeka Poindexter is a North Omaha-born writer and performer. In her work, she builds a historical record through poems and essays that draw on all five physical senses to connect with readers and listeners. Raised in multi-generational homes by descendants of the Great Migration, she draws on issues of race, class, struggle, and joy to fuel her work. Zedeka has worked with the Nebraska Writers Collective for over ten years to provide writing and performance education in schools, community organizations, and correctional facilities. As Slam Master for the Omaha Poetry Slam, she guided local artists through generating new work, stage performances, and fundraising. She is the first woman, and the only woman of color, to be named Omaha City Poetry Slam champion. As a member of Omaha’s poetry slam team, she qualified for semi-finals at the National Poetry Slam. Only one other team achieved this honor in its 18-year history.

We recently sat down with Jared Ledesma, Senior Curator at the Akron Art Museum, to follow up on ‘From the Margins to the Center: Inclusive Curatorial Practices and Cultural Institutions,’ an Alternate Currents panel discussion hosted in August of 2021. We spoke more about methodological shifts in the curatorial field, institutional barriers to working inclusively, and what adopting more inclusive curatorial practices might mean for arts organizations committed to equity and justice. Listen here or visit the Alternate Currents blog on Amplify’s website for a full transcript with links to additional resources.

Recently, Associate Curator of Native American Art at the Joslyn Art Museum, Annika Johnson sat down with Sunshine Thomas-Bear, Director of the Angel DeCora Museum and Research Center and Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, to talk about the history of the Ho-Chunk People and tribal museums’ essential role in reinvigorating cultural lifeways. Stream the full conversation here and visit the Alternate Currents blog on Amplify's website for the the transcript with links to additional resources. 

We recently sat down with artist, organizer, and member of the Osage Nation, Lydia Cheshewalla to talk about the ways in which relationships, rooted in reciprocity and care, shape her highly collaborative practice, their potential to influence the future of cultural institutions, and what it means to opt out. Listen below or, visit the Alternate Currents blog on Amplify's website for a full transcript and links to more resources. 

We recently sat down with artist and organizer, Alajia McKizia to talk about charity, solidarity, and self-determination. The conversation trained its focus on white supremacist ideologies embedded within philanthropy and emergent networks of mutual support that posit community-centric fundraising as a viable response. Listen here and visit the Alternate Currents blog on Amplify Arts' website for links to additional resources and more great conversation.