Inner States

A couple months ago, I got invited to help put on an experiment in collective art-making. I was working with two smart, creative thinkers here on the IU campus. Carmel Curtis is the interim director of the IU Moving Image Archive – she initiated the project. And Linda Tien is the director of the Grunwald Gallery at the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture, and Design. We invited people to the Grunwald to make film strips without cameras—which is to say, we had strips of blank film that they could draw on. While they were making their art, I interviewed three people—Amy Oelsner, Stephanie Littell, and Ileana Haberman—about times in their lives when they resisted the status quo. These weren’t big, public shows of resistance, but changes in their own lives. After the conversations and the film-drawing, Carmel and her team of film archivists spliced the film together and we all watched the abstract film everyone had made. In today’s episode, I’m sharing the interviews. If you want to see the film, you can watch it here.

And I have an announcement: Here at WFIU, we are hard at work on a new project that will keep up the longform conversations with artists and thinkers that you love on Inner States. But will also do more reporting on what’s going on in the arts here in Southern Indiana. That means this podcast feed’s going to go quiet for a while. But don’t unsubscribe! We’ll announce the new project here in a few months. And I’m hoping to get at least one more Inner States episode out to you in the meantime.

On our last episode, we talked about welcoming refugees in the U.S. And it got me thinking about what it’s like to live away from the place where you’re from, especially if it’s in another part of the world. Say your mother is Lebanese and, I don’t know, your father’s…American but also grew up in Beirut, and their circumstances meant that you grew up in Cyprus and Pakistan and spent your later childhood and adolescence in Baltimore and they taught you English rather than Arabic so your mother’s family’s language lives in your brain but in a kind of ethereal way, not one you can just converse in. How do you relate to your roots in Lebanon? To Arabic? Where’s your home? What’s your mother tongue?

You’ve probably been wondering about that scenario, and of course you started listening to this episode for the answers. So it saddens me to tell you that, while those questions are at the heart of this episode, we can’t just give you the answers. They’re essay questions, not multiple choice. They’re too individual and complex, and, really, they keep shifting around as time goes by. Luckily, we have ways of delving into them. And if you were thinking, oh, poetry’s probably a good way, I don’t blame you. It’s the end of April, which, along with being the cruelest month, according to T.S. Eliot, is also National Poetry Month. We’ve all been thinking in poetry for the past 30 days. So, to keep that going, I found a poet to help us think through the dynamics of that scenario. A scenario that is, coincidentally, quite similar to her own life, and which she explores in her first book of poems, which came out on April 28th. The poet is janan alexandra, and her book is come from. 

On this episode we talk about how the geographical trajectory of her childhood has shaped her relationship to place and language, her evolving relationship to the United States, and why it can be helpful to let go of the idea of being whole.

Credits

Inner States is produced and edited by me, Alex Chambers. Our associate producer is Dom Heyob. Our master of social media is Jillian Blackburn. We get support from Eoban Binder, LuAnn Johnson, Sam Schemenauer, Payton Whaley, and Kayte Young. Our Executive Producer is Eric Bolstridge.

Our theme song is by Amy Oelsner and Justin Vollmar. Additional music this week from L. Boyd Carithers, whose album Doom Town is coming out soon, and on which album you might hear our poet, janan alexandra, playing the fiddle. We heard, in order, Whistle Rag, Dinnertime for the Cats, and Last Month on the Corner.

I’ve been thinking about borders for a few months now. The last time we had our current president, he talked a lot about building a wall between Mexico and the U.S. There’s been less talk of a wall this time around. Turns out, in the 21st century, a wall isn’t the most effective way to stop people coming into your country. It’s bureaucracy. Visas, passports, customs, resident status. You can stop a lot more people by changing rules than building a wall, and that’s what Trump has done this time. One of the rules he changed—this was on his very first day in office—was about refugees. 

So, as you may know—I didn’t—the president has a lot of control over how many refugees enter the United States. Every year, the president decides how many refugees the country will accept. In Obama’s last year in office, about 85 thousand refugees resettled here. In the last year of Trump’s first term, it was about 12 thousand. Biden brought it up to a hundred thousand. And then, as soon as he got back into office, Trump completely suspended the program, meaning zero refugees would be admitted to the United States.

A few years ago, Exodus Refugee, an Indianapolis-based organization that helps refugees resettle, opened an office here in Bloomington. I wanted to understand how Trump’s suspension of refugee resettlement has affected the office here, and the people they help, and to understand that, I thought it would be good to hear the story of how the office got started.

Erin Aquino is the founding director of the Bloomington office. Exodus has been around as an organization since 1981, but Erin got called in to start the Bloomington office at the beginning of 2022. When she took the job, she’s imagined having a few months to get things set up. But she ended up moving a lot faster than anyone expected. Which was good, because she you can’t meet with clients in a hotel room, and the post office was getting tired of all the carseats.

On this episode, Erin Aquino tells us how to set up a refugee resettlement office when the refugees have already started arriving. And what’s happened since January 20th.

There’s been a lot of talk in the past few months about a range of important issues: the rule of law, checks and balances, free speech on campuses, whether people’s jobs will continue to exist.

You know what I haven’t heard people talk about much? Oranges. I’ve heard precious little consideration of what you might whisper to an orange before you peel it.

Admittedly, I wasn’t thinking about that either when the basis of this episode got started. Last spring, I heard about a performance at the I Fell building in downtown Bloomington. It was called How to Preserve an Orange, and it was this ritual, participatory performance. I’d heard great things and decided to invite the artist, clay scofield, to do it again, this time at Redbud Books in Bloomington. Redbud is a community space as well as a bookstore.

How to Preserve an Orange was strange and fun and it made me think about experimentation, being in tune with our senses, and play. clay and I sat down in the studio a couple weeks later to talk about the experience, about what it means to train our attention on something, why limiting possibility is important for people who want to amass power, how play can open up opportunities for transformation, and how, as a result, real, deep play can also be risky. Dangerous. Which is a little bit how I felt during How to Preserve an Orange, when clay asked us to ask our oranges to consent to being eaten.

clay is a visiting assistant professor in digital art at the Eskenazi School of Art Architecture and Design in Art. They’re on the board of directors of the School of Making Thinking, and they’re a co-creator of the Deep Play Artist Residency. clay has MFAs in poetry AND in studio art.

This episode includes excerpts from the performance of How to Preserve an Orange. If you want to try it at home, the full recording of the performance is also be available in the Inner States podcast feed. Let us know if you do! Email us at [email protected].

Credits

Associate producer Dom Heyob put this episode together. Jillian Blackburn keeps our social media alive and well. Eoban Binder, LuAnn Johnson, Sam Schemenauer, Payton Whaley, and Kayte Young support the show behind the scenes. Eric Bolstridge digs us out of whatever holes we get stuck in.

Our theme song is by Amy Oelsner and Justin Vollmar. We have additional music from the artists at Universal Production Music.

This iteration of How to Preserve an Orange, a participatory performance by artist and poet clay scofield, played on February 25, 2025 at Redbud Books in Bloomington, IN. This is the uncut performance itself. It's a bit of a ritual, or meditation, and you can absolutely follow along at home. If you do, let us know how it went! Send us an email or voice memo to [email protected].

Local newspapers are disappearing left and right. Even when they still exist, they’re increasingly owned by private equity firms or subject to corporate consolidation, making them local in name only. This is a problem. It's a problem for democracy. Research has found that after private equity takes over local papers, voter turnout drops. People are more likely to vote straight ticket for the party they like, instead of voting based on local issues. Political polarization goes up. There’s more corruption in government and business. And people trust the media less overall. (See Paper Cuts to learn more.)

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Martinsville, Indiana, population 11 thousand, has a new paper in town. It’s a print newspaper. The Morgan County Correspondent. It started in August 2023. And it’s doing pretty darn well. Stephen Crane is the founding editor. And publisher. And reporter. I went up to the Correspondent’s offices a couple weeks ago to talk with him. 

He told me what happened to the newspapers in Morgan County, where Martinsville is the county seat. Martinsville had a newspaper, and so did Mooresville, in the north of the county. They still do. In theory at least. Today’s headline in The Reporter-Times, which was Martinsville’s city paper, is about the Princess Theatre building’s new owner. The Princess Theatre is in Bloomington. Looks like most of the other articles are also about Bloomington. Stephen and I also talked about how he got into journalism – he says he had some authority issues when he was younger, and his decision to start a paper two years ago is not unconnected. We talked about the differences between locally-owned papers and corporate-owned, the experience of reading a print paper vs online, and why he doesn’t care too much about attracting readers under 40.

Nathan Dillon is the director of Everybody Rocks. It’s a music education company, and these days, it’s focused on bringing live music to old folks. Another way to describe Nathan’s work is that he drives around and sings at senior centers. He’s been running Everybody Rocks for a couple decades now, and all that time has given him insight into music and memory, the invisibility of old people in most of our society – and what it’s like to live in the gig economy. On the latest Inner States, we visit with Nathan Dillon and a few of his fans after his latest visit to the Richland Bean-Blossom Health Care Center.

Credits

Inner States is produced and edited by me, Alex Chambers. Our associate producer is Dom Heyob. Our master of social media is Jillian Blackburn. We get support from Eoban Binder, Natalie Ingalls, LuAnn Johnson, Sam Schemenauer, Payton Whaley, Lisa Robbin Young and Kayte Young. Our Executive Producer is Eric Bolstridge.

Our theme song is by Amy Oelsner and Justin Vollmar.

The residents we spoke with at the Richland Bean-Blossom Health Care Center are, in order of appearance: Stephanie Sappingsfield, Daniel Allen, Rita Eaton, and Tammy Brohome. We’d like to thank them and also Dorothy Hinson, in Activities, who helped us meet people, and was just about the most cheerful person we’ve ever met. 

The other day I went to check in on my 10-year-old during her screentime. She was playing Goat Simulator on her Switch. She was also watching Gravity Falls on her iPad. Other times she just watches people play video games. I get it. It’s my role, to not understand my kids’ media habits. And, as a parent, it’s also my job to worry about my kids’ screentime. Maybe you don’t worry. Maybe you’re at one end of the spectrum or the other – like either have at it, kids! Or you set limits with the iron fist of nurturing boundaries. But most of us, I think, can’t help but worry about what it does to their attention spans to be streaming TV while playing a video game. 

My 10-year-old does have limits on screens. For my teenager, the limits eroded over the years. I really don’t know how much to worry about it. I want them to get outside, talk to real people, look at the sky, touch trees, experience the wonder and boredom of the analog world. But I’m not trying to be a Luddite. Maybe I’ve never been that into video games, but I realize they can offer rich, complex narrative experiences. And, you know, fun. I hear people like that, too.

There might even be things that video games offer that are just too hard to access in the contemporary world otherwise. I don’t know, the adrenaline rush of being chased by a wild boar. Quests to find treasure, even if in reality it was about potable water rather than a chest of gold. Or to prove yourself to a community. I’m trying to acknowledge the value of video games, but clearly I’m still a little skeptical about their importance for humanity. And yes, I do realize I’m saying all this on a podcast. Side note, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “podcast” first appeared in English in 2004. Decades after video games. 

I just want my kids to spend more time outside.

Anyway. In the midst of all this, I heard about someone who’s working on video games to support girls. That’s great. And she’s also working on video games for another group that hasn’t traditionally had games made for them.

In the video for her company, Parrot Concepts, she hesitates before saying what they’re trying to solve is a…problem. But she goes ahead and says it. And defends it. By the end of our conversation, I was ready to agree. There’s a real problem, and video games for parrots are going to help.

Credits

Inner States is produced and edited by me, Alex Chambers. Our associate producer is Dom Heyob. Our master of social media is Jillian Blackburn. Our intern is Karl Templeton. We get support from Eoban Binder, Natalie Ingalls, LuAnn Johnson, Sam Schemenauer, Payton Whaley, Lisa Robbin Young and Kayte Young. Our Executive Producer is Eric Bolstridge.

Our theme song is by Amy Oelsner and Justin Vollmar. We have additional music from the artists at Universal Production Music.

I also want to give a shoutout to Lydia Norton and Betsy Leija. Their interview with Patricia on the IU Media School’s I’m No Expert podcast is how I found out about her love of parrots and parrot games.

My mission here at WFIU is to cover local arts and culture in Southern Indiana. The thing is, when you’re worried about the health of democracy in your country, local arts coverage can feel like too little too late. I believe you can’t have a healthy democracy without lively and thoughtful arts and culture. But still, sometimes you want to face things a little more head-on. 

So I decided to invite my friend Faye Gleisser for an interview. She’s a professor in the art history department here at Indiana University. I realize, on the face of it, that that might feel even more removed from the state of contemporary democracy. When I think “art history,” I picture students listening to a lecture about the slant of light in paintings of religious epiphanies. Good stuff, but different from protesting injustice in the streets.

Faye Gleisser is not that kind of art historian. (She actually feels complicated about calling herself an art historian at all.) Her book is called Risk Work: Making Art and Guerilla Tactics in Punitive America, 1967-1987. It came out in 2023, and it’s about how, in the 1960s, artists started using new tactics in response to changes in…policing. It’s about policing and art. 

We talk about the relationships between those two things, and about an article she wrote about artists at risk in Indiana. And I ask her whether art can resist fascism. She get into her art historian chair and gave me some really helpful insights.

Credits

Inner States is produced and edited by me, Alex Chambers. Our associate producer, Dom Heyob, put this episode together. Our master of social media is Jillian Blackburn. We get support from Eoban Binder, Natalie Ingalls, LuAnn Johnson, Sam Schemenauer, Payton Whaley, Lisa Robbin Young and Kayte Young. Our Executive Producer is Eric Bolstridge. 

Stephanie Solomon and I became friends in our early twenties. We talked about everything. Gender was one of those things. The assumptions people carried with them about how men and women should be in the world, or how relationships should work. We saw the problems so clearly. As you do when you’re young. A couple decades later, it turns out it’s not as easy to change it all as we thought.

These days, Solomon works in domestic violence prevention. She still talks and thinks about gender a lot – in her professional and personal life. We sat down a couple months ago to talk about how those revolutionary dreams are playing out for us today. 

Credits

Inner States is produced and edited by me, Alex Chambers. Our associate producer, who was instrumental to putting this episode together, is Dom Heyob. Our master of social media is Jillian Blackburn. Our intern is Karl Templeton. We get support from Eoban Binder, Natalie Ingalls, LuAnn Johnson, Sam Schemenauer, Payton Whaley, Lisa Robbin Young and Kayte Young. Our Executive Producer is Eric Bolstridge. 

Our theme song is by Amy Oelsner and Justin Vollmar. Thanks to Amy and Justin for the additional music on the episode as well.