Projects
Statement
Art can be contagious like laughter and comprehensible, like a joke. With this ideal in mind I invite others to work with me and lend my energy towards other people's initiatives. I support novel, democratic approaches for distributing (or dissolving) art in public experience. My intention is to expand open-ended discourse in the subject areas that my projects pass through, inside and outside the discipline of visual art. My work returns to social and ecological themes: permission, personhood, and cohabitation.
I use the act of walking as a vehicle for interaction, a medium, or a method of research. I value its approachability and capacity for transgressive continuity (between public and private space, memory etc.)
Bio
Dillon de Give is an artist and educator working with performance, film, publication and documentary forms. He is a co-founder of the Walk Exchange, a cooperative walking group and organized the annual Coyote Itinerancy, a retreat that traces a footpath between New York City and the wild, from 2009-2017. Dillon holds a BS in Radio/Television/Film from Northwestern University and an MFA in Art and Social Practice from Portland State University. He lives near Seattle, WA.
Contact: implausibot (at) yahoo (dot) com
Reference
(recent sources, small projects, writing, press, links etc.)
By Our Own Admission performance at UT Missassauga.
Upacking (after) a coyote walk writing for WalkingLab Residency.
Presented on coyote walks at "Artists and Post-Industrial Urban Wilderness" screening and discussion at Union Docs, New York.
Chance Ecologies, wilderness at Plank Road event with Queens Museum and Rebecca Solnit’s Nonstop Metropolis.
Report on Walk Exchange collaboration with Luz Porras' migration course at SUNY New Paltz.
Fung Wah Biennial: art show on a bus! Contributing to the Baltimore leg.
The Rotation of the Earth presents: the Sunset. An anonymous poster, sunset viewing and silent walk in semi-public space. Chance Ecologies (2015).
Three instructions for The Institute for New Feeling’s Felt book tour, which began at SPACES in Cleveland (2015).
Two entries published as a “Thinker in Residence” for Art in Odd Places, New York 2014.
A short book: John Malpede with Dillon de Give profiles Malpede’s individual works as well as the long term activities of the Los Angeles Poverty Department, a theater group partly composed of homeless and transient residents of LA’s Skid Row. Published by Reference Points series 2013.
Buy Just the 2 of Us a short book on the process and mechanics of arranging dual stranger walks.
Teaching
North Seattle College
Adjunct faculty, Video Art. 2017
Seattle Public Schools
Highschool classes Seattle Skills Center and Creative Advantage partnership: Intro to Media Arts: Digital Storytelling; Intro to Video Production, 2017-18.
Portland State University
Instructor. "The Practical Joke". Humor has been employed as a social critique and disruptive political tactic. It is also an access point to ideas behind many works of conceptual art. In this class, we will consider the practical effects of humor in social and artistic realms. We will identify forms (i.e. the one-liner), use theories of laughter (such as those from Bergson and Freud) to analyze contemporary examples and experiment with comic technique. Undergraduate weekend intensive. Portland State University, 2013.
Center for Urban Pedagogy
Teaching artist. Project-based courses examining urban policy and planning issues. Each public high school course used the collaborative production of films to increase meaningful civic engagement and demystify issues that impact communities.
Talking Trash: Throwing Out the Big Apple Where does New York City's trash go? Frances Perkins Academy, Brooklyn, NY. 2016-17
Who Rules? How does City Council work? International Community High School, Bronx, NY. 2014
Now Boarding What is a Community Board and what can you do with it? International Community High School, Bronx, NY. 2013
Common Cents What is participatory budgeting? International Community High School, Bronx, NY. 2012
The Walk Exchange
Co-facilitator. The independent Walk Study Training Course (WSTC) is a six week walking seminar that puts active participation at the centre of a cross-disciplinary pedagogical approach. The course pairs specific walks with critical texts and case studies, and uses walking as both practice and subject, addressing a wide range of ideas through the common activity of walking. Our walking discussion is informed by individual encounters with case studies during the week, and facilitated exercises in place during the meetings. The pedagogical philosophy for the Walk Exchange is based in embodied notions of knowledge production, and a non-hierarchical approach that focuses on participants as equal partners in the learning experience. Courses included:
"Walking as Art", Fall 2011
"Walking as Reading and Writing the City", Spring 2012
"Spatial Relationships", Fall 2012
"Walking and Autonomy", Fall 2013
Mildred's Lane
Session leader: "Walking Talking and Social Practice". How walking practices and other participatory, experiential, non-traditional work can function in the social-sphere. at J. Morgan Puett's Mildred's Lane, a working-living-research experiment. Participants were primarily graduate students. Co-taught with Harrell Fletcher, 2015.
