Jill Magid + Dr. Leah Kelly

What power do existing institutional structures (including art museums) really have? Artist Jill Magid has spent her career working alongside or within large organizations, making use of institutional quirks and systemic loopholes that allow her to make contact with people “on the inside” to better analyze the power dynamics at play. Magid sits down with neuroscientist Leah Kelly to break down what keeps us ingrained in these structures and how we might learn to disrupt them.

This program will show clips from Magid’s work Evidence Locker as well as her recent feature film The Proposal, which premieres at IFC on May 24.

“During the past 18 years, I’ve trained as a spy, a police officer, and as a war journalist. Gaining access to power systems takes research, trust, and a series of unorthodox requests, requiring constant negotiation. From the inside, I engage these systems in personal dialogue. From there, I’m able to raise questions and concerns on how we live in relation to them. —Jill Magid

About the Speakers

Jill Magid is an artist, writer, and filmmaker. Solo exhibitions include Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; San Francisco Art Institute; Tate Modern, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Berkeley Museum of Art, California; Tate Liverpool; and the Security and Intelligence Agency of the Netherlands. She has participated in Manifesta, the Liverpool, Bucharest, Singapore, Incheon, Gothenburg, Oslo, and Performa Biennials. Magid is the recipient of the 2017 Calder Prize. Her first feature film, The Proposal (83 min, 2018), premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Leah Kelly is a neuroscientist at Rockefeller University. She uses electrophysiology, tracing, and imaging to elucidate how neurons communicate with the rest of the body to regulate appetite and metabolism. She enjoys engaging with artists and has contributed to the works of artists including Pierre Huyghe, Camille Henrot, Alexandre Singh, and Agnieszka Kurant. In 2014, she co-curated Impakt Festival in the Netherlands. Titled “Soft Machines,” the festival explored AI and empathy. She also contributed to the book Experience, published by MIT Press, in which artists, philosophers, anthropologists, historians, and neuroscientists explore aspects of sensorial and cultural realms of experience. This is her second Brainwave appearance.