THE TALKING CURE COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: LECTURES, PANELS AND WORKSHOPS
The Kranzberg Center for the Arts
St. Louis, MI
February 2018
CreativeWorks Theater, “The Meeting” Performance
The Meeting is a theatrical/musical depiction of a meeting between Martin Luther King Jr. & Malcolm X. JPEK CreativeWorks Theater performed several scenes from the play in the gallery- designed specifically to relate to the various stories and sculptures in The Talking Cure.
March 2018
Wild Women Writers Visit
The Wild Women Writers group came to the gallery to experience the exhibit and write their own personal monologues work in response to The Talking Cure exhibition.
PopOut Friday Presentations
PopOut is a regular Friday night gathering designed to facilitate creative conversations and community engagement. Attendees are welcomed to engage with the exhibit in whatever way they see fit. Various artists are presenting spoken word, poetry, and/or music responding to the exhibit, throughout the months of March, April and May.
TLT Productions – Something Like…Godspell,
An original TLT Production, Based and inspired by the musical, Godspell. TLT Productions staged a reading from Something Like…Godspell in the gallery in response to The Talking Cure.
Hope Creates, Metals, Fibers, Words
Members of the Hope Creates addiction treatment program visited the gallery to draw inspiration and create new artwork of their own in coordination with the Craft Alliance.
April 2018
Mehlville Public School visit
Gallery talk with artist Melissa Stern.
Gallery talk with students from St Louis University
St. Louis University students gathered in the gallery for talk with Melissa Stern in preparation for their own “response” visual art exhibition.
EVENING DANCE PERFORMANCE
Consuming Kinetics Dance Company
CKDC performed a choreographed response to The Talking Cure exhibition. Music, movement, storytelling and visual art were intertwined in this multi-media experience.
St Lou Fringe The Talking Cure Project SPEAKS. A World Premiere Piece of Performance Art
The Talking Cure came to life through St Louis Fringe Festival artists and performers. New written monologues based on the sculptures in The Talking Cure. Performed in a theatrical setting with live actors and video projections.
Hope Creates Expressive Arts Exhibition
Public event showcasing the work created by participants from March 25th “Metals, Fibers, Words” session. Also featuring music composed in response to The Talking Cure.
Members of the STL Poetry MeetUp Group
The Poetry Meetup Group will present prepared work, written in response to The Talking Cure. Participants will be invited to visit, interact, and draw inspiration from the exhibit.
May 2018
Saint Louis Story Stitchers
Premiere performance of TEEN RAP CRISIS ll.
Artists from the Saint Louis Story Stitchers will perform works written in response to or inspired by the exhibit. Teenagers and adults will tell their stories through spoken word and music.
Jazz Trio
Musicians will write and perform original or inspired music in the KAC gallery. Attendees will be encouraged to interact organically with the exhibit and the music.
The Weisman Art Museum
Minneapolis, MN.
April 2017
What Needs to Be Said? Ceremonial Burning Event
Over the course of The Talking Cure exhibition hundreds of visitors contributed private responses, in the form of secret written notes, to The Talking Cure. This public participation was in conjunction with Rebecca Krinke’s installation What Needs to Be Said?, a companion show to The Talking Cure. To mark the closing of the exhibition, Krinke lead a burning of the private responses. This represents a ceremonial closure and ushering of new beginnings.
Student Fashion Design Showcase
Questions of personal identity were the themes that the designers of this year’s Student Design Showcase considered through the creation of runway-ready garments inspired by the Weisman’s exhibition The Talking Cure by Melissa Stern. This year’s theme challenged each designer to create a piece of fashion that visually represents a self-presentation narrative. In partnership with the College of Design.
Sib. Day
Working with theater Professor Michael Sommers and psychologists from the University of Minneapolis Masonic Children’s Hospital, the siblings of children receiving cancer treatment were be invited into the exhibition to talk about their feelings, as facilitated by the artwork. The day culminated in the making of shadow puppets and an improvisational performance by the children.
March 2017
Veteran’s Workshop – Clay Vessel Making
Hosted by visual artists and American war veterans, Suzanne Asher and Matthew Krousey, this workshop addressed a series of questions raised by the Weisman exhibition The Talking Cure through the creation of clay objects. Through mutual support and the provocative inspiration of the exhibition, this workshop inspired participants to create visual reflections by using clay to express stories, feelings and emotion.
January 2017
Open Mic Night & Wellness Fair
This open-mic event was inspired by The Talking Cure and in collaboration with Active Minds, the University’s mental health awareness-raising organization. All students, staff, and faculty, and all forms of creative expression, were welcomed, including poetry, storytelling, rapping, singing, performance art, and more. Mental health and wellness resources (and snacks!) were provided. In addition to the open mic, the public was free to peruse the galleries or join for “laughing yoga” with celebrated performance artist Esther Ouray.
November 2016
Guthrie Theater Actors | An afternoon of live theatrical performances in the gallery. Original dialogues and monologues by Guthrie Theater actors inspired by sculptures in The Talking Cure exhibition. This collaborative exhibition by artist Melissa Stern featured 12 sculptures, 12 drawings, and 12 writers. The Weisman’s presentation of the exhibition included the addition of local works by Guthrie actors.
Reflections on the Unspoken
Presented in conjunction with the Weisman Art Museum’s exhibition The Talking Cure, “The Unspoken” was an experimental, interdisciplinary event that brought together scholar Leslie Morris, renowned countertenor Ryland Angel, and visual artist Rebecca Krinke. Attendees heard excerpts of Morris’s memoir, which reflects on her unexplained coma brought on by learning of her mother’s complicated Holocaust family history, hear the world-premiere performance of Angel’s libretto composition inspired by Morris’s experience, and were invited to contribute to Krinke’s participatory art installation, What Needs to Be Said? In partnership with University of Minnesota’s Center for Jewish Studies, Department of Art History, Department of German, Scandinavian and Dutch, the Institute for Advanced Study, and Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
October 2016
Writing Back with Valeria Luiselli
Celebrated author Valeria Luiselli lead workshop participants through creative writing exercises, making connections between WAM’s exhibitions Pan American Modernism and The Talking Cure and exploring a range of themes, from identity to storytelling. The event was free for University of Minnesota students. In partnership with University of Minnesota’s Creative Writing Program and professor Peter Campion’s MFA class.
September 2016
The Talking Cure: Conversations
The Talking Cure artist Melissa Stern, creative writer Madelon Sprengnether, and theater artist Michael Sommers convened to discuss the exhibition The Talking Cure and Stern’s creative process. The artist, writer, and actor were moderated by Gloria A. Levin, a practicing Minneapolis–based psychoanalyst, and had a conversation about the questions raised by Stern’s work and Sigmund Freud’s original description of psychoanalysis, as “the talking cure.” In partnership with University of Minnesota’s Department of Art.
Redux Contemporary Art Center
Charleston, SC
June 2016
The Charleston School of the Arts
A day spent with the entire sixth grade from The Charleston School of the Arts, a charter public school. Students held a Q&A period with the artist. Based on this conversation they worked in groups to discuss and then write about their feelings and responses to the exhibition. Later programming involved the making of collage and drawings in response to the exhibition.
Artist talk and Q& A
The public was invited to a Saturday afternoon gallery talk with the artist. The artist. Melissa Stern discussed the process that went into the making of The Talking Cure and queried the audience about their responses to the project.
SPOLETO PICCOLO
The Talking Cure was a featured visual art project of the Spoleto Music Festival. Throughout the festival, musicians were invited into the gallery to improvise a musical response to the exhibition.
Nov. 2015
Wesleyan University
Middletown, Connecticut
Talking about Talking Cures: A conversation with Melissa Stern ’80, P’17, and Bob Steele, Prof.
In 2012 Melissa Stern embarked upon an artistic odyssey. Along with 12 writers and 12 actors, she investigated the notion of Sigmund Freud’s theory of a Talking Cure. The resultant exhibition and book have been touring the US, showing in museums and engaging with the public. Students and alumni joined Prof. Robert Steele and Melissa Stern for a conversation about “talking cures”. The talking cure was always about talking about what could not be said. We are going to talk about what can’t be talked about and explore the contexts and places where saying the forbidden is encouraged.
Presenters:Robert Steele joined the Wesleyan faculty in 1973. His research interests are extensive, ranging from his book, Freud and Jung: Conflicts of Interpretation, to his work as director of Diversity Connections, an interactive digital database for the Ford Foundation.
Melissa Stern ’80, P’17, is a multi- media artist who lives in New York City. She has taught at NYU, Brooklyn College, and SVA. She is a contributing writer to Hyperallergic, an online newspaper about art culture and politics and exhibits her artwork throughout the US.
Real Art Ways
Hartford, CT.
May 2015
The Talking Cure: A Conversation about Art, Memory and the Brain
A freewheeling conversation about the intersection of art and the mind. Using “The Talking Cure,” Melissa Stern¹s Real Art Ways installation project as a starting point, the presentation discussed the creative mind from the perspective of the artist, the neuroscientist, and the psychologist. With William Mace, Professor of Psychology at Trinity College, and Sarah Raskin, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Trinity College and a Board Certified Neuropsychologist.
Akron Art Museum
Akron, OH
April 2014
BURIED LETTER PRESS, at Kent State University
A one-day workshop around the subject of “personal narrative,” open to High School students through adults. Stories were read in the gallery, both TTC monologues and others. There was a discussion based around personal narrative- autobiography vs. fiction. Participants wrote narratives and then handed them off to others to read. Stories were edited and work-shopped throughout the day.