Hi everyone. I hope you are staying safe, healthy, and sane in these strange time. Today is another week of quarantining and it seems states and countries are slowly opening up but I don't know if that is the best idea without a vaccine. I guess we will have to wait and see. There's only a few more weeks of teaching in the semester for my university and after that I don't know what is happening. Things are out of my hands regarding that, as I am sure it is with everyone else. Anyway. For today, I have a special interview with Dell Marie Hamilton, an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and curator. Dell has a B.A. in journalism from Northeastern University and an MFA from Tufts University. With roots in Belize, Honduras and the Caribbean, Dell frequently draws upon the personal experiences of her family as well as the history and folkloric traditions of the region. In addition to her performances, Dell works as a curator for the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. I first encountered one of Dell's performance in late February at the Hood Museum in New Hampshire. Titled "Blues\Blank\Black", Dell's performance took inspiration from Toni Morrison's novels combined with stories of police brutality on black and brown women, all this while within the context of an art museum. I was able to connect with Dell after the performance and that is how we ending up talking for the podcast. By the time we recorded, it was just as the Covid-19 shutdown began in the US. For some reason, the internet audio quality wasn't the best and the audio skips a few times, so I apologize for that. I did my best to fix it post-production. Throughout our conversation, Dell and I talk about the tension between body and property, nationalism in museum spaces, and how oral traditions are not static. I hope you enjoy this.
Hi everyone. I hope you are staying safe, healthy, and sane in these strange time. Today is another week of quarantining and it seems states and countries are slowly opening up but I don't know if that is the best idea without a vaccine. I guess we will have to wait and see. There's only a few more weeks of teaching in the semester for my university and after that I don't know what is happening. Things are out of my hands regarding that, as I am sure it is with everyone else.
Anyway. For today, I have a special interview with Dell Marie Hamilton, an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and curator. Dell has a B.A. in journalism from Northeastern University and an MFA from Tufts University. With roots in Belize, Honduras and the Caribbean, Dell frequently draws upon the personal experiences of her family as well as the history and folkloric traditions of the region. In addition to her performances, Dell works as a curator for the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research.
I first encountered one of Dell's performance in late February at the Hood Museum in New Hampshire. Titled "Blues\Blank\Black", Dell's performance took inspiration from Toni Morrison's novels combined with stories of police brutality on black and brown women, all this while within the context of an art museum. I was able to connect with Dell after the performance and that is how we ending up talking for the podcast. By the time we recorded, it was just as the Covid-19 shutdown began in the US. For some reason, the internet audio quality wasn't the best and the audio skips a few times, so I apologize for that. I did my best to fix it post-production. Throughout our conversation, Dell and I talk about the tension between body and property, nationalism in museum spaces, and how oral traditions are not static. I hope you enjoy this.
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Zhiwan Cheung: [00:00:00] Welcome to seeing color a podcast that talks with cultural workers and artists of color in order to expand the area of what is a predominantly white space in the arts. I'm your host. See one chunk. Hey, everyone. I hope you are staying safe. Healthy, insane. In these strange times, today is another week of quarantining and it seems States and countries are slowly opening up. Uh, I don't know if that's the best idea without a vaccine. I guess we will have to wait and see. There's only a few more weeks of teaching in this semester for my university.
And after that, I don't know what's happening. Things are out of my hands regarding that. Anyway, for today, I've got it. A special interview with Del Marie Hamilton and interdisciplinary artists, writer and curator. Dell has a BA in journalism from Northeastern university and an MFA from Tufts university with roots and Belize, Honduras, and the Caribbean Dell frequently draws from the personal experiences of her family, as well as the history and folkloric traditions of the region.
In addition to our performances, Dell works as a curator for the Huskins center for African and African American research. I first encountered sure. One of Dell's performances in late February, the hood museum in New Hampshire titled blues plank, black Dallas performance took inspiration from Tony Morrison's novels, combined with stories of police brutality on black and Brown women.
All this while within the context of an art museum. I was able to connect with Dell after the performance. And that's how we ended up talking for the podcast. By the time we recorded, it was just as the COVID-19 shutdown began in the U S for some reason, the audio quality wasn't the best through the internet and the audio skips a few times.
So I apologize for that. I did my best to fix it. Post production. And I hope it isn't too much of a problem throughout our conversation. Dull. And I talk about the tension between body and property nationalism in museum spaces and how oral traditions are not static. I hope you enjoy this.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:02:46] It's been good. Like I said, some thinking from some of the challenges of. Zooming, but also too trying to remind myself to just, yeah, the news is going to be uncomfortable to listen to sometimes because it's just so much information, cheetah process. And so one of my tools for. Trying to work through this kind of chaos is to turn off the news.
So, right, right. After I got off my other call, I decided like, Oh yeah, I need to turn this TV off because I can't, I can't listen to this press conference. Cause it's just too much information. And as much as my brain wants to consume and find out where things are, I realized like there's moments in which you do actually have to try to set some boundaries.
And I think. Myself and some of my other peers are dealing with that, particularly that, again, this is a pandemic and we're trying to work from home. And in many cases we've already kind of set up a lot of boundaries between how we work with students. Have we worked with peers and the whole working from home thing is a blurring of that boundary.
So, um, I think that that's also one
of those things that's creating some anxiety for folks,
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:04:03] you know, that you taught,
what are you teaching? Where are you?
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:04:05] I'm not teaching this semester. I had been booked to teach a class on curatorial practice. Oh, nice. To come in and do like a workshop with students.
Most times I'm asked to do artist talks. But earlier in the year, I had also gotten an invite from a faculty member at BU who wanted to know if I could come in and do a workshop on performance and to try to think about different ways to talk about my work and teaching performance. And so what I was talking about with this colleague just up.
Do you moments ago was about the fact that I had to try to do. I had to decline. Once things went virtual, I ended up having to say I couldn't do it. And so, and so I was just kind of talking through some of those challenges for me. And so thinking about the cognitive dissonance, trying to teach via a screen and many of my.
Again, mentors and cough leagues and so forth. They're muddling through, but I was okay with saying, Nope, I am too scared to try that. We'll try to work through a screen. I'm an artist who works and thinks through their body as you know, because I do performance, but I'm also really aware of my body when I'm making photographs, when I'm painting, drawing, writing.
And so our bodies pick up so much information. When we're in the room with one another. And so you're kind of feeling you're feeding off the energy that's happening. Right. And so that became quite clear to me when Steven Colby or was trying to do his monologue, like from his home.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:05:37] Yeah. Yeah. There's there, there.
Yeah.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:05:40] And it's just like, okay, these jokes are not funny. There's no energy between. Yeah through a screen. I just, I figured that out for myself, I didn't have language for it until like today, but realizing like, I really can't work through that kind of cognitive, just an app. So conversations are fine. I've been kind of muddling through those things, but again, I'm so aware of the fact that that absence of not being in the same space.
Someone and realize just how much I miss, you know, seeing friends and family and in person. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's been, like I said, it's been really challenging. So yeah, I was okay with saying like, no, I'm too chicken shit to try to teach a class. So, um, but yeah, so, and talking, like I said, with my fellow colleagues and friends and things, yeah.
They are, they're getting through it, but it does pose a lot of challenges and they're, but they're also acutely aware of that, you know? Students need what they need and they've never been through this either. So they're trying to adjust and be patient and those kinds of things, but it's it's yeah. This is something that none of us really has a playbook for.
So we just kind of, you know, just be really kind with yourself.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:06:51] Yeah. Um, yeah, I mean, I think that I've been thinking about that a lot, cause I've been having to teach with my students and write a lot of those. Especially at the university. There's not much choice. Like you have to, you have to teach. Right.
You know, every, everyone has like a weird thing to figure out, like, especially teaching studio classes. How does one do studio class online?
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:07:13] Yeah. How do you teach sculpture? So understand.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:07:17] I don't, but I know if you have colleagues, who've had an just like, yeah. I don't know how,
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:07:22] I don't know how to do that.
Yeah. It's definitely a skill. So. Yeah. And then I have, I've definitely had a couple of friends just post on social media. Like, Hey, you guys don't get too good at teaching online because maybe they just phase this out. But that's where our brains are at this point. Cause we're like, what is happening? Why.
Why is this even happening to us? This did not have to happen.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:07:48] I know. Yeah.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:07:49] So that's, what's the, again, it's just like, yeah. I think also too, I think being artists and writers and intellectuals, like we think we can fix it with our mind. And so I'm kind of in that space still as well, like reading, you know, as much as I can about this virus and how does it behave and all these kinds of things.
And so it's weird. It's really weird.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:08:11] Yeah. I know. Um, In regards to your workouts case, where'd you where'd you grow up and how did art enter your life?
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:08:18] Yeah, it's a good question. So I was born in Spanish, Harlem in New York, and then lived there till I was about eight or nine. My mom and dad split up. And so my mom had a lot of cousins here in the Boston area.
And so. Early eighties is when we moved from New York to Boston. After that, it was a lot of summers back and forth in new York's anytime with my dad and my cousins, there would be like working here in Boston. So I've, I always kind of had these two holes. And then I would say like, I'm again also kind of, well, they only figured out recently is that my interest in art has existed for a really long time.
I just didn't know that I was an artist and I didn't know how to get the ideas that were in my head out of my head. And so my undergrad is actually in journalism and. I've since I've identified as a writer for a really long time, like that sense to me because throughout middle school and high school, and even in elementary school, I was always writing and making up stories and all those kinds of things.
And then in undergrad, I had to take a class for photo journalism. It was back. Then those days in the nineties, they kind of taught you everything. So graphic, design, photography, all that kind of stuff. And when I, he was learning the needy and love photography, I realized that I was someone who thinks in pictures.
And that is to say that like, when I'm reading a book, With no images, I'm actually making images in my head. And I, I just, I didn't think that was special. I just assumed everyone could do that. So it didn't seem like a big deal to me, but what I, as I continue to learn the medium of photography, I realized that I could.
Merge my conceptual thinking and metaphor into an image. And so it's during that process and undergrad, when I realized like, Oh, this is a new medium that I can use to think about how to navigate the world and try to understand the world. And so when I, by the time I was thinking about trying to switch my major, major over to photography, I was already so far into my co op program at Northeastern.
So it just didn't have the kind of flexibility by them to then. Switch gears. So, um, after undergrad I continue to take photos and take classes and things like that. And then for a little while I was taking drawing classes, um, like at the Cambridge adult education center and realizing that, Oh, I have another way of storytelling through drawing.
And so. Through that process of kind of little by little making increments and sort of thinking through how my brain worked. I realized like, Oh, you know, I've got some, all these ideas, but how do I execute them? What happens if I try to go to school and get training and try to think. Through how to do that.
And so, yeah, I went back to school in like my mid to late thirties. And so I started an MFA program in fall of 2008. So just as Obama was being ushered into the president, he actually was elected on my birthday. Wow. Number fourth, 2008. For me, that was a really good kind of woman. And so I really enjoyed my graduate experience at the SMFA and the fact that I was able to work through different kinds of mediums.
And that also kind of taught me a lot about like where my strengths were and where my weaknesses were. So. Yeah, it was a really productive time period for me. So, you know, since then kind of, I guess the rest is history, but that's sort of where things came from working for different ideas intellectually, and then trying to think through our relationship with my family and sort of how they.
Yeah, my mom and dad, you know, grew up in Honduras and trying to work through these different ideas around race and ethnicity, or I just kind of felt like, wow, I've got some material to work with. How do I figure out some of that stuff out?
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:12:09] What are your parents' response to you becoming an artist?
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:12:13] That is a good question.
I remember when I first told my mom,
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:12:16] when was that?
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:12:18] Probably that was like the pilot, the summer. Before I started class like 2008 when I was working on my grad application. I didn't say anything to anyone. I didn't really, I wasn't, I didn't really, I was going to get in.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:12:32] Yeah.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:12:34] I didn't think I was going to get into a grad program.
I thought maybe I do like a one year post-bacc cause my undergrads, you know, when these other, like in writing and research and, and, you know, with the training and. In photography. So I just figured, like, I'll just have to like take some baby steps. I got really lucky in terms of the, the recruiter who was recruiting for the estimate phase at that time, he was also an artist.
He's a colleague and friend. His name is Colin Washington. Yeah. When he saw whatever I showed him, he was like, yeah, no, you need to apply for the MFA program. I'm just like, what. Be quiet. Like, I don't know what I'm doing,
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:13:15] but I'll ask someone to push us along.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:13:17] Yeah. And so he pushed me and so I got into the program and I got a scholarship to attend.
And so, yeah. So I remember when I told my mom this, she, I, you know, I told her, I got into school, got into this program, got a scholarship. She's like, Oh, okay. So yeah. Um, can we talk about your brother again? Like she just kind of like jumped right over that it did
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:13:37] because she was nervous or she didn't want to confront it or.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:13:41] Because she didn't want to confront it. I think that she didn't think that it was anything like real. I think that's what was in her head. And I remember when I told my dad, he was like, you're not going to quit your job at Harvard. Are you? And I was like, No, I'm going to work out like working part time and a flex schedule.
He's like, okay, good. And so that, I think it, I mean, in his mind, what he has said to me is that he's always wanted me to be an attorney. Um, you know, I've been told, you know, by my parents, I was, I was difficult to parent cause I was really argumentative. And to this day I do like. Kind of going that kind of discourse going back and forth with people.
But over time they've become a lot more supportive. So my mom has seen my work in person since she came to my first solo show last January. And so she was really excited, like, you know, and she was like, wow, you know,
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:14:39] it's really, it's real now.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:14:40] It's real. It's real people came to see her talk about her work is amazing.
And I, and she didn't know how much the work is influenced by, but her storytelling. My dad is not my work in person. I've sent him some images and articles and things like that. So I think for him, it's still not actually. Um, I think probably like once a week, get through this pandemic, whenever there are exhibitions again, I guess I got to work on trying to get something in New York.
We'll see it in person, but yeah, they're, they're both cool with it now, as I think from their perspective, even with my dad, even when he doesn't know what my work looks like, he knows that I'm happier. As, you know, in terms of how I approach my life now. So that's that those are still really good things.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:15:26] Yeah. Do you want to, do you want to quickly talk about the transition from undergrad to grad? Cause you still work at the, uh, the Hutchins center for African and African American research. And you also mentioned it as you were working there part time while you're going to grad school, right?
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:15:40] Yeah. That's a good question as well.
Yeah. So I started working at Harvard fall of 2003 and I got into. Ended up getting a job there through a program called yeah. Administrative fellowship program. And so as a pipeline program to bring in African-Americans as well as other folks of color and into higher ed administration. And I had applied a few times to different projects.
I mean, different, um, positions that Harvard and never got a call back so much as an email or anything. And when I got hired there, I was hired as an events manager and. Prior to that, like right prior to that, I was working in an independent theater and producing a theater project with a really dear friend of mine.
Who's a composer.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:16:25] And so you stuck around the Boston area after undergrad?
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:16:28] Yup. I stuck around, I got, I've gotten really lucky in terms of jobs. Most of my jobs. I have not gotten through like applying through like, you know,
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:16:36] our normal channels
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:16:37] and normal channels. It's almost always that someone met me somewhere and they, then they write to me and they're like, Oh, I think you're a good fit for this.
And so at that time, one of my. Colleagues, her name is Audrey to how to she was working in the department on African and African American studies and wanted to relocate back to Oklahoma. She told me about the administrative fellowship program. She thought I'd be a really good fit for the department and getting, except into that program, it was a fellowship that lasted for a while one year.
And there was some possibility of staying at Harvard, but it wasn't guaranteed, but this was a way to sort of get you the experience. That you wanted to be at a higher ed institution. And so the first few months, I wasn't sure that I would survive. It could harp because Harvard is a really intimidating place, not just for students, but it's intimidating for faculty and for administrators and, and, you know, facilities folks.
It's just a really complicated world and it's older than in the United States. So that's the really, yeah. Yeah, it is founded in the 1600.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:17:45] Right.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:17:45] So, yeah, so it's history goes back further. And so like trying to, you know, change an institution, like you kind of do that at your own folly. I remember being there and already being, knowing a lot about professor Henry Louis Gates.
Junior's work as a scholar. I just, you know, I couldn't believe how lucky I was to get this gig. He right
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:18:08] here runs that.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:18:09] Yeah, he was, he was still the chair at that time and also was running the research arm as well. And so by the time the spring of 2004 came, they gave me, they offered me a full time position.
And so at that time I was working mostly in events, organizing events and doing PR and communications. Between how I worked with my friend in independent theater and then all my other experience working in communications and at a newspaper, it ended up being a really good fit for working in that department.
And then over time I was promoted to be the assistant director. So that was about like, 2005, 2007 or so. And by that point, then I had, you know, staff reporting to me and then sort of, you know, making sure that the machine runs well, but do like a series of kind of like, just really kind of crazy family things kind of happen.
So my mom got sick. Um, my brother got sick. My doctors thought I had like lupus. So it was just like a bunch of like health things happening in my family. And I, and I realized at some point like, okay, I'm just going to ignore what these doctors are telling me. I was having a lot of chronic pain issues and we couldn't really quite pin down what it was.
But I remember just thinking to myself, like, I'm just gonna like. Tomorrow's not promised. I, I'm not, I'm gonna sit on my hands and worry that I'm gonna pop, you know, at some point be disabled by an autoimmune disease. And so I just made it up in my mind that I was going to apply to school and see what happened.
And so, like I said, miracle of miracles, I got into the program, but it was, it was one of those moments where, you know, when you, and at the time as well, like my, one of my cousins was killed in a homicide. And so. Yeah. It's those moments of kind of like precariousness in your life, where you are thinking through like, About the people that you love, you're thinking about yourself, what is your future look like?
And then realizing like, life is so precious and fragile, and it's important to figure out who you are and what you want to do with your life. Cause you know, like maybe, maybe there's no heaven or hell or, or Shangri lost someplace. Like maybe this is our only shot. And so it was, it was one of those kinds of moments where again, lots of tons of ideas kind of floating around in my head and then.
Thinking like, okay. If there's a way that I can get some training and figure out how to
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:20:27] do that, then
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:20:29] I'd be the way to try to do that. So, Um, yeah, myself very, I think I'm really lucky in that I kind of was just kinda like gambled with my future and it paid off, but yeah, it was gambling.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:20:41] Yeah. Yeah. I was curious, how was your time at grad school?
You talked a lot about your photography. When I saw you in New Hampshire, you talked a bit about it as well, but on your website, I don't see too much about it. And I'm curious
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:20:54] what happened
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:20:55] it, and how'd you make that shift? Cause I also, like I came from like a painting background and I didn't never, I never thought I would be making videos of myself.
So I was curious for you how'd you make that shift? What about the, um, yeah. What was that sort of like moment?
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:21:09] Yeah. When I was applying to. In school. I knew I wanted to study at the SMFA mostly because I wanted to work with one particular artist. Her name is Maria Magdalena, Campos, Tom. She's an Afro Cuban artist and works in multimedia, you know, does all kinds of really amazing stuff.
And I remember. Because we organized a conference at Harvard, I got to learn more about her work. There were panelists who taught her work. And then we also used one of her photographic images for like the conference program. So I had some sense of where I wanted to study and I thought, yeah, when I got to school that I'd be making photographs.
The first semester there, I think all the photo classes were filled or something. And so, um, but we had to take, you know, it's kind of like foundations kind of course, like your first and second semester and art school, it's like, you know, you gotta read all the, you got to read the can and read, all,
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:22:03] read the text, talk about it,
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:22:05] all these texts, learn how to deconstruct them, all that kind of stuff.
And so one section like, so one half was kinda like more about like, Painting and the history of painting and conceptualism. And then like the second semester, I think was more about performance. And I, I took that seminar class with a artist whose name is Marlin, Marilyn, or some who is a pioneer, experimental performance artists.
And having, you know, being in the room with her and then kind of going through the readings that she assigned and the title of the, of her syllabus was the body and art. And I remember kind of. Reading through some of those texts and about how visual artists who were ensconced in painting or photography made the shift to the body and using the body as material.
And I, to me that seemed so immediate and it made it a ton of sense to me, partly because again, because photos and paintings can be static. And I was trying to think through what would it be like if I could use my body as a tool, it sounded ridiculous to me when I was reading through, you know, reading about the work of like, you know, really amazing performance artists, but I just remember thinking, wow, this is like super weird.
I don't understand this, but it also sounds kind of exciting reading that.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:23:24] What stood out to you,
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:23:26] Chris burden so that, you know, the piece where he has somebody shoot him, I was. Yeah, artists like Trisha Brown dancer, a choreographer, Merce Cunningham, John cage, like all of those artists there, weren't a lot of there weren't really any black artists necessarily that she was referring to.
Um, Maybe like one or two and one, I think his name at that time was rod force. He may go under another name by now, but I remember thinking about this notion of a, the history of the black diaspora, African diaspora. Right. And so are these questions around like body that is, you know, Transformed into property that is then a thinking object, thinking property, and then black folks having to constantly remind society that no we're human beings.
We're, we're, you know, this kind of, again, this relationship between like, you know, a body is somehow equal to a carpet or a dresser or something like that. It's again, it's like abstract and insane and we can never. Having never lived through that. There isn't an easy way for us to sort of, again, really understand what that was like.
You could read all the history and sort of understand those things from that perspective. But I just remember thinking about that tension between body and property and. Sameness and difference in liveliness and time. And so, yeah, conceptually to me, it seems just as like a really rich kind of territory to work through.
And so then after that, I signed up for whatever the next class that Maryland was teaching. And I was, yeah. And so that class ended up being like a year long class.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:25:06] So what was your first performance?
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:25:08] Um, okay. I, now I remember one of the things she has do. Immediately was to think about the use of time and the body.
And so she asked us to do an act. And at that point she wasn't necessarily talking about performance art. It was more just about like actions, actions in time and in space. And so one of the first assignments was choose an actor action that you can do in class, and then time yourself while you're doing it.
And you know, each time you stop that task. Think about it, write a little bit about it and then do it again for a longer period of time. And I remember that I have had come up with a, kind of a language kind of dialogue, and that was like in my head for a really long time. And. Decided I would write that out on paper with charcoaled.
And I figured out that while I was doing that and stopping and starting and sort of been adding in more time that the words were kind of like shifting around on the paper. And I thought that was super interesting about how language itself is a medium and that it's not static. At all. And so from there, I ended up doing a much longer performance again, writing this language and then kind of starting again by the beginning and then muscling it up again with my body as I'm kind of writing it again.
So again, the kind of utility, but again, the, again, the kind of liveliness of language and its relationship to the body. Um, so yeah, that's, that's how it started. Um,
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:26:40] how long was that? How long did you repeat that for a section?
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:26:43] Um, I think initially I did it for like 15 and then I think, so that was kind of like, maybe like our intro class might be 15 and then the next time he was 30, I think, and then maybe I added in another 10 or 15 minutes or something like that.
But by the time I, by the time that class was over and then I think with our, within a few weeks of that particular class, we had to do. Another assignment. I just chose to dig further into that particular action. And so I think the longest I ended up doing it in class was for about 40 or 45 minutes.
That's a long time. It's a, it's a long time. And so we think as well, too, that we sort of, we think we can control time. So that's the other thing that's interesting about working in performance is that. Sure. You've got a set amount of time to do the performance, but still that's like a conceptual sort of social construct that we enact upon time.
And so these questions about paying attention to time and also how your body moves in time. So that was super interesting to me. Before I started school, I had actually done a marathon. I did. Yeah. So
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:27:51] I did the full 25 mile marathon.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:27:53] Yeah. Yep. One of those. It was in San Diego. It was crazy. It took me six and a half, some odd hours, but I did it.
And again, it was one of those things where my doctors were like, no, we, you know, issues are getting really bad. Like we think you should stop money. And I'm just like, No, that's not going to happen. I'm going to keep running. And part of it again was through those, again, those, those moments in which I felt like I needed to have agency over my body and I was going to figure out if I had to live in this body that was constantly falling, falling apart on me.
I still need to figure out some way to exist in this thing, you know, and work through these ideas. And I found that through running, that was a con that was a meditation Aiden process. And that for whatever reason, help clear my head. Particularly when I was anxious about things as well. And now I better understand the science of it and the endorphins and all those things.
But at the time it was more about like, no, this is like on my bucket list, bucket list. So I'm gonna,
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:28:58] I kind of want to do a marathon. I don't know yet my, my, my ankles has been giving me issues. And now I'm like, did I miss my moment? But
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:29:06] no, you can. It's never too late to do it. You just have to train, you just have to train really hard.
But it would, that would, that, again, that teaches me is again, is that the body is an instrument and it is, it is the thing that is taking in all this information, um, whether we're conscious of it or not. So by the time I got to this class and I'm in, and I'm, you know, kind of doing tasks and incrementing them by time, having already done that marathon, I had some context.
And so those moments in which. You're in the state of kind of Nirvana. And I, I, I knew what that felt like already. And I thought I'm just going to keep chasing that feeling.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:29:44] I never thought about, I never thought of a marathon. Is it performance? But it is. Yeah,
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:29:48] but it is, it is. So, yeah. So those, those instances of wrothing and movement and walking, those are things that always show up in my performances.
As well. Yeah. So I know some friends who just do, um, really, um, performances where it's just like one task and they just stay in one space and then they just kind of repeat it over and over. I found that for me, I have a, I guess, a certain kind of restlessness in my body, so I need to be moving around. And so that, like, that's my thing.
It's my way of,
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:30:18] yeah. So
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:30:19] yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's where things shifted into, um, Performance. And so that's now kind of like my bread and butter. That's mostly what people pay me for performances, but yeah. So that's, that's where that shift came,
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:30:32] right? Yeah. And then I love, I also loved how it's transformed because I think in the, in at least when I was looking through your earlier work, it seemed like you were kind of doing performances out in the world and then.
You're kind of forcing the context in a very specific way, but it was also somewhat abstract. Yeah. And when I saw you, at least at the, at the hood museum, when I thought it was really fascinating was you were then juxtaposed with this history. That was very clear. In an institution that was very clear.
Yeah. And I was curious how that sort of evolved. Cause I was thinking also, like when I look at your earlier performance, like I looked at like, where else Williamsburg, the you're from, for the care Mae Weems in the Guggenheim. Like I saw the documentation, but it wasn't as clear what was going on. Sure sometimes.
I mean, I could infer some things, but I thought like once you're in the context of museum, it kind of changes so completely, right. Like, cause Williamsburg, there's a lot of different things that you could be talking to if I don't know. Right. But then like when you're like, Oh, okay. This is like institution and art institution at a very specific place with a very specific art.
History. Right? Like all those things narrow it in a very beautiful way. I'm just curious how that sort of happened.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:31:43] Yeah. How that happened. Yeah. So that's true. A lot of my work was just happening out in the world really experimental and that I can absolutely credit back to Maryland is, you know, again kind of engaging with the world and trying to create some sort of connection with it.
The way I got shifted into museum and gallery spaces was through like, Like maybe like within a few months of. Graduating or being pretty close to graduating. I went to a panel discussion at the MFA and Liz who at that time was the museum's first curator of performance art. She had staged an event where three artists, Marilyn arson was.
One of them. And then John does all, this was a classmate of mine. And then another artist did performances throughout the museum, like on the same day. And then I think right after that, then they had a panel discussion. Now, Magda Campbell, spawns, who again is my idle and mentor and teacher. She told me about this performance and said go to the panel discussion too, and go talk to Liz.
And I was like, okay, I don't know Liz from any, anytime Amanda tells me to do something, I just try to do it's best. If I just do what she tells me to do. And. I, and the good thing is that Liz was really approachable. So after the, I let her know Magna suggested I come and talk to you wanted to let you know, I really enjoy this discussion.
You know, I also make performance art and she's like, Oh, that's great. You know, since I'm new in town, I want to try to do more studio visits. So then I think maybe a few days of that, she emailed me asking if she. Could come to my studio and see what I'd been working on. So she came by, I don't remember how long she was there, but it felt really kind of, it, it was a kind of really easy rapport.
And then within a few days of that, she invited me to do a solo performance at the MFA. And so when I remember getting the invite and I was like, Like what is happening? This is like an institution that I used to cut class from to go, to, to go look at AR and paintings and stuff like that. So I was just like, Oh my God, it's
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:33:47] real.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:33:48] It's real. This is real. I can do this. So, um, yeah, so that's when I did a performance called Columbus day blues at the MFA, and I remember. Thinking again about institutional critique, um, artists like Fred Wilson who go into museums and interrogate these structures and all the objects that are in them and thinking about how American art, but also Americanism, like nationalism is also kind of forced in a museum space.
Right. And so, yeah, we know the history of art and sort of this kind of Americanness. Sort of approach version versus what Brits are doing versus what Latin American artists are doing. So I thought that was really interesting to try to think about how the museum itself is doing a kind of storytelling and it's also placing value.
Are you on what art is important? What art isn't important? So I thought that was super interesting and it was also a case of me doing a performance on Columbus day, which is an open house day where it's free admission and. Swarmed with all these people. And I remember thinking about Columbus day because it's in November and that's, and you know, is now celebrated as like world indigenous day and thinking about like, Oh, this is not a celebratory.
Yeah.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:35:03] The transformation of colonialism,
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:35:06] I was just like, okay, what can I do? So that's when I started thinking about, Oh, Columbus, state blues, thinking about the blues does a musical idiom, but also two blues is nationalism. Blues. Also too, a kind of way to think about melancholy and loss. And grief. And right before that, I had finished up my thesis installation, which was focused on banana republics and Chiquita bananas, and again, colonialism and all those kinds of things.
So it was easy at that point to do that research, think about that space and then try to like move it into this other direction and do this roving performance.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:35:41] So what did you do in the museum?
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:35:43] Yeah, so the. For what I first started doing is I started sitting right outside of the cafe and the museum and I was eating round rotten bananas.
And then yeah, these, these Brown really grows bananas, Chiquita bananas. And from there I had camera if I did it during the performance or beforehand, but I had excised the red strips from the. American flag I've had pulled those out, kind of cut them out and then use them like these kinds of tapestries and then proceeded to walk near a wall that had a work by an artist.
And it was all in like black and yellow. And I thought, Oh, that's an interesting set of colors before I do a performance. I do a lot of site visits. I kind of think about what, like, how does the work talk to me? So at that point, I thought I was thinking about, again, the invisible labor. That goes into like managing museums and presenting them for the world.
And so I use those strips of fabric from the flag to crawl up along in wall and sort of collect all the dust underneath that particular mural. And then from there, I went into a space where there was a photo exhibition and it was focused, I think, on women in photography. But I think women in particular, in like the middle East.
Okay. And so in that space, I then pulled out those registrants. And then I wrote some profanities around Columbus, you know, sailing in 1492, but thought Kim. So I left those on the floor and then I burst into song. And so I read some I'm going to make you love me by the Supremes. And the reason why I chose that song was thinking about immigrants and folks who are undocumented and who are.
Come to the U S and America to actually, you know, to kind of have that American dream. So there's a kind of love for that kind of Americanist viewpoint and folks come here for opportunities, but at the same time too, it's sort of like the country kind of inspires a kind of love through it's nationalism and patriotism, but then also too, like thinking about immigrants who.
Just want to come here and stay and build lives and have opportunities and have families, right. And sort of be included into the American dream. And so there's from their standpoint, maybe that's a question about love of needing this, this, this idea of America to love you back. And then from there moved into the contemporary art.
Section where they were artists. Um, the work of artists whose work, I was a lot more familiar with like Carol Walker. So in front of the Carol Walker piece, I laid down on my back and then pushed myself along the ground to get here, my body scraping against the floor. And I was doing that while I was singing Yankee doodle dandy.
Okay. And I just remember at the time when I was, like I said, organizing the performance and kind of writing an outline for Liz, I was thinking about like, Oh, what's more, what's more American than like slavery. So that's where the Yankee doodle dandy comes in. And then by the time I got to the end of the performance, I had put the.
Flag over me. And then I kind of spun myself dizzy throughout the space and it was right underneath one of terror Donovan's pieces. And it was, I think the styrofoam ones, which is made of a bunch of little,
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:39:05] a hundred hundreds of hundreds,
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:39:07] hundreds, there's an hundreds of styrofoam cups and that, that circular shape.
And so that's where they're kind of spinning. Top came from. So yeah, I've gotten again, I think probably because I've spent so much time in museums since I was a kid that I am aware of the ways that objects talk to us and how space talks to us. So there was, there was, yeah, there was those kinds of questions.
And then, yeah, just kind of thinking through like the way that other artists were, you know, even. Colleagues and friends, you know, who are architects, you know, thinking about like, huh, owl, how do, how does it a building create this kind of storyline? How does it move people through a space? Like how does scale work?
So, yeah, it's very, it's been very much a kind of. Evolution, but sort of like starting with one seed and then moving on to something bigger.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:39:59] So what was the reception to that and how, how has, how has that work been received? Awesome. Boston, because Boston is very interesting. I think relationship to just race in general.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:40:08] Yeah. Uh, yeah, that's a good question. I would say it must have been received. Well, normally with this particular performance, we did not do a QA the same way we did it at the hood. Um, I think that it must have been received well because since then, I had, I just kind of, yeah. I kept getting more invites to do performances and then I am afterward.
I know that Liz, you know, talk to me about wanting to write about that performance. I don't know if that was still on her radar to do, but I ended up, like I said, having a really good. Working relationship with Liz. And so again, being one of these curators who is generally genuinely interested artists and the way that artists think and is really committed to performance art and has, you know, brought other artists of color into that institution.
So she's. She's really been a, I think a real key player here in Boston on terms of, you know, curators are really invested in performance art. So in terms of what I learned from there that has sort of carried me through other institutions and thinking about sort of like the constraints and using those constraints, and then thinking about the possibilities of like, kind of removing those constraints.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:41:17] What are some constraints that you.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:41:20] Yeah, I would like, so at the Clark art museum where I performed last fall in November, there was all this concern about how close I could get to the paintings and the sculptures. And I. And, and I, I did a lot of side business before that performance and at, at one of the site music meetings.
Yeah. There was all these questions about like, Oh, you can't, you can't stand closer than 10 feet to this
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:41:45] 10 feet.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:41:48] No one looks at a painting from Tennessee. It's just not. At least not
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:41:52] initially. Yeah, yeah,
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:41:54] yeah. Right. You, maybe you move in closer then maybe it's. Yeah. Yeah. So I was just like, what is going on?
Cause the thing is, is that I, I'm not the one who chose the room in which I would perform.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:42:08] They chose it for
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:42:09] the room and they chose this room because it was a very large room. And it was a room where I guess it's their most popular section of
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:42:17] the museum Abbott's paintings or something.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:42:20] No, uh, all of the, um, you know, the, the French, you know, paint, um, you know, French artists will Dan and
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:42:28] Monet.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:42:30] Exactly. And so I just remember thinking like, Well, I didn't choose this space. Like, why are you now telling me I can't engage? You know, but only under these kinds
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:42:40] of 10 feet away.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:42:41] Yeah. So I just remember thinking about that a lot and trying to think about how could I use that. Oh a tool. And what dawned on me is that I could do a kind of institutional critique.
They, and like I said, they asked for it, they set themselves up for this by putting this constraint in my, you know, in my way. At some point they had were, like I said, they were. Clearly really concerned. Cause they had never had a performance artwork, you know, presented in the museum. So some of that I understand because I'm also a curator and I, and I work at a very old institutions.
So I understand how difficult it is to get institutions, to move past where they think they should be or what. You know, but I remember as I was formulating the piece the night before, I started to think a lot about institutional critique. And so, as I'm talking about these black women who've been killed, you know, I'm also kind of reminded like, Oh, that's so interesting.
You guys are really interested in this role with Rodin, but you're not interested in the story about Eleanor bumpers. Oh, that's right. You don't want the women artists, you want the white guy artists. Okay. So I kept repeating that throughout. Performance. And so by the time that ended, we didn't do a Q and a, after that, with some of the scholars who were attending the symposium, that was part of where this performance were done.
They, they were paying a lot of attention and I, that was really refreshing. They, I clearly had left them with a lot to think about cause their, their questions were like, you know, one right after the other. And then. To the extent that, so that was kind of like part one of the Q and a, and then in the two days that followed some of the grad students that were part of that symposium, they also had more questions for, and how they realized like, Oh my goodness, because a few of them were from Williams college and then a few of them were from Spelman in Atlanta and they were both, Oh my goodness.
He changed how I interact with the space now, like. You transformed it in a way that I hadn't thought about before. So again, I, I did my job and I'm told as a result from the feedback that, you know, from these, from folks who attended and who were asking these questions, like, yeah, they were paying quite a bit of attention.
And so it, it paid off in the long run. But, but, and even after that, one of the contemporary art curator. Said to me. Oh, Delynn so I'm so glad you did this performance because now I can, you know, this, this gives me an opportunity to try to bring in other performance artists into this space and to try to again, move this institution into a world of contemporary art.
So I was like, Oh, that's great. I'm a facilitator. I have done my job. So yeah. So it was, it was amazing. And each time, even though it's the same performance with each site, it changes over time. And so. That is again, why I'm still very much in love with performance, because again, it's a, it's an actual dev thing and I can't always completely control what's happening because again, human beings, you know, unpredictable, um, and, and objects have a history to them.
And so again, the constraints are what they are, and then it's your job as an artist to try to figure out some way to, to work with them or work against them, or figure out some other possibility.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:45:59] Yeah. At, at the Clark, was that that's where you performed blues blank and black. Yup. And that was the first iteration?
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:46:06] No, that by then I had probably performed that piece about four or five times when I first performed that piece. It was in Brooklyn, in. 2016. And when I performed it then, and it was just one character and I was in a corner.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:46:23] Could you just quickly describe the piece so that people just for people listening?
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:46:28] Yay. Um, so the piece is called blue slate. Whack. I performed it first in Brooklyn at a gallery called five miles. And it's a piece that merges central American folklore figures, as well as the work of Tony Morrison. And then the industry patient of black women who have died as a result of police violence or in brutality.
So, you know, Tanisha Anderson, Sandra bland being the, probably the most prominent because there's video of her death or per arrest. So for me, Putting together that particular performance, it came out of a larger project of working with other black women performance artists. Most of them based in New York, but realizing that we all had a way of using language and storytelling in our performance practices.
And so we organized an evening of performance pop-up performances called black girl lit between performance, literature, and memory, because. We were all sort of riffing off of the work of Tony Morrison or my Angelou, or even oral traditions that we've heard growing up. It was an interesting way to sort of highlight all these different, you know, this kind of broad outline, but then have all these different women artists like, you know, approach it in all these different ways.
And at that time, I, you know, between the curating, getting the space, getting the video in place, getting the photographer, getting the booze, all of those things kind of coming together. I didn't have a ton of time to figure out my performance. I had been already re rereading the work of Tony Morrison. So in particular, the bluest eye and the love it, I knew I was interested in.
Those are those stories, because again, they're about these women or girl protagonists who were trying to work trauma in one way or another, this kind of Gothic sort of elements and haunting and all those kinds of things. So for me, it was kind of, it was a, it was two texts that I was already pretty familiar with.
I had the dress already, the black dress with all the tool. I had some wigs and I had the velum paper and I had charcoal in a studio and I just shoved all that stuff into the suitcase. And at the time I, yeah, I remember getting like on the bus, the Greyhound and like what this performance is going to be, just memorize the sections that you're really interested in.
Pull those off as convincingly as you can, and just see what happens. So, yeah, I had the dolls in my studio as well, so I just, I did like really like a kind of like just pushed everything into the suitcase and I figured I would figure out the performance. Yeah. So when I first did the piece, it was completely improvised.
I'm not an, I don't improvise my performances. They're like really calculated. I just have too many control issues to wing it. So that particular night I didn't have a choice, but to wing it because I was off doing intros for each performance and MC and all that
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:49:27] kind of stuff.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:49:28] So, yeah, so it, like I said, I had everything kind of on the floor and the names written on bell and paper.
I kind of backed into this corner and there was just that one character in the black dress and with the wig. And I remember when I was doing it, the piece, you could hear a pin drop, like no one was talking or yeah. Acting. So I had no idea if we're on board, I had no idea what was happening. I just kind of got through the piece.
I didn't time it. So I don't know how long it was. It could have been 20 minutes. It could have been 40 minutes, 30 minutes. I have no idea because I didn't know what the hell I was doing. But I knew enough to try to, you know, try to create this moment with the repetition of the name. And I knew that the space itself had a kind of echo quality so that every time I repeated the name, it kept kind of bouncing and sort of reverberating through the space.
I had managed to really memorize the text. Well, in certain sections, I always have been able to do that for whatever reason. And I just kind of went from the piece. Afterward people clapped, but I didn't, I still didn't know if people were being polite. Cause then I just went in the back to the dress off, put my regular clothes on and then introduce the next artist.
I didn't know what was going on. It's not so afterward, like. Few weeks after that, talking to a friend who was there, who I didn't even notice was there, all that piece was amazing. It was terrifying. It was amazing. And I was like, really? Okay. And he was like, yeah, yeah, you should do, you should do that piece again.
And I was like, What I don't re I don't re perform
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:51:06] pieces. You normally we perform
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:51:08] now. That was the first time things got performed. I did it because I didn't, I didn't quite understand how it functioned in that first version. So I thought, okay, well, I'll just treat this as research. And so then when I got an opportunity to perform it in Cambridge, at the Cooper gallery, that's when it merged, it kind of evolved into these three separate characters that space itself allowed for this other narrative to kind of come.
True. And so, yeah, so that's, that's how it ends up being three characters. But in, in each performance, always doing a different thing to some extent. So the objects are the same. The passages are generally the same. The wigs are the same. The names are mostly the same, but where and how I respond to the space and how people respond to me.
Yeah. Is what makes it dynamic.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:51:58] Yeah. How, how has that changed your idea of performance from you performing things non repetitively or not redoing things and you having to, uh, have a piece that you are now returning to over and over again?
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:52:12] Yeah. I think for me, what I have learned is that AI, I can let go a little bit.
I don't have to control everything. So that, that way kind of just, yeah, I mean, Maryland, Maryland would emphasize this in class as well. Sort of like, you know, Oh, if something doesn't go the way you pictured it in your head, just like, let it take you in this other direction. And you know, that's also something I've learned from working with Manda and performing with her at the Guggenheim.
That piece was performed on a Sunday. And it was during a series of events that Carrie Mae Weems that organized for that weekend to go along with her solo show. So kind of like this symposium of, with artists and musicians and scholars and so forth, and I had not planned to be in that performance. I got drafted to be in that performance than Mike, before.
And it kind of, at the time I'm thinking to myself like, Oh my God, Magda, like, what are you asking me to do? Like real
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:53:14] improvisation, right? Where you, I also like crazy also performing for a show for Carrie Mae Weems right in the,
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:53:22] yeah. The whole, the whole thing is nuts. All of it's not. Right. So again, but one of the, the things that I remember that Magda reinforced for us as we were kind of in the dressing rooms, was that you just to commit, commit to the task, commit to the moment because the audience doesn't know that you're making a mistake.
I don't know what's happening. You're the only one who knows that. But as long as you're committed to the work. Yeah. So the vision and the spirit of the work, then. Everything follows from that. It's from working so closely with Magda, for the Google hide piece. For the piece we did at national portrait gallery.
There was a lot more preparation for that. But with, as with many of Magna's projects, they're really ambitious, but they're, they're generous in terms of the artists that she has, that she brings into the process and enables you to collaborate with her. And to think through all of these questions about again, how do institutions function and how do they tell stories and how do objects and art tell those stories.
And so, so much of the way that I work has yes, has so much to do with yeah. Watching Marilyn work, as well as, uh, which is, you know, a more kind of minimalist way of working. And then we're working with Matt. Yeah. The pieces are operatic. There's these really large. Ensembles and with all of these different performers, bringing something really interesting to it.
So yeah, I have to say I'm incredibly lucky to have found teachers in grad school who let me do what I wanted to do and experiment. And, you know, make a lot of mistakes and all those kinds of things. So, and prior to that, I had worked with Carrie Mae because I curated a small show for her. So yeah, at that time we didn't have our larger space, the Cooper gallery, which is on the main street level.
We have a smaller gallery. That's called the women's dine gallery name for Neil Wieden Stein. And. Carrie Mae's work, her kitchen table series and some of our other pieces that was like, basically my first curatorial project. It was, it was really, yeah, it was, it was basically professor Gates saying, Hey, Dell, um, Carrie Mae Weems is going to do a show in the Rubinstein and, um, you're going to curate it.
And I'm just like, what?
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:55:42] Like, did you like just to visit and see all the works? And like, I want this.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:55:46] No, not at all. Carrie had had the kitchen table series and then other pieces that were already not out at different shows at that time. And so she sent me a portfolio of the pieces that she wanted to show.
And so at that point, what the curatorial process happened when we were installing the work and deciding what went on, what wall. And so working with Carrie through like what the postcard would look like, what the title of the show would be. And then one of our other colleagues is an art historian, Sheldon, chief, working closely with him.
About where, where do things go? How does this look? What do you think? Oh, no, this goes here now. They looked okay here, but it looks better over here. So yeah, it's through collaboration has probably been my best teacher.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:56:33] Yeah. Yeah. Um, when you're performing, are you performing a version of yourself or are you completely different character?
Maybe you don't think about it? Cause when I perform, I try not to think about what exactly I am. Yeah. Some people are very clear ideas about like who exactly they're embodying. Um, I'm just curious, what do you see your performance as, as you mentioned, some of your texts mentioned ideas of like shamanism and embodying something.
I'm curious. Yeah. What are your characters like?
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:57:02] Yeah, they are, they're fictional, but they're rooted in some kind of truth. So like lessons. Yeah. And then lie, you don't have, those are, you know, folktales that I've learned from cousins and, you know, told, you know, told me, you know, horrifying stories as a kid to scare the crap out of me.
And it just turns out that I, as a result of that, I pretty much only, Whoa. Watch crime and horror films.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:57:26] What are these stories that have scared you?
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:57:28] So, um, so yeah, so the, when I first started as a kid, it was, um, she would, you know, come and steal your way in the night and, you know, abducted you. And so she could eat.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:57:40] So these were children who were in pain, who were being listening to their peers.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:57:43] Exactly, exactly. And what I, what I've learned since then is that that character shows up in other cultural contexts. So that's, what's also becomes interesting again about. Storytelling and additions, right? That though that those traditions are also not static and that they're, they're tailored to a particular time and place in a particular history and social context in a particular geography.
So what I've learned over time is that, you know, the ideas that I have in my head, those are mine, but that there is some give and take that I'm sort of. Uh, negotiating with fiction and using all of those kinds of tools together. So it's, it's very much a mix of things that I'm playing with and thinking through.
So yeah, I've stopped thinking about like, is it me or is it this other thing? Probably. Cause I've done this piece so many times, so I don't need to do that, but there, there are those instances where. It feels like I'm not completely in my body. I think it's called metacognition, but there's something about, at some point I'm not really in my body and I'm actually observing what's happening.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:58:55] You have an out of, out of body experience.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [00:58:57] It's something weird like that. Where, where it feels like I'm. But it feels like I'm me, but I'm not, I've stopped trying to figure out exactly how it works. I just know that that place of sort of like that high that I would get when I was running, like, that's what performance gives me.
So I'm. I think a little bit as, you know, artists as like addicts, like we're like chasing this thing that feels really good when we get to it. And then once that, when that project's over, then we're like onto the next thing, trying to get that fix. There are definitely moments where you finish a project and you don't know what the next step is.
And there was moments like that for me as well, where it's just like, I'm just kind of quiet. Yeah. And kind of just process things, but yeah, there's moments in which it's kind of like, I can kind of feel things progressing to this other place and I'm just happy that I got there, but yeah, it's, it's a, it's a high that I'm chasing.
Zhiwan Cheung: [00:59:52] Yeah. Well, it's funny because when I'm performing, I'm always, I don't get that high. I get the high after, when I'm like reviewing from the video actually.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [01:00:01] Got it. Got it. So, yeah. However, however it works, he was just talking with other artists about. The way that they get there as well. Some people are like super methodical and their studio is like really, really organized.
My no doesn't work that way. Rain doesn't work that. So I, I try not to spend too much time overthinking it anymore. Like again, kind of just letting the work do whatever it needs to do.
Zhiwan Cheung: [01:00:28] Yeah. Yeah. And then for the work, when, how do you, how do you see your work in relationship to documentation?
Dell Marie Hamilton: [01:00:35] Yeah, I've learned the hard way that it's important to have both a good videographer as well as a still photographer to document.
The performances and the way that I learned that that was the hard way is like, when I'm trying to do like, you know, residents see applications or grant applications and not having the money shot in there. And so I've, you know, and I'm, again, is something also to that Magda as well as Maryland taught me life.
No, you should document this. I don't care if you're just doing it in class. Like, you're going to be sorry that you didn't do it. And in my head I'm like, Whatever this thing, isn't that important for? It ends up being really important because it helps me explain how, how the piece evolved also til you get older and you forget, well, that's the reality of like being a human being, why like you forget things.
And so, yeah. It's so in that, in those kinds of, it's a really just kind of practical things I have learned that it is really important, too. Document things visually as best as you can and as much as your budget can afford. So the good thing is that I get paid for all of my gigs now. And so someone else is absorbing that cost, but yeah, back back in the day when I was still in school and just coming out of school, I was, I was lucky if I got a decent two minute clip.
Zhiwan Cheung: [01:01:53] Yeah.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [01:01:54] So yeah, I think also too, thinking about yourself, sort of like your legacy as an artist, like, you know, when you're gone, like who's, who's the person. That's my dog. That's coming in to say hi. Okay. That's my God noisy for a second. But, um, yeah. Thinking about like, what do you want to leave on this earth once you're gone and you know, what will you leave for the scholars and the curators and the historians to, you know, to try to piece together that history for you?
Zhiwan Cheung: [01:02:21] Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, the reason I asked also is because when I was looking through your, your website, like, you didn't leave much and it almost felt like you really wanted people to go to your performance and you actually didn't want much, much documentation to be around. So that's why I was curious about that.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [01:02:35] Yeah. Initially it was, it was just, it was really more about just like, Oh yeah, whatever images I get, whenever I, whenever I get whatever I don't get, but as I've. Gotten more invites to do performances curators have asked, Hey, can you send me some video? So as a result of doing this piece several times, I've got good set of clips.
Um, there's a couple of other performances that I was really proud of that have also been documented. I mean, editing it is a pain. I just, I really dislike. I like editing. It's just not like that. I do it because I have to do it, but it has paid off in terms of particularly your, again, when curators. You know, maybe don't have a chance to come and see your
Zhiwan Cheung: [01:03:16] personal
Dell Marie Hamilton: [01:03:17] here's a clip and they can get a sense from where the work is is coming.
So it pays off later on. But at the top, when you're trying to do art direction for, for your performance, it's kinda like, it's not like the first one. No.
Zhiwan Cheung: [01:03:29] Yeah. It's the last thing on your mind? Yeah. But, I mean, that's the one thing I think that's interesting, which is about, at least all the studio classes I've been teaching the students have to have good documentation because that's actually like,
Dell Marie Hamilton: [01:03:41] yeah, exactly.
That's all you can grade them. So yeah. It's the practicalities of thing.
Zhiwan Cheung: [01:03:48] Yeah. Well, I think I've touched upon. Lots of different topics. And is there anything that I missed that you want to chat about? Do you want, do any shout outs,
Dell Marie Hamilton: [01:03:59] any, any
Zhiwan Cheung: [01:03:59] plugs, anything that, uh,
Dell Marie Hamilton: [01:04:02] yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, no, I think more than anything, I just want to say thank you for, um, wanting to talk about my work, but also too, just thinking about like, You know, whatever happens with this pandemic, just again, be well, be safe, but also too, like if there's ways that we, as artists can figure out.
A way forward, you know, as a result of the moment that we're in, I think this is an important time to continue to make work and try to again, make sense of, of what is happening. So yeah, for me, it's, it's mostly looking at artists and writers and musicians as well. Thinking about like how to, how to find a way out of clearly quite chaotic, but, but yeah, holding onto hope that there was another side.
So that's an an, and some really great work could be created as a result of it.
Zhiwan Cheung: [01:04:51] All right. All right. Thank you Del so much verus I enjoyed this a lot.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [01:04:56] Thank you so much. I enjoyed it as well.
Zhiwan Cheung: [01:04:58] All right. Talk to you later. Stay safe. Stay healthy.
Dell Marie Hamilton: [01:05:01] Bye bye. Bye.
Zhiwan Cheung: [01:05:10] Seeing color is recorded, edited and produced by myself. So you one chunk, original music by Alex Chou. You can find more information on the website, www.Seeingcolor pod.com. Or on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook under the handle, seeingcolorpod.
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Again. Thank you so much for listening. And goodbye for now