J. Moran Puett. Radical Pedagogy: Wholeschooling

In this segment, Creative Time curator Nato Thompson talks with artist and fashion designer Morgan Puett about Mildred’s Lane, a communal residence where collaboration, interdisciplinary art-making and socially engaged practices are tested at a distance from major art centers, and in conversation with local townspeople. Puett, a founder and host of this 96-acre residence along the border between Pennsylvania and New York, also elucidates the ideas behind her current project "Radical Pedagogy: Wholeschooling", which she works on together with her teenage son Grey Rabbit Puett.

Deeply influenced by her experiences growing up in southern Georgia, the daughter of a beekeeper and a painter, Puett shares memories of her childhood and discusses the challenges of raising a son as an artist and a single mother. “Most residencies in the world don’t allow kids…so what am I to do as a woman, a single parent, a project artist, nomadic?” Puett asks. Countering stereotypical assumptions and models of working and workstyles, she considers reasonable ways to deal with art and life in the 21st century and points out how Mildred’s Lane can help artists construct better ways of living together.

This program is part of a regular series entitled Forms of Life, hosted by Creative Time’s Chief Curator Nato Thompson, and produced for their online magazine, Creative Time Reports, in partnership with ARTonAIR.org. Guests are culture makers whose work posits new ways of looking at political realities. By addressing a wide range of issues such as alternative economies, calcified political structures, new forms of collective living, or simply being a thorn in the side of normality, Forms of Life interviews provide an opportunity to think counterintuitively about social conditions people face around the world.

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