Taking ICA’s current exhibition Jessica Vaughn: Our Primary Focus Is To Be Successful as a starting point, David Hartt, Carrafiell Assistant Professor in Fine Arts at the Weitzman School of Design, and Zoë Ryan, Daniel W. Dietrich, II Director at ICA, will discuss the ways in which the built environment both frames and opens up…

Our Primary Focus Is To Be Successful is a major survey of new and recent work by visual artist Jessica Vaughn. Within this exhibition Vaughn considers the intersections between late twentieth- and twenty-first-century work culture, modular architecture—its promise of malleability and universality—and the marginalized workers who have been rendered invisible within these workspaces. Join us…

Rhythm is literally and figuratively at the heart of Milford Graves’s practice. Using a device known as an electronic stethoscope, Graves was able to hear and record the different patterns produced by each heartbeat, translating these vibrations into audible frequencies that he called heart music. Of course what he is best known for are the…

Milford Graves’s visual and sonic transmissions have shaped and been influenced by Black traditions rooted in Afro-Caribbean culture. Each aspect of his performances, from the guttural sounds that emerge from his diaphragm to the elastic ways he bends and shifts his lithe body, function as gestural forms of communication with the ancestors. Ars Nova Workshop…