The start of the semester brings five new Collaboration Incubator residencies to the Target Studio. A platform that supports collaborations between artists and UMN researchers, the Target Studio for Creative Collaboration was created to allow time and space for relationships to grow and develop into professional networks. Designed as short-term projects intended to lay the foundation for long-term relationships with academic collaborators, artists and researchers will work to propel their projects and prepare proposals for future funding—all in an effort to carry out the long-term and ongoing nature of socially-engaged work.

Amoke Kubat

Artist, weaver, sacred doll maker, and occasional stand-up comedian, Amoke Kubat will utilize the Target Studio residency to further support and explore Yo Mama’s House. A North Minneapolis cooperative for female artists, mothers, activists, and healers, Kubat will partner with the Urban Research and Outreach-Engagement Center (UROC) in an effort to further inform her work on reclaiming African Indigenous sensibilities. 

Marcie Rendon

Playwright, poet, and writer, Marcie Rendon is an active member of the local Native arts community. Rendon, Anishinabe, enrolled member of the White Earth Nation, aims to research the causes and effects of the disproportionate rates of incarceration of Native American women in Minnesota during her time at WAM. 

Rosy Simas

In this unique collaboration, artists Rachel Breen and Vienne Chan will partner with the Carlson School of Management’s Susanna Gibbons and her students at the Carlson Fund Enterprise to investigate and combine financial and artistic thinking. Bringing in creativity and a sense of social responsibility, artists will participate in the program alongside students to challenge traditional models of financial decision making and raise questions of social values and consequences of financial investments.

States of Control | Emily Gastineau, Billy Mullaney, and Rachel Jendrzejewski 

Inspired by the 2016 Cambridge Analytica scandal and the associated technologies of weaponizing masses of data to manipulate public opinion, artists Emily Gastineau, Billy Mullaney, and Rachel Jendrzejewski will use performance to to investigate data as a tool for manipulation of democracy. Particularly interested in the ways aesthetic and performative forms combine with psychology, technology and law to create push-polling, gerrymandering, and social media manipulations, the team will investigate questions that challenge representation and the political, ethical, and performative aesthetics of participation.

KATE DRAKULIC | COMMUNICATIONS INTERN

Top image, clockwise left to right: Amoke Kubat (Photograph by Adja Gildersleve), Marcie Rendon (Photo by Boris Oicherman), Rosy Simas (Photo by Tim Rummelhoff), Rachel Breen (Photo by Justin Allen), Vienne Chan (Photo by Roland Baege), Rachel Jendrzejewski (Photo by Theo Goodell), Emily Gastineau (Photo by Theo Goodell), and Billy Mullaney (Photo by Roman Ermolaev)