Campus Announcements

The five recipients of the 2016 Kaspar T. Locher Summer Creative Scholarships will present their work on Tuesday, October 4, at 4:40 pm in the Studio Art Building Feldenheimer Gallery.

At the presentations, Ateha Bailly will sing a selection of his songs; Brian Bartz’s installation in room 222 can be experienced, and will be open by appointment through October 11; a selection of Eden Chinn’s photographs will be on display in the gallery through October 11; Erika Enge will read from her collection of poems; Michael Frazel will read a scene from his play. A staged reading of the whole play will be given on Friday, October 7, at 7:30 in PAB.

Ateha Bailly  Things I See

A nine-song EP comprised of six original songs and three interpretations of traditional negro spirituals. The EP uses my background in Christianity and Ananda Marga to  broach issues surrounding race and class in America. It also touches upon the strain issues such as these put on various types of relationships. Ultimately, the overarching theme which ties Things I See together is the constant struggle between spiritual and secular action in the face of the injustices found in today's society. 

 

Brian Bartz  Human Pixelation Chamber

What is left of a human once they are reduced to pixels? This work, a meditation on the nature of digital interfaces, forces one to use their body as a tool with which to extract content from an intentionally abstracted system. Through cycles of feedback and translation, this audiovisual installation asks viewers to reassess the ways in which they regularly interact with digital technology, and the implications therein.

 

Eden Chinn  Make Believe

Make Believe explores the relationship between conformity and transgression in the performance of the gendered self. This collaborative color film photography project asks its subjects to separate their identities into different gendered alter-egos. These egos respectively embody the positive and negative feedback the subject receives from their gender performance, as well as the subject’s internal conception of their gender that they may not be able to perform in their daily life. This three-part perspective, with each gendered self defined by the subject, captures the tension between societal perception and self-actualization. 

 

Erika Enge  Found in Translation

A collection of English and German poems written for the purpose of translation. Through the partnering of the resulting English originals with their German translations and vice versa, this collaborative project explores translation as a poetic medium through which poetry is not “lost”, but is instead one through which additional layers of meaning can be uncovered.

 

Michael Frazel  Silence

Silence is a play exploring the artistic process through the lens of the Conceptualist artist On Kawara. It is a two-act drama exploring the lacuna of a life devoted to art, aspiring to push the boundaries of what a medium (ostensibly) devoted to language can be. We see Kawara as a young man beginning his experiments with reaching pure consciousness and at the end of his life as an aging titan battling obscurity and death, reflecting along the way on taxes, love, and the art of silence.  

 

The Kaspar T. Locher Summer Creative Scholarships support independent projects in creative writing, visual arts, theater, dance, and music. Competition for the summer scholarships is held each spring and is open to all Reed students who are returning the following fall.

Kaspar T. Locher was a literary scholar and professor of humanities and German at Reed College for nearly 50 years. Locher was born in St. Gall, Switzerland, on December 15, 1920, and came to the U.S. in 1946 under the auspices of the Institute of International Education after studying medicine at the University of Geneva and literature at the University of Zurich. He received a Ph.D. in comparative literature in 1949 from the University of Chicago. He taught there and at Vanderbilt University before coming to Reed as an instructor in German. Locher wrote a number of books and articles on German literature that were published in the U.S., Germany, and Switzerland. He received research and travel grants from the American Philosophical Society, the American Council of Learned Societies, and other institutions. He was visiting professor of German at the University of Washington in 1963 and at the University of Oregon in 1978. He was granted emeritus status at Reed in 1988. Locher, an active supporter of the arts in Portland, collected numerous works by Northwest artists. Locher established the summer creative scholarship competition in the 1960s and revived it in the late 1980s, chairing the selection committee until shortly before his death in 1998. The endowed Kaspar T. Locher Summer Creative Scholarships Fund was named in his honor in 1997.

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