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"We’re struggling. Our generation is trying to cope. Life is crazy." On this final episode of Helga: The Armory Conversations, I look to this next generation of artists. Three participants in Park Avenue Armory’s Youth Corps program, playwright Wilson Castro, visual artist Raven Garcia, and photographer Biviana Sanchez, sat down with me and as we made a space together, we experienced what it means to be vulnerable with oneself and with each other.  The Youth Corps Program immerses students in the art and creative processes of the Armory’s artists through paid, mentored, project-oriented internships. Starting in high school, the Youth Corps provides a test audience to the Armory Artist Corps during the lesson design process, offering feedback from a student perspective, serves as Front of House staff for all Armory events, assists in administrative projects in all departments, and completes and presents a term project. Building on this foundation and responding directly to student needs, the program also includes a post-secondary phase, including strategies to promote college persistence, professional development, and student leadership. 

"I want to push those limitations. Push them." Researcher, writer and critic K. Anthony Jones discusses what it means to make your own way and how to carve a path where one does not exist.  K. Anthony Jones researches and writes on the history, theory, and criticism of late modern art and architecture. His research interests include the media cultures of the Cold War; modernism and war; art and globalization; science and technology studies; visual culture; critical race theory; political anthropology; imperialism; postcolonial studies; art and technology; methods of historiography; and archival science. Jones received a Master in Design Studies degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 2020; and a Bachelor of Art degree from Morehouse College in Sociology in 2010. And here are 5 books that offer a glimpse into his world: 1. The House That Race Built: Original Essays by Toni Morrison, Angela Y. Davis, Cornel West, and Others on Black Americans and Politics in America Today by Wahneema Lubiano 2. Home by Toni Morrison 3. The Middle Passage: White Ships / Black Cargo by Tom Feelings 4. Taryn Simon: The Color of a Flea’s Eye: The Picture Collection by Taryn Simon (Author, Photographer), Joshua Chuang (Author), Tim Griffin (Author) 5. The People Could Fly: Black American Folktales by Virginia Hamilton (Author) Leo Dillon (Illustrator), Diane Dillon Ph.D. (Illustrator)  

“There’s a real potential in art making to have someone reassess everything that they had thought about a history.” Curator, critic and writer, Antwaun Sargent engages Helga in a discussion around the motivations behind his work as a curator and the circuitous path that led him to a life in and around art.  Antwaun Sargent is writer, editor and curator living in New York City. Sargent is the author of “The New BlackVanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion” (Aperture) and the editor of “Young, Gifted andBlack: A New Generation of Artists” (DAP). Recently, he was hired as a director at Gagosian Gallery. The Coda includes a reading from "Notes On Social Works" by Antwaun Sargent.”

“It was so important to be apart of community. To find strength in each other. To know that on the days when I can’t move forward, someone is going to take up the baton and move forward for me. “ Professor, Lawyer and ACLU President Deborah Archer sat down to speak with me about some of her earliest moments and how they shaped her desire to fight for equality.   Deborah N. Archer is a Professor of Clinical Law and Co-Faculty Director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at NYU School of Law. Deborah is also the President of the ACLU and a leading expert in civil rights, civil liberties, and racial justice. She is an award-winning teacher and legal scholar whose articles have appeared in leading law reviews. Deborah has also offered commentary for numerous media outlets, including MSNBC, National Public Radio, CBS, Monocle, The Atlantic, and The New York Times.  Deborah previously worked as an attorney with the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., where she litigated in the areas of voting rights, employment discrimination, and school desegregation. Deborah is also a former chair of the American Association of Law School's Section on Civil Rights and the Section on Minority Groups. She previously served as Chair of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, the nation’s oldest and largest police oversight agency.

“That's been one of the hardest things to really heal from. Has been the grief of knowing that my choices and the way that I live my life, which I love means that I am isolated from my community.” Liliana Maria Percy Ruíz, radio producer and founding member of On Being with Krista Tippett sat down to talk about identity, her definition of faith and the complexities of family.  Born in Cali, Colombia, Liliana Maria Percy Ruíz immigrated to Miami with her family at the age of four. She studied English Literature and Film Studies at Florida International University.  Liliana Maria has worked as an associate editor at MovieMaker magazine, and as a producer for StoryCorps and NPR’s “All Things Considered” on the weekends, where she produced the series “Movies I’ve Seen A Million Times.” In 2012, she received the Religion Newswriters Association Radio/Podcast Religion Report of the Year Award for her profile of four Roman Catholic Womenpriests. Liliana Maria was one of the founding team of four of the On Being Project. During her time at the OBP, she was the Executive Producer of On Being Studios, where she produced the national public radio show and podcast, On Being with Krista Tippett, as well as created the podcasts Poetry Unbound and This Movie Changed Me, which she also hosted.  Liliana Maria proudly serves on the board of Centro Tyrone Guzman, the oldest and largest multi-service Latino organization in Minneapolis.

"The positioning of being kind of on the edge of the room looking in? That's the position of a journalist." Jad Abumrad, co-Host and creator of Radiolab, joined Helga to talk about the beginnings of his career, the impact of family and how he works with doubt.  The son of a scientist and a doctor, Jad Abumrad did most of his growing up in Tennessee, before studying creative writing and music composition at Oberlin College in Ohio. Following graduation, Abumrad wrote music for films, and reported and produced documentaries for a variety of local and national public radio programs, including On The Media, Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen, Morning Edition, All Things Considered and WNYC's "24 Hours at the Edge of Ground Zero." While working on staff at WNYC, Abumrad began tinkering with an idea for a new kind of radio program.  That idea evolved into one of public radio’s most popular shows today – Radiolab.  Abumrad hosts the program with Robert Krulwich and also serves as one of its producers.  The program won the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award and explores big questions in science, philosophy and mankind.  Under Abumrad’s direction, the show uses a combination of deep-dive journalism, narrative storytelling, dialogue and music to craft compositions of exploration and discovery.  Radiolab podcasts are downloaded over 10 million times each month and the program is carried on more than 500 stations across the nation and internationally.  Abumrad is also the Executive Producer and creator of Radiolab's More Perfect, a podcast that explores how cases deliberated inside the rarefied world of the Supreme Court affect our lives far away from the bench. Abumrad was honored as a 2011 MacArthur Fellow (also known as the Genius Grant).  The MacArthur Foundation website says:  “Abumrad is inspiring boundless curiosity within a new generation of listeners and experimenting with sound to find ever more effective and entertaining ways to explain ideas and tell a story.”  Abumrad also produced and hosted The Ring & I, an insightful, funny, and lyrical look at the enduring power of Wagner's Ring Cycle.  It aired nationally and internationally and earned ten awards, including the prestigious 2005 National Headliner Grand Award in Radio.

"It split me. In one instance it split me in two. Because I had never thought of using my different voices to do different things." Opera singer Davóne Tines joined Helga to talk about his path towards a career in classical music, how he's tried to bring his whole self to his work and the impact of feeling like he can't. Davóne Tines is a pathbreaking artist whose work not only encompasses a diverse repertoire, from early music to new commissions by leading composers, but also explores today’s pressing social issues through work that blends opera, art song, contemporary classical, spirituals, gospel, and songs of protest, as a means to tell a deeply personal story of perseverance that connects to all of humanity. Mr. Tines is the recipient of the 2020 Sphinx Medal of Excellence in recognition of extraordinary classical musicians of color and one of Lincoln Center’s 2018 Emerging Artists. 

"I love to hear humans just gathering and talking and being and making lots of noise. I like to do that too...just being, and making yourself known and present." Author and performing artist Karen Finley spoke with Helga Davis about the evolution of her early work and what she wants to give her audience now.  Karen Finley is an artist, performer, and author. She is an interdisciplinary artist working in performance, text, sound, music, poetics, film and video, installation, public and social practice art. Born in Chicago she received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her raw and transgressive performances have brought debate, censorship and controversy. Finley was the named plaintiff for the Supreme Court case Finley v. NEA that challenged the decency provision in government grants to artists through the National Endowment for the Arts. Her performances and visual art have been presented internationally such as the Barbican in London, Lincoln Center, New York City, MOMA, the Bobino in Paris, amongst others. Finley is interested in freedom of expression concerns, social justice, gender and sexuality, visual culture, art education, metaphysics and lectures, and gives workshops widely. She is the author of nine books, including her latest, Grabbing Pussy ( OR Books 2018) and the 25th anniversary edition of Shock Treatment by City Lights. Reality Shows Feminist Press 2010) A recipient of many awards and grants, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, she is an arts professor in Art and Public Policy at New York University. Follow her on Instagram @the_yam_mam Karen Finley is a commissioned artist featured in the Armory’s 100 Years |100 Women Project. The Coda includes a reading of "Pussy Speak Out" from Grabbing Pussy by Karen Finley.

“Everything I know about gender politics or gender identity as it's changed and continues to change and shift and be named in all these glorious and intricate ways, have come from 16 year-olds. Thank God for them.” Youth author Jason Reynolds joined Helga Davis to talk about what it means to make work during the pandemic and how important it is to make space for the next generation.  Jason Reynolds is an award-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author. Jason’s many books include Miles Morales: Spider Man, the Track series (Ghost, Patina, Sunny, and Lu), Long Way Down, which received a Newbery Honor, a Printz Honor, and a Correta Scott King Honor, and Look Both Ways, which was a National Book Award Finalist. His latest book, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, is a collaboration with Ibram X. Kendi. Jason is the 2020-2021 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and has appeared on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and CBS This Morning. He is on faculty at Lesley University, for the Writing for Young People MFA Program and lives in Washington, DC. You can find his ramblings at JasonWritesBooks.com.

"How exactly do we listen to images? We listen by feeling. We listen by attending to what I call 'felt sound'." Helga Davis invites Scholar and Author Tina Campt to explore her relationship to her practice and her family, centering the conversation on the power and pleasure of listening to images. Tina L. Campt is Owen F. Walker Professor of Humanities and Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. Campt is a black feminist theorist of visual culture and contemporary art. She leads the Black Visualities Initiative at the Cogut Institute for Humanities and is the founding convenor of the Practicing Refusal Collective. Campt is the author of three books: Other Germans: Black Germans and the Politics of Race, Gender and Memory in the Third Reich(University Michigan Press, 2004), Image Matters: Archive, Photography and the African Diaspora in Europe (Duke University Press, 2012), Listening to Images (Duke University Press, 2017), and most recently, A Black Gaze (MIT Press, 2021). She has held faculty positions at the Technical University of Berlin, the University of California, Santa Cruz, Duke University, and Barnard College, and currently serves as a Research Associate at the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre at the University of Johannesburg. Professor Tina Campt has provided scholarly advice and inspiration for many Park Avenue Armory Public Programs over the past six years, most recently as a Keynote Speaker for Theaster Gates’s Black Artist Retreat and advisor to the collaborative project 100 Years | 100 Women.  "The Coda" includes a reading from A Black Gaze by Tina Campt.

"I’m curious about how we work. Why we’re here. What we’re doing to each other, with each other. And I know on a fundamental level that I am so much more capable than I can imagine." Actress & Disability Advocate Marilee Talkington sat down with Helga Davis to talk about her journey towards a life in theater, how she continues to innovate in that space as a low vision actress, and how important it is to be a resource and voice for her community.  Marilee Talkington is a professional actor, writer, director, and filmmaker.  She is also an activist and thought leader in the Disability Justice and Arts movement and is the Founder and Executive Director of Access Acting Academy, which is a 1st-of-its-kind professional actor training studio for blind and low vision actors. She is one of the 1st legally blind women in the United States to earn an M.F.A. in Acting (American Conservatory Theater) and has originated over 80 characters on stage and screen with leading roles at Tony Award winning theaters under the direction of Broadway directors.  She has also recurred and guest starred on multiple television shows on NBC, CBS, CW, and Apple TV+.   Marilee is a MacDowell Fellow, California Center for Cultural Innovation Grantee, Winner of the A.C.T. Carol Channing Trouper Award for dedication and excellence,  a recipient of the 2020 Dr. Jacob Bolotin Award, one of Park Armory's Artist/Activist 100 years / 100 women, and most recently the voice at the Guggenheim museum that describes the approach to the architectural masterpiece.  www.marileetalkington.com | www.accessacting.com | imdb.me/marileetalkington | @anartistwarrior Marilee Talkington is a commissioned artist of Park Avenue Armory’s collaborative project 100 Years |100 Women. The Coda features a new work titled, "The Experiment" in collaboration with Marilee Talkington and Helga Davis.

"When I look outside, when I go to the front door. That is my new canvas. Today. It's not really what happens in the studio. It's what happens outside of the studio." Visual Artist Nick Cave joins Helga Davis to talk about the evolution of his sculptural work, his community collaborations, and how to move from Black sorrow to Black excellence.  Nick Cave (b. 1959, Fulton, MO; lives and works in Chicago, IL) is an artist, educator and foremost a messenger, working between the visual and performing arts through a wide range of mediums including sculpture, installation, video, sound and performance.  Cave is well known for his Soundsuits, sculptural forms based on the scale of his body, initially created in direct response to the police beating of Rodney King in 1991. Soundsuits camouflage the body, masking and creating a second skin that conceals race, gender and class, forcing the viewer to look without judgment. They serve as a visual embodiment of social justice that represent both brutality and empowerment. The Let Go, Cave’s Park Avenue Armory Commission, premiered in June 2018.