Terri Witek
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Recent Work

  • Teaching with Cyriaco Lopes at the Hand Art Center ( June 2024 MFA residency at Stetson University)
  • Beyond the Illegible on Boundary Ave
  • Exit Island featured at show at The Liminal
  • ARCO Madrid
  • ARCO Madrid
  • Collaboration with Amaranth Borsuk

Interview with Terri Witek, by 32 Poems

Apr 11, 2011

Serena M. Agusto-Cox interviews Terri Witek at 32 Poems:

http://www.32poems.com/blog/2105/terri-witek-an-interview-with-serena-m-agusto-cox

From the interview:

2. Do you see spoken word, performance, or written poetry as more powerful or powerful in different ways and why? Also, do you believe that writing can be an equalizer to help humanity become more tolerant or collaborative? Why or why not?

I love ephemeral creations, and as I have been working with Brazilian new media artist Cyriaco Lopes since 2005, have become more and more enamored of doing things that disappear—words and images (he uses photographs and video), sound pieces. We did some ipod voice pieces for an installation and I loved that…watching people lean into the rooms to catch fragments, etc. Of course I still love words on the page. But I really like staging “events” with him where we switch out—it feels unexpected, even when I know what’s going to happen, as I do now with the day you left, a 50-minute piece we’ve done several times. Actually, I find collaboration deeply mysterious and satisfying. I make no larger claims for it except that it puts you right into someone else’s technical stuff in a way that seems pretty magic. Is this equalizing? More that to play together in the same space feels temporary and precious. Maybe world peace would feel just like this.


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