{"id":18469,"date":"2023-10-05T20:40:37","date_gmt":"2023-10-05T20:40:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/?p=18469"},"modified":"2023-10-05T20:40:39","modified_gmt":"2023-10-05T20:40:39","slug":"nicole-miller-brilliant-in-the-here-and-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/?p=18469","title":{"rendered":"Nicole Miller: Brilliant in the Here and Now"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left has-normal-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><em>\u201cI&#8217;ve had a painful experience. And sometimes, I just feel disgusted in my body at times or in pain. So I would feel like, if I didn&#8217;t necessarily have a body, maybe I could escape from that, in a way.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left has-normal-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><em>\u201cI think my body&#8217;s just the most precious thing to me, but I tend to forget it because I have a lot of responsibilities on my back, so I don&#8217;t take the time to actually take care of myself. So like today, I&#8217;m so tired. I just realized how tired I am. I guess I push myself way too much.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-normal-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><em>\u201cHonestly, it feels great to be alive, but, like, with this\u2014with things that I struggle with, it&#8217;s often too much for me to deal with. I would\u2014I wouldn&#8217;t say that I wouldn&#8217;t\u2014I don&#8217;t want to be alive, because I do, and I enjoy my life so much and all the people that are in it and all the things that I do, but it can be hard. It can be hard living.\u201d<\/em><sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-18469-1' id='fnref-18469-1' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(18469)'>1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:38px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These words spoken by St. Louis teenagers ring out across the space of Nicole Miller&#8217;s 2022 installation <em>A Sound, a Signal, the Circus<\/em>, commissioned by the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis.<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-18469-2' id='fnref-18469-2' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(18469)'>2<\/a><\/sup> As its content suggests, what it means to be alive\u2014specifically, the brilliance and the precariousness of life in a Black body\u2014is an important entry point into the work of this California-based artist and filmmaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>A Sound, a Signal, the Circus <\/em>is a multisensory installation in which Miller explores and expands an understanding of synesthesia\u2014a perceptual phenomenon where one sense is experienced through another\u2014as it relates to Black experience in the United States. Through an intricate choreography of sound, moving image, and laser-light animation, the artist enacts what she describes as a kind of \u201cecstatic translation\u201d in which the heightened, interior sensory experience of being in a Black body is transmuted into something external and destabilizing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube aligncenter wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"A Sound, a Signal, the Circus\" width=\"1140\" height=\"641\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rR4AVLuH64o?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><figcaption>Nicole Miller, trailer for <em>A Sound, a Signal, the Circus<\/em>, 2022. Commissioned by the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis (video provided by the artist and Kristina Kite Gallery, Los Angeles)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Miller\u2019s twenty-three-channel soundscape anchors the exhibition, providing the narrative arc for the work and directing the viewer\u2019s attention. It is composed of recorded and appropriated texts, sounds, and music, along with edited excerpts from interviews that the artist conducted in St. Louis in the summer and fall of 2021. In these interviews, poets, dancers, educators, and teenagers of color share a wide range of perspectives\u2014personal, political, philosophical, and creative\u2014often drawing connections to their own bodies.<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-18469-3' id='fnref-18469-3' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(18469)'>3<\/a><\/sup> Miller asked participants to talk about their daily lives and experiences while always bringing the discussion back to the idea of what it feels like to be alive. \u201cI really wanted to see how people responded to that very big question,\u201d she states. \u201cAnd in particular, what it feels like to have a body.\u201d<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-18469-4' id='fnref-18469-4' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(18469)'>4<\/a><\/sup> Participants evoke the body variously as a repository of experience, as a palimpsest of histories, and as a locus of joy and trauma. Miller intentionally omits her own voice from these conversations. The viewer, like the artist herself, is positioned as an active listener\/witness, receiving these stories while contemplating their own body in the space of the gallery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1000\" height=\"667\" src=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_1-1000x667.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18479\" srcset=\"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_1-1000x667.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_1-500x333.jpg 500w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_1-200x133.jpg 200w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_1-2048x1366.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_1-720x480.jpg 720w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_1-560x373.jpg 560w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><figcaption>Installation view of <em>Nicole Miller: A Sound, a Signal, the Circus<\/em>, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 2022 (photograph by Joshua White; provided by the artist) <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Throughout the soundscape, Miller juxtaposes the informal stories shared with her by St. Louis teens with readings of formal texts by eminent scholars and poets, including Hortense Spillers and Margaret Walker, along with recorded performances by such musicians and composers as Nina Simone and Max Roach. Themes of control, exhaustion, mortality, anxiety, self-consciousness, invisibility, vulnerability, disenfranchisement, survival, and self-care are woven throughout this sonic tapestry. The soundscape was designed to encourage visitors to explore the space of the installation, experiencing different sound elements depending on where they are in the room at different moments.<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-18469-5' id='fnref-18469-5' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(18469)'>5<\/a><\/sup> At times a single voice or story projects across the installation; Miller also overlays many at once, resulting in a dense audio landscape that fully immerses the viewing body in sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As a filmmaker, Miller is acutely aware of how we read other people\u2019s humanity through images, videos, and sounds; active viewing and listening are central to her practice. \u201cI\u2019m trying to inform viewers of the kind of viewers they can be,\u201d she has stated, recognizing the power of representation to shape reality and asserting her desire to share something of that capacity with viewers.<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-18469-6' id='fnref-18469-6' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(18469)'>6<\/a><\/sup> In <em>A Sound, a Signal, the Circus<\/em>, she intentionally upends the conventional cinematic hierarchy of image (primary) and soundtrack (supplementary), loosening established relationships between vision and sound and underscoring the multisensorial, synesthetic quality of the installation as a whole. The different modalities of listening, watching, and witnessing that Miller\u2019s work demands draw our attention to what Tina Campt describes as \u201ca Black gaze,\u201d a multivalent model for seeing \u201cwith, through, and alongside\u201d Black people.<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-18469-7' id='fnref-18469-7' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(18469)'>7<\/a><\/sup> The framework of the gaze was first employed in feminist criticism to describe the objectifying power of the male spectator. Campt recasts this, asking, \u201crather than looking at Black people, rather than simply multiplying the representation of Black folks, what would it mean to see oneself through the complex positionality that is blackness\u2014and work through its implications on and for oneself?\u201d<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-18469-8' id='fnref-18469-8' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(18469)'>8<\/a><\/sup> In her terms, a Black gaze is both a way of understanding how artists work and a form of engaging with art that makes rigorous demands on both thinking and feeling. At a time when the visual is often victimizing for Black people, Miller\u2019s multimodal approach works to, as the artist Martine Syms states, \u201copen up possibilities about what viewing can mean,\u201d casting a deeply affecting quality onto young Black people&#8217;s accounts of Black life that pivot from mundane, to joyful, to heartrending.<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-18469-9' id='fnref-18469-9' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(18469)'>9<\/a><\/sup> Miller, like Campt, is interested in <em>how<\/em> we come to see\u2014not simply <em>what<\/em> we see\u2014and this process includes senses beyond the ocular.<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-18469-10' id='fnref-18469-10' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(18469)'>10<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>The artist puts pressure on the museum as a literal and figurative white space by centering individual and collective experiences of youth of color, translating them into poetic mediations of sound, light, and transformation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>A Sound, a Signal, the Circus<\/em> builds on two of Miller\u2019s previous works\u2014<em>Athens, California<\/em> (2016) and <em>To the Stars<\/em> (2019)\u2014that center the stories of young people in an exploration of how societal pressures and the violence of racism condition the experience of growing up in the United States, including how youth are represented and perceived. With each work, Miller issues an invitation to action\u2014not of a performative sympathy, but of rigorous reflection, both on the part of the viewer and the institution of the museum. By inserting the voices of people who are just figuring out how to articulate their stories into the context of an art museum, Miller challenges normative expectations. Across her trio of works, the artist asks us to see these young people, their different contributions and experiences, as \u201cbrilliant in the here and now,\u201d rather than through a future-oriented lens of potential (or lack thereof). With each installation, the artist puts pressure on the museum as a literal and figurative white space by centering individual and collective experiences of youth of color, translating them into poetic mediations of sound, light, and transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Miller comes from a family of educators\u2014both of her parents were public school teachers\u2014and this background partially informs her ongoing interest in working with young people and engaging with their stories. Storytelling can be a means of sharing knowledge and building empathy through personal experience. Recounting events in one\u2019s life can be a powerful act. Miller skillfully harnesses that power, creating intimate portraits of youth that are notable for their sensitivity to her subjects\u2019 integrity and complexity. In the three-channel video installation, <em>Athens, California,<\/em> commissioned by Los Angeles County, the artist wove together personal interviews and accounts from a range of teenagers, many of whom attended George Washington Preparatory High School, located in the unincorporated community of Athens in southern Los Angeles County, which is predominantly populated by Black and Latino residents.<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-18469-11' id='fnref-18469-11' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(18469)'>11<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1000\" height=\"530\" src=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Athens_InstallShot_CAAM-1000x530.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18482\" srcset=\"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Athens_InstallShot_CAAM-1000x530.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Athens_InstallShot_CAAM-500x265.jpg 500w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Athens_InstallShot_CAAM-200x106.jpg 200w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Athens_InstallShot_CAAM-1536x814.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Athens_InstallShot_CAAM-2048x1085.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Athens_InstallShot_CAAM-720x382.jpg 720w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Athens_InstallShot_CAAM-560x297.jpg 560w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><figcaption>Installation view of <em>Nicole Miller: Athens, California<\/em>, California African American Museum, March 14\u2013September 9, 2018 (photograph by Brian Forrest; provided by the California African American Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Miller began the project by meeting with teachers and the vice principal at the school, as well as community organizers and leaders in the neighborhood. After talking with the school\u2019s drama teacher, Mr. Barrows, who was running a program where he had students write from their lives and then perform those stories on stage, Miller decided to host a workshop where the students could talk and write about their experiences in Athens.<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-18469-12' id='fnref-18469-12' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(18469)'>12<\/a><\/sup> They would then go on to perform those narratives in front of the camera, equipped with an awareness of their self-presentation and empowerment in telling their stories.<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-18469-13' id='fnref-18469-13' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(18469)'>13<\/a><\/sup> In the final installation, the students discuss issues including political activism, transgender identity, familial tragedy, and personal aspirations. Evelyn, a poet, tells of her older brother being killed outside a friend\u2019s house; Rjissle, host of a morning radio show, listens to music with his friends; Jaelin, a transgender teen, describes hanging out at her mom\u2019s beauty shop and goes on to recount shattering physical and sexual abuse; Andrea, an activist, explains to her mom and sister how she organized a student walk-out in solidarity with the Ayotzinapa mass kidnapping in Iguala, Mexico. Surrounded by the three screens of the installation, the stories move around the viewer. Voices overlap at moments as narratives blend sonically across the screens, creating a kind of oral archive that acknowledges documentary-style methods while undermining that format with screen shifts, edits, and incomplete narratives that raise questions about knowledge production, power, and a person\u2019s right to be heard.<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-18469-14' id='fnref-18469-14' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(18469)'>14<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>To the Stars <\/em>(2019) also centers the voices of youth, in this case 12 year-olds from a public junior high school in San Francisco. The work was commissioned by the education department at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for the museum\u2019s Phyllis Wattis Theater with the aim of bringing more young people into the museum.<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-18469-15' id='fnref-18469-15' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(18469)'>15<\/a><\/sup> Miller interweaves the stories of these middle school students with those of NASA astronaut Dr. Yvonne Cagle, choreographer Alonzo King, opera singer J\u2019Nai Bridges, and violinist Jessica McJunkins, focusing throughout on the power of light and the resilience of the human body. Astronaut, dancer, singer, and musician are all professions that Miller herself aspired to at some point during her childhood.<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-18469-16' id='fnref-18469-16' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(18469)'>16<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube aligncenter wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"To the Stars, trailer\" width=\"1140\" height=\"641\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qwG_yRLqhKQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><figcaption>Nicole Miller, trailer for <em>To the Stars<\/em>, 2019. Commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (video provided by the artist and Kristina Kite Gallery, Los Angeles)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The labor of rehearsal is notably foregrounded in <em>To the Stars.<\/em> All of the incredibly accomplished adults who appear in the film are shown practicing, preparing, experimenting, and refining their respective skills. By focusing on the space of rehearsal, Miller shifts emphasis away from totalizing representations, especially the burden of Black exceptionalism, and the inherent distortions of idealization versus lived human experience.<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-18469-17' id='fnref-18469-17' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(18469)'>17<\/a><\/sup> She frames creative articulation\u2014be it a dancer practicing in a studio, an opera singer training her voice, or a young person telling their story\u2014as an ever-changing process of becoming instead of a point of arrival or resolution. Movement, flow, plurality, and possibility are prized rather than essential ontology. As in <em>Athens<\/em>, the students featured in <em>To the Stars<\/em> look directly, sometimes awkwardly, into the camera while sharing accounts from their lives: figuring out how to do a triple axel, growing up with a father in jail, being worried about an older brother struggling with self-love and depression, and being handcuffed during a police raid with the rest of the family at nine years old. One of the most compelling scenes in <em>To the Stars <\/em>is a short montage halfway through the hour-long film, in which some of the children state their ages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube aligncenter wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"To the Stars, clip\" width=\"1140\" height=\"641\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uWWcz2ZQBmM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><figcaption>Nicole Miller,<em> To the Stars<\/em>, 2019 (video clip). Commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (video provided by the artist and Kristina Kite Gallery, Los Angeles)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The students range considerably in terms of ethnicity, height, and body type, but they are all in seventh grade and are 12 or 13 years old. \u201cI really think a major issue in America is that most Americans cannot see all kids as kids,\u201d Miller states. \u201cSo I wanted to be like, \u2018This is a 12 year old, this is a 12 year old, this is a child, this is a child.\u2019\u201d<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-18469-18' id='fnref-18469-18' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(18469)'>18<\/a><\/sup> The film functions as nothing less than \u201can indictment of American adults watching it.\u201d<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-18469-19' id='fnref-18469-19' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(18469)'>19<\/a><\/sup> Why would a nine-year old ever need to be handcuffed? Who is seen as innocent and who is seen as a threat? Who gets to hold on to their childhood?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In <em>A Sound, a Signal, the Circus<\/em> Miller retains her focus on young people, but the bodies of the teenagers whose voices animate the soundscape are absent, intentionally withheld. The artist\u2019s choice not to film the teens denies access to any concrete sense of knowing the speakers. Furthermore, while all of the participants were credited by name on the introductory wall text positioned just outside the gallery, in the actual experience of the soundscape it is left unclear exactly who is speaking at any given moment. The piece maintains a certain level of opacity.<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-18469-20' id='fnref-18469-20' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(18469)'>20<\/a><\/sup> The bodies that <em>are<\/em> visible in the installation are those of professional acrobats and dancers who appear across a three-channel video in various stages of practice\u2014on a trampoline, in a park, on a basketball court, in an apartment\u2014many of whom are preparing for roles in various circuses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1000\" height=\"500\" src=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_Stil-1000x500.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18526\" srcset=\"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_Stil-1000x500.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_Stil-500x250.jpg 500w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_Stil-200x100.jpg 200w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_Stil-1536x768.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_Stil-2048x1024.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_Stil-720x360.jpg 720w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_Stil-560x280.jpg 560w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><figcaption>Acrobat Austin Bradley in a still from <em>A Sound, A Signal, the Circus<\/em>, 2022 (provided by the artist and Kristina Kite Gallery, Los Angeles)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like the bodies of the young people interviewed in the soundscape, the circus is invoked but never actually made visible as Miller again trains her attention on the labor of rehearsal, on the lived experience of being a moving and feeling body. The circus serves as a key point of tension in the work, conjuring associations with not only extreme physical ability, but also risk, spectacle, and empowerment. Images of individual bodies in motion are repeated across the three screens in the installation, shown in different angles and from different perspectives. Unlike both <em>To the Stars<\/em> and <em>Athens<\/em>, the sound of the video is, for the most part, not diegetic\u2014the relationship between the imagery on the screens and the soundscape is rarely synchronized. The intermittent inclusion of laser animations serves as an additional point of disruption and reorientation. As transmutations of sound to light, the lasers draw our attention as viewers to the materiality of being in space as well as light\u2019s transformative qualities on an emotional level.<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-18469-21' id='fnref-18469-21' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(18469)'>21<\/a><\/sup> The installation thus manifests brilliance literally and figuratively through what is recorded\u2014the compelling self-expression of young people and the skilled artistry of adult performers\u2014and the effect produced in the luminous experience of the installation itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Light has been a mainstay of communication in Miller\u2019s work, whether in the form of photography, film, or distilled to a material object in the form of lasers. She first introduced laser light into her practice as a kind of Brechtian distancing effect aimed not only at readjusting the audience\u2019s patterns of perception and the outlooks they bring to the work, but also the recognition of being an embodied participant oneself. Miller first combined film and laser animation in <em>To the Stars<\/em>, a work located not in a gallery, but in a theater at SFMOMA. The work\u2019s location in a theater presented a unique challenge for the artist: how to break up the seamless cinematic experience that facilitates dissociated viewing and implicate the viewer as part of the system of viewing and receiving art? The film is punctuated at key moments with laser animations projected, at times, directly onto the images on the screen in the form of abstract shapes and lines. In other instances, the lasers spell out the words \u201cad astra,\u201d \u201cprelude,\u201d and, \u201cthe end.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube aligncenter wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"To the Stars, laser documentation\" width=\"1140\" height=\"641\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JipZcjZzvns?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><figcaption>Nicole Miller, <em>To the Stars<\/em>, 2019 (laser documentation). Commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (video provided by the artist and Kristina Kite Gallery, Los Angeles)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The quality of laser light is so bright that it can only be experienced live. Its beauty and its power is that it requires us to be present. When viewed in close proximity, as in the case of <em>To the Stars<\/em>, the lasers provoke a physical response, a jolt of delight and discomfort as our eyes struggle to adjust to their radiance. The experience of being in the theater with the lasers punctuating the screen, the lyrical cinematography of the film, and the surround sound is intentionally overwhelming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In <em>A Sound, a Signal, the Circus<\/em>, with its emphasis on synesthetic experience, laser-light animations become even more pronounced, existing on equal terms with the soundscape and the three-channel video. Animations appear projected onto the wall behind the three television monitors, which emit a quality of light that alternately complements and clashes with that of the lasers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"667\" height=\"1000\" src=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_2-667x1000.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_2-667x1000.jpg 667w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_2-333x500.jpg 333w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_2-133x200.jpg 133w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_2-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_2-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_2-720x1080.jpg 720w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_2-560x840.jpg 560w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_2-scaled.jpg 1707w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 667px) 100vw, 667px\" \/><figcaption>Installation view of <em>Nicole Miller: A Sound, a Signal, the Circus<\/em> at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 2022 (photograph by Josh White; provided by the artist)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The animations include abstract forms that riff on the dynamic movement of the bodies on the screens, as well as select words and phrases derived from the soundscape. Additionally, the words \u201chere\u201d and \u201cnow\u201d appear at moments throughout the program, referring to place and a feeling of the temporal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1000\" height=\"667\" src=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_3-1000x667.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18481\" srcset=\"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_3-1000x667.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_3-500x333.jpg 500w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_3-200x133.jpg 200w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_3-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_3-2048x1366.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_3-720x480.jpg 720w, https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Miller_Kemper_White_3-560x373.jpg 560w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><figcaption>Installation view of <em>Nicole Miller: A Sound, a Signal, the Circus<\/em> at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 2022 (photograph by Josh White; provided by the artist)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The prominence of these words harkens back to Miller\u2019s first laser work, the 2018 text-based projection <em>For Now<\/em>, in which the words \u201cFor Now\u201d move rapidly across a wall, reminding viewers of the passing nature of any given condition, be it joy or pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube aligncenter wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"For Now\" width=\"1140\" height=\"641\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-i5Zd8qtUcU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><figcaption>Nicole Miller, <em>For Now<\/em>, 2018 (detail) (video provided by the artist and Kristina Kite Gallery, Los Angeles)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The deliberate repetition of the words \u201cnow\u201d and \u201chere\u201d in her work at the Kemper Art Museum similarly draws attention to the passing (or not) nature of pleasure, anxiety, and even trauma, underscoring the range of sentiments evoked in the soundscape.<sup class='footnote'><a href='#fn-18469-22' id='fnref-18469-22' onclick='return fdfootnote_show(18469)'>22<\/a><\/sup> The words themselves are never static, but rather continuously morph in terms of font, color, size, and legibility. The lasers thus transmute and amplify the expressive power as well as the disorienting effects of Miller\u2019s use of narrative strains, screen shifts, and fragmentation across the installation. The encounter is deliriously kinetic with a concentration of light and emotion that is both captivating and disconcerting to behold. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Miller troubles an easy faith in the notion of visibility as an antidote to erasure and exclusion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Through these continuous transmutations\u2014sound to light, light to text, text to sound, sound to video\u2014Miller troubles an easy faith in the notion of visibility as an antidote to erasure and exclusion, seeking to generate a different register capable of holding a multiplicity of, sometimes contradictory, stories and experiences. In this immersive environment visitors are implicated as spectator and subject; we are asked to question how we come to know what we know about bodies and the meanings attached to them. The sound of voices speaking and the sight of bodies moving through space set up the potential for a heightened attention to one\u2019s own body while provoking fundamental considerations of whose bodies are valued in society, whose stories are amplified, whose lives are cherished, and whose brilliance shines forth in the here and now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:37px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The author wishes to thank Nicole Miller for generously providing insight into her artwork and for assistance with images. My gratitude also goes to the anonymous reviewers of this essay for their insightful comments and suggestions. Additionally, I thank John J. Curley, Emily Hage, Jennifer Josten, and Meredith Lehman for their support and feedback.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:24px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu\/directory\/449\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Meredith Malone<\/a> <\/strong>is curator at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis. A specialist in postwar and contemporary art she has curated numerous exhibitions, including <em>Nicole Miller: A Sound, a Signal, the Circus<\/em> (2022), <em>Multiplied: Edition MAT and the Transformable Work of Art, 1959\u20131965<\/em> (2020), and <em>To See Without Being Seen: Contemporary Art and Drone Warfare<\/em> (2016).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:40px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n<div class='footnotes' id='footnotes-18469'><div class='footnotedivider'><\/div><ol><li id='fn-18469-1'>These three quotes are excerpts from three separate interviews with teenagers conducted by Nicole Miller November 3\u2013November 6, 2021 in St. Louis. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-18469-1'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-18469-2'><em>Nicole Miller: A Sound, a Signal, the Circus<\/em> was on view at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, March 25, 2022 \u2013 July 25, 2022. I curated the exhibition. Some of the text describing the installation at the Kemper Art Museum mirrors verbiage I wrote for the exhibition handout. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-18469-2'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-18469-3'>Participants included teenagers of color and staff at different cultural institutions in St. Louis. Miller engaged St. Louis ArtWorks, an organization that provides job training in the arts to creative teens; Center of Creative Arts, a multidisciplinary community arts organization; College Prep at Washington University in St. Louis, a program designed to help high school students in the region succeed at college; the Griot Museum of Black History; and Circus Harmony, a social circus that trains youth, using circus arts to motivate social change. Before interviewing each participant the artist conducted informational meetings, either in person or via Zoom, introducing herself, her practice, her previous films, her goals with this new work of art, and what it means to share your story in a public way in the space of a museum. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-18469-3'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-18469-4'>Nicole Miller quoted in Jeremy D. Goodwin, <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/news.stlpublicradio.org\/arts\/2022-04-28\/nicole-millers-multimedia-installation-at-the-kemper-is-built-on-black-st-louis-voices\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cNicole Miller\u2019s Multimedia Installation at the Kemper is Built on Black Voices,\u201d<\/a> <em>St. Louis Public Radio<\/em> (April 28, 2022). <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-18469-4'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-18469-5'>Miller created the soundscape in collaboration with sound mixer and musician John Somers. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-18469-5'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-18469-6'>Nicole Miller, quoted in <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kcet.org\/shows\/artbound\/nicole-miller-mirror-images-and-the-power-to-create-reality\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cNicole Miller: Mirror Images and the Power to Create Reality,\u201d<\/a> <em>Artbound<\/em> (November 16, 2015): 8. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-18469-6'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-18469-7'>Tina Campt, <em>A Black Gaze: Artists Changing How We See<\/em> (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021), 7. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-18469-7'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-18469-8'>Ibid. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-18469-8'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-18469-9'>Martine Syms makes this statement in reference to Nicole Miller\u2019s 2016 film installation <em>Athens, California<\/em>, but the sentiment speaks to Miller\u2019s work broadly, including her installation at the Kemper Art Museum. See Syms, \u201cWhat Kind of Viewer Can I Be?\u201d in <em>Athens: Every Word Said<\/em> (Los Angeles: East of Borneo Books, 2019), 7. For an insightful perspective on how the visual can be victimizing for Black people see, Simone Browne, <em>Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness<\/em> (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015). Browne examines the violence of hypervisibility that has defined and surveilled Blackness since the beginnings of the transatlantic slave trade. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-18469-9'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-18469-10'>Miller\u2019s emphasis on embodied experience as a significant form of knowledge engages an implicit phenomenological framework, specifically one that centers Blackness. Campt\u2019s <em>A Black Gaze<\/em> does so as well with a driving focus on positionality, asking how we, as viewers, position ourselves in relation to Blackness, given the overall climate of anti-Blackness and white supremacy. See also Biko Mandela Garay and Ryan T. Johnson, <em>Phenomenology of Black Spirit <\/em>(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022). This study grapples with anti-Blackness at the heart of philosophical thinking about the development of self-consciousness over time. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-18469-10'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-18469-11'>The area of Athens initially sparked Miller\u2019s interest because it is unincorporated, without its own local municipal government. Unincorporated communities receive less representation and funding in city and county governments and \u201clack voices in their own civic lives.\u201d Shamim M. Momin, \u201cNicole Miller,\u201d in <em>In Plain Sight<\/em> (Seattle: Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, 2020), 37. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-18469-11'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-18469-12'>\u201cNicole Miller in Conversation with Naima J. Keith,\u201d in Nicole Miller, <em>Athens: Every Word Said<\/em> (Los Angeles: East of Borneo Books, 2019), 123-124. This book exists as a document of the process of making the work and the relationships forged. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-18469-12'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-18469-13'>Several of the students&#8217; written accounts, along with stories of some of the adults Miller met with, are published in Miller, <em>Athens: Every Word Said<\/em>. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-18469-13'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-18469-14'>Miller originally showed <em>Athens<\/em> in conjunction with her four-channel installation <em>Death of a School <\/em>(2014), a chronicle of two Tucson elementary schools on the verge of closure. Miller\u2019s mother taught at one of the schools for many years. Beyond personal connections, <em>Death of a School<\/em> bears witness to the school\u2019s shuttering, to the effects of political ineptitude and anti-immigration policies, and, in Miller\u2019s words to \u201cthe death of thought in the pictured space.\u201d Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson, <a href=\"https:\/\/moca-tucson.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Nicole-Miller-Map-and-Didactics.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201cCurator\u2019s Essay,\u201d<\/a> February 2016. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-18469-14'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-18469-15'>The work was commissioned by SFMOMA with junior high school audiences in mind. Miller described the challenge in conceptualizing <em>To the Stars<\/em> as follows: \u201cI really spent a good amount of time trying to think about what it means to possibly make such a significant work, where it\u2019s communicating to 12-year-olds and also in dialogue with the rest of my conceptual, structuralist filmmaking practice at large.\u201d Nicole Miller and Lauren Mackler, \u201cAn Introduction, a Prelude,\u201d <em>Michael in Black by Nicole Miller<\/em> (New York: CARA\/Public Fiction, 2022), 229. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-18469-15'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-18469-16'>Conversation with the artist September 25, 2021. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-18469-16'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-18469-17'>Nicole Fleetwood\u2019s discussion of dominant visual modes of representing Blackness and Black lived experience as exceptional or deviant is helpful to consider here. Fleetwood distinguishes between \u201ciconic blackness\u201d\u2014larger-than-life personae (Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., for example)\u2014and \u201cspectacular blackness,\u201d including criminal deviance and excessive bodily enactments. She counters these narratives with an exploration of localized, everyday images that are unfamiliar to canonical histories of Black American experience. Nicole Fleetwood, <em>Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness<\/em> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), esp. 37 and 47. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-18469-17'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-18469-18'>Nicole Miller quoted in Emily Wilson, <a href=\"https:\/\/hyperallergic.com\/530935\/to-the-stars-nicole-miller-sfmoma\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201cAn Art Film Created with Middle Schoolers in Mind,\u201d<\/a> <em>Hyperallergic<\/em> (December 2, 2019). <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-18469-18'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-18469-19'>Miller and Mackler, \u201cAn Introduction, a Prelude,\u201d 230. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-18469-19'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-18469-20'>\u00c9douard Glissant discusses this quality of inaccessibility or withholding in terms of a \u201cright to opacity\u201d in <em>Poetics of Relation<\/em> (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997). <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-18469-20'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-18469-21'>In collaboration with the laserist Zak Forrest, Miller produces these laser animations by \u201crunning an analog synth sound through a synthesizer, which moves around mirrors inside the laser with sound waves. This animates the beam of light very quickly, which changes the color and the size, the intensity.\u201d Miller and Mackler, \u201cAn Introduction, a Prelude,\u201d 231. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-18469-21'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><li id='fn-18469-22'><em>For Now <\/em>was inspired partly by a 2002 endurance performance on video by Adrian Piper titled <em>You\/Stop\/Watch: A Shiva Japan. <\/em>In the video, the artist repeats the mantra \u201cI can take it\u201d over and over again until she breaks down crying. The phrase \u201cfor now\u201d becomes itself an affecting mantra, a therapeutic gesture that emphasizes duration and survival. Conversation with the artist September 25, 2021. <span class='footnotereverse'><a href='#fnref-18469-22'>&#8617;<\/a><\/span><\/li><\/ol><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nicole Miller&#8217;s Ecstatic Translation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":18526,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"kia_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-texts",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18469"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18550,"href":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18469\/revisions\/18550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}