Fellowships

Wes Janz 

Ball State University 
Professor Emeritus and Architecture 

A Murder of Crows: Remembering the one woman and twelve men executed by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2020 and 2021

In the last days of the Trump Administration, 13 people were killed at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, capping a presidency, just four years, characterized by more federal executions than had occurred in the previous 56 years combined – the weeks following the executions saw no obituaries, or public remembrances of the dead. In this talk, scholar-activist Wes Janz, who lives just 20 miles from USP Terre Haute, asks how we might mourn the death of these people who committed terrible crimes in ways that question the policies and people dedicated to their death to awaken those who gave their existence and departure no attention whatsoever.

Wes Janz’s scholarly and creative work investigates remnants, refuse, and what Janz terms “leftover space.” From informal houses made of discarded pallets in Chihuahua, Mexico, to UN refugee camps whose temporariness has become permanent, through “new” villages in Sri Lanka that replace already established informal towns, to the miles of barbed wire covering Eastern Colorado, Janz’s globe-spanning body of work interrogates what it means to make space in an age defined by overproduction, uncertainty, ecological crises, and social upheaval. Janz questions and destabilizes neat distinctions between the imagined liberal West and the so-called “global south” by calling attention to the “third world conditions of the first world,” and the social imperatives that drive the discipline of architecture to ignore waste and underemphasize its 2 | Heller Fellowship Application – Wes Janz ties to wealth, power, and illiberal excess. In his 2011 essay on Flint, Michigan, Janz encapsulates this provocation in the question, “what is the role of the architect in a city where there’s more demolition than design?

”Dr. Janz’s award-winning body of work spans monographs, essays, sculpture, art and design fellowships, and gallery exhibitions. Janz was the inaugural recipient of the Curry Stone Design Prize in 2008 in recognition of his community engaged work in South Asia, he also received a prestigious Graham Foundation award between 1989 – 1991, and he was awarded a National Endowment of the Arts grant in 2015 to support an artist’s residency with M12 studios in Last Chance, Colorado. Janz’s work in Colorado centered on the transformation of post- agrarian communities into prison-centered economies and built on his shift towards thinking about mass incarceration in the United States as an effort to use prisons as “solutions” for “leftover spaces” by using “leftover people” as sources of profit. The products of this residency included a gallery exhibition entitled “Wide Views” which considered the racialized economies of prisons in the West. Janz’s work in Colorado led him to two additional gallery shows, both entitled “Pinned Down,” which considered the carceral geographies of prisons through written and sculptural works. These shows dovetailed with Dr. Janz’s ongoing advocacy around prison abolition, including his personal and epistolary relationships with inmates incarcerated in US Penitentiary Terre Haute, otherwise known as “federal death row,” just 20 miles from where Janz lives. Following the rushed executions of thirteen inmates at USP Terre Haute during the final days of the Trump Administration, Janz was troubled by the lack of attention to the lives of the people executed. In response, Janz is in the final stages of work on a new monograph that reflects on who these people were, tentatively titled A Murder of Crows: Critical Obituaries for the Thirteen People Executed in the Last Months of the Trump Administration, as both a form of protest to these deaths, and as a critical act of mourning.

Ayako Kato

Choreographer / Dancer

ETHOS V: Ways of the Wind  is a work-in-progress, outdoor installation performance combining storytelling, dance, and music on the land around the Heller Center. Seeking out a path of decolonization and healing of the land, the reflective movement project will be led by Heller Fellow and dance artist Ayako Kato in collaboration with Yvonne Wu, Assistant Professor of Music; Rosely Conz, Assistant Professor of Dance; 'Ilaheva Tua'one, Assistant Professor of Indigenous/Native American Studies and Storytelling Professor; and UCCS students. Ayako Kato is a kinetic philosopher/poet and contemporary choreographer/dancer originally from Yokohama, Japan.

Ayako Kato is an award-winning experimental dancer/choreographer/improviser originally from Yokohama, Japan and currently based in Chicago, IL. Since 1998, Kato has collaborated with over 80 musicians and composers in Europe, Japan, and the US. Incorporating principles of fūryū, (“wind flow” in Japanese), cyclical transformation, and human motion in nature, Kato creates dances for traditional stages and large-scale site-specific installations. Kato’s current work focuses on building relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and doing restorative work to heal the land. Her four-part ETHOS dance installation project, has focused on the impacts of capitalistic values (ETHOS I: To the Shore, 2019), human relationships with nature (ETHOS II: Inception, 2021), a common ancestral origin and essential elements for life (ETHOS III: LUCA/Res Communis, 2022), and the pursuit of symbiotic ways of being between nature and humans and among humans (ETHOS IV: Degrowth/Cycle/Rebirth, April 2024).

Visit Ayako Kato's website for additional reading.

Wes Janz
Ball State University
Professor Emeritus and Architecture
Co-Sponsored with the Department of Anthropology 
A Murder of Crows: Remembering the one woman and twelve men executed by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2020 and 2021
 

Paul Josephson
Professor
Colby College in Waterville, Maine
Co-sponsored with the Departments of Geography & Environmental Studies and History 
A Journey Through Nuclear Landscapes of the US West
 

Maria Luisa Tucker
Journalist, Podcaster, and Artist
Co-sponsored with the Department of English 
Sound, Story and Imagination: A Narrative Podcasting Workshop

Jon Rubin
Professor of Art
Carnegie Mellon University School of Art
Co-sponsored with the Department of Visual & Performing Arts – Visual Art
Art in Context: A conversation with Jon Rubin
 

Mark Miller
Assistant Professor
Center for Human Nature, Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience (CHAIN) Hokkaido University
Co-sponsored with the Department of Communication
What do social media and gaslighting have in common?

Pedro Lange-Churiόn
Professor, Department of Modern and Classical Languages
University of San Francisco
Co-sponsored with the Department of Humanities
Photographic Portraiture as Civic Contract

Leland Harper
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Philosophy
Siena Height University
Co-Sponsored with the Department of Philosophy
Do Racists go to Heaven?

Christine Stewart-Nuñez
Professor of English
South Dakota State University / South Dakota Poet Laureate
Co-Sponsored with the Department of English
Public Lecture: Intersections of Poetry & Art

Dohee Lee
Dance Artist
Co-Sponsored with the Department of Visual & Performing Arts (Dance)
Artist In Residence

George Lewis
Professor
Colombia
Co-Sponsored with the Department of Visual & Performing Arts (Music)
A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music

Ramona Beltran
Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Social Work
University of Denver
Co-Sponsored with the Kraemer Family Library
Representational Belonging: Healing Historical Trauma Through Narrative

Peter Coviello
Professor
University of Illinois at Chicago
Co-Sponsored with the Department of English
Peter Coviello

Janani Balasubramanian
Performance Artist
The Public (New York City)
Co-Sponsored with the Department of Visual & Performing Arts (Theatre)
Rogue Objects

Joni Palmer
Assistant Professor
University of New Mexico
Co-Sponsored with the Department of Geography & Environmental Studies
Reading and Writing the Land