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 (work-in-progress) 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.